Companies focus on different tactics to display targeted content and marketing strategies to their customer base. One of the most notable tactics many businesses adopt is content marketing, specifically webinars. It is an instrumental approach that can increase engagement with prospective consumers in the B2B/B2C environment.
Statistically, 73% of marketers in B2B companies mention webinars as a suitable and powerful strategy for high-quality lead generation. In addition, around 61% of them utilize the same for their content marketing requirements.
In the context of SaaS-based funnel marketing approaches, there is a prevalent doubt about the uses of the webinar. Here, you would get comprehensive information about that, highlighting what you can expect by using a SaaS webinar funnel to improve buyers' journeys and their main elements.
What is the Importance of a SaaS Marketing Funnel?
There is a high need for planning and developing suitable marketing funnels to drive more consumer engagement. Statistically, 96% of users who visit a site for the first time take time to make their buying decision. They leave information about their contact details to send valuable product offers later. However, not all of them are suitable as the target audience.
With the proper marketing funnel, you can convert the correct group of casual site visitors into customers. In addition, with the funnel marketing approach, you can understand the whole buying process from customers' perspectives and use the insights you gather for targeted marketing.
To note, different consumers would react differently during their sales process. For example, an existing customer would not respond the same way to a new user-oriented marketing plan. Not to mention, SaaS products require a niche type of marketing scheme not suitable for physical goods-related promotion.
The companies need to target customer retention more since the SaaS products rely heavily on subscriptions. To effectively create a SaaS-based funnel marketing scheme, you have to focus on five stages primarily:
- Grow awareness
- Consideration of products
- Decision-making process
- Customer retention
- Final advocacy
Focusing on these five stages would help you create a high-quality B2B marketing funnel for your SaaS products that keeps generating conversions and leads. With B2B marketing webinars, this is possible.
5 Crucial Elements of a Top-quality SaaS Webinar
When using webinars for your B2B funnel marketing needs, you must consider the various elements and stages. Webinars that hold high content value and provide usable offerings are the ones that perform the best. For this, you have to focus on the main elements that go into preparing a SaaS webinar:
- The topic for the webinar
- Slide deck/structure
- Persona
- Date and Time
- Promotional Strategy
Let’s discuss them further:
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The Main Topic of the SaaS Webinar
For the best results of your webinar, you need to make sure to choose a topic that relates to the primary outcome you are after. First, consider your requirement:
- Pulling MQLs
- Book multiple sales calls
- Portray yourself as one of the best thought leaders in your market scope
The idea you work on for the webinar should align with your targeted buyers' SaaS marketing stage and your chosen persona. Some of the most popular options are listicle-based content or "how-to" guides.
To determine the proper SaaS webinar funnel or persona you should utilize, you should conduct thorough research first. Consider which funnel stage you want to target and which part of your existing marketing funnel is getting the least traction.
Consider the following factors to understand the stage where the prospects are in their buyers’ journey:
- What is the aim of creating the person for success?
- Which pain points will the person handle?
- What is the type of mode that customers prefer for their information input?
- Which audience are you targeting the content to?
After that, you can understand the right topic idea that would work well for your SaaS webinar style and phases. After this, bundle all of the content you provide for your marketing needs with context-based information and extra resources.
Make sure that your SaaS webinar covers the following things highly:
- Product demos
- Educational resources
- New features
- Case studies
- Thought leadership
- Product onboarding
- Best practices
The SaaS webinar content you create should engage the audience, excite them to try the products, and educate them about the necessary information. On this note, also consider how the content would benefit the audience you are targeting.
Multiple Uses of the Webinar Content in Different Phases of the Buyer’s Journey
Certainly, there is no hard-and-fast rule that the webinar content you create should target one specific matter. Instead, you can repurpose the content for different types of webinar topics. For example, you can utilize visual items like video, whitepaper, and scripts to focus on various aspects of your content in a specific webinar.
Make sure to use both your webinar content and additional items like blog content to double your chances of customer retention.
Types of Content to Provide
Here, it would be best if you took the time to understand the value your webinar content would give to your viewers. Some examples of additional content you can add cover:
- Ebooks, manuals, and whitepaper content
- Free downloadable items, like checklists or templates
- Training material like videos of guides
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The Structure of the Webinar
The next important element you must focus on while creating your B2B webinar is its primary structure. Viewers should read the information you provide and the main points for the gist. All attendees should have no trouble understanding the message you are portraying.
