FROM PRESENTATION TO CONVERSATION Drive Interactivity and...

1How to Drive Interactivity and Engagement in Your Webinars

ON24 WHITE PAPER

FROM PRESENTATION TO CONVERSATION

Drive Interactivity and Engagement in Your Webinars

ON24 WHITE PAPER


ON24 WHITE PAPER

Webinars have become a top-tier marketing tool, with an ever-growing

number of companies leveraging this powerful medium to generate and

qualify leads. While highly effective, the use of webinars as a leading

marketing tactic means that audiences have many webinars to choose

from. Companies must therefore capture the imagination and attention of

attendees – or risk losing them to the competition.

From 2012 to 2013, average webinar viewing time jumped nearly 40%, from

38 minutes to 53 minutes, according to ON24 benchmark research data. Our

analysis suggests the increase is due to the growing use of tools aimed at

delivering a more interactive and engaging audience experience. Increased

levels of audience engagement result in longer viewing times and higher lead

values. This correlation means companies must transform their webinars

from presentations into conversations.

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT IS ESSENTIAL

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Top Tactics to Fill the Funnel“How effective are the following marketing tactics for you at generating new leads?”

Top Tactics to Accelerate Sales Cycle“How effective are the following marketing tactics for you at cultivating leads to sales-qualified status?”


ON24 WHITE PAPER

Webinars are ideal for creating an interactive environment, as audiences

tend to be more comfortable online than they are in person. Attendees

who might remain quiet in a live seminar are more likely to ask questions,

share opinions, post ideas and answer poll questions in a webinar. This

level of interactivity has multiple benefits:

• It broadens the reach of your messaging at no additional cost.

• Longer viewing times mean longer exposure to your content

and messaging.

• The more engaged audiences are with your material, the more they

will retain the content.

• It increases the number of marketing touches per event, enabling

companies to offer more information to a customer or prospect in

a single exposure.

• Increased interactivity provides richer data for lead scoring, enabling

more targeted and effective follow-up.

There is no right or wrong way to drive interactivity and engagement.

The key is simply to do it. How? There are many tools available today

to help you. In the following section we will examine four categories

of tools available on most webinar platforms that will enable you to

shift your webinars from one-way presentations to lively, engaging,

interactive conversations.

AVERAGEVIEWER TIME

PREVIOUS BENCHMARK

54MIN

38MIN

Source: 2013 ON24 Benchmarks Report*Webinars averaged 45-60 minutes in length


ON24 WHITE PAPER

TOOLS FOR DRIVING INTERACTIVITY AND ENGAGEMENT

The adoption of interactive tools into the webinar experience has come

slowly. Some tools like live Q&A and polling are fairly common, while other

tools like social sharing and collaboration are still rarely used.

1] SOCIAL SHARING TOOLS

These tools enable audience members to share your webinars, with their

social media networks. This greatly enhances the reach of your webinars by

leveraging the power of your audience’s social and professional networks,

amplifying your message and content.

“SHARE THIS” TOOL. The “share this” tool lets attendees choose from a

number of social media applications to share your webinar’s title, description

and URL with friends and colleagues. Social sharing tools can be imbedded

both in the webinar console and on registration landing pages to provide

multiple opportunities for your audience to share your events with their

peers. This increases the number of people exposed to your webinars.

SOCIAL MEDIA. In the age of social media, people are habituated to

broadcasting their every thought. If an audience member wants to highlight

something said in your webinar, they will typically turn to social media to do

it. By integrating social media applications like Twitter and Facebook directly

into the webcast experience, attendees can share their thoughts about your

content without leaving the webinar console. This keeps your audience

members engaged with your webinar while enabling them to amplify your

message and further promote your webinar.

