Recently, live webinars have been an essential piece of marketing and have been used by a wide range of online businesses, from tech companies to health and wellness organizations. One of the features that make webinars so powerful and effective is not just that they are a good way of promoting your products and services or a critical tool for audience engagement; they are also a fantastic source of data.
Considering the crucial role of webinars in online content marketing, it is essential to do them right. Fortunately, there are benchmarks that every marketer can use to ensure that they can get the right results by doing it right. This article will show you the benchmarks every marketer can use to ensure that their webinars are effective.
How we got the data on webinar statistics
Webinars generate a ton of data collected by webinar hosting platforms such as Cloudpresenter. Many marketers use this data to boost audience engagement, lead generation, and, conversely, their conversion rate. B2B professionals can also use the data to improve the quality of their live webinars.
While it would be impossible to scour every facet of data to extract and exploit as much information as you can, there are several benchmarks that every diligent marketer must incorporate into their webinars to ensure that they are fulfilling their purpose.
Ultimate webinar benchmarks every marketer should know
Millions of webinars are recorded or hosted live annually, and their importance has convinced nearly 75% of B2B marketers to use them in their marketing efforts; likely, you have also used webinars in your business. Over the years, it has become part of marketing best practices to utilize the data accumulated by webinar hosting platforms to improve their webinars. Here are some of those benchmarks:
What are the most popular webinar topics?
People mainly consume webinars for information or enlightenment about exciting topics or fields. An average webinar that doesn’t address issues that affect your prospective clients will not garner much interest. Hence, before you host a webinar, you want to ensure that the topic you’re focusing on is popular with the audience.
According to the data collated from the sources, the topics with the most responses are marketing strategies and revenue generation, technological advances, and career training. Other well-engaged topics include How-to's and Introductions, Industry trends, expert interviews, case studies, original research, and data insights. When treating these topics, the goal is to add educational value to these topics and not be overly concerned about pitching your products. Unfortunately, such salesy pitching is one of the worst webinar mistakes among many marketing and sales professionals.
How long can a webinar attendee stay focused?
The marketing efforts, such as engagement and pitch, can be jeopardized if your audience is not even paying attention. If you want to succeed with your goals, you want to ensure they listen to your words. According to the data accumulated, audiences of webinars are zoned in during 75% of webinar sessions, and nearly half of attendees answer poll questions.
Some webinar hosts can also detect if an attendee has the webinar open as their main tab or if they multitask; you can use these features to monitor their interest and attention during and after webinar options.
When do people register for webinars?
An analysis run on nearly 400,000 webinars revealed that the majority of webinar registration happens as closely to the virtual event as possible. According to the data, 66% of audiences registered 1-7 days before or on the event day, while about 34% of all registrations occurred eight days or more before live events.
This data suggests that webinar promotion should start early enough, preferably two weeks before the event, to improve their chances of garnering traction. Promotion should be increased a week before the event, and constant reminders should be sent via emails on the webinar day, as that is when 29 out of the 66% register for events.
What is the best channel for promoting webinars?
Before the webinar, you can promote your event via several channels, such as social media posts and your website, using SEO techniques. However, the data collated from webinar-promoted materials reveal that email marketing is the best way to promote webinars, with up to 57% of all registrations from email marketing. Moreover, many research reports have confirmed that it is one of the best ways to generate high-quality leads.
To use this data well, you must improve your email marketing campaign results by sending personalized messages to your email list instead of the generic ones that do nothing to pique their interests.
Also, choose a subject line that is moderately salesy, as this could turn off some on your list from opening your emails, which will also diminish your marketing performance. You also want to collaborate with a B2B marketing influencer or an affiliate company to leverage their email lists or increase email outreach.
What are the best times for webinars?
To retain your audience's participation and attention, you want to know the best times to host your webinar and how long you should host them. It was interesting to discover that longer webinars perform better than shorter ones, contrary to popular belief. For example, the data reveal that webinars advertised to last at least an hour attract 67% of registrations, while those advertised for half an hour only bring in 8%.
It was also discovered that 6, 10 & 11 am EST, and 8 am PST are the best and most popular times for webinars. Although, if you wish to stand out in the webinar market, you should try less competitive time. You will also want to experiment using 30 minutes for presentation and 30 minutes for audience participation activities such as Q&A or a live demonstration.
How effective are CTAs during virtual events?
One of the best ways to use webinars for lead generation is Call-to-action or CTAs, such as Book a Demo or Visit our website. These CTAs are popular among marketers and are even more popular among webinar attendees. For example, in 2021, data from a webinar hosting platform showed more than 500,000 featured action clicks across all events run from the platform. So it is a good idea.
What is a good webinar show-up rate?
The benefits of webinars are most often dependent on their attendance rate. However, the data show that only 52% of those who register for webinars show up. However, this rate will vary from industry to industry and depend on the use case and webinar software. While webinar attendance may be better, it emphasizes expanding your reach the days before the event so more people can attend your webinar.
Conclusion
Webinars are an essential part of online marketing, but savvy marketers know to use webinar benchmarks to improve the performance of their webinars. Some of the benchmarks to consider include the attendance rate, CTA response, and attention span of attendees. You want to ensure that you use good webinar hosting platforms such as Cloudpresenter to get the right metrics that you can use to improve your performance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are some good webinar hosting platforms you can use?
Some webinar platforms help promote your products, encourage audience participation, and collect data that could improve your webinars. Some great ones include Cloudpresenter, Gotowebinar, etc.
Why are webinar benchmarks important?
Webinar benchmarks are essential because they help marketers measure success, set goals, and include such metrics as registration rate, engagement, CTA clicks, and attendance.
What makes a webinar successful?
You can try several things, such as utilizing interactive features, live polls, chats, and a live Q & session at the end so you can interact with your audience in real time.
.webp)