A high-functional webinar structure usually covers the following aspects:
- Introduction of the content
Amount of time: 5 minutes
This starts off the entire SaaS webinar presentation. Cover three main factors in your script or slide deck at this part.
- Make an introduction to the company and any speakers in the webinar discussion.
- Provide information about the main benefits attendees can expect from the webinar.
- State the credibility of your expertise; use resources like social proof, partnerships, and quantifiable metrics.
For highlighting your company, you should provide the value proposition and their positioning statement at this point.
- Body of the webinar
Amount of time: 20 to 25 minutes (approx.)
After the introductory part is complete, you need to focus on the main points of the topic. First, provide a basic explanation of the content and how clients can benefit from it.
Focus on explaining the overall sequence of the content and its value, how it reaches the last point from point A. Ultimately, educate the viewers on the new features or aims of the project. Also, highlight some of the claims you are making and show a few pain points. Finally, make sure that the attendees understand every aspect of the main topic you are handling to leave no doubts on their minds.
- Q&A session
Amount of time: 10 to 15 minutes
After covering your main topic, open the floor to discuss the subject further. Allow the attendees to ask any additional queries and interact with their concerns.
This would further increase audience engagement and leave them feeling heard and like they learned the correct information. Statistically, 92% of people who attend B2B webinars enjoy the live Q&A session the most.
- Call to Action
Amount of time: 2 to 3 minutes
Finally, address the attendees to reach out and urge them onward to their sales funnel. Add a direct and appealing CTA at the end targeting the primary action you want the customers to do. The type of CTA you add would depend on what you want the consumers to do. Some examples include:
- Write a review or testimonial
- Read or subscribe to blog content
- Register for a trial
- Book the demo version
- Contact the main business number of the company
Ensuring that your added CTA leads the target audience to the right funnel stage would be best. Then, add clear steps at the webinar's end.
How to prepare a good structure?
There is a possibility that you might have trouble understanding the proper planning process or sequence of the webinar structure. For this, you can refer to the existing webinar content of your competitor brands.
See what strategies they utilize and use the gathering intel to navigate your SaaS webinar funnel-building process. Here, check your progress as well.
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Persona
As mentioned earlier, you need to plan the topic for the SaaS webinar content as per the main funnel stage and persona you want to target. You need to set yourself apart from your competitors and avoid generic content targeting all viewers. Personalized content would have a higher chance of attracting the right audience than basic-level webinar content that anyone can understand but cannot relate to.
So, take the time to choose on industry vertical or customer base to target. Understand their interests, objectives, demands, the pain points they deal with, and the related use cases. At this point, you should avoid target audiences that are already part of other marketing campaigns.
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Date and Time
The timing is a significant concern for many companies and B2B marketers while planning their webinar content. For deciding the best time to have a webinar, you must consider factors like the time zones. To note, the zones that maximum of your audience belong to would be the most convenient option.
The time zone you choose would highly matter in the context of how many people and who can attend the webinar or register. Therefore, it would help determine a timing that people across different time zones can easily find suitable.
For example, if your customers are mainly from the West, like the United States and Canada, choose 10 AM or 11 PM (Pacific Time Zone). Promote your SaaS webinar for at least three weeks before the time of the actual event to give prospective attended ample time to plan their schedule. This applies to people who want to participate in the webinar but live in other time zones.
Statistically, the best time to have a webinar is between 10-11 AM or 1-2 PM. Also, Wednesdays and Tuesdays record the most attendance rates as per research.
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Promotional Strategies and Campaigns
Finally, it would be best to promote the webinar across different mediums to the target audience. Standard options for this are organic inbound marketing strategies, email, or social media platforms.
You should market your webinar event across more than one platform to increase potential attendance rates for the best results. You can send promotional messages and emails around the timeframe that is suitable for the prospective customers in the chosen time zone.
The best timeline breakdown for marketing plans is given here.
