In todayâs ecosystem driven world, customers buy software based it’s ability to integrate with the other apps in their stack. This makes partner webinars the perfect goto market motion.
When leveraged correctly, partner webinar forge strong relationships with partners, while demonstrating “a better together” solution for customers.
However, without knowing how to build a partner webinar designed to generate leads, trials, and/or sales (not just registrants), you risk wasting your time and your partner’s time.
In a recent conversation with Dan Dawson, we discussed the best practices for planning webinars as a Partner Marketer. Today, weâll dig into our top takeaways you can implement immediately, including our three-phase planning checklist, my post-registration follow-up sequence, and strategies for crafting an engaging webinar campaign.
Why Conduct Partner Webinars?
After undergoing a significant shift to remote work in 2020, webinars have become an exponentially powerful resource for B2B companies to connect with and convert leads. One way to enhance your webinar success further is to conduct webinars with partners as a joint promotional effort.
There are a few key reasons you may host webinars with your top partners.
Position Yourselves as Experts
You can deliver tremendous value to your leads with educational workshops addressing their pain points and challenges. In a 30-45-minute webinar, you can educate attendees about a topic you and your partner are experts on.
Leverage this opportunity to establish each of your unique perspectives and joint-value propositions. Include other industry experts to boost your credibility and add value for attendees.
Pool Resources to Achieve Joint Goals
One of the best parts of co-marketing campaigns is reaching your partnerâs audience and sharing marketing resources to achieve more than you would alone. Within your partnership, you can identify where each of your strengths lies and optimize your task distribution to achieve the most significant results.
For example, if your partner has an expansive newsletter list, while someone on your channel team has an enormous LinkedIn audience, youâll each benefit from each other. Whether youâre looking to attract or convert leads (more on that next), conducting virtual workshops is an effective strategy to speed up your sales cycle and increase marketing ROI.
Expand Your Content Library
Recording webinars is an extremely efficient way to create strong content you can leverage for years because theyâre a perfect format to repurpose content from. In my experience, a single 45-minute webinar can easily become a:
- Podcast
- Blog
- Downloadable asset (checklist, infographic, ebook)
- Set of promotional videos
- Week of LinkedIn posts
- Newsletter
Two Types of Partner Webinars
Partner webinars are valuable at all sales funnel stages, from Awareness to Advocacy. Weâve split this journey into two phases: demand generation and demand capture.
Demand Generation
Webinars that fall under demand generation focus on the top half of the sales funnel. Here, goals include broadening your brand awareness, aligning with your partnerâs brand, and generating leads. Success metrics include:
- Landing page views
- Registrations/emails captured
- Attendees
Demand generation webinars might include online events such as:
- Educational webinars â Teach your audience about a specific topic you and your partner are experts in.
- Expert panels â Host 2-3 industry experts to discuss a topic. Ask 5-6 questions on the theme, allowing each expert to share their thoughts.
- Networking webinars â Begin with a brief presentation on a theme, then separate attendees into breakout rooms to discuss topical questions. Unite at the end to share your insights and encourage attendees to connect afterward.
- Solo-expert interview â Host a solo expert and interview them on a topic relevant to you and your partner.
Demand Capture
When conducting demand capture webinars, your main focus is lower in the funnel: conversions and referrals. At this stage, attendees are more interested in your brand, signaling that theyâre ready to take the next step. Some attendees may be customers looking to get more out of your product or discover how they can recommend your solution to others in their network.
Demand capture webinars are typically product-focused. Common event examples include:
- Product workshops â Provide a real-time product workshop showing how to achieve a specific result in your product. Consider including experts from your Product and Engineering teams to share pro-tips.
- Feature demos â Conduct a feature demonstration with your partner highlighting new product benefits and unique capabilities thanks to your partnership.
- Partner success stories â Include a shared customer to discuss a joint success story with your partner. Have your customer share their journey, from first discovering their problem to the value theyâve experienced since.
