Webinars are having a moment.
Credit the drought of in-person events. Or increasing comfort with virtual interactions. Or maybe savvy B2B marketers have just cracked the code to make sitting through a presentation feel like an outstanding way to spend a lunch break.
However you slice it, webinars work in 2021.
That all sounds great. But what can you do if your webinars aren’t performing as planned? There’s a lot to that. It could be a lack of proper promotion. It could be that your marketing team needs to take a more human-centered content approach that will resonate better in the current environment. But those items are mostly in the marketing team’s hands.
On the sales side of the house, what can you do to help deliver webinars that perform? Ensure the organization isn’t missing one crucial component: sales and marketing alignment.
Sales and marketing alignment (or “smarketing,” if you live dangerously) can result in some real ROI. An aligned sales and marketing team can see:
The coordination and alignment between the sales and marketing teams is essential to whipping up webinars that drive SQLs (sales-qualified leads) and convert SALs (sales-accepted leads).
In this post, we’re going beyond brand awareness and other top-of-the-funnel activities and straight for the bottom-of-the-funnel (or purchasing stage) webinars—the kind of content that’s basically jet fuel for your sales-marketing machinery.
Here are six actionable tips on how to build better B2B webinars through sales and marketing alignment.
Sales and marketing misalignment costs businesses around $1 trillion annually in decreased sales productivity and wasted marketing efforts, according to G2.
If your sales and marketing teams are siloed with an old-school approach, it’s time to have a conversation or two. And leading up to your next webinar is the perfect place to start.
Some of these chats can be a little contentious if your sales and marketing teams are more divided and prone to finger-pointing than hand-holding. But these talks will help build the momentum that proves the revenue-rocking power of a well-aligned, cross-functional sales-marketing team.
Need an ice-breaker for that first sales-marketing conversation? Start with getting sales and marketing to create and agree upon a definition of a sales-qualified lead (SQL).
Because if the goal of the webinar is to create SQLs, you first have to establish how to identify SQLs if you’re going to have any hope of hitting your goals.
Sounds simple. But only 44% of companies have formal agreement between sales and marketing around the definition of a qualified lead.
The sales team needs to be clear with marketing on what info they need to accept for a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) to become a sales-accepted lead (SAL).
If your company is using marketing automation, you can define actions or information uncovered about a lead that will increase the lead’s score. Then, you can automatically upgrade the lead to an SQL once that score is achieved.
The next chat marketing and sales need to have as part of the webinar pregame process is gaining clarity of why you’re hosting the webinar. This will inform not only the content of the webinar but how it’s promoted.
You can break this down further into two questions:
Finally, before the campaign launches, you should outline the needs of both sales and marketing.
Create a detailed campaign plan that outlines all assets that need to be made before launching a campaign. This includes everything from the webinar signup page down to the product sheet that sales will need when a prospect converts to a SAL.
Now it’s time to . . .
When it’s time to spread the word about your high-value, SQL-driving webinar, sales and marketing each have roles to play.
Hot Tip: Consider a spiff to encourage playful competition between individual contributors on the sales team to drive sign-ups. For this, get marketing to create customized UTM links to track where signups are coming from (and make sure your form is using hidden fields to capture UTM info). Sales can then report who’s in the lead each week leading up to the webinar, and announce and reward the winner after the big day.
After the webinar—which marketing will hopefully pull off without a hitch—your work is still not done. Because, like golf or tennis (or basically any activity where you hit a ball), the follow-through is as important as what came before it.
The ultimate, bigger-picture goal should be to have marketing and sales aligned as a cross-functional team, but both marketing and sales each have unique responsibilities in your post-webinar follow-up.
Hot Tip: Be specific in your sales follow-up ,especially since the marketing messages won’t be. For example, reference a previous conversation or invite them to coffee at a nearby shop to chat further.
According to G2, sales and marketing alignment can help your company become 67% better at closing deals.
Sales enablement is a critical function of marketing for successful B2B companies. When sales and marketing work together, expect to see a jump in revenue, higher conversion rates, and a shorter sales cycle.
Want to learn more about how we can help build a content marketing engine that aligns both sales and marketing? Contact us!
