Author Archives: Jason Stegent

No matter what you hear from other vendors in the marketplace, pulling off a top-notch webinar strategy isn’t easy. It takes a well thought out approach, from registration page creation to event archive, to turn your webinars into what we like to call ‘sales accelerating weapons.’ When executed properly, it’s a beautiful thing. When done poorly, you can lose an audience forever, so making sure you nail your presentation IS that important. Here are four ways you can lose a webinar audience:

1. Registration Page: Most people don’t even know that they’ve lost their webinar audience before it even started. If there’s one thing your registration page needs to do, it needs to tell your audience why they should take 30, 40, 50 minutes out of their day to hear what you have to say. What value are they going to get out of it? What are they going to learn and how is it going to make them better? Telling them how great your product and solutions are won’t do the trick. Either is telling them that the majority of the presentation is going to be a demo (see more on that below). And while you have them on the registration page, make sure it’s optimized so they can save it to their calendar and share it amongst their peers. If they like what you’re cooking, they’ll serve it throughout their network as well

2. Downloads and Plugins: If your audience has to download a plugin to view your webinar on their desktop, two things are most likely true:
1 – You’re not using a webinar/webcasting solution…you’re using a meeting tool that limits you in a variety of ways.
2 – A number of your prospective registrants aren’t going to bother downloading software. It annoys them and they simply don’t have the time because your audience has less patience for this type of stuff than ever before. Look for a browser-based solution where no plug-ins are required. When you see the difference in registration, you’ll be glad you did.

3. Lack of Engagement: If you’re using the right webinar tool, there are so many things you should be able to do to keep your audience engaged – live Q&A, group chat and one-on-one chat, polling, surveys, content downloads, sharing and email options, etc. These are all things you should be considering to not only keep your audience engaged, but to measure their interest at the end of an event. Having insight into how engaged your audience is allows you to trim the fat and make your webinar follow-ups a lot more laser-focused. Trust me, your sales force will thank you for providing them with this insight. It makes their job that much easier

4. Death by Demo: I get it. People are proud of their products. They’ve invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears to develop what they consider to be a world-class solution. Problem is, your audience doesn’t care unless your demo speaks to where they are in their buying journey. In today’s world of ‘Content is King,’ you should know by now that it’s Content Marketing 101 to give your audience the content they want, when they want it. The problem with executing demos in webinar environments is that your audiences have different needs and are at different stages of the buying cycle. In my opinion, you should NEVER do a demo for top of the funnel webinars. You should focus on industry challenges and your company’s approach to solving those challenges. If you’re ever going to demo, do so when you can customize a demo to meet your attendee’s needs. This should be geared for folks that are much further down the funnel.

Lead generation is the life-blood of any sales force and the chief function of any marketing team. Unfortunately, too many B2B organizations aren’t equipped to do it the right way and what you’re left with are leads that aren’t qualified or ‘sales ready’, a dry pipeline and unaligned sales and marketing teams that are constantly playing the blame game. If you’re seeing this in your organization, here are three reasons you should consider outsourcing your lead generation to somebody that does it for a living

1. It’s more cost effective

Think of all of the costs involved to build an in-house lead generation engine – inside sales reps (ISRs) with their salaries, benefits and monthly expenses; sales managers to manage them with their salaries, benefits and monthly expenses; technology, both software and hardware, to help manage the process; offices to house them (they’ve got to sit somewhere don’t they?), etc. The list goes on and on. What if you could outsource it to a team that has all of this covered? What if you could have 1-2 (+) people dedicated to your account and you pay them on a retainer basis? Or what about performance-based contracts, meaning you only pay for the leads delivered to you that meet a pre-determined criteria? You’re not paying for garbage, you’re paying for quality. Sounds enticing, doesn’t it?

2. It’s not what you do…

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” – Red Adair (and fellow Houstonian)

It’s simply not what you do. You don’t have the process or technologies in place; you don’t have the people that have the experience to get the job done; and a lot of the time the good people you do have are completely out of bandwidth, meaning you’re out of resources to do the job right. Outsource this function to professionals that can provide the horsepower you need while you and your team focus on closing business. “Get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus.” – Jim Collins, Author of Good to Great

3. Your sales reps are entitled

That might sound aggressive, but it’s true. Today’s B2B sales reps, more often than not, want qualified leads delivered to them on a silver platter and they’re not willing to make the amount of touches necessary to drive leads. And when you tell them that’s a part of their role, they begrudgingly do it. This leads to resentment amongst your sales team, which leads to unenthusiastic calls (in terms of first impressions, having the wrong tone can be an absolute killer), poorly scripted out emails, and overall poor results. And for your sales reps that aren’t entitled, many times they’re getting poor training because their managers and supervisors don’t know how to implement an effective lead-gen strategy. Remember, it’s not what they do (see reason # 2). This is an instance where outsourcing this function to a lead generation partner is a necessity. Look at the commitment it takes to drive a sale. Ask yourself, “Is my team willing and ready to do this?”