Usage of Interactive Webinar Tools

Source: 2013 ON24 Benchmarks Report

81.20%

48.80%

35.50%

31.40%

17.10%

9.80%

7.60%

7.20%

6.50%

2.80%

0.50%

0.20%

0.10%

Q&A

CONTENT DWNLD

TWITTER

SHARE > WEBINAR

EMAIL > WEBINAR

FACEBOOK

LINKED IN

GROUP CHAT

SURVEY

WIKIPEDIA

IDEA GENERATOR

YAMMER

SALESFORCE CHAT


ON24 WHITE PAPER

2] AUDIENCE INTERACTION TOOLS

Engagement is highest when audience members are contributing to the

conversation and interacting directly or indirectly with the presenters and

each other. There are several tools to help enable this interaction.

POLLING. Polls are a great way to capture the voice of the audience.

Not only do they provide marketers with important information about

attendee interests, they also enable the audience to compare their own

experiences with those of their peers attending the webinar. Polls also

provide valuable data for promoting on-demand webinars. When you get

an interesting poll result, you can blast it out via social media channels

and include a link to the archived webinar to draw in additional viewers.

• Live polling keeps your audience engaged.

• Provides useful data on the interests of your audience.

• Increases lead scoring capabilities.

QUICK TIP

When using Twitter,

choose a pre-determined

hashtag, to encourage

a focused social

conversation. This also

enables you to easily track

and respond to audience

comments. Retweeting

audience comments can

be a great way to increase

your social connection

with your attendees.


ON24 WHITE PAPER

Q&A. Enabling audience members to submit questions to the presenter

during a live webcast is one of the most widely used tools, with more

than 8 in 10 webinars incorporating it. With the ability to see who is

asking each question, presenters can refer to people by name, making

the interaction feel more personal. One new Q&A trend we are seeing is

presenters answering questions throughout the presentation rather than

waiting until the end, thereby increasing the level of interactivity during

the webinar.

APPOINTMENT SETTING. Enable highly engaged viewers to set an

appointment with your company right from your webinar console. This

is the pinnacle of marketing effectiveness. Our research shows that

appointment attendance is higher when a prospect self-selects the

appointment as opposed to appointments set from sales calls.

SURVEY. Surveys are an ideal way to gather more information about

each attendee, providing for better quality follow-up. They also help

presenters consider the effectiveness of their webinars. Was the content

on target? Was the presenter effective? Was the presentation beneficial?

The more feedback you get, the better you can adjust your presentations

going forward.


ON24 WHITE PAPER

Survey Tips

• Keep your survey limited to just a few questions. The longer the

survey, the fewer people will fill them out.

• Include a text box for attendees to add additional comments. There

may be issues that you are not aware of that will get mentioned.

• Avoid survey questions that query for additional attendee data. Your

audience wants to feel like you care about their opinions, not that

you are just interested in their potential as customers.

In addition to the commonly used closing survey, it can be helpful to

push out a pre-webinar survey during the registration process. Surveys

can be imbedded onto registrant landing pages, providing registrants

with an opportunity to share their expectations of your webinars. This

not only drives interactivity from the start, but it also helps presenters

ensure that they are meeting audience expectation.


ON24 WHITE PAPER

3] CONTENT DISTRIBUTION

Your target audience is busier than ever, and competition for their

attention is fierce. Marketers must therefore find ways to increase the

number of marketing touches in each interaction. Content distribution

tools are a great way to accomplish this. Here are two tools that do

it well:

RESOURCE LIST. This is an easy-to-use yet critically important tool

for marketers. With a resource list you can upload additional relevant

content and make it available directly from the webinar console. Upload

white papers, datasheets, case studies or anything that supports the topic

of the presentation. Every piece of content is an additional marketing

touch as well as a way to better understand and qualify leads. It is

important that content be carefully selected and well targeted to the

presentation; too much content will reduce the effectiveness of the

resource list.

