Jennifer Kirby, PentaVision Media
 

It’s no secret that consumer (e.g. eyecare practitioner) engagement boosts the likelihood of a sale. As a result, marketing tools that hold a consumer’s attention are of great interest to businesses. One such tool is the webinar. In addition to commanding a devoted audience, as viewing requires registration, webinars came in second place, behind white papers, as a top content revenue driver, according to DemandWave’s 2017 State of B2B Digital Marketing Report.

“Webinars typically run about an hour, and the average watch time is 57 minutes long. The watch time has been trending up for the last five years or so,” explains Jack Wildt, senior manager of demand generation operations at ON24, a webinar platform.*

        
Something else to consider: Some webinar platforms can provide viewer profiles and sales leads via built-in viewer surveys and downloadable related resources.

“With the surveys, for example, every time there is a sales-qualifying question that is answered by a viewer, the webinar triggers an alert to the sales person who owns that prospect,” Mr. Wildt points out. “So, the sales person can use that answer to follow-up with the prospect and, hopefully, provide him or her with the service or product.”

All that said, webinar success depends on a specific formula. Here, Mr. Wildt provides some of this formula:

• A catchy title. The title is first item a potential viewer sees. If it’s not catchy or compelling, there’s an excellent chance that viewer won’t register for the webinar, explains Mr. Wildt.

“One of the best practices we [ON24] found is to use numbers in the title, such as, ‘5 Important Things’ on whatever the topic may be,” he says. “The title should be direct and capture what, specifically, the viewer is going to walk away with.”

In eye care, an example could be “Five Ways To Ensure Successful Post-Cataract Surgery Outcomes.”

•  Problem-solving content. The most popular content, according to ON24’s monthly best practices series, is calling out a specific pervasive problem and then providing specific steps on how to solve it, says Mr. Wildt.
        
For example, undiagnosed dry eye disease is a common problem in eye care, so a webinar on how, specifically, to identify patients who may have the chronic condition may prompt large registration.
        
A caveat: “Regardless of the webinar’s topic, businesses shouldn’t do audio and slides alone because that becomes boring fast,” Mr. Wildt explains. “Whenever possible, there should be video of a presenter — a decent speaker — too, along with additional patient engagement tools, such as surveys.
        
• Early afternoon/midweek deployment. Based on ON24’s webinar benchmarks report, the best time to schedule a webinar for the United States is 11:00 am PST on Wednesdays. That said, in the case of healthcare, the ideal time is after hours, 6:30 pm to 7 pm EST, according to PentaVision’s emedia group.

“One last thing I’d like to point out is that webinars can be a lot of fun — both doing them and attending them,” Mr. Wildt says. “If you’re having fun with it, I think the people watching are more apt to have fun with it; I truly believe that.” It’s worth noting that fun falls under that highly coveted engagement.  PV
 

*PentaVision Media uses ON24 to host webinars. View the 2019 ON24 Webinar Benchmarks Report here: https://www.on24.com/resources/assets/report-webinar-benchmarks-2019/?utm_source=pentavision