Leads and More

All product-marketing campaigns include tactics designed to generate leads for your sales team to turn into new business. Live events such as trade shows and conferences have long been a good source of new leads, but with tight budgets and other considerations, not all your best prospects are able to attend industry events.

Since the advent of Web conferencing in the late 1990s, publishers have solved that problem by bringing together the best of conference content and live event interaction without travel expense through webinars. The chances are pretty good that you receive webinar invitations for all kinds of topics of interest to modern marketing professionals. Today, webinars are recognized as a top tool for lead generation, lead nurturing and customer retention.

Brand marketers can participate in webinars in two main ways: by sponsoring a webinar that is put together by a publisher’s editorial team, or by creating a custom webinar that is hosted and produced by the publisher’s production team.

A well-attended editorial webinar could result in hundreds of qualified leads. What’s more, the leads from a custom webinar are very well qualified because the registrants signed up specifically to hear your expert information, and the cost per lead can be very attractive – not necessarily the case for leads acquired at trade shows. But just like attending trade shows, there are a number of other good reasons to sponsor webinars.

By choosing the right topic and the right publishing partner with which to sponsor a webinar, you can position your organization as a thought leader, supporting the sharing of valuable expert information with a well-qualified audience.

Custom webinars allow you to choose the topic and select the speakers. A publisher likely will have a team to produce and host the webinar and, most importantly, will supply the audience. Not just for lead generation, this is an opportunity to share complex or highly technical information and your team’s expertise.

As the sponsor of either type of webinar, you should receive contact information for all registrants, including those who register after the live event to view the archived webinar. You may have the opportunity to participate in custom polling and surveys during and after the live webinar event to find out attendees’ buying authority and plans. Finally, your company benefits from having your name and logo associated with the webinar in print and online promotions and communications before, during and after the webinar.

That’s a lot of exposure, resulting in leads and so much more.

Photonics Media webinars consistently beat the registration-to-attendance industry average of 33%.