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January 20, 2004
Can Web Seminars Truly Drive Sales?
Because Web conferencing is still relatively new to most companies, many wonder if it can deliver real bottom-line results. For example, can Web seminars attract real sales opportunities, or are they just education opportunities for tire kickers? One of our clients has provided us some data that clearly suggests the former.
We managed a series of Web seminars for a company providing an enterprise-level, ASP-style service. The series attracted 278 registrations, of which 197, or 71%, attended the seminars. From this group of attendees, the value of the business already closed is about five times the cost of doing the seminars. Yet short-term revenue was not the only criterion: the seminars also helped prime the sales pipeline and lay groundwork for future marketing and sales activities:
The company has closed sales with 39 of the attendees, or 20%.
The company is presently engaged with another 33 (17%) of the seminar attendees.
The company is also starting to position its services for a set of companies that represent future sales opportunities. In this series, 59 attendees (30%) were representatives of this future business segment.
Seventeen of the attendees (9%) were from existing clients, providing greater value of the business relationship.
The remaining 49 attendees are considered uncategorized prospects or not interested.
One reason for the seminars success was the attendance by senior-level decision makers and purchasers, many with titles such as CEO, CFO, Senior Vice President, Vice President, and Director. We were able to attract such influential executives by employing well-regarded speakers and education topics relevant to our target audience. These were not sales presentations, although they were able to communicate and support key corporate messages. Also, we had a well-defined follow-up process to continue the dialog begun in the seminars. These tactics, along with a number of other best practices, are what make Web seminars so successful for generating leads and stimulating sales activity.
While these results are impressive enough, we must also consider the ongoing value of the resulting database of contacts. The company is following up with all who registered: another 81 contacts in addition to the 197 attendees. As we produce new seminars and other promotions for this company, we will continue to draw upon this database of clearly interested, well-defined prospects and customers.
Posted on January 20, 2004 at 01:19 AM
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