How To Make Online Webinars Work For You As A B2B Demand Generation Machine

 

Imagine you could talk to your target audience one-on-one, just like in the days of door-to-door selling. How persuasive do you think you would be? At the very least, I’m sure you would hope to get phone numbers for follow-up, right? Well, I see online webinars as events that let you use the same one-on-one selling power with hundreds of your audience at once.

Thought-leadership marketing webinars are a low-pressure demand generation strategy to help prospects get comfortable and understand your solution.

Why Online Webinars Work For B2B Demand Generation

I see marketing webinars as unrivaled in creating demand because they:

• Establish your brand as an authority before your audience even needs to make a purchase—and lets you do it at scale too.

• Allow you to take a pulse of prospects’ concerns and objections and address them immediately due to the interactive quality of webinars.

• Give you a chance to make a case for your product and/or service as the solution your audience needs. You can demo it live in action as seeing is believing.

• Give you high-purchase intent leads since anyone interested in what you have to say and considers it worth their time will likely buy from you eventually.

Webinar Strategies For The Demand Generation

Creating a killer online lead generation webinar is a craft that requires strategic approaches.

1. Solution-Framework Webinar Topic

When choosing a webinar topic, you need to understand the problem that your product or service solves for the target audience. Then craft your webinar topic as a specific solution framework to solve prospects’ pain problems.

For instance, rather than tagging a webinar “How to generate leads for your real-estate business,” you should tag it in a more specific manner like, “How to use the X strategy we used in generating Y results for a real-estate business.”

The difference between the two topics is that the second one describes how the company has designed a specific pain-killer for the audience’s headache (while stating the result on other similar patients). The first topic just says come, let’s cure your headache (without any context as to how they intend to do it).

Which would you go for if it were you had a headache? One thing to note in using this strategy is, do not explain your “X strategy” methodology on your sales page. It’s better to tell them what it’s not. This keeps them curious enough to join the webinar.

2. Hook Them Until The End With The Open-Loop System

It’s one thing to be able to get people to attend your webinar, and it’s another ball game entirely to make sure they stay until the end.

What you need to do is get them hooked, just like you might get hooked at the end of an episode of your favorite TV series. You can do this using the open-loop system. To use this trick, you have to make a promise early on in the webinar to show them how to do a certain thing or share a certain valuable tool with them later on in the video.

For instance, for a real estate lead generation webinar topic, you could have an open loop that goes like this: “In this short masterclass, I’m not only going to show you how to use the X framework to get Y results but also how to do it at a ridiculously low cost and without having to do any of the grunt work by yourself.”

You could also create open loops by throwing a question (as a mystery to unravel) at the attendees that won’t get answered until later. Use these open loops throughout the online webinars. This way, you can be sure to keep the audience hooked till the very end. You can also create opportunities for interaction with polls and surveys to keep them engaged.

3. Use An Attendee’s Business To Demonstrate Your Solution And Expertise

As part of your demand generation strategy, you have to show webinar attendees how to get the most out of your product or service. You can do this through an interactive walkthrough of your product’s features or service offerings. But a more subtle and effective approach is to go into a “challenge mode” and demonstrate your solution using one of the webinar attendee’s businesses.

For instance, if you offer an AI funnel builder solution, rather than walk them through your product features, build out a funnel for one of the attendees while others watch live. If it is a service, you can run a quick audit for one of the attendees while suggesting solutions to issues you identified.

This way, your webinar audience will be convinced beyond any doubt that you have the solution to their pain points, thus, making selling your offer to them easy-peasy.

Conclusion

Demand generation is largely about leaving a lasting positive impression on potential buyers. This makes them trust your solution enough to make a purchase when you offer it.

I find that there’s no better way to build trust than a marketing webinar. Unlike other demand generation strategies, online webinars provide engaging interactions in a personal way through live questions and answers, chats, surveys and pools.

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