Data centers and cloud service providers have likely hosted an in-person networking event. Maybe a breakfast or cocktail party in their office to bring in potential clients for a tour or to meet the team.
But have you considered using webinars to build relationships with clients who may be too far away to stop in for an hour or two?
But how can you be sure the right people will hear about it and attend?
Setting Up the Webinar Campaign
Joshua Feinberg, Vice President and Co-Founder of SP Home Run, stresses the importance of setting up an effective live event and post-event campaign. When developing a live webinar event, it is critical to market the live event weeks in advance to see more attendees. However, webinar recordings are valuable content as well because people who missed the live event can still sign up to watch the webinar recording.
Webinar recordings allow your business another way to connect with potential leads. Feinberg mentions his company’s recordings from years ago are still being looked at today by interested prospects. Both live events and recordings are great marketing resources, although you must remember that both campaigns must have separate conversion paths.
So you may be wondering what exactly a conversion path is; HubSpot defines a conversion path as “the process by which an anonymous website visitor becomes a known lead.” A conversion path contains:
- A content offer
- Call-to-action (CTA)
- Landing page
- Thank You page
Your company develops a content offer and turns it into a CTA. For example, “Watch the Webinar Recording Webinar Best Practices for Data Centers and Cloud Service Providers,” interested prospects will click on the CTA to retrieve the offer. Once the CTA is clicked on, they will be guided to a landing page where they will fill out a form.
This form will give you the information you need about the lead. Once they complete the form, they are then guided to a thank you page. On the thank you page, the prospect will be able to download your offer and will have the ability to browse your website.
Once these four steps are configured properly, your conversion path is finished! This being said, both campaigns—the live event and the recording—must have separate conversion paths for optimal results.
Importance of Buyer Personas
When developing either of the campaigns, you must be sure you are getting the information into the right hands. Feinberg explains a recurring mistake that he sees people make when running a promotion: "They blast their entire email database at once. That would be like shouting into a microphone and assuming everyone cares about the same thing.”
The reality is people do not care about the same things. The information you provide must only go to interested individuals and must be relevant to your buyer persona. If you email every person in your database, you will get an increased unsubscribe rate—something you do not want. Feinberg advises: “Be very specific about your segmentation.”
Where to Promote Your Campaigns
When promoting either campaign, you must use email segmentation, as mentioned before; do not send an email to everyone in your contacts. Many sales reps today use email signatures incorporated in either their Gmail, Outlook, or CRM. Sales reps can also add a CTA for an upcoming webinar in their email signature. Feinberg suggests, “They should do this in the weeks leading up to the live event.”
Your company can also create a blog post with a sneak preview of the live event or create a blog by taking excerpts from the recording and promoting the content in this fashion. Additionally, Feinberg says, “Co-marketing partners, joint venture partners, and channel partners can help you more effectively grow your reach.”
Other options to promote your live event or recording are through paid search (such as Google AdWords) and paid social, which includes LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter advertising.
However, Feinberg says always to remember, “Where you prioritize your resources should be linked to your buyer persona.” You may also promote your webinar CTA’s on your website.
Key Highlights
Don't be lazy when promoting a live event or webinar recording. Create separate conversion paths for each campaign. Always consider your buyer persona, and never blast your entire email database—use proper segmentation.
You can promote your campaigns through email segments, email signatures, social media, blogging, paid search and social, and website CTA’s.
Has your company already started using webinars - and if so, are you properly creating and promoting your Data Center webinars? Or are webinars completely new to your Data Center? Let us know in the comments below.
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