You planned an incredible webinar, and it went off without a hitch. The chat box was fire, your Live Q&A was actually fun and lively, and you’re ready to review event analytics with your team.

If the aim of your webinar was to drive sales, what should you do next? (Aside from crossing your fingers and refreshing the requests for product demos?)

Below, we share some best practices for driving qualified leads to take action during your webinar and setting your sales team up for success. 

 1. Inspire Attendees to Act‍

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All the work to drive qualified leads to your sales team technically starts while you’re creating your webinar content. As an attribution point in your buyer’s journey, your webinar helps move prospects through the sales funnel. Make this process even easier by adding inspiring call-to-actions, or CTAs, to the final slides for your virtual event.

A strong CTA will:

• Create a sense of scarcity (like a limited-time offer or a two-for-one deal), or
• Provide your webinar attendees with something they really want (like your one-of-a-kind spreadsheet template or a product demo that makes their purchasing decision that much easier)

And a great CTA might achieve both goals!

Thankfully, new webinar platforms make it easier than ever to create a CTA that drives and captures results. With a clickable CTA overlay, for example, you can capture a lead’s information and funnel it directly to your sales team from within your webinar. 

This way, you won’t force your lead to fill out yet another form (annoying!) or leave the presentation altogether (a missed opportunity). In just one click, attendees move closer to scheduling that product demo or sales call while your sales team captures all the information they need to make the next touchpoint a success.

In addition to promoting product demos, you can also use clickable CTAs to highlight a product guide or promote your next webinar. What’s the ideal next step your prospect should take on your site or with your brand? Promote a link to your best offerings, so they can continue on the buyer’s journey.

2. Conduct a Post-Event Survey—Before Attendees Leave the Room

Does your sales team need more information to drive their post-webinar campaign strategy? Collaborate on a post-event survey to learn even more about your prospects while you still have their attention.

Follow-up surveys are a great opportunity to discover whether your leads are ready to buy—or are just kicking the tires. Often you won’t know where you stand unless you ask prospects directly about their intent.

In Welcome’s webinar platform, launching a user survey with our Polling Feature is easy. You can even schedule the survey to drop before the host closes the doors to your event. Not only will attendee responses be more insightful, you’ll also get a better response rate. That means more actionable data for you and your sales team.

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Don’t risk attendees skipping over an email in their inbox one week later. Pose your most important questions as attendees head out the door, then integrate your survey responses into your customer relationship management (CRM) software to make demo and sales calls that much easier.

Planning a webinar? Check out the Webinar Best Practices Guide to ensure your webinar program is a success!

3. Follow Up

According to ConvertKit, 40% of webinar registrants will attend your live event. Of your entire registration list, only about 30% of your audience will watch the webinar content after the actual event ends. That makes following up with registrants even more important for your sales pipeline!

In addition to sending your thank you email and event recording after the webinar ends, you should also send along marketing materials or other assets to help attendees make a decision. Since prospects are 60x more likely to convert if you send marketing materials after your webinar, those post-webinar assets are key to sales enablement. 

Whether you’re emailing attendees templates, checklists, or a full breakdown of product features, make sure your sales team knows which assets you’ve chosen—and who’s accessing the files. That way, your sales team will have an easy conversation starter with any leads during their post-webinar sales calls or product demos.

4. Use CRM Integrations to Maximize Sales Conversations

Webinars are a popular lead generation tool because they’re highly effective at converting leads into customers. According to BrightTALK, 62% of webinar attendees request a sales demo after the presentation. Wouldn’t it be great if your sales team already knew everything about the lead—including their webinar engagement?

The best webinar platforms have integrations with your CRM, so your sales team can hit the ground running. Capture the actions your webinar attendees take during the event, including any questions they asked during your Live Q&A, any polls they responded to, or any assets they downloaded to read later. 

With all of this information at your sales team’s fingertips, they won’t be starting a sales call from scratch. Instead, they’ll be able to pick up a conversation right where your lead left off.

5. Promote Your Webinar Recording with Short-Form Content

You already know that 30% of your webinar registration list will watch event content later. To drive more viewers to the event you worked so hard to produce, use your social channels to promote your webinar—even after it’s over. 

At Welcome, we’ve had great success in sharing short-form content from our virtual events on LinkedIn and other social media channels. Whether you create short video clips or illustrate meaningful quotes from your speakers, exciting social content will help your team increase brand awareness, build additional interest in your webinars, and remind attendees to check their inboxes for the real deal.

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Remember: you want registrants to watch your content, download the assets you’ve sent along, and request a product demo. More often than not, social media provides the nudge your busy attendees need to dive back into their email accounts and seek your content out.

6. Have a Nurture Campaign Ready to Roll

Even if your webinar had incredible live attendance and resulted in promising sales demos, not all of your attendees will be ready to book a product demo—or to buy. 

That’s why you should use your webinar analytics—and any additional insights from your sales team—to develop a lead nurturing strategy. For leads who didn’t book a product demo, you might consider a softer approach, like:

• Sending helpful tips, tricks, and educational content
• Promoting your product reviews or case studies
• Offering an extra freebie asset to pique their interest

No matter what you decide to do, let analytics be your guide. If you’ve integrated your webinar platform with your CRM, you should have incredible insights into what your leads are interested in. Use these details to send more targeted content and improve the outcomes of your nurturing campaign. 

Whether you send free assets or encourage leads to sign up for additional webinars, don’t discount the power of a nurturing campaign to build trust and confidence in your brand—and set your sales team up for future success.

Final Thoughts

53% of B2B marketers consider webinars the best way to identify qualified leads. But without a plan for enabling your sales team based on your webinar’s outcomes, you won’t get far.

Welcome is a webinar platform built with B2B marketers in mind. Features like clickable CTA overlays and real-time polling drive results, while our powerful analytics help you and your sales team plan your next steps. 

With the right information at your fingertips, you’ll transform cold sales calls into real conversations—and identify the leads who still need a little TLC before they click “buy.”  

Schedule a demo with Welcome today to learn more about our powerful, easy-to-use platform for webinars, virtual events, and more.