Webinars are an increasingly popular format of content marketing to engage with prospects and current customers for B2B and B2C organizations.
According to research, 90% of B2B marketers consider webinars the best way to generate quality leads, and 61% of marketers use webinars as part of their content marketing strategy.
Still, many of you probably find yourselves in an environment where SaaS webinars aren’t deemed necessary to invest in. If you’re on a marketing department or team that doesn’t understand the ‘why’ behind webinars, there are many reasons you should advocate for one.
Let’s explore the functions and benefits of webinars in the B2B SaaS buyer’s journey, then how to execute a webinar (or many) that directly impacts your bottom line.
At its core, a webinar is content marketing—delivered virtually and in real-time—to attract, engage or delight your audience.
SaaS CEOs and CMOs are familiar with the importance of content marketing, and webinars are a great way to engage with your audience at each stage of the funnel.
Your SaaS company can use webinars to meet a variety of goals, which may include:
Each webinar should target one stage of the buyer’s journey with pre-determined ways to measure their results in the grand scheme of things. Lining up your webinars with these goals will yield the best results:
Hubspot uses the Flywheel Model to describe the momentum of your marketing function as you deliver a remarkable customer experience.
Once built up, the momentum fueled by your happy customers will drive more sales, referrals, and dedicated advocates of your solution. There are three phases of the marketing flywheel: Attract, Engage, and Delight.
Webinars are hugely impactful and come with a significant time commitment/cost, so take the time you need to plan and prepare. No amount of promotion or incentives will drive positive results if the content you’re sharing doesn’t add value to your audiences.
The impact of your webinars is directly tied to the value of your content and offerings. To plan your SaaS webinar, consider the following elements:
Let’s cover this in more depth.
Your webinar topics should directly align with the outcomes you want to drive. Are you trying to book more sales calls? Attract MQLs? Establish yourself as a thought leader in the space?
Ideating a topic that speaks to your selected persona and selected buyer’s stage is the first part of determining what to discuss. Research shows that lists are the highest rated form of a webinar title, followed by ‘How to..’ topics.
If you’re unsure of what funnel to target or persona to address, audit where prospects feel friction in your marketing funnel or target the area of the funnel you’re trying to move. You can determine what stage of the buyers’ journey prospects are in by asking yourself:
After answering those questions, brainstorm around topics that fit one of the Flywheel model phases and then bundle the content so that you’re able to create a series with context and additional resources.
If you’re not sure what to start with, your webinar could cover:
When designing your SaaS webinar content, you can tackle multiple goals at once. Educate, engage and excite your audience to either pick you as their SaaS provider or keep picking you (for current customers).
Always ask yourself: What can you give to your audience? What’s in it for them? For my clients, I like to share value in the form of:
Pro tip: Create a Quarterly Agenda so you can prepare topics ahead of time. Make sure to include webinars that target the different buyer personas in your journey, in addition to funnel stages. To learn more about creating content for each step of the buyer’s journey, download our free SaaS content calendar template.
The content of your webinar can be repurposed for different educational content, from introducing new product features to best practices and use cases. Whatever your topic is, make sure it’s of actual value to your audience.
I recommend using a branded slide deck that leverages white space, visual aids, meaningful statistics, and highlights you want to discuss. In addition, make sure you have a script (especially if you’re discussing with multiple people in your webinar).
Now that we’ve covered potential topics, let’s talk about what your slide deck should look like.
Pro Tip: Coordinate your blog and webinar content to support and create interest before and after your webinar. If you can provide your prospects with content you already have around the topic, this lets them know you’re a trusted authority in the space.
Structure your webinar in a way that is easy for attendees to understand the information and see the value of what you’re sharing.
At a high level, your SaaS webinar deck should include the following sections:
At the beginning of your SaaS webinar, include three things into your slide deck or script:
Use your company’s positioning statement and value proposition here to introduce your company to new attendees and remind returning attendees of what you bring to the table.
Once you’ve introduced your speakers, company, and established expectations for the upcoming webinar, it’s time to dive into the ‘meat’ of your content.
Explain how this webinar will take your clients or prospects from point A to point B and teach them something—a new skill, a better way of doing things—or show some of your pain, gain, claim aspects. This should be the majority of your speaking time and cover the main learning points and takeaways from
B2B market research shows that 92% of attendees like live Q&As at the end. Always leave space to interact and engage with your audience after you’ve delivered your content.
All great content has a direct and compelling CTA. After all, driving desired behaviors are the purpose behind content!
If you’re unsure what CTA to make, ask yourself: what do you want from your audience? This could include subscribing to the blog, booking a demo, signing up for a trial, writing a testimonial, or posting a review. Make sure this is tied into your funnel stage and audience, and list clear next steps for your audience at the end of the webinar.
If you’re still stuck and don’t know where to start, I recommend watching webinars from your competitors or fellow SaaS companies like HubSpot.
The more you engage with other webinar content, the more you’ll understand how to improve their methodology and find the right strategy for your goals.