If you’re current ISRs are doing a poor job of filling the calendar and the pipeline, and you’re looking to get more return on your lead-gen investment, outsourcing should be at the top of your to-do list. Just make sure you do your due diligence on your lead-gen partner of choice. There are a lot of swindlers out there that muddy up the waters for the rest of us!

Here at Elastic Solutions, our software solutions are all about visual marketing. From webinars to virtual events, the best ones are leveraging video and other visual components to tell a story, increase engagement and accelerate revenues at the end of the day. Ultimately, I look at webinars and virtual events as the ultimate content marketing vehicles, and content marketing as a whole is becoming increasingly visual.

YES!

With that being said, I came across an article in Forbes that sums this up perfectly – 5 Visual Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2016. It has a heavy focus on why video is so important in today’s marketing environment, which we’re completely onboard with since video has proven to increase webinar and virtual event engagement, ultimately leading to more qualified leads. Please click here to read on.

If you’re compelled, please share your feedback below. Talk soon

Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com

2016 is right around the corner (can you believe it?!) and marketers have one thing on their mind….what programs can I run to drive more leads for my sales force and look like an all-star in my CEO’s eyes? In today’s marketing environment, the options are endless. Webinars, email marketing, SEO, SEM, PPC, digital advertising, 3rd party lead generation partners… and events. What events can we either attend or host that will get us in front of our target audience, strengthen our relationships with current customers and prospects, and drive greater pipeline value?

If you’re like the majority of the marketers out there, you’re most likely going to attend or host the same events that you always have. In most cases, these events are going to yield the same results as in years past. But if these events aren’t driving the results you want, why do you keep attending/sponsoring/hosting them year after year? If any other lead generation tactic doesn’t work, do you keep doing it the same way year after year? Of course not. Then why are you taking that same approach with your event strategy when there’s another option out there?

Virtual Events Have Been an Option for a Long Time

We all know the challenges of in-person events. Travel expenses can be a killer; you feel like the time away from the office puts you too far behind the 8 ball (the #1 reason people don’t attend in-person events isn’t because they’re not interested…it’s because they can’t justify the cost and time away from the office) and it can be incredibly hard to measure their effectiveness. So if you attend/host an in-person event, spend a boat load of money, and either don’t have a lot of leads to show for it or can’t effectively measure how engaged your end users are, that doesn’t seem like something worth repeating, now does it?

Enter virtual events. They’ve been around for a while, but marketers have been slow to adopt them. But why, especially when you look at the mainstream adoption of other online events such as webinars/webcasts? There’s really no clear cut answer. The only thing I can think of is organizations don’t think their audience is ready for them, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. If your target audience is consuming your content through webinars, they’ll consume it through virtual events as well. If your audience is digitally savvy – and in today’s world if they’re not, they’re watching the parade pass them by – they’ll attend your virtual event.

We did a study at the end of 2014 on B2B Demand Generation Effectiveness. Of the marketers profiled, 56% had not attended or hosted a virtual event. Of the 44% of marketers that had leveraged virtual events in some capacity, 88% said they would make them a part of their lead-generation plan moving forward. What this tells us is that marketers have been slow to adopt virtual events, but when they do use them as part of their lead generation plan, they’re VERY likely to use them again. The reason being? They see the benefits

• It’s a fresh, outside-the-box way to engage your audience and drive ‘sales ready’ leads for your sales force

• They’re more cost-effective than an in-person event, reducing event costs by as much as 75%

• They knock down the walls of geography and allow you to reach a broader audience. It’s a global economy, so why aren’t your structuring your events with that in mind?

• They’re a great tool to extend the shelf-life of a physical conference. Virtual doesn’t have to wipe out in-person events. Instead, they can act as a complement or extension to an existing show. How do you get engaged with all of those people that couldn’t justify the cost/time away from the office to attend in-person? Give them a virtual option to consume your content and thought leadership, and your pipeline will reap the benefits

• Virtual events are more measurable, plain and simple. They can measure everything a person does – how long they attended; rooms they visited; booths they entered and how long they stayed there; content they viewed/downloaded; links they clicked; presentations they attended and for how long; interactions they had with peers, sponsors and product experts, etc. The options are limitless. Don’t you think your sales team would rather have all of these engagement metrics at their disposal, as opposed to just knowing that Joe Schmo stopped by the booth? Of course they would, because it makes their job that much easier!

