In my seven years of running webinars (both directly as the coordinator and indirectly as a manager), it has struck me more than once what a significant number of people it takes to run a successful webinar program. This week I took a moment to think it through and I came up with a surprisingly large list! The list includes team members on my immediate team or within my department, key resources within my company but outside of my department (‘internal vendors’ if you will) and external parties outside of my company. Here it is:
My team/department:
- The Webinar Program Manager is, of course, at the top of my list! Organizing all the details from the content calendar, speakers, scheduling, registration, promotion, rehearsals, day-of production, post-event follow up, lead distribution and more.
- SMEs – these folks help direct the content, messaging and collateral used for each track focus
- Evangelists – our team of evangelists is always willing to fill speaking slots and build or review content
- Product marketers – it starts here with the strategy, focus, target audience definitions and competitive differentiators that drive the structure and foundation of the program
- Social media guru – our resident social media guru ensures our followers know all about upcoming events
- Conferencing and registration technology – I am lucky to be on the team that develops the technology I use – so not only do I get the best support ever, I get to have input into the way I want the technology to work!
Internal vendors:
- Channel Management/Sales – obviously these teams are integral to the overall program success as they are following up on leads generated from the program and providing continual feedback
- Website producer –program awareness on the website is, of course, extremely important
- IT – Gotta be friends with this group as they provide the audio conferencing lines and hardware we need
- Contact management – this group assists in segmenting and pulling the house list to use in promotions
- Lead management – if my leads don’t route, my efforts are pointless – this team keeps everything flowing correctly through the CRM
- Finance and purchasing – can’t forget these important folks that divvy out the funds and help me spend it!
External vendors:
- Agencies – the agency I use is incredible not only for the design work that they do, but because they have taken the time to fully understand the intricacies of our unique program
- Speakers – how could we have a webinar program at all without amazing speakers with great content and who can keep an audience engaged for 60 minutes!
- Media partners – they make all the difference because without registrants and attendees, our effort is futile
- Channel partners – our channel both drives registrants and interest as well as actions and nurtures the leads post-webinar turning our investment into revenue
These key resources have changed from time to time from internal to external and back, but one thing remains constant – they are all important to achieving success. One person certainly can’t get this all done! Perhaps there are resources you haven’t tapped into to help make your job less overwhelming?