VIDEO. Video increases both engagement and viewers’ retention of

content. It also provides an opportunity to add additional content to a

webinar. There are countless ways to incorporate video into the webinar

experience– everything from professional studio recordings to streaming

of a live seminar to simply setting up a webcam, which can add value

and help presenters better connect with audiences. Pre-recorded videos

such as company overviews, product demos or other thought leadership

content can be integrated directly into a webinar presentation to

enhance your story. Video integration of any kind is a compelling way to

increase the engagement with your audience.

• Webcams, live event streaming, studio and demos.

• Video = higher attention and responsiveness.

• More dynamic presentation of content and ideas.

QUICK TIP

By strategically choosing

the resources that you

upload into the webinar

console, you can

ascertain the interests

of your audience by

examining which content

pieces they did, or didn’t,

download. This could be

useful in determining the

next logical step in the

customer journey.


ON24 WHITE PAPER

4] GROUP COMMUNICATION & COLLABORATION TOOLS

Today’s audiences are accustomed to sharing ideas and seeking

feedback from their peers in real time. If they are engaged with your

topic they will want to talk about it with other attendees – a capability

enabled by several powerful communication and collaboration tools.

GROUP CHAT. Group chat allows audience members to interact directly

with one another during a presentation, either anonymously or by name/

organization. Since comments are unfiltered, we recommend someone

from the presenter’s department monitor the chat to keep it on topic

and clarify any misconceptions. There will always be one or two

naysayers; a colleague can help re-direct the conversation into more

positive territory.

IDEA GENERATION. The idea generation tool enables group

brainstorming, feedback and collaboration. Presenters can pose a

question or topic to the audience; audience members can then answer

the question, share their own ideas on the topic, comment on ideas from

other attendees and/or rank the ideas and comments. Idea generation

differs from group chat in that it is a more authoritative, focused forum

for sharing ideas and getting feedback.


ON24 WHITE PAPER

Improved interactivity and engagement lead to increased webinar viewing

duration, content retention and, through social media channels, broader

reach of your content. Ultimately, more interactive webinars enable

marketers to deliver better qualified leads to the sales department.

By analyzing each attendee’s viewing time, responses to polls and surveys,

questions asked, content downloaded and comments made on social media

or group collaboration tools, marketers can create a behavioral profile to

better understand the interests of all webinar leads. Attendee profiles can

then be scored to determine the next step in the marketing prospect cycle.

Intelligent webinar lead scoring, based on interactive data, results in higher

qualified leads and increased sales conversions.

Create Behavioral Profiles Of Your Attendees

• Registration data.

• Viewing time.

• Social media engagement

• Questions Submitted.

• Interaction with polls, surveys and chat.

• Content download.

SUMMARY. Delivering highly interactive and engaging webinars increases

the value of your events for both you and your audience. Your attendees will

retain more of your content and value your webinars as a trusted source of

information. As webinar presenters, you will gain much more insight into the

needs and interests of your prospects, resulting in a significantly higher lead

conversion rate.

There are many interactive tools to choose from. Figure out which

engagement tools work best for you, and turn your presentations

into conversations.

THE VALUE OF WEBINAR INTERACTIVITY

© 2014 ON24, Inc. For more information on the benefits of the ON24 virtual environment, contact us at 877-202-9599 or visit www.on24.com.

ABOUT ON24, INC.

ON24, the virtual communications platform for the global enterprise, provides

interactive, impactful cloud-based solutions that drive outstanding results. ON24

offers a broad and innovative product portfolio, including webcasting, virtual

events and virtual environments, accessible from any device and supported

by robust reporting and analytics. Applications for the ON24 platform include

demand generation, partner enablement, virtual talent development, product

launches, company town hall meetings and user conferences. More than 800

organizations, including IBM, CA Technologies, Merck, Unilever, JPMorgan

Chase, Deloitte, Credit Suisse, Ernst & Young, Amazon and SAP, rely on ON24.

ON24 is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices throughout the world.

For more information, visit http://www.ON24.com.

ON24, INC.

201 THIRD STREET

SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94103

877.202.9599

WWW.ON24.COM

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