In our changing work from home landscape, the way we connect (and market) has altered drastically in just a few short months. One of the clearest places we’ve seen incredible change is the rise of virtual events. You probably can’t open your inbox on any given week without getting at least one webinar invite.
So, as marketers we have to ask, are webinars oversaturated? Or are they here to stay?
In On24’s recent Webinar Benchmarks report, they pulled some key statistics on webinar usage year over year. They saw a near 300% increase in webinar hours consumed on their platform in April, with viewers watching more than 168,000 hours of webinars per DAY. That’s a lot of webinar content.
And it seems this increase is here to stay. According to the On24 report, webinar viewers are watching three times more webinar content than in 2019. If you’re a digital marketer this should be music to your ears. Here’s 5 reasons why we think virtual events are here to stay (with good reason!)
Easier on the budget
This one is a no brainer. Take out the travel and expenses from getting to in person events. Or shipping a large booth, and replace that with an entirely virtual event. Your cost savings are going to be huge. And hopefully you still have budget to put into your platform, your promotions, and even your follow up (hello direct mail!)
Get more granular with your topics
Webinars take less time to pull together than in person events, which feasibly if you have the subject matter experts on hand, allow you to diversify your content even further. Get into the nitty gritty with your marketing topics to give more value to your audiences.
Reach more people
Another great benefit of virtual events is the reach. Even at the largest tradeshows, you’re limited by space. With a webinar you can reach entire countries at the same time with your message, as long as your content is intriguing and your promotions are pulling them in.
Spin them out into bigger campaigns
Your webinar campaign doesn’t end when the recording does. With on demand webinars you can turn your content into spin off campaigns in email nurtures, social media posts, blogs, the choice is yours!
Gather more data and analytics
With most webinar platforms you get direct insights into what attendees are paying attention to, what questions they ask, and exactly how they got to your webinar. You can also more easily get them to engage with polls and surveys that would be more difficult to pull off in a booth setting.
And of course we have to mention how easy it is to setup a webinar program that can promote, register, track and follow up with your attendees automatically in Marketo. If you’re interested in building out your webinar strategy and need help with the campaign logic, contact Leadous!