OK, I admit it. we may be just the tiniest bit obsessed with webinars. We think about webinars. We write about webinars. We dream about webinars. And, of course, we deliver webinars. Then, once a year, we step back to do something completely different: we measure all of the thousands upon thousands of webinars.
Our annual Webinar Benchmarks Report lets us take a detailed look at the wide world of webcasting to identify key trends and actionable best practices. The insights we get are so interesting that we can hardly wait to share them with you. This year, webinar marketing maestro Mark Bornstein dove into the benchmarks data and brought us four data-driven webinar tips that you can start using today:
Don’t Shortchange Your Promotion Cycle
Over and over again, we hear that the single biggest webinar challenge for marketers is driving registration. So why are so many people only sending out one or two emails to promote their events? Our benchmark data shows that a full 23% of webinar registrations come in more than two weeks before the event. WOW.
If you’re only promoting your webinar for a week or two and only sending out a couple of emails, you are missing out on an enormous potential audience. Instead, plan on a promotional cycle that last around three weeks, and send at least three emails (at ON24, we usually send a mix of formatted HTML and plain text emails to appeal to a wider audience). And don’t forget the day of the webinar itself! More than a quarter of all webinar registrations come it at the last minute!
Don’t Fear the One-Hour Webinar
Think all your content needs to be snackable? Think again! Since we started tracking webinar benchmarks, we’ve seen the average viewing time go up every year, reaching an all-time high of 57 minutes in 2016, up from 38 minutes in 2010. As much as people love infographics and listicles, there’s also a huge appetite out there for long-form, in-depth content — and the 2016 data shows that nothing satisfies an appetite like an engaging and interactive hour-long webinar.
Get Interactive
When it comes to webinar interactivity, Q&A still leads the pack. In our study, we discovered that 81% of webinars include a Q&A portion. But there are so many more options available! Social tools are on the rise this year, with nearly 1 in 3 webinars integrating social media. And polling and surveys are still strong performers, each making an appearance in nearly a quarter of all webinars.
If you aren’t using these tools in your events, you could be missing out on a chance to engage with your audience in a fun and meaningful way. And if your event attendance is falling short of the average 57-minute mark, adding moments of interactivity may draw people in and keep them around for longer.
Have an On-Demand Strategy
Believe it or not, 1 in 3 people who watch a webinar miss the live date entirely, as they would rather watch it on-demand. Let’s face it: we’re all getting used to an on-demand world of binge watching and streaming services that put the viewer in control of the media experience. So, why would webinars be any different? As marketers that means that we need to think beyond the launch date alone. When planning your webinar promotion strategy, you need to have a plan for promoting the on-demand version of the webinar as well so that you don’t miss out on a much larger potential audience.
There are a lot of ways to promote on-demand webinars, from banner ads to emails. Personally, I’d recommend a nice blog post — after all, you’re reading this one!
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