Bottom line – if you’re looking for a new way to execute events, extend your reach, and drive more qualified leads in the process, give virtual a try. The data shows that if you try them once, they’ll be a part of your lead-gen arsenal moving forward.

If you’re compelled, please share your feedback below. Talk soon

Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com

Nearly everything is digital – “Google” is now used as a verb; communication is primarily through texts and emails more than phone calls and in-person meetings; we’ll check YouTube for instructions before calling a manufacturer for help. The advancement of the digital world is fascinating and opens an infinite number of doors for businesses if leveraged the right way.

Webcasts are no exception! They’re time-efficient, budget-friendly, and present numerous opportunities that produce results down the pipeline… if properly executed. I’m sure you’ve attended a webcast that was ‘less than intriguing’ (okay, it was a total flop). As a platform provider we do everything in our power to make sure that this doesn’t happen, but we’ve seen our fair share of ‘flops’ as well; but we’ve also seen webcasts with extraordinary execution and outstanding results (a real WOW experience).

Here are 6 reasons why webcasts get stuck in the mud and how to get them rolling uphill:

Underdeveloped content

It’s great to focus on the content and avoid becoming ‘slide centric’. We encourage it! However, having underdeveloped slides is essentially sabotaging yourself by disregarding your visual support. There shouldn’t be a focus on strictly slides or strictly spoken content, but a comfortable balance.

The fix: One or two graphs relating to your topic, along with some bullets and images, can be a life-saver for webcasts! It doesn’t have to be intricate or fancy, but it does need to be relevant and insightful.

Inexperienced speakers

While it’s impressive to have particular individuals involved in your webcast, their contribution could potentially hurt your efforts if they are inexperienced or unenthusiastic about the topic. Keep in mind that the audience has taken the time out of their day to visit your webcast. If the presenter is monotone, speaks for a long period of time, or is reading directly from a script or slides, you run the risk of losing attendees who have lost interest.

The fix: Practice, practice, practice! Go over the information and have a rehearsal with your presenters. This provides an opportunity to give tips and opinions. It’s also a good time to make sure that your presenters stay on track and stick to their predetermined time frame.

Insufficient promotional period and content

It’s true that most registrants signup during the week leading up to the webcast, but that doesn’t mean that you should only do one week of promotions. The golden number is 3; AT LEAST 3 weeks of promotions. Think about it – most advertisements only have about 3 seconds to make an impression and emails have about 7 seconds, that’s just how the human attention span works.

The fix: begin promotions at least 3 weeks before your webcast, focusing on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays around 9 AM and noon. These are shown to be the peak times to generate the best response from an audience. Also, try switching up the wording and visuals of your content to keep it fresh!

Lack of preparation

‘Winging it’ isn’t the best approach to events, and let’s face it, most of us aren’t usually good at it. If this is your style, bravo! But as a best practice and reassurance, preparation is key. Nothing is worse than stumbling and forgetting your part. You get flustered and embarrassed while the audience gets confused and impatient.

The fix: As a rule of thumb, have your content finalized and ready at least 3 days prior to the event. Also, always do a dry-run with your team and platform provider. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and there are no last minute confusions.

Low audience engagement

Talk about short attention spans – Yikes! Keep your attendees in the moment with your webcast, not looking at the clock. This happens when one or a combination of the above reasons is exhibited in a webcast without two-way communication between the presenters and attendees.

The fix: Use polls, chats, and Q&A sessions to give your audience a voice and a reference as a way of building a relationship.

No escape route

We’re all human and we make mistakes. Sometimes we’ll stumble or forget to change the slide, but it’s not the end of the world. You have to roll with the punches!

The fix: Make light of the situation and correct it. The audience won’t scrutinize you for a simple mistake and will be forgotten momentarily. Maintain confidence and focus and you will be fine!

If you’re compelled, please share your feedback below. Talk soon!
Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him at jstegent@elasticroi.com 

Webinars have become, quite possibly, THE most important tool for marketers to help drive demand and accelerate revenues for their organizations. There seems to be a common misconception that webinars are only for lead generation but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Webinars should be an important piece of your strategy for every stage of the funnel. The key is delivering the right webinar, to the right audience, at the right time. Here are the different types of webinars you should deliver at each stage of the funnel, ultimately turning prospects into wins.

