Question

Topic: Strategy

Recorded Webinars: Require Registration Or Not?

Posted by chritz on 5/27/2014 at 2:12 PM ET 250 Points
I'm a B2B marketer and we do monthly webinars for our clients (a feature of our service). I want to make the recordings available later for download for prospects to view via our website.

I was thinking I would put them up with a click here to watch the recorded webinar and they'd have to fill in a quick form (name, company, email) to have access to it. These are not sales webinars but informative compliance, what to do, etc. Human Resource topics (how to coach bad employees, HR Documentation best practices, unemployment claims integrity, etc.) and HR Professionals can earn CEUs for watching them.

My ad agency advised against requiring registration, saying we should just put them the site via YouTube for "free" viewing. But to me the value is in gathering the info of the person viewing it. (I like the youtube for SEO but I don’t think we should jut put them out there without getting a sales lead in the process) Which of us is right?

Do you "charge" information to watch a webinar?

Would you still watch it if you had to provide some basic contact info (like most of us have to do to get a copy of that white paper or study)??

Is there a best practices on how to handle recorded webinars this?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 5/27/2014 at 2:34 PM Accepted
    I'm with the agency. I'd make the videos available with no strings attached. At the end of the video you can ask for the contact information. If they really value what you've delivered, they'll probably be willing to give you their information. Otherwise, they will probably not be prospects you want anyway. This will also motivate you to deliver really high value in the webinars.
  • Posted by Jim Greenway on 5/27/2014 at 2:54 PM Accepted
    I have found requesting information before to view a video or white paper verses requesting information after the video, your viewership is increased significantly when the information is required after the knowledge based piece. If the webinar, video or white paper has value the viewer will most likely request to be informed when other information is available. We have done several case studies on just this topic.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 5/27/2014 at 5:05 PM Accepted
    You can also have it both ways, if you want. You could make the first 1/2 available with no contact info required. Then if people want to watch the rest, they need to provide the info.

    But ultimately it's not really the number of viewers that matter - what matters is the number of leads. So, instead of taking all your content and making it "no strings attached" - try a few and measure the results.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 5/27/2014 at 5:31 PM Accepted
    Do it both ways: send download links to people on your list; ask people with whom you have no connection to register in order to receive your free content. This way you maintain your relationship with your current clients and you build a new relationship with the new clients.

    OR …

    Put just the first few minutes of each video on your site—free of charge, no opt in, no sign up, nothing—and depending on the length of the content, once viewers have become connected with the content, fade things out and ask them to sign up for free to view the remaining footage. In this brief message allude to the value of the information they'll receive and ask them to carry out a specific action that benefits them in the long run.

  • Posted by jmosley-matchett on 5/29/2014 at 8:29 PM Accepted
    Frankly, if a website "blackmails" me by showing only the beginning of a video and then holds the rest of it for ransom until I provide contact info, I'd view that as a rather nasty tactic and not want to do business with people who treated me like that.

    Either ask at the beginning or the end, but don't try to scam people into giving you their contact info.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 5/29/2014 at 9:33 PM Member
    With respect to the honorable doctor, I'm not suggesting anyone "scam" details from anyone.

    The notion of presenting a portion of the content ash then requesting opt-in details to learn more being a "blackmail" technique is nonsense. Teaser campaigns like this have been used in direct response marketing for decades BECAUSE THEY WORK.

    If the content is relevant enough to the interest of the audience, if the lead is interested enough in the outcome, and if the desire to receive the fuller version of the content in exchange for an email address is deemed valuable enough in terms of an exchange, and if the process CONVERTS the prospect into a QUALIFIED lead, then the process works.

    All I'm suggesting is that as a marketing strategy it is worth testing. If it does not work, you gain a positive result of what NOT to do next time. If the strategy results in an increase in opt-ins IT IS A SCREAMING SUCCESS.

    I know of an e-commerce site in the sports training market that uses this technique. How effective is it? Well, as it generates $400,000 in monthly sales I'd say it works quite well.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 5/31/2014 at 11:47 AM Member
    … and here's an example of the same idea in action for a print-based website: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/naturalresources/article...

    This is the UK Times newspaper's site: you can read the introduction to the article,
    but if you want to read more, it'll cost you.
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