Sponsored webinars emerged in 2015 as a mainstream marketing tool as a means of reaching national engaged and qualified audiences. Marketers, particularly in the vision care industry, have begun to identify and grasp the inherent broad reach and efficiency that a well-managed event delivers. Evidence of this came when PentaVision doubled its number of webinar productions for the third consecutive year in 2015. At roughly the same cost associated with producing one local live seminar, a webinar delivers both content marketing and lead generation programs with polling, surveying, question-and-answer session, post-event archiving, and advertising to national audiences. This trend of burgeoning sponsored webinars illustrates that this marketing tool's time has come.
 
Webinars have held sway in other markets since the early 2000s, especially in the information technology markets, and the techniques and technology applied to drive attendance and manage events have improved drastically in the last two decades. While disconnected technology standards can occur when presentation techniques like video streaming and screen sharing are employed, these are hardly over-whelming obstacles. With proper planning, early speaker-webinar producer dialogue, and advance planning, such obstacles are easily manageable.
 
A turnkey webinar producer delivers advanced event planning, real-time communication, practice time, marketing program, attendance program, event production with a live and a back-up producer, as well as post-event hosting of the event and subsequent marketing. The producer also should demonstrate real-time failover of its Internet connectivity to further avoid disruption of the event itself. That leaves the management of content to the under-writing organization or the speaker, in most cases. However, it has become common, particularly on the medical side of vision care, to require the webinar producer to also step up with a program to manage the speakers. Resources on the sponsor side may be inadequate or restricted in this area.
 
A viable webinar producer also can demonstrate an extensive track record of successful events. Choosing the right provider is a strategic decision and the webinar is a high visibility event internally at the sponsoring organization – a practical reality that puts the focus on choosing webinar producers based on track record. Recent PentaVision optometry webinars can be viewed here: http://www.optometricmanagement.com/webcasts. In ophthalmology, events can be viewed here: http://www.ophthalmologymanagement.com/webcasts
 
Webinars provide a focal point for your organization’s messaging and a successful event will energize your entire team, from marketing to management to sales. But the key to success is the quality and value of the content being presented. Therein lies the successful story of attendance generation, attendee attentiveness to the presentation, the extent of Q-and-A engagement, and the quality of the attendee base. The success formula comes down to content value and production capability.