Don’t forget to monitor your progress and capitalize on your newfound relationships -- nurture and retain new and current funnel prospects with more helpful content, one-on-one communications, and help them achieve what they’re searching for.
As you pick your webinar topic, keep in mind the persona and funnel stage you want to target. Don’t be generic—you can’t be everything to everyone all of the time. More than ever, data shows that segmentation and personalization are critical to successful marketing strategies.
Picking one audience or vertical helps you narrow in on one set of pain points, dreams, and use cases to maximize the relevance.
Pro tip: Triple-check your contacts. Make sure that the list of contacts you’ll be communicating with aren’t already enrolled in an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) campaign or outbound list. If so, they might feel overwhelmed by your content and put you on spam or black list.
What time zones are the majority of your contacts in? This can significantly impact how many people register vs. attend. Research has shown that 10-11 AM is the best time to hold a webinar, and webinars held on Tuesdays and Wednesdays see the highest attendance rates.
Make sure you’re selecting a time that works for people across many time zones. If most of your SaaS buyers and contacts are in Europe, don’t host a webinar at 5 PM Eastern Time (ET). Unfortunately, they won’t get up in the middle of the night just to watch you talk.
Pro tip: For webinars targeting your prospects, give yourself three weeks to promote the event. This means that you can do one webinar a month and provide enough time for your prospects to get excited about joining and registering for it. Don’t rush or put together a lot of low-quality webinars-—less is often more in the world of content.
I like to use a specific blend of email, social media, and organic inbound promotions for my clients. You can also include the webinar promotions in our ABM campaigns, depending on the situation.
Pro tip: research shows that over ⅓ (36%) of webinar registrations occur between 8 AM and 10 AM. Aim for sending promotional emails out between this timeframe and use your email marketing platform to send according to each contact’s timezone.
Here’s the SaaS webinar promotion sequence I like best:
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Email outreach for prospects |
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Email outreach for current customers |
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Email outreach for current customers |
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Each webinar (and all marketing campaigns in general) need a place to submit contact information. For SaaS companies, this should be a webinar-focused landing page hosted under your site’s domain.
Simply put, landing pages are a low-friction way for consumers and prospects to access the relevant information and make an easy decision to sign up (or skip it).
The right landing page should excite your audience about this opportunity, make them feel like they’re receiving something they’d pay for free, and clearly understand the key takeaways that will be covered. Your landing page is also a great way to communicate the webinar value props and incentivize attendees to sign up.
There’s no right or wrong number of webinar registrants—this number depends on your list size, addressable market(s), and internal company goals. We aim for around 30 to 60 webinar registrants, but B2C SaaS webinars often receive thousands of sign-ups.
At a minimum, effective webinar registration landing pages should incorporate:
In addition, you can include:
Here’s a great example of a high-converting SaaS webinar landing page from one AP SaaS organization:
Ascend Software properly utilizes the page’s content to direct registrants to a form while including relevant information, social proof, talking points, and other important information that will hook viewers in.
Doing this will help you set the stage for a successful virtual event your potential customers and current ones will get value from.
During the webinar itself, we recommend using a slide deck and notes to guide your prospects. You’ve spent the time and resources promoting your virtual event, now blow your attendees out of the water with the content and delivery.
Once the webinar is over, you still have work to do! Don’t let these newly formed relationships and positive experiences go to waste.
Follow these steps to ensure that you’re fully capitalizing on your webinars.
You’ll need two core elements of a post-webinar plan: your email drip campaign and your landing page or webinar recording.
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Non-attendees |
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Research shows that when you offer on-demand webinars for registration, 28% of registrants sign up to watch a recording. But other than increasing the number of registrants, keeping an accessible online repository with past webinars is a great way to get the most value from your content marketing investments.
On-demand libraries and landing pages with recordings make it easy for registrants who couldn’t attend to catch up while also repurposing content for any inbound prospects exploring your website and resources.
You can repurpose your SaaS webinars in many ways—from Sales Demos and Case Studies to introducing and training users on features.
Your SaaS webinars should be tied back to your initial goals and analyzed to measure effectiveness.
If you don’t establish desired outcomes or goals, you’ll reduce measuring success to vanity metrics like total registrants, attendees, etc.
Instead, make sure that your conversion is clearly defined. Use your content management system (CMS) and customer relationship management (CRM) data to understand how many webinar attendees submitted a ‘contact us’ form, subscribed to the newsletter, booked a demo, and more.
Throughout your webinars, track this data and make optimizations from what you learn. Don’t expect your first (few) webinars to go perfectly—make sure you practice and perform run-throughs with your internal team members.
If you don’t see the results you expected, there may be a problem with your content’s value, your messaging and promotions, the time and date, or you may be overshooting entirely.
Use the first few webinars to benchmark your conversions and then monitor from there. The more you host, the more you can optimize your marketing efforts and deliver results.
You've done the research, now it's time to get started.
Include the following elements into your SaaS webinar campaign and content, and build upon what you learn:
To learn more about SaaS content marketing, subscribe to our blog below and check out our B2B SaaS Marketing podcast.
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