By presenting common use cases for your product, you can demonstrate your value and strategies for achieving better results. Target metrics for a demand capture webinar include:
- Attendees
- Demo requests
- Trial conversions
- Renewals
- Contract expansions
- Referrals
Three Phases of Successful Partner Webinars
As you establish internal partner webinar planning processes, youâll streamline the experience. However, successfully preparing for a partner webinar is a three-part process spanning six weeks.
Planning
During the planning phase, youâll:
- Select an optimal partner
- Determine joint goals
- Align internally and externally
- Establish a shared timeline
Content Optimization
While building your campaign, there are a few steps you can take to optimize lead generation. During this stage, youâll refine your:
- Event framing
- Landing page and call-to-action
- Registration process
Promotion
Finally, itâs time to leverage your content to drive registrations and attendees. For the final stage of your webinar planning, youâll focus on:
- Attracting registrations
- Reducing attrition with an engaging follow-up sequence
Starting Right (The Planning Phase)
The beginning of an optimal partnership comes from aligning on goals and building a shared vision. Your long-term collaboration will improve when you can establish clarity around each partyâs tasks.
Selecting the Right Partner
The first step is a big one â selecting the partner with which you want to host a webinar. To do this, first consider your goals for the campaign. Are you creating a demand generation or creation webinar?
From there, explore which of your partners is likely to have a shared interest and strategic strengths. This may be due to a recent integration launch, a new referral campaign, or achieving a specific partner tier.
For example, with a demand generation webinar, you may partner with an organization based on their reach in a specific audience sector. Meanwhile, you may save demand creation webinars for the most engaged members of your program who have reached your top partner tier.
Conduct Resource Mapping, Training, and Introductions
Especially with so many moving parts and a variety of involved team members, itâs critical to have clear documentation of your goals and plans. Consider the following at the beginning of a partnership:
- What are our shared goals?
- Which audience segment will we target?
- What KPIs will we track?
- What responsibilities can we take on?
- What resources can we commit?
- Who will we need to involve?
- How will we leverage this content post-webinar?
- Who will conduct which tasks?
- Schedule concerns (Will someone be out? Are there holidays to plan around?)
- Do all individuals with responsibilities know their role and when to serve it?
- What milestones are in your calendars?
- Does everyone have access to the tools they need to succeed?
Double, Triple-check Calendars
Before you go to market, revisit your calendars. Itâs essential to rule out any potential conflicts before you move forward. Donât forget about vacations, parental leaves, or international holidays when planning your event â these are easy to overlook when reviewing so many schedules.
Struggling to find the perfect date? Iâve been able to streamline scheduling with Doodle Polls and Calendly.
Send an Official Calendar Invite
After selecting a date and time, invite your partnerâs team and any speakers to an event. Today, hard commitments on the calendar are essential for keeping everyone on track.
In your invite to event speakers and hosts, include:
- Sign-on link/credentials
- Important session information (planned practice session, info on other panelists, planned questions, FAQs)
- Extra context or resources (link to promotional assets)
Stay in Contact
With so many stakeholders, messages, tasks, and files can easily get lost in email threads. After getting everyone on the same page, consider building a Slack channel for the project to keep tasks moving and organized.
Consider conducting a test session in advance so everyone can confirm their equipment works and talking points are succinct and engaging.
Capturing Leads (The Content Optimization Phase)
The registration process is not about driving as many attendees as possible to your webinar. Instead, you should focus on capturing leads ready to take action toward you, a partnerâs product, an upsell, or another joint goal.
There are a few key best practices for capturing quality leads for your webinars.
Create Workshops vs. Webinars
Iâve found that attendees get the most value â and are most likely to convert â when you build a workshop instead of a webinar. Give them an over-the-shoulder look at how to solve a problem, achieve a greater ROI, or leverage a specific feature of your platform.
If youâre not sure how to ensure youâre delivering a workshop instead of a webinar, remember to provide as much value as possible based on your goals and the audience youâre targeting.
