Webinar Marketing for Software Companies

Software companies have various promotional opportunities available to fill the sales pipeline and move prospects through it. The particular techniques used and their priority depend upon many factors, including, but not limited to, market segment, product complexity, price points, and length of the sales cycle. One of my favorite techniques for companies with more complex products, higher price points, and typically longer sales cycles is webinar marketing.

This is a promotional technique that is mostly used in B2B marketing. Lower-cost promotional methods might be optimal for a large consumer market or a broader B2B market.  Webinar marketing appears to be very labor-intensive and somewhat inefficient compared to such techniques. So it’s not a great fit for large, low-priced markets.  But this is NOT true compared to the high-touch, “one-to-one” selling that is commonplace in enterprise software markets.  The “one-to-many” webinar can be seen as an efficient use of resources in comparison. While also providing relatively high-touch interactions with prospects early in the sales cycle.

Once you’ve decided to embark on a Webinar Marketing campaign, there are two important components to consider. The first is attracting attendees. The second is creating compelling, engaging content for the webinar that will move prospects to the next step in your sales funnel. Let’s take a look at each of these important activities:

Creating Webinar Content

1. This is key–attracting a lot of attendees but then presenting a weak webinar serves no purpose whatsoever. It’s important to take webinar content creation seriously. Plan the best webinar possible, since you will be touching many prospects during it.
2. Segment your market and create individual webinars for distinct segments. The tighter the target audience, the more familiar and compelling the created content will feel to them.
3. It’s usually best that the webinar is highly educational, rather than a hard-core product pitch. Attendees will be most open to attending and sticking around (and paying attention!) for the entire webinar if you teach them something new. They will then be more open to a soft product pitch interspersed with the educational content or presented at the end. This occurs once you’ve established the presenters as topical thought leaders.
4. Keep introductions to a minimum. Get right to what the folks have come for as soon as possible. A short introduction to establish the presenter’s qualifications is fine. A very brief bit about the company is also ok. But keep any longer materials on the company’s business and product offerings at the end.
5. Keep it short. These are all business people who have real jobs to get back to. I find an hour ideal, including at least 15 minutes for Q&A.
6. Use available tools to qualify the audience. For example, create a poll asking the attendees if they plan to purchase a product in your category for the first time, or if they are replacing an existing software application. Qualify the attendees upfront so you can slant your presentation appropriately.
7. One of the major advantages of webinar marketing for a software-based company is that it’s very easy to incorporate product demos into the presentation. Per the comments above, the webinar mustn’t be simply a product demo. But with a software-based product, you can easily weave the software’s capabilities into an educational presentation using demos as part of “show and tell”. Or a short demo can be given near the end to demonstrate how the product solves some of the issues discussed in the presentation.

Webinar Marketing: Attracting Webinar Attendees

1. It’s important to know that statistically, only 40-60% of those who sign up will attend the webinar! So you need to attract significantly more than you believe is the minimum attendance required to make it worthwhile.  Modern webinar software will provide multiple attendance reminder prompts to those signing up to minimize this issue. But in any event, don’t despair. You can still MARKET to those that don’t show up at the live webinar via sending them a recorded version of it, sending them an email special offer, etc. Those signups can be valuable in their own right, regardless of live attendance.
2. Use all methods available to you to alert target attendees of the upcoming webinar
3. Send invitation email messages to your existing house list, including prospects, partners, resellers, etc.
4. Consider teaming an organization (media, analysts, etc.) with a large list of target prospects
5. Consider teaming with a co-presenter with a complementary/non-competitive product or service to help increase attendance.
6. Use PPC advertising with the webinar signup as the call to action.
7. Post the webinar announcement on target social media sites such as LinkedIn Groups, Twitter, and Facebook. Also, target market-specific online discussion forums and community boards.
8. Use a cost-effective “PR” service to put out a low-cost announcement of the webinar.
9. Ensure that a prominent webinar link is on your home page, including detailed information on the webinar’s focus on a webinar-specific page.

That’s a quick primer on some key steps to consider in creating successful webinar marketing campaigns. Please consider leaving a comment below with your own thoughts and experiences on the benefits of this marketing method.

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