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Email Outreach You Send to the Existing Customers:
- A week before
- Three days ahead of time
- The previous day
A final reminder on the webinar day with an attached CTA, linking to the planned webinar meeting.
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Email Outreach for all Prospective Customers:
- Three weeks ahead of time
- Before two weeks
- The previous week
- Two days ahead of time
- Day of the meeting
- One hour before the webinar commences
How to Nurture the Prospective Client Relationships for Best Retention Guarantee?
After completing the whole webinar plan, you need to focus on two aspects to further the relationship with prospective customers. These include the webinar recording/landing page and email drip program.
On-demand webinars
Statistically, 28% of people who register for webinars prefer to watch the recorded webinar after it completes airing live. So, it is beneficial for SaaS companies to provide recording webinar content to their prospective clients and increase the registration rate.
Plus, having an online repository in place with past webinars is an effective tool for increasing your content marketing value for customers. Keep your recordings on the on-demand webinar libraries and webinar registration landing pages.
This would provide easy access to the content for new prospects searching through your online content later.
Also, you can reuse the SaaS webinar content through the libraries for different content marketing strategies for your company. For example, add the webinars to the case studies or sales demos you provide to potential prospects visiting your site as an introductory guide.
Email Drip Campaign
There are two styles of email drip approach you can take for your business. For the attendees, follow the following sequence for customer retention.
- Day of the webinar- Thank the viewers for their attendance and prompt them to participate in NPS/surveys for quick feedback. Then, you should add your on-demand webinar-based CTA.
- Day 3- Ask the attendees about their thoughts on the SaaS webinar content. Then, add a relevant CTA that suits their personalized buyer's journey funnel stage.
- Day 6- Finally, you should ask the attendees about their decision or progress so far. Again, include the Day 3-based CTA.
The following steps are relevant to consumers that did not attend the SaaS webinar.
- Day of the webinar- Provide them with a recording of the SaaS webinar.
- Day 3- Reach out to the consumers asking if they saw the recording. Then, ask them to participate in an NPS survey to give their feedback.
- Day 6- Again, address the non-attendees and ask their thoughts on the SaaS webinar. Here, you can add extra resources compatible with their buyers’ journey stage or persona.
- Day 9- Provide a CTA for the action you want them to perform (i.e., aligned with the content and CTA of the webinar). Ask them to share their feedback.
You may also use call center software to automate nurturing. There are a number of call center solutions available that can help automate nurturing processes. One option is CloudTalk, which offers a variety of features including automatic call distribution, caller ID identification, and skills-based routing.
How to Check the Efficacy of Your SaaS Webinars for B2B Funnel Marketing
Indeed, the SaaS webinars you produce should appropriately relate to the primary goal of your company and content marketing strategies. If they do not align with the right plans, you might record wrong measurements for vanity metrics like total attendees and registrants. Instead, you should define the conversion points correctly and evaluate them accordingly.
Some of the primary KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) you should focus on to study the effectiveness of the SaaS marketing funnel are:
- CRR- Customer Retention Rate
- CLV- Customer Lifetime Value
- CAC- Customer Acquisition Cost
- MRR- Monthly Recurring Revenue
You can utilize the data from the CRM and CMS your business works on for gathering the right insights. Some examples of information you can get are:
- The number of newsletter subscriptions
- Count of webinar attendees that submitted their Contact Us forms
- The number of attendees who booked for a demo
Focus on the KPIs and monitor such metrics about your webinar carefully. Then, get optimized details about the content you created and its success rate with prospective customers. Handle multiple run-throughs for your SaaS webinars within the organization since the first ones can take some time to gather adequate engagement rates.
If the results are not high, evaluate the content and structure of your SaaS webinar model to detect the problem areas. For example, check if the issue is related to the message, CTA, content value, or time/date.
Conclusion
Webinars are highly effective in gathering higher leads and conversions for SaaS-based marketing. It would help if you took the time to structure the webinar based on the set topic targeting the principal value or persona. Conduct product research and build appropriate webinar structure with introduction, body, and Q&A section.
Finally, you should use the proper follow-up techniques to retain the customers and get the necessary actions with relevant CTAs. Ultimately, it would help if you practice-ran multiple SaaS webinars to understand the conversion benchmarks to focus on and analyze them accordingly.