From cold contacts to qualified pipeline: five steps to webinar success

Done well, a webinar is one of the most efficient ways to turn a cold contact list into a qualified pipeline. It gives your prospects a reason to engage, gives your sales team a natural next step and gives you a piece of content that keeps working long after the event ends. In this blog post, we're sharing our top five steps to webinar success.

We've planned and delivered webinars for enterprise IT vendors and partners across finance, technology and the public sector. We delivered a campaign for an Oracle partner in the finance sector which ran over just six days and delivered 38 registrations, 22 attendees and seven post-event meetings. That's the kind of return a well-run webinar can produce when every stage is planned with the end goal in mind: meetings, not just attendance.

Here's how we approach it.

Step 1: Choose your topic and speakers with the outcome in mind

Start with what you want your audience to do next, not just what you want to tell them. Your topic should speak directly to a challenge your target accounts are already wrestling with, and your speaker line-up should reflect that. Two speakers plus a moderator, run in a fireside conversation format, tends to hold attention far better than a single presenter talking at a slide deck.

Step 2: Lock in the date and build in lead time

Once your topic and speakers are set, agree a date that gives you enough runway to build and clean your data, and to run a proper multi-touch registration campaign. We work to a minimum 6-week run up, but the earlier you start, the more leads can be developed. Avoid school holidays and aim for midweek, mid-morning or mid-afternoon slots when calendars are least congested. Make sure your platform sends automated reminders in the run-up. This alone can significantly lift your show-up rate.

Step 3: Drive registrations across every channel

This is where a webinar starts to earn its place in your pipeline. Email and social will only get you so far. A focused telemarketing campaign, layered alongside your digital activity, consistently outperforms email alone for registration numbers, and gives you a warm reason to have a first conversation with target accounts before the event even happens.

Step 4: Rehearse until it's second nature

Run at least one full rehearsal with your speakers and moderator, covering the running order, the presentation tools and the interactive elements such as polls and Q&A. On the day, bring everyone together 15 minutes before you go live to check notifications are off, doors are closed and presentations are ready to share. This is the unglamorous work that makes the difference between a webinar that feels professional and one that doesn't.

Step 5: Treat the follow-up as the main event

The webinar itself is only the midpoint. Review attendance and drop-off, then follow up attendees with a call to move them toward a meeting or demo, not just a thank-you email. Just as importantly, follow up your non-attendees with the recording and the same call cadence. Many of your best opportunities will come from people who registered but couldn't make it live.

And finally

A webinar's value doesn't end when the recording stops. That recording becomes an asset for future email and social campaigns, and a useful tool to share ahead of a first meeting. Handled properly from topic selection through to post-event follow-up, a single webinar can generate meetings and pipeline for months afterwards, not just on the day.

Kai Engel, Function Six

Want to turn your next webinar into qualified pipeline rather than just an attendee list? Get in touch to talk through your requirements, or find out more about how we support event campaigns and lead generation end to end.