Get answers to the most common questions about webinars from B2B veterinary marketers.

Veterinarians are hungry for knowledge, not just to maintain their licenses with continuing education, but also to keep up with the constant innovation in animal health. Webinars are a great way to feed that curiosity and to generate highly engaged leads.

In this blog, we’ll provide in-depth answers to common webinar questions that we hear from B2B veterinary marketers:

• What’s a good CPL by channel for a webinar registrant?
• How do I get a good ROI from webinars?
• What technical pitfalls should I avoid?
• How to squeeze more life out of webinar content?
• What does the CE process look like for webinars?
• Where should I be promoting my webinar, and for how long?
• How do I promote my webinar if I have a small database?
• What webinar platform should I use?

If you’re new to webinars, this article provides a comprehensive overview of how to get started. If you’re already a pro, you’ll find a few pearls to help you optimize the processes you’ve already got in place.

Webinar Basics

Before we dive into optimization techniques, let’s review some webinar basics.

Are webinars all live?
There are three ways webinars are delivered: live, pre-recorded, or a hybrid approach combining a pre-recorded presentation with a live question-and-answer session.

Do webinars have to have CE?
No, you can host a webinar that is informational or product-focused, which is not approved for CE.

If you wish to host a CE webinar, you must get approval through RACE. The standard approval process takes about 45 days. You may also partner with Clinician’s Brief to manage the entire CE process and webinar hosting for you. CE webinars tend to have higher registration and attendance numbers due to their continuing education value. You may elect to have your webinar approved for live delivery, which requires it to be hosted live with an interactive question-and-answer session. Or you may elect to have your webinar approved for on-demand delivery, which typically requires a learning management system to administer the content delivery and the post-webinar quiz required to award on-demand CE.

Who should present a webinar?
For CE webinars, a subject matter expert veterinarian or veterinary professional should present your content. The speaker must submit their CV to RACE for approval.

For non-CE webinars, there is more flexibility with the speaker, but for the best results, use a subject-matter expert with high authority for the presentation.

Now let’s dive into optimization tips. We’ll review pro tips for each stage of the webinar execution journey.

Webinar Planning

For CE webinars, you’ll need 45 days to prepare your webinar unless you’re willing to pay a rush fee to get your content approved faster. Below is a planning framework to help:

• 45 Days from webinar airing: Submit webinar to RACE
• 30 Days from webinar airing: Begin webinar promotion
• Add webinar registration to your website homepage
• Begin paid social media promotions (run this ad for 30 days)
• Schedule organic social posts
• Include the webinar in your email newsletter
• If you’re hosting the webinar on your own, book media placements through Clinician’s Brief to help promote your webinar.
• Schedule at least 3 emails:
• 20 Days before the webinar
• Retarget to unopens 10 days before the webinar
• Day before the webinar

Clinician’s Brief can manage CE submission, webinar development, and promotion with turnkey webinar programs. If you don’t have an existing key opinion leader (KOL), the Clinician’s Brief team can also help connect you to a qualified veterinary professional who can present your content.

5 Content Pro Tips

1. Make sure the topic of your presentation is timely and relevant; this will help drive higher registration numbers.
   
   
2. Spend time crafting a strong hook. The title of your webinar matters; make sure it’s highly engaging and feels important and exciting. Veterinarians have many options for online CE. Make your content stand out.
   
   
3. Webinars are typically 30-60 minutes. If you’re hosting a CE webinar, aim for a 50-minute presentation followed by a 10-minute question-and-answer session.
   
   
4. If your presenter is well-known, lean into promoting their name. If they’ve got a strong social media following, encourage them to share the registration link too.
   
   
5. Use photos, videos, and real-world case studies in presentations to drive engagement. If you’ve got these elements in your webinar, make sure you highlight that in the promotional copy to get people excited.

Popular Webinar Platforms

If you plan to host your own webinar, below are several common webinar platforms for consideration:

ON24
This premium platform includes many advanced features that enable engagement with attendees during webinars.

Zoom Webinars
There are fewer real-time engagement features, but if you’re just getting started and have experience with Zoom Meetings, this could be an easy entry point.

Webinar Geek
This is a great platform for hybrid webinars if you wish to use pre-recorded presentations and live question-and-answer sessions.

GoToWebinar
Comparable to Zoom Webinars, GoToWebinar is a good entry point if you’ve got experience with GoToMeeting.

If you plan to integrate your webinar platform into a CRM or marketing automation platform, you’ll want to do your homework before deciding on a platform or investing in the integration (which is usually a paid add-on). Not all integrations are created equal.

The Art of the Registration Page

Don’t rush the development of your registration page. The answers to the question on your webinar registration can make or break your sales team’s lead follow-up process. These leads are the gold at the end of your webinar rainbow. Include key qualifying questions on your registration form to help your team prioritize leads. Below are several questions you may consider including:

• Current experience with your product or service category?
• Currently using a competitive product?
• Interested in hearing more from sales?
• Do you have a purchasing timeframe?
• Is your practice corporate or privately owned?

