How to fix B2B webinars

Welcome to a new edition of PROse, where B2B marketers get better at creating content that resonates.

Let’s jump in.

Most B2B webinars suck.

The topics aren’t interesting, the value-to-time-spent ratio is low. And once the webinar is finished, the company just enrolls you into a weeks-long email sequence and moves on to the next activity. 

This is a generalization, of course. But it’s on-par with most webinars I’ve attended.

These types of webinars aren't just annoying for your audience, but they’re also an inefficient use of time if your goal is to build trust and generate revenue.

So, I thought of some ways I’d revamp them. Here’s what I came up with:

TL;DR version:

• Rebrand as a workshop series

• Solve a specific problem, in depth and completely in each session

• Once complete, repackage as a free course

Rebrand as a workshop

The first challenge with webinars is getting people to show up. And to be frank, it’s 2022. No one is bragging to their friend about attending a SaaS webinar. But they will show up and talk about a workshop.

Rebranding is as much a marketing tactic as it is a psychological trick. You’re naturally more inclined to walk through relevant topics and provide tactical value for your audience. Your audience is more inclined to be excited and show up because they know they’ll get more than just a story & a pitch.

Webinar = being lectured & sold

Workshop = being guided & supported

Solve a specific problem

What is a workshop without a problem to solve? This is where the magic happens.

Creating content that resonates and outperforms is mostly about solving a pressing problem. If you don’t know where to start, scan social media or ask your customers about their most common challenges. Choose a challenge that aligns with your product’s value.

Once you’ve got the problem, give an in-depth answer—like really deep. This means you likely won’t get it all done in one sitting. For example, if you sell ecommerce email software, you’d want to cover the mindset for email marketing, psychology behind how it works, logistical set up, systems for ensuring deliverability, and a lot more before you even get to the actual emails. There are too many things to cover for a single 60 minute session.

This is why I advocate for doing a webinar series, where you tackle section-by-section and step-by-step, everything your audience needs to know. The goal should be for attendees to walk away with the knowledge they need to implement your solution on their own.

Now, you might be wondering: “I thought the goal was to drive demos/revenue. How does this do that if I’m teaching them a solution that isn’t my product?”

You’re right, that is the goal. Giving attendees a DIY solution makes it easier for them to get started without your product. But you only have so much influence over the purchase. By the end of the workshop, there’ll be three groups:

• People who are convinced to buy your product

• People who are on the fence about which solution to choose

• People who are uninterested in either solution and never want to hear from you again

You want to focus on the people who are on the fence.

Giving them a DIY solution may mean that they never buy your product. At least you built trust with them, and that’ll likely pay off in the long run. But, the more likely scenario is that you build trust and they try the DIY version first for a while and realize your product is the better option.

Turn it into a course

Repurposing content is all the rave in marketing right now. For mostly the right reasons. And the workshop series is one great opportunity to repurpose existing content into a net new asset.

Once you’ve finished the series, you can upload into an unlisted YouTube playlist that you embed onto a landing page on your site. Make it a free course that you gate, or even better, leave ungated for people to watch at their leisure.

If you want to kick it up a notch, you can do some post-production edits and post it to Podia or another course creation platform.

Either way, it makes a great demand gen piece that can be used to educate and build trust with audience members who are not ready to buy yet.

There you go. It’s not difficult or mind-blowingly genius, but small tweaks make a difference when everyone is following the same path.

Let me know what you think. What would you add to make this even better?

See you next week! :)