Webinars are an amazing tool for driving brand awareness, and with 54% of B2B marketers watching webinars every week, that’s a huge market of opportunity! 

‍

But how do you optimise webinars as a brand awareness tool and marketing opportunity? With 89% of B2B marketers thinking brand awareness should be the most important goal of any event they host, we’re here to share some of our team’s top tips on how to make sure your webinars are fully up to scratch to support your brand awareness growth.

Those first impressions really count.

‍

1. Email

‍

Email comms are a great opportunity to get your brand out there; both visually and through your copy and content. As potentially one of your brand’s first introductions to attendees, you want your brand’s introduction to be clear and consistent from the very first email.

‍

This means it’s also really important to make sure your emails are consistent in their appearance and branding, so as to make sure they continue to feed into the power of brand consistency. After all, with brand consistency having been shown to increase revenue, it’s an essential part of your marketing and webinar planning.

‍

2. Groups

‍

One smart way to both increase engagement and brand awareness is to create online groups for attendees. If you have a webinar series or topic areas you delve into through your content, having a dedicated space for attendees to connect and support one another can be an invaluable addition to your webinar strategy. 

‍

A virtual world can be pretty isolated sometimes, so empowering your attendees and audience in spaces such as groups with like minded professionals and others facing similar challenges or wanting to gain similar knowledge is a huge benefit to your attendees experience and engagement. Look at using social networks like LinkedIn or Facebook to connect attendees with each other and share insights. 

‍

Another benefit is that by creating such groups and collaborative spaces, you can inject your brand in another space! Customising it to your brand’s visual style, messaging and being able to share branded content, you’re able to further engage with attendees, providing them with useful and insightful content, all while also building brand awareness.

‍

Audience engagement can be a real challenge, especially when it comes to the virtual world. So by connecting your attendees and audience, you’re creating a space for ideas to be shared and connections to be made - all of which hugely contribute to successful marketing activities that really support your brand awareness.

‍

3. Merch

‍

You’re probably thinking that these tips were for the virtual space, so how can merch possibly fit into it? Well, we’re here to tell you that everyone loves a little swag - and whether it’s physical or virtual swag, by making them part of your webinar (in the right way of course), can really help to add an extra special touch.

‍

Sending your attendees branded merch that’s relevant to the webinar is a great way to start building your brand awareness, but if you want to take it one step further, you could even send things that are a part of the webinar itself. 

‍

For example, you could send your attendees a branded pack of resources to help them prepare, feel engaged and get involved with the webinar. This encourages engagement and supports long-term brand awareness. And hey, it might even give you some user generated content, and that’s the kind of engagement you simply can’t buy! 

‍

Virtual goodie bags are great and personalised ways to spread brand awareness without the issues that can come with sending things out. Plus, there are so many ways to align your brand with your virtual goodie bag, that it’s another golden opportunity to put your branding front and centre!

‍

If you do choose to incorporate merch, it’s an amazing way to get your attendees excited and engaged about your webinars and have a great first impression of your brand.

‍

Get the most out of your webinar platform & your content.

‍

4. Personalise the welcome & landing page

‍

You want your brand to be one of the first things your attendees are exposed to and seeing, which is why maximising the use of your entry landing page is a great way to continually put your brand front and centre. 

‍

It's your first opportunity to introduce attendees to your brand's whole identity, from your tone of voice to the imagery and visuals that make up your brand. This is one of many moments where choosing the right webinar platform that allows you to truly personalise your webinar is essential. Some platforms offer highly customisable and personalised ways to welcome your attendees, whereas others offer a faceless waiting room that doesn’t bring your audience into the tone and feeling of your brand.

‍

The ability to integrate brand colours, messaging and everything else that makes up your brand gives your webinar a unique edge, making it much more memorable and impactful. Plus, it feels so much more cohesive and consistent with the rest of your marketing activities and messaging, to feel like a complete experience with your brand and communications.

‍

Providing a branded journey across all your audience touch points ensures that brand consistency is present throughout their journey of interaction with your brand.

‍

Consistent branding across platforms has also been shown to increase revenue up to 23%, making it even more important to choose a platform that gives you these tools. 

5. Make a lasting impression with great content

‍

One way of growing brand awareness is through a content library that harnesses all the great insights and value gained from the speakers at your webinar. By sharing branded content that supports and aligns with your webinar topics, you can provide your audience with resources and insights that last well beyond your webinar and keep the conversation and brand interactions going even once that end webinar button is hit.

‍

The potential for content that can come as a result of your webinar is pretty vast! From video and imagery to infographics and long form articles, there’s so many ways to get creative with the content that can come from your webinar. Plus, one study found that B2B marketers think virtual events, webinars and online courses made some of the best overall content marketing results for their organisation.

‍

Highlighting the expertise of your brand, providing other departments with resources they can use and ensuring your brand can be exposed across so many of your channels, webinars bring the potential for content that can make it deliver value over and over.

‍

This content can also be shared on social media or blogs, driving up brand awareness and bolstering your webinar’s value. One of the greatest benefits of a webinar is the amount of customised content that can be shared after the event to grow brand awareness. 

‍

Customised content is specifically valuable because it makes 82% of consumers feel more positive about a brand. So don’t miss out and use what you got from all that great live content and expertise!

‍

We’ve shared our top tips on how to make sure you get the most out of your webinar content in an article here and why it’s so powerful for your brand awareness and lead generation efforts. So, be sure to give that a read before your next webinar to see how you can really maximise its impact!

Our platform has been designed with your marketing goals and brand awareness in mind. We believe webinars can drive huge commercial gain for your business and are where marketing teams are losing the chance to show off their brand. 

Drop us a line if you fancy a chat about how your webinars could be delivering you even more value - we’d love to hear from you!

References:

1. LiveWebinar: “Webinar statistics 2021: 70+ webinar stats you need to know”
2. Statista: “Leading goals for B2B event marketers worldwide 2021”
3. Content Marketing Institute: “Manufacturing B2B Manufacturing Content MArketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budget, and Trends - North America” 
4. Markletic: “60 Incredible Virtual Event Statistics! (2021 Research)”
5. Small Biz Genius: “50+ Eye-Opening Branding Statistics - 2021 Edition”
6. Statista: “Change of online event budgets worldwide in 2021”
7. Content Marketing Institute: “11th Annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends”