Live webinars offer a unique opportunity to qualify leads on the spot using real-time behavior. Last week I talked about qualifying leads using webinar content. Now let’s take lead qualification to the next level. The rich and interactive experience webinars offer give B2B marketers unique and valuable information about the registrants they’ve attracted. Marketers who use every possible opportunity to measure webinar attendee interest during the event are gaining sales’ trust and driving better results. Here are 7 ways to qualify webinar leads based on behavior:
Attendance: This is the most obvious one, so let’s get this one out of the way. Attended or not attended is the most basic way to look at this one. Capturing information on duration of attendance can also be useful. Consider assigning a higher score to a lead that stays for the entire webinar versus someone that attends but leaves early, and an even lower score for a no show. However, keep in mind that the act of registering, at a minimum, demonstrates interest in the content you’ve offered even for a no show.
Recording views: Tracking the recording views of each registrant tells an even fuller story. If someone did not attend, but watches the recording, they’ve still taken the time to consume your content and most likely just had a conflict – life happens. If someone did attend and still watches the recording, this indicates strong interest as they are reviewing the content again – or feel it’s worthwhile to share with a colleague.
- Breakout session: Adding a breakout session to the end of a webinar (especially best practice or thought leadership webinars) for a short demo of your product/service is a great way to identify current shoppers. (See previous blog for more info.) Tracking their attendance to this session is very valuable information for the sales team.
Poll answers: This is an easy tactic to add to your webinar, and an easy one to get wrong. While this is a great way to capture useful information about your attendees, be strategic. For instance, be sure you’re not asking something you already know based on the registration information you’ve collected or based on the content of the webinar. Beware of collecting information without giving value first. The Virtual Presenter has some great ideas and suggestions to consider. Assigning specific answers differing scores will add to your overall lead behavior qualification score.
- File downloads: This is a less-used but extremely valuable behavior to track. Consider giving each file type a unique score – for instance, if someone downloads the PPT from the presenter that’s not as valuable as if they downloaded a solution overview about your product or service. You’ll want to be sure to give that action a high score and let sales know what they downloaded specifically.
- Questions: Q&A is used during most webinars to answer technical questions and manage quest
ions for the presenter. Depending on the content of the webinar, attendees may be asking questions about your product and service as well. Having a way to flag the questions that indicate shopping behavior or strong interest is extremely valuable. Whether you wrap this behavior up into an overall score or simply pass the information to sales, be sure not to overlook the richness of the information collected during Q&A.
- Overall engagement: Measuring chat participation, use of emoticons, participation in polls and activity during Q&A can give you and the sales team an overall sense of how engaged each attendee was during the webinar and therefore get a general sense of their interest level. Some platforms will give you this overall engagement score automatically. If not, you’ll need to find a way to use your marketing automation or CRM systems to roll this data up into an overall score. If you don’t have a way to wrap up all the behaviors into a nice neat score, consider taking steps toward passing all the behavioral information you’re collecting to sales in a meaningful way.
Webinars, above all other marketing tactics, give marketers a unique opportunity to interact with prospective clients and qualify leads based on real-time behavior. While live events offer interactivity, they do not offer the ease and richness of tracking attendees’ actions that digital events provide. Can you think of other ways to use webinar attendee behavior to qualify your leads?