Five Reasons to Add Auto-Webinars to the B2B Marketing Mix

“Is it live or is Memorex?”

If you are Gen-X or older like me, you may remember that famous ad campaign… that’s the one where singers such as Ella Fitzgerald shattered glass from a Memorex-taped recording of their brilliant voices.

That startling act proved the power of a Memorex audio-taped recording.

The big myth with marketing webinars is that your audience cares whether the webinar is live. They don’t.

Your prospects, clients and centers-of-influence (COIs) don’t care if your webinar format is live or an auto-webinar (an automated webinar).

Once you understand this paradigm, the much-maligned strategy of webinars becomes a game-changer for marketing and a way to cut through the clutter in today’s saturated search economy.

An auto-webinar (sometimes referred to as evergreen, virtual-live or persistent webinars) is the one B2B marketing strategy that combines the unstoppable power of video with the intimacy, interactivity, and immediacy of a live webinar.

An auto-webinar is a pre-recorded presentation broadcast. Your audience believes the webinar is live and the experience is virtually identical to attending a live webinar with questions and polls.

Auto-webinars started about 10 years with a few niche marketing technology players.

Now this relatively new technology is available from LogMeIn’s GotoWebinar and other full-service webcasting companies.

Most importantly, auto-webinars can help you narrow cast your B2B marketing message to reach the right buyers at the right time with the right message, one that is targeted to them!

Here are five other reasons to add auto-webinars to your B2B marketing mix in 2020:

1. Stop marketing as if you were back in 2010.

That quarterly educational webinar or explainer video will not engage prospects at the right time and the right stage of their journey.

Auto-webinars will leverage the power of digital marketing with the immediacy of offering your best presentation when prospects want it.

For example, you can set-up a weekly broadcast to engage prospects when they are searching for solutions about one of your key decision drivers so they are attracted to your website and register for your webinar.

2. Most presenters are not “one-take Jakes” or seasoned presenters.

You will lose your audience quickly with a flawed live webinar.

In contrast, you can fix all mistakes and blemishes (and any “sales-prevention” content) to make every presentation perfect with auto-webinars.

Pre-record once, have internal stakeholders of all types preview it, and then it can be broadcast dozens, even hundreds of times.

3. Reach buyers during the morning and evening by running the same webinars twice in one day.

Some prospects will want to tune into your presentation during the day and others after work in the evening.

Boost registration numbers and viewers by 50% or more by adopting an auto-webinar strategy with multiple broadcast times per day.

4. “The more you tell the more you sell.”

Your one-minute explainer video might get attention, but it is not enough to propel prospects to the next step or to get them in the office.

In contrast, auto-webinars work well as sales-enablers.

Think of them as a “TED Talk” (your best, compelling presentation) for your product, service, or offering for a maximum of 29 minutes.

Kick the trade show or in-person seminar habit once and for all.

5. Auto-webinars are five times more effective than in-person marketing events.

If auto-webinars get five times the bang for your marketing bucks with less effort, you will double qualified sales leads with their use.

One of my clients tested auto-webinars and they generated qualified sales prospects at 1/20 of the average cost-per-prospect of their traditional marketing like seminars.

Webinars done right (a longer conversation we don’t have space for in this article) have a high perceived value with B2B prospects.

You gain their registration/opt-in and permission to market to them.

Then, you unleash targeted marketing (your auto-webinar) because you know precisely when they are searching for a solution like yours.

Key benefits of auto-webinars and why they can be a game changer in B2B marketing:

• Get your best presenters in front of prospects using the power of video and marketing automation,

• Educate and nurture prospects with long-format webinars which have proven selling power,

• Scale and repeat your best webinars, which are up to five times more effective than in-person events.

• Perhaps best of all, auto-webinars can be inserted at any point in the buying process, and

• Educate your audience on your point-of-view and build trust and a relationship.

For example, I worked with a small services firm that tried live webinars and only had 20 registrants and no sales opportunities.

It then got its “Ted-Talk” in front of prospects via email marketing and garnered 187 registrants to an auto-webinar broadcast twice on the same day.

Almost 100 prospects attended their two auto-webinars broadcasts on the first day, adding $3 million in qualified sales pipeline in the first 7 days alone.

In your 2020 marketing plan, test one or more auto-webinars to gain new prospects and ideal clients.