Leverage Strong Copywriting
Donât skimp on your registration page headlines! Iâve found that a fantastic headline does 80% of the work for you. Test out a handful of headlines with your team before nailing one down, and donât be afraid to try a new headline out if you donât see the conversion rate you expect.
Include topical keywords with engaging phrasing to attract your target audience to register. Consider highlighting a strong benefit theyâll get from the event or a pain point they can reduce by attending.
Past headlines Iâve seen perform well include:
- âLook over our shoulders to see step-by-step little know yet highly effective ways to get more emails delivered & respondedâ
- âDiscover âThe Core 4â SMS Strategies Aircall Power Teams Use To Drive More Appointments, Sales, Referrals & Reviews!â
Instead of a generic call-to-action like âregister now,â get creative and highlight the value of your offer. Be specific and compelling, with copy like âget more repliesâ or âget more meetings.â
Reduce Friction
Use smart content to ensure the registration page is in your attendeeâs timezone. Build a process to send your attendees a calendar invite for your event and auto-enroll in a follow-up sequence. Remember to include information for participation and joining to make it as easy as possible.
Optimize for Leads vs. Attendees
By creating a multi-step sign-up process, you can optimize your efforts to generate high-quality leads, instead of a surplus of irrelevant attendees. Leads engaged enough to complete multiple forms signal that theyâre especially interested in learning more.
Capture the Essentials
On the first form, capture key contact information (name, email, phone number). Anyone who completes this form should be automatically enrolled in your follow-up sequence, including sending a calendar invite.
Gather More Information
After someone registers, take them to the next form where youâll gather additional lead information, including:
- Their tech stack
- Industry
- Team size
- Role
- Key pain point
Use this information to customize your presentation content as applicable. For example, include resources for specific industries registered or discuss strategies optimal for team sizes attending.
In addition to enrolling these contacts in your event registration follow-up sequence, this list should get communications specific to their scenario and pain points.
Recommend Related Content
Finally, share a few resources related to your webinarâs topic. Include links to sign up for product demos, as applicable. Add instructions for accepting the calendar invite and attending on the day of.
Drive Attendance (The Promotion Phase)
Typically, out of everyone who registers for your virtual event, only 40-60% will attend live. Sometimes higher priority meetings come up, and other times, your registrants forget about the event.
Create an omnichannel follow-up campaign to ensure registrants are excited about the upcoming event and donât forget. If theyâre excited about attending, theyâll be less likely to schedule over or miss it.
I always recommend Zapier for all of your post-registration follow-ups. No matter your mar-tech stack or access to resources, anyone can get started with a budget of $30. Best of all, you can run your entire reminder sequence on Zapier.
Consider my sample follow-up sequence.
Calendar Invite – Upon registration
Immediately upon registration, send out a detailed calendar invite with information on the webinar, access to any relevant free trials, an agenda, and a link to join live.
Email 1 – One day later
Confirm that your list got the calendar invite and include an additional link to enter your live session. Use this as another opportunity to highlight the demo activation offer.
SMS 1 – One day later
If your list hasnât accepted the invitation, send them an SMS message with another reminder. Keep this concise, including the event date and how to confirm.
Email 2 – Day of event
Remind your registrants again with one last email. Include why theyâre coming (the benefit youâre providing in your webinar) and the link to join right at the top.
If youâre confident this is a lower funnel stage audience, include links to activate a free trial.
SMS – Day of event
Send one final reminder via text anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours before your event. Encourage anyone canceling to email you (this creates the perfect opportunity for following up).
Your Partner Webinar Playbook
A strong partner webinar begins with mutual alignment, so you should spend the first third of your planning efforts synching your goals with your partner.
After getting on the same page, prioritize lead generation with a strong landing page, registration process, and follow-up sequence. Engage leads vs. attendees by strategically developing engaging headlines, an optimal registration process, and a fool-proof follow-up sequence.In our next meet-up, weâll capture the final stage of a successful partner webinar: perfecting the presentation. Take your partner efforts to the next level when you sign up for Partner Playbooks workshops.