Driving Awareness among Prospects (Top of the Funnel)

These are what we like to call ‘top of the funnel’ webcasts. The goal here should be to talk about industry challenges and typical pain points your target audience is faced with, and establish yourself as a thought leader/SME. You’re trying to build credibility, so now isn’t the time to demo/product pitch the audience to death. Instead, you should be able to provide your audience with actionable takeaways that leave them hungry to learn more. You’re not necessarily attracting prospects at this stage that are ready to buy immediately (although that would be nice!), but rather those that may be currently shopping for a solution. Provide an interactive experience and content that can help accelerate these prospects through the sales cycle. Give them the ability to ask your presenters questions; download content in the form of whitepapers, product briefs, case studies, etc.; respond to surveys and polls. And at the end of the webinar, have a very clear call to action in terms of next steps, from reaching out to the presenters directly with their questions or scheduling time for a product demo. Once the webinar is over, measure attendee engagement and determine which prospects have ultimately turned themselves into qualified leads for your sales force to pursue.

Turning Qualified Leads Into Active Opportunities (Mid-Funnel)

Your ‘top of the funnel’ webinar weeded out the contenders from the pretenders, and now these qualified leads are excited to understand exactly how your technology works and perhaps see some real-life examples of where a company/individual similar to them experienced ROI. While I’m always a big proponent of bringing in a third party when possible (I know it’s not always possible because customers can be weird about this kind of stuff, and industry analysts and academics can cost an arm and a leg), I believe it’s more important here than at any stage of the buyer’s journey. Make the customer, and their journey with you, the focus of the webinar. More often than not, your best sales tools are happy customers, so allow them to help you build your business case. Talk about the specific applications your customer leveraged to tackle their challenges and realize ROI, and if applicable, integrating a demo into the mix is a good play here. It doesn’t need to be the bulk of the presentation, but 10-15 (+) minutes of product will wet the appetite. If they want more, and if you’ve done a good job of building the business case they will, you can always schedule a more in-depth, one-on-one demo.

From Evaluation to Purchase

Here they are. They’re at the 5 yard line, and it’s your job to get them across the goal line. Remember, your audience for this webinar has a specific set of challenges. You’ve given them real-life examples of your approach to tackling those challenges and now you need to show them how you’re different from the competition. Lean on the advantages they’ll see in working with an organization such as yours and provide statistics that help strengthen your business case. A lot of times, buyers can experience ‘risk avoidance’ at this stage. They get worried. They worry about whether or not they’re making the right decision by moving forward with you, and whether or not you’ll deliver the results you’re promising. You need to re-enforce your business case, provide additional examples if necessary, and make them feel confident that choosing your solution is the way forward. Show them the risk they would be taking by NOT moving forward with you.

Even though we’re not going to go beyond the ‘Evaluation to Purchase’ phase of the funnel with today’s blog, the webinar strategy doesn’t stop there. Webinars have proven to be an extremely effective tool to upsell your customer base. Once a customer is on-board, they’re much more likely to purchase from you again…as long as they’re happy – but that’s another blog for another day.

Remember, for a truly effective webinar strategy that drives results, you need to tailor your webinar content to each stage of the buyer’s journey. Develop your webinars with the buying cycle in mind and you’ll experience accelerated sales cycles and greater revenue growth.

If you’re compelled, please share your feedback below. Talk soon-

 Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com.

Cold calling is dead…it doesn’t work…nobody picks up the phone anymore…it’s antiquated…outbound was so yesterday, only inbound works….yada, yada, yada. To be completely honest, to say that cold calling is dead is complete and utter BS! If it didn’t work, I’d be flipping burgers – not that there’s anything wrong with flipping burgers. More often than not, the people proclaiming that cold calling is dead couldn’t sell hot chocolate to an eskimo.

With all of that being said, I came across a Salesforce.com blog that I believe tackles this subject about as well as it can be tackled. So much so that for once, I decided to let my own thoughts on the matter take a back seat because this blog speaks exactly to my thought process. It not only talks about how cold calling isn’t dead, but how delivering an integrated, balanced approach is key. “Allbound” – a mixture of in/outbound – is the way forward. And yes, cold calling, done the right way with the right people, should be a part of that strategy. Click here to read on and happy selling!

If you’re compelled, please share your feedback below. Talk soon

Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com