5 Best On-Demand Webinar Software Platforms (