The Effectiveness of Webinars As a Marketing Tactic
Our upcoming SpeakerBox webinar got me thinking about how other marketers are using Webinars and to what effect.
Forrester Research recently published a report entitled, “Top-Performing Tech Marketers Use Webinars as a Portal to the Buyer’s Journey.” The gist of the report is that Webinars are one of the most popular digital marketing tactics, used by 93% of technology marketers. Not surprisingly, most marketers are using Webinars for lead generation and awareness-building.
For attendees, Webinars can prove to be beneficial, although perhaps not necessarily influential. While attendees rate Webinars as most useful during the information-gathering stage of the buying process, attendees also rank them as the least likely resource to influence decision-making compared to printed publications, in-person events and email newsletters.
These results differ slightly from the 2012 B2B Content Marketing Report, published jointly by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute. Results from this survey indicate that 90% of marketers use some form of content marketing, which accounts for more than 25% of marketers’ budgets. On average, most marketers use eight different content tactics to meet their marketing goals, including case studies, whitepapers, blog posts, events and videos.
However, according to the 2012 report, Webinars did not fare as well in terms of implementation – but, ironically, better in regards to effectiveness. According to that report, only 46% of marketers claim to be using Webinars – which places this tactic ninth in the ranking of most popular content marketing tactics. In the 2010 survey, Webinars ranked eighth, with 43% of marketers using this tactic. In spite of this limited usage, marketers ranked Webinars as one of the most effective tactics, second only to in-person events. In fact, the perceived effectiveness of Webinars increased more than 25% over the 2010 report.
Like many of those surveyed, we’re big believers in a diversified content strategy. If you’ll excuse the shameless plug, I hope you’ll register for our upcoming Webinar – “Inbound Marketing – Getting Found with Creative Content” on Wednesday, August 29th at 2:00. See you there.
-- Katie Hanusik
(photo courtesy of DownEU)