Many industrial marketers have invested in technology, equipment, and training to produce and host their own webinars. Given that the coronavirus pandemic has forced many in-person events to be canceled and replaced with online options, it makes sense marketers are running their own webinars to connect with customers and prospects.
Webinars are experiencing a renaissance of sorts. Recent research from GlobalSpec found that 84 percent of engineers find webinars valuable. Seventy-three percent of B2B marketing and sales leaders say a webinar is the best way to generate high-quality leads.
But hosting your own webinars shouldn’t be the extent of your webinar program. Marketers should consider outsourcing some of their webinar programs to a third party or media partner.
Outsourcing webinars offer benefits beyond what webinars produced in-house can deliver:
- Expertise in webinar production
- Access to a broader audience
- Third-party credibility for your content
- Extensive marketing support
Expertise
A third-party or media company that specializes in webinars will be able to manage all aspects of webinar production, quickly deal with any technical glitches, provide expert advice on the content and structure of your webinar, offer a host of interactive features to engage your audience, and more.
A webinar partner will also be up to date on the latest trends in webinars, such as what’s working best these days and what isn’t, optimal days/times to hold a webinar, live vs. pre-recorded webinars, archiving webinars, and creating on-demand versions of webinars.
As a marketer, you can’t be expected to have expertise in all these areas specific to webinars, but you can access this expertise through partnering.
Audience
Perhaps the single biggest advantage of outsourcing some of your webinars is gaining access to a target industrial audience you would otherwise have difficulty reaching, but who are still interested in what you have to say.
The right media partner will have an extensive opt-in database with information on each record so that you can precisely identify and target a new audience. Expanding to new audiences is a perfect way to increase visibility, penetrate new markets, or connect with new or underserved customer segments.
Credibility
While you may have quality educational content for your webinar, a webinar hosted by in-house staff can still come off as a sales pitch, which would alienate an engineering audience interested in unbiased educational and technical information. On the other hand, hosting a webinar through a respected partner brings additional credibility to your content. You will gain industry name recognition that by association lends status to your webinar and content.
Marketing Support
A webinar partner can handle list generation, marketing to promote the event, registrations and reminder emails, and post-event marketing to attendees and registrants who didn’t attend. Plus, you will get contact information of attendees and registrants for future marketing endeavors.
Find the Balance
If you’ve invested in a webinar platform and are hosting your own webinars, you’ve made a smart move to fill in the gap of canceled tradeshows and other in-person events. But to take full advantage of the popularity of webinars among engineers, you should still consider working with a partner for some of your webinar programs.
You’ll gain all the benefits, plus you won’t be burdened with technical glitches, handling registrations, pre-and post-event marketing, and meeting high production values. You’ll also be able to free up some of your internal resources to focus on other pressing marketing matters.
With webinars, it makes good marketing sense to find a balance between in-house production and outsourcing to a partner. For more information on how GlobalSpec can support and enhance your webinar marketing efforts, visit our webinar page.
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