How do you measure the return on investment (ROI) of your Science webinar? Webinar software, staff time, marketing the event, these all have costs whether it’s a one-off webinar or a webinar series.
Which metrics are worth paying attention to when running science webinars? Well the answer is going to depend on your goals.
Below are 3 common webinar goals:
- Build thought leadership
- Generate leads
- Convert leads to sales
Let’s take a look at each.
WEBINAR GOAL 1:
Build thought leadership through educating X number of prospects on (your subject) by providing expert and actionable insights.
Attendee satisfaction %
What did we do well? What can we improve? Did we meet or hopefully exceed expectations? All these can be answered in a short post event survey.
Retention rate
Did people stay to the end and if not when did they drop off? This data will show what we need to work on and what worked well.
Social media engagement afterwards
Did our attendees continue the conversation on social media? Or were they interested enough in our webinar to check out / follow / like our social pages? Use Facebook Insights to monitor any increases in traffic directly after your webinar.
Increased organic website traffic after broadcast
Similar to above. Seeing an increase in organic traffic after your webinar is a good indication of a successful webinar that has generated more interest in your content. Check out Google Analytics to monitor any increases in traffic directly after your webinar and to see what content has been viewed.
Engagement levels
Did attendees participate in your polls, surveys and Q&A? All are good indicators of an engaged audience.
Repurposing of content
Not necessarily something that is easy to measure but what other content were you able to create from your webinar? Could it be repurposed for a podcast, blogs, social media posts etc.
WEBINAR GOAL 2:
Generate X number of leads for your organisation by (insert date)
Leads per channel
Tells you where your audience found out about your webinar, what messaging persuaded them to register and what media they are using frequently. This data will show you where you focus your efforts and budget for future campaigns.
Registration page traffic to registrations
Did your landing page help increase the number of registrations or did it you get a high drop off rate? Testing with different images, video and messaging can help you to find the most persuasive registration page.
Registrations to attendees
Not everyone who registered will attend your webinar but you clearly want as many too as possible. Make it as easy as possible for those who registered to attend by providing calendar reminders, email reminders and extra resources designed to build anticipation / knowledge around your subject.
Total number of sales qualified leads
How many people were interested enough in what you had to say to complete your calls-to-action. Those who did have shown intent and are more likely to be more qualified leads ready for sales.
WEBINAR GOAL 3:
Convert X number of leads into sales equalling (insert $ amount) by (insert date)
Sales conversion rate
How successful were you at converting qualified leads into sales. Use this calculation to come up with a %:
Leads converted to sales / number of sales qualified leads x 100 =
Revenue contribution from converted leads
What was the value of your conversion? Both the initial $ value and potential future $ value?
Cost of acquisition
How much did you need to invest to acquire these new customers? Work out what worked and reinforce your efforts in this area.
Conclusion
Having a fixation on your goals is vital. If your goal is to educate your audience through thought leadership but you are focusing more on lead generation then chances are that your webinar will not be successful.
The same principle exists if your goal is to generate leads and you don’t focus on clear call-to-actions that will nurture your attendees to become sales qualified leads.
Focus on why you are running the webinar and take it from there…
Are you looking to improve your webinar marketing?
Watch our 2020 webinar: "Using Webinars to Market Science" now on demand
We discuss all aspects of your webinar including:
- How best to market your webinar
- Keeping your audience engaged throughout the webinar
- How to capture and utilise webinar data
- Advice on platforms, equipment and managing your webinars
Gain valuable and actionable insights to support your webinar marketing.
This session is aimed at Sales and Marketing professionals in Science, Engineering and Healthcare.
