'Measure your ROI' is new initiative that focuses on the power of the webinar in B2B
The San Francsico-based start-up webinar marketing platform ON24 launched 'Where is Your ROI?' today, an initiative that aims to educate marketers on the best use of resources, time, and money.
It takes approximately twelve marketing touches to convert a prospect into a customer, according to ON24 research, which suggests that webinars are uniquely able to measure prospects' levels of interest and enable prospects to have multiple content touches in a single prospect interaction.
Marketing webinars are critical for doing lead generation and sales for B2B (business-to-business) or software at scale, according to a study from the Content Marketing Institute that revealed that marketers rate webinars in the top five in terms of most effective tactics they use. Despite this value, many B2B marketers ignore the positives of the webinar, regarding it as an old-school strategy and discarding it in favor of the new and flashy methods seen in digital marketing today.
Webinars basically function as a way for companies to show a piece of themselves to a targeted audience. Part of the appeal and attraction of this method is it allows potential customers to get a taste of content at no cost. “Webinars have been part of our marketing strategy, and the most effective way to use webinars was to not hard sell but to give away a lot of free content,” says Anthony Myers of BookPrimo.com. “Essentially, we use the webinars to build trust and give away as much value as we could to prospects.”
For many marketing campaigns, the goal is to establish that relationship of trust, thereby helping customers feel more comfortable with the idea of working with businesses in the future. Free content contributes to that feeling, and any calls to action should usually come at little to no cost, the CMI report states.
"Marketers are increasingly under pressure to improve ROI for every dollar they spend," says CMO of ON24 Joe Hyland. "Traditional marketing tools like email are starting to lose their effectiveness, and new media - such as social - has yet to develop proven best practices for driving revenue, but webinars are unique in their ability to drive ROI at every stage of the funnel. The 'Where is Your ROI?' campaign is dedicated to empowering marketers with the data and tools they need to turn unknown prospects into loyal customers."