Webinars have often been proven to be one of the most effective ways for B2B teams to drive engagement with their target audience. Over the years, both, podcasts and webinars have enabled B2B marketing and B2B sales teams to take their goals and business to the next level. Moreover, with a shift in content consumption habits, the need to drive marketing and sales activities with a range of text-heavy and interactive media formats is becoming key to driving customer interest and engagement.
But when it comes to B2B salespeople: what should they focus on more?
Webinars, podcasts, online events and similar such activities usually fall under the radar of the marketing team in a typical B2B company. Over the years though, salespeople have become more active in collaborating with their marketing counterparts to optimize use of these channels to drive actual conversions.
Several leading B2B brands run regular podcasts and webinars to drive engagement today. But not all of them are able to successfully drive conversions and sales from the leads generated through these activities.
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Podcasts and B2B Sales:
In a crowded digital buying-selling environment, sales people can find it tricky to pursue their prospects and truly stand out. This is why several industry leaders often cite the importance of senior level sellers building their own personal brand so that it is easier to network and grow sales activities in the future…
In fact, sales leaders can benefit a lot from having their own podcast.
But like with every sales or marketing channel, B2B teams cannot rely on one activity or one medium for success and moreover, every channel comes with its own pros and cons.
There Is A Limit To How Many People A Sales Person Can Have On Their Podcast
Podcasts are a great way to build business relationships and even brand value in the market. However, in most cases, a B2B brand might just choose to have one guest per episode or a couple of guests (like a three-way chat) for certain themes.
But it’s not yet a norm for B2B teams to include more number of guests in podcast episodes.
This is where webinars can turn out to be more effective, especially if a salesperson wants to engage with larger number of people at a time. A webinar can easily be planned as a no-demand or live event and marketing team members and sales teams can work closely together to define the core theme and content, to collect the registration and lead data and agree on a drip or other nurture campaign that can help drive better conversion and value in the long run.
That Doesn’t Mean Podcasts Should Take a Back Seat!
Depending on your current resources and budget, while also taking into account industry content consumption trends, it’s important for B2B teams to include elements like podcasts and webinars, even events and other forms of interactive media as part of their marketing-sales cadences and plans.
A well-structured podcast can boost brand value and allow marketers and sales people a different kind of entry into their target market.
What can make a difference here is having marketing and sales teams work together to structure their near-term webinar and podcast strategy to help achieve immediate goals.
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Knowing Where to Prioritize Between the Two: Webinars and Podcasts
A webinar can help a sales team and marketing team drive results and impact against a larger audience set at a time. One webinar can span about 45 minutes or an hour and help generate or gather a bunch of registrations.
If marketers and salespeople have the bandwidth to run regular drip or nurtures to help win more deals from their webinar leads, pursuing a webinar driven strategy makes sense.
Webinars may require a larger marketing / sales or broadcast budget vis a vis podcasts and a regular webinar strategy will need investments into the right martech systems too.
When assessing team ability, it is also crucial to measure how well internal team members can build and broadcast visually rich or audio rich content to suit either of these channels. This is what can help prioritize or streamline podcast or webinar initiatives.
Like most endeavours, there will be a pros and cons against each channel. Depending on current team strengths and immediate goals, assigning priorities to a channel can help streamline efforts and ensure businesses achieve most of their end goals.
At the end of the day, what works is a balance between channels, with prioritization based on actual metrics and attribution.