Is your next webinar event on the horizon? Are you incorporating it into your marketing plan and budget? You’re thinking, well usually webinars can cost an arm and a leg, but that’s not always the case. 

Yes, there are usually a variety of expenses, depending on your objectives and goals. As reported by ReadyTalk, the average cost of conducting a webinar can range from $100 and $3000, all depending on your promotion and technology costs. On another note, it’s important to understand WHY you should be incorporating a webinar event into your marketing plan and what value it offers both your organization and the audience.

According to B2B Content Marketing 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America, 58% of B2B organizations use webinars and 1 out of 3 professionals named it the most critical tactic for a successful content marketing strategy. However, a webinar is useless if it offers no value and if there are no attendees.

No matter how good you think the content of your webinar is, if there’s no one around to listen to it, it’s unfortunately not worth much. According to HubSpot, a successful webinar is more than just scheduling the perfect day or time, it’s about choosing a killer topic, setting goals, creating a great landing page and so much more.

So what’s the secret sauce to the “best time” or “right day” in promoting your webinar? Webinar distributor BrightTALK which has been publishing benchmark data since 2010, recently released a report discussing key findings in promoting a successful webinar strategy. They analyzed over 14,000 webinars, 300 million emails, 563,000 attachments downloaded, 68,000 questions asked and social promotions that were all viewed by 7 million people worldwide.  That’s a lot of data!

Included in the report are best practices and tips from top experts that help marketers reach success in promoting webinars as well as teach them how to build an effective and scalable video practice, including the best days and times to hold and promote webinars. Let’s dive right into some key findings and trends BrightTALK covers in their 2018 benchmark report.

Pre-Webinar Promotion

Over the past year, BrightTALK gathered and analyzed an overwhelming amount of data consisting of hours of content viewed, social promotions, emails, questions asked and much more. Here’s what they found…

• Webinars succeed when promoted early (3-4 weeks before) and continue live
• 3 dedicated emails should be sent out over 3 weeks before the webinar
• The last email promotion should be sent out on the day of the live webinar
• Reducing the number of emails will affect the number of attendees

Best Days to Promote

Sidenote, definitely don’t host your webinar over the weekend, but you probably already knew that. After gathering extensive data, BrightTALK found that conversion rates for promoting webinars were actually somewhat flat during the week, EXCEPT for Tuesdays.

• Tuesday performed the best as email conversion for webinars was up 31% over the past year
• Everyday of the week is pretty much effective in promoting webinars with a slight edge on Monday & Tuesdays
• Monday comes in as the best day to broadcast live with a higher audience rate

@BrightTALK

Best Times to Go Live

Another significant point to make is the wide range of time to host the webinar and increase live views. BrightTALK analyzed the best times to hold a webinar across different regions around the world and they go as follows:

• North America – between 8 and 9 am (PDT)
• EMEA  – between 8 and 9 am (UTC)
• APAC – between 7am and 3pm (CST)
• Monday through Friday work best with Monday showing a minor increase in live attendees

@BrightTALK

Live Production: Average Registrants & Viewings

BrightTalk compared the average amount of registrations and viewings between last year and this year and came up with the fact that there is more streaming content competing for attention than ever before. Here are some more key findings including engagement metrics…

• Average registrations per webinar decreased 4.5% from last year
• Average viewing highly increased by 27.2% from last year
• Webinar competition rate is up by 36.2%
• Average viewing time is 41.7 minutes
• Between 2017 & 2018 average ratings increased from 4.37 to 4.44 (out of 5)

Preferred Content Subjects

When planning out a webinar, marketers should come up with an objective for the webinar and the theme as well as the value it will bring to its audience. BrightTalk compared multiple different content themes and analyzed their engagement rates.

• Training and Industry Trends was the preferred content by power webinar users
• How-to explanations and case studies saw an increase
• Educational content should be prioritised over product-related content

On-Demand Viewings

Here you can find a breakdown of on-demand viewings during the span of 100 days following the event and BrightTalk found that on-demand webinar viewings were critical in the days right after the live broadcast.

• 48% of viewings will occur within 10 days following the event
• 26% of viewings will occur within 20 days after the event
• In comparison to last year, there was a slight spike in on-demand viewings

@BrightTALK

Over the past year, BrightTALK has seen an impressive increase in the number of webinars on the platform by marketers and realized that B2B marketers should take specific approaches to their webinars and videos, mainly focusing on the customer and their journey.

Download the report here to learn more on what makes a webinar successful, from strategy and action to promotion and tactics.