Design your questions with drop-down answers whenever possible to make data analysis easier. Ensure the questions and answers align with your CRM to make data matching easier during post-webinar lead upload. If you assign leads to your sales team based on geography, make sure you collect that information on the registration form.

Include database opt-in language and an opportunity to opt-in to SMS. Even if you’re not currently using an SMS marketing strategy, webinars are a good opportunity to start building a database of text opt-ins.

Webinars are high-value long-form content; you can ask more questions on a webinar registration form than are typically tolerated for content downloads.

Webinar Promotion

Ideally, you’ll want 30 days of active promotion to drive the best outcomes for your webinar. Below are key media channels and the estimated cost per lead (CPL) for each channel.

• In-House Email
  CPL $0
  Webinars are a great way to nurture and engage your current database of prospects. These registrants won’t be new to your database, but it’s likely you’ll pick up a few prospects who are ready for a sales demo.
  
  
  
• Organic Social
  CPL $0
  Organic social isn’t typically a large driver of registrations unless you have a highly engaged following.
  
  
  
• Website
  CPL $0
  Add the registration page to your website to attract registrants from browsing prospects.
  
  
  
• Paid Social
  CPL $5-$30
  The cost per lead on paid social varies widely by topic. Make sure your META technical setup is dialed in to optimize registrations.
  
  
  
• Clinician’s Brief Newsletter Ad
  CPL $10-$30
  Leverage a native newsletter ad in the Clinician’s Brief daily newsletter to drive registrations.
  
  
  
• Clinician’s Brief Targeted Email
  CPL $10-$30
  Work with the Clinician’s Brief team to identify your ideal webinar attendee. The Brief team can segment audiences by demographic and behavioral data to serve your email to the most appropriate audience.

Most brands that partner with Clinician’s Brief to turnkey webinar programs enjoy an average CPL of $20-$15. Those who partner with Clinician’s Brief and then also promote the webinar through their owned channels (in-house email, organic social, and website) see the best outcomes and often, the lowest CPL. This turnkey option is often attractive to small or busy marketing teams or to brands without a large internal database of prospects.

Webinar Hosting

If you are hosting your own live webinar, do not skip the practice session. Often, KOLs need to practice logging on, sharing their screen, and troubleshooting audio connections. The practice session enables you to resolve any technical issues before the live air date.

On the day of the broadcast, speakers and moderators should arrive 15-20 minutes early to ensure there are no technical issues.

Assign a moderator to introduce the speaker and facilitate the question-and-answer session. The moderator should come prepared with a script to kick off the webinar and introduce the speaker.

If you’re hosting your own webinar, you should also have an organizer. They play a behind-the-scenes role operating the webinar platform. This includes starting the broadcast, recording the content, troubleshooting technical problems, and responding to attendee technical problems. The organizer can also send mass messages to attendees to provide additional resources or other important communications.

If you elect to partner with Clinician’s Brief, they’ll provide a moderator and organizer to take the anxiety of running a live broadcast off your team.

Post-Webinar Follow-Up

If your webinar has CE, you’re responsible for uploading a list of those who qualify for CE to the CE Broker portal. If you partner with Clinician’s Brief, they’ll take care of this process for you.

Next, you’ll want to upload your leads to your CRM and hand them off to sales for follow-up and ROI tracking. You should also have an email sequence ready to nurture warm leads into sales conversations. If you’re offering an on-demand version of your webinar, that should be the first email in your post-webinar nurture sequence.

Lead follow-up is the most crucial part of your webinar.

If follow-up processes are broken, then your lead-to-sale conversion will suffer. Before you host a webinar, make sure you have an air-tight follow-up process with your inside and outside sales organization to make the most of your hard-earned leads. If you don’t have a marketing automation system, the Clinician’s Brief team can support you with a post-webinar email nurturing sequence.

COPE

The “COPE” methodology means create once, publish everywhere. Webinars are a treasure trove of content. Here are ways to squeeze more life out of these long-format pieces of content:

• Transcribe the webinar and adapt the content into an eBook or several shorter pieces, such as checklists or quick reference guides.
• Pull video snippets out for YouTube, paid social ads, and to support blog content.
• Pull quotes for your website and organic social.
• Create 1-pager case studies and video case studies from real-world cases Re-use high-performing presentations at live CE events such as industry conferences.
• Re-promote on-demand webinars to keep the influx of leads flowing.

The time investment to develop a quality webinar is significant; make sure you’re getting the most utility from your content.

Let’s Build Your Next Webinar, Together

We hope you found this webinar deep-dive useful! The Clinician’s Brief team looks forward to helping you build your next webinar. Our team of experts can develop your webinar from start to finish for a competitive CPL. Contact us today to get started.