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As the world had to adapt during the years of the pandemic, we saw a rise in webinars and online events as effective marketing tools. Now, live events are back, but that doesn’t mean you should drop webinars from your marketing plan. The advantages of webinars are vast and as digital marketing continues to evolve, so does the role of webinars in the industry. Not only do they offer immense value in brand awareness and thought leadership growth, but they are also a huge lead generation opportunity.
In fact, an estimated 73% of webinar attendees become qualified leads. Webinars also continue to be a valuable benefit to our American Chemical Society (ACS) members. Out of the ACS members surveyed, 97% found webinars beneficial. By embracing new technologies and niche-specific content, you can leverage the power of webinars and stay competitive in this digital age. Below, we’ll pull in C&EN examples to highlight 5 key advantages of webinars and why they are still an effective marketing tool in 2023.
5 Key Advantages of Webinars
#1: Webinars are Flexible and Cost-Effective
Because webinars can either be hosted in real-time or prerecorded, they cater to people’s busy schedules and provide the flexibility to make it possible for people to attend. We see this reflected in that 84% of surveyed C&EN readers attended a webinar in the last 12 months, with 50% attending 3 or more. Webinars also allow you to target a broader, maybe even global, audience by removing the need to travel to a physical location such as with a live conference or exposition. This provides the ability to scale your marketing efforts and really optimize webinar lead generation.
#2: Webinars Generate High-Quality Leads for Quicker ROI
Only genuinely interested prospects will take the time to register, provide their information, and tune in to a webinar, meaning those prospects are already high-quality leads when they come in. Apart from re-engaging existing leads, webinars can proactively attract fresh leads and create new loyal customers by optimizing sales conversion, resulting in a faster ROI. You can also incorporate content handouts as a pre-registration lead generator to increase the perceived value of your webinar and make it more intriguing to potential registrants. And with the ability of webinars to be recorded and replayed, they provide ongoing lead-generating opportunities as well as long-lasting value to deliver to prospects with minimal additional effort required.
#3: Webinars Can Help Establish Your Company as an Authority in the Science Industry
Webinars are a fantastic platform for telling your science story in a way that showcases your company and the scientific expertise at the head of the industry.
They are also a great way to generate demand by allowing you to establish your company as an authority and put your products in front of the right audience. By doing this, you have an opportunity to really educate by demonstrating product functionality, showcasing upgrades in technology, and explaining complex topics to increase understanding.
More than a quarter (27%) of C&EN readers said webinars are one of the resources they rely on most to keep abreast of new products and technologies. Further, a recent study concluded that video content increases people’s understanding of your product or service by 74%.
#4: Webinars Build Relationships Through Engaging and Exciting Material
With the ability to speak on a more personal and engaging level, webinars enable you to captivate your audience and bring in exciting interactive elements to not only motivate attendees to actively participate, but to also help improve the retention of the material presented.
At C&EN Media Group, our webinar program utilizes interactive features such as Q&As, polls, downloadable resources for attendees, certification of attendance, and video integration to create a more memorable and personalized experience overall. Attendees can also share their progress and updates on social media platforms which creates a sense of community and comradery among peers with similar scientific interests. Finally, webinars give you the opportunity to provide value first which in turn creates a loyal audience that leads to sales.
#5: Webinars Can Serve as Content Hubs
Webinars serve as the perfect foundation to create a series of content around a specific topic which helps reach a wider audience and also engage that audience in multiple ways.
Think about all of the different channels you can use to repurpose a webinar – transform it into a promotional video, white paper or eBook, create a blog post or article around it, or even develop a supporting infographic. In doing this, you are attracting new audiences and helping to reach potential customers to add to the sales funnel.
How to Get Started
Creating a successful webinar to see these benefits doesn’t have to be challenging. Follow our tips on how to avoid common webinar pitfalls as well as how to make a webinar that will keep your scientific audience awake. Be sure to clearly identify your audience and subject matter upfront and provide knowledge that your audience can actually apply. It’s also key to keep your slides dynamic, decluttered, and data-driven while incorporating mixed media into the presentation whenever possible. And always pick an engaging speaker who can interact with the audience in an affable and professional way. With these few simple steps, you can take advantage of all of the benefits science webinars provide and continue to use them as an effective marketing tool.
Looking for more help? Host your next webinar with C&EN. Our team will guide you through the process to host an interactive session that gets results. To get started, contact us or download our Lead Generation Playbook, which provides full details on our webinars as well as additional lead generation products, solutions, case studies, pricing and package components.
