Webinar Question
Posted June 10th, 2009 by Karl Stromberg
Do you guys have any recommendations on qualifying and justifying the cost of producing online video to wary customers? Clearly web video is the direction online marketing is heading, but people seem a little nervous about spending the money to get a quality professional video on their website. Any advice or recommendations on quantifying the ROI of online video to customers would be extremely beneficial as well. Thank you.
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Interim Steps Are Also an Option
Steve Early 2 years 32 weeks 1 day 4 hours ago
Karl:
You may also look into alternative technologies for some of your webinar needs. There is no question in my mind that full video can be very impactful. The question is; do you need it, and for what part(s) of your webinar? Establish goals for the webinar and then determine if full video is something you need and for which parts of the overall webinar.
Other options that are available include flash based techniques that can take animated PowerPoint, add an audio track, and deliver an on-line experience that certainly isn't full video but is very impactful nonetheless.
When doing an important webinar (big announcement), I would also recommend working with a company that produces webinars for a living, and who will help you pre-record the event. You can still do live Q&A, but it is amazing how much better a presentation comes across when all of the hesitations, mistakes, "ummms" and "ahhhhs" have been cut out of the audio track prior to delivery. A good webinar viewed 100 times at its initial showing, will probably be viewed about 5 more times once archived and made available over the internet. Be sure to consider that in your cost justification objectives.
Steve
Keep it Simple and Spend Less
Prashant Kaw 2 years 34 weeks 6 days 21 hours ago
Karl,
Video is engaging and has a high impact. If you can keep the costs for production low you can have a dramatic impact on customers. I think the definition of a professional video has changed. The videos of our CEO Brian Halligan on our site in my opinion are very articulate and professional. But we did not spend big bucks producing them. Just the $350 for the digital video camera and some time from our employees.
Measurement is harder for something that is not behind a form (like Brian's video). But anything that is for lead gen can easily be measure by number of leads and the conversion of those leads into customers and ultimately revenue.
If you post the videos on to other video sharing sites as recommended in the webinar you can measure by the amount of inbound traffic they generate and how that traffic is converting to business (i.e. if you have closed loop reporting to help with that tracking).
Qualitative measures could be comments on that video on the sharing sites or on your blog if the video is embedded in there.
If you do a regular video like a podcast show you might want to track the growing subscribers in iTunes.
hope this answers your questions!
Prashant