Even before COVID, webinars were a key tool for marketers. And for good reason: according to a study conducted by GoToWebinar, 73% of B2B marketers and sales leaders believe that webinars are one of the best options available to generate high-quality leads.i Now, due to the pandemic, the use of webinars has skyrocketed, with organizations using them for everything from new product launches to professional education. At the same time, people are realizing that webinars offer a lot of benefits – mostly relating to time and cost savings – that will continue to resonate, even after the coronavirus abates.

But not many organizations are truly maximizing the ROI on their webinars. Why? Because they’re failing to capture the value of recorded webinars. For organizations in healthcare or engineering, a huge amount of valuable information is contained in webinars. But often, once the webinar is over, that information – and value – is gone.

By recording your webinars and sharing them across a wider audience, you can maximize the value in significant ways. An online webinar hub offers an easy way to showcase and share your webinars, both live ones and recorded versions.

A dedicated webinar hub might contain:

• Recorded webinars & abstracts (including those with subtitled versions in additional languages, to extend to wider audiences)
• Announcements on upcoming webinars, with registration forms
• Option to register for email updates on news from the webinar hub – updates on live webinars, newly-added recorded webinars, new subtitled versions added, etc.

Gating the content on your webinar hub (requiring visitors to register with their email address to watch a live or recorded webinar, and giving you permission to contact them with updates), opens up two key avenues: it allows you to reach out to registered members with relevant information and updates, and it provides you with detailed tracking statistics on usage.

Whether you brand your hub as a Campus, Library or an Educational Hub, a webinar hub can support multiple marketing goals:

• Help you to stay top-of-mind. Long sales cycles are the norm for many organizations in B2B, and even more so during the pandemic. Sending email updates about new webinars that are available in your hub, or the launch of new languages, offers a good way to stay in touch with your target audiences.
• Create contact moments. Once people have registered to receive updates on your webinar content, you can send emails that are specific to the interests they’ve indicated, for a high-value contact moment.
• Reinforce your thought leadership. By promoting your hub and the experts and expertise in your webinars, you also reinforce your thought leadership, and highlight your expertise.
• Generate high-quality leads. This,of course, is one of the most important benefits of a webinar hub. People who register at your webinar hub represent high-quality leads, because they are clearly interested in a specific topic or product area.

Detailed information on what webinars people are watching

Another benefit of organizing all of your webinar activity in a webinar hub is the ability to gather detailed tracking information. Through HubSpot, integrated with HubSpot’s CRM platform, you can see which webinars are being watched, by whom, where they’re located, and how long they watch. All of this information is displayed on an easy-to-understand dashboard. Armed with this in-depth knowledge of a user’s interest areas, you can reach out to them with relevant invitations and offers.

To make it easy for people to access, users only need to provide their name and email on their first visit. After that, they’re recognized and don’t have to re-enter their credentatials. Once they’re registered, you can continue to connect with them with teasers about new content, coming soon updates, and more.

Extend your reach with subtitles

To extend the reach of your recorded webinars, they can be subtitled in different languages, to make them accessible to wider audiences across regions and countries.

At Living Stone, we’ve created webinar hubs for multiple customers. We typically use HubSpot, because it offers the most detailed tracking statistics. A webinar hub can also be built in WordPress (but the user statistics are not as detailed.) If you’d like to learn more, about maximizing the value of your webinars, and how you can launch a dedicated webinar hub, contact Anne-Mie, by email at anne-mie.vansteelant@livingstone.eu, or call at +32 (0)55 59 10 01.