What Is Webcasting? (+How to Generate Leads with Webcasts)

Webcasting can be an exciting and engaging way to generate leads for your business.

It’s often difficult to show off your company’s true benefits without an in-depth explanation. Thankfully, high-quality streaming video has made it possible to reach a large audience with your brand.

Although scheduling a webcast may be easy, it takes skills to convert prospects into customers. That’s why the expert team here at WebFX has written this guide to walk you through the three best practices for generating leads with webcasts.

Keep reading to explore more about this exciting topic — and don’t forget to subscribe to Revenue Weekly, the digital email newsletter from WebFX, for more marketing tips and tricks.

What is webcasting?

Webcasting is the process of video broadcasting live over the Internet. A webcast is a highly efficient way to distribute information to large groups of leads or customers.

People often confuse the terms “webcast” and “webinar.” A webcast is a one-way presentation with no participation from the audience, while a webinar allows the audience to participate in activities like a question and answer session.

When you need to communicate with hundreds or even thousands of potential customers, a webcast is the best way to interact with such a large audience. The webcast is a highly effective method to generate leads and tell customers more about your brand directly.

How to create a high-quality webcast

Marketers have been perfecting webcasts for more than two decades. There are several tips and tricks you can follow to create an engaging presentation:

• Scheduling: Based on research, the best time to host a webinar or webcast is on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. during the week. These times are statistically high for attendance rates and engagement.
• Length: Studies show that 60 minutes is the best average length for a webinar or webcast, with most viewers tuning in for 56 minutes. It’s key to have a clear stopping point about 50 minutes into the program so people won’t tune out before the end if they think the presentation is going on too long.
• Announcements: Always have a pre-roll for your webcast that showcases information about your company. You can include a bio about the presenter, information about the company, and all of your relevant websites and social media.
• Recording: It’s important to follow up your webcast with a recording of the presentation and a call to action (CTA) that asks leads to engage with your brand or convert to customers.

How to generate more leads with webcasting

Building a lead generation campaign for your webcast that drives conversions is a step-by-step process. If you master each step carefully, you’ll reach a large audience with a single presentation.

Here’s how to generate more leads with webcasting in three steps:

1. Target high-quality leads

One of the key steps to generating leads with webcasting is to attract the right audience. For example, if you have an audience interested in a budget product but show them a premium option on your webcast, they’re unlikely to convert.

You can target and attract the right leads with a two-step process. First, you want to map a buyer persona for your ideal lead. A buyer persona identifies the psychographic and demographic information about your customer. The goal is to find psychographic and demographic information that gives you a picture of the person’s overall motivations for buying.

Once you’ve established the target lead, you can create a customized landing page. The page should focus on only one CTA — signing up for your webcast. You’ll need to balance the needs and wants of your customer while addressing their pain points.

It’s vital to provide a bio for the speakers, urge your audience that signing up is time-sensitive, and provide social proof from customers who have enjoyed past webcasts.

2. Guide people to your webcast

An indoctrination series is a sequence of persuasive emails written to convince your audience to take action. In the case of webcasting, the series begins with a “thank you for signing up” email.

You should send a minimum of two emails, one a day before your webcast and the next one hour before your webcast. Generally, in an indoctrination sequence, you send even more.

After sending your first thank you email, you’ll want to combine reminder emails for the event with opportunities to explain your unique selling points (USPs) to the lead.

The series of emails that follows before and after your webcast should include your brand story, social proof about the success of your business, and links to resources from your websites. You should specifically address the obstacles consumers face and how your product is a solution.

3. Nurture prospects after your webcast

Once you’ve invested the time and resources to generate a lead on a webcast, it’s much easier to follow up with more information and opportunities.

There are two key ways to nurture your prospects:

• Thank-you gift: You can make a lasting impression on a lead by offering them a free gift for attending your webcast. For example, you can offer a free e-book on a relevant topic. Reading the book will help the audience remember and consider you as a solution.
• Time-sensitive promotion: Providing a time-sensitive promotion is an excellent way to drive users to action. For example, you can offer a discount for your services that’s only good for a limited time during or after the webcast.

37% of marketers say that generating high-quality leads was one of their biggest challenges.

We want to decrease that percentage.

WebFX can help you generate high-quality leads with a customized marketing strategy.

Learn More About Lead Generation Services

Generate more webcasting leads with WebFX

Lead generation is one of the key factors to growing your business, so it’s helpful to have experts like WebFX in your corner.

In just the past five years, the WebFX team has generated over 24 million leads for our clients. We’ll walk with you to create a custom marketing plan with industry-leading tools and software built to help you earn the highest return on investment (ROI).

Whatever the size of your audience, WebFX will help you create a highly engaging lead generation strategy that encourages your prospects to convert into loyal customers and clients.

Please reach out to our team online today to begin or give us a call at 888-601-5359 to learn more about how our lead generation services can drive revenue for your business!