I was very excited to both participate in this brand new research study and to review a copy, which I couldn’t put down.  If you’re a serious consumer or producer of webinars, it’s a must read, as the landscape is changing, and for the better .

The purpose of the study was to dig into 2 key areas, the first is why webinars are not used more often if they are so effective, and how exactly marketers are successfully using webinars?  This study is a great complement to the Content Marketing Institute’s (CMI) annual study  “B2B Content Marketing 2014: Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America.”

Shelby Britton, Sr. Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Connect, was gracious to allow me to both participate and share some of my insights.  I’m not going to steal the thunder from this very interesting research, so I’ll provide a link at the end of this post for you to obtain your own copy to discover these gems.

The most recent CMI Content Marketing study shows that webinars were ranked the 3rd most effective content marketing tactic (tied with videos) and that 62% of marketers were using webinars, up from 59% the year before.

What I found as being a most interesting stat in reviewing this and past CMI studies, is a ranking that measures the Confidence Gap, which asks marketers on a sliding scale to what degree do they believe a particular tactic is more effective to being less effective.  For the Webinars and Webcasts Confidence Gap, 63% said they are effective, with 37% saying webinars are less effective. This is slightly up from the 2013 study,  where these stats were 61% effective and 39% less effective.

My 4 top takeaways:

 1.  Key reasons why webinars aren’t being used more?  22% of survey respondents who aren’t currently using webinars, but have in the past, stopped  using them not because they weren’t successful, but either their company reallocated budget (50%) or they lacked sufficient staff (42%),

 2.  Having a webinar strategy significantly  increases effectiveness  Only 38% of marketers have a documented webinar strategy and 53% don’t, and of those that do have a documented strategy, 71% of those find webinars effective vs. 42% who don’t have a documented strategy.  This aligns with my view that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

 3. Selected Top Challenges:

a. 58% said getting registrants to actually attend was their top challenge

b. 44% was securing enough registrations

c. 43% for developing the content

d. 41% finding quality engaging-speakers

e. 22% said technology related challenges

f. 20% having dedicated headcount/staff

 4. Thought Leadership and other intangibles becoming a higher goal than just lead generation, etc. Webinars are most cost-effective when integrated more broadly across the customer’s buying journey, and what was most interesting to me is that the highest level of agreement between cost effectiveness and reaching goals was where “thought leadership”, “brand awareness”, “building relationships” and “engaging with an audience” received higher agreement than “lead management/nurturing and “lead generation”.

To me, the real pacing item is having a conversation on how do we as a community of webinar professonals keep the trend of the confidence gap continuing in the direction of producing and delivering “more effective” webinars that meet or exceed our commercial goals while delighting and adding value to our audiences?

I’d love to have others weigh in on this topic, and to get your copy of the above study, click here.

Here’s to your webinar success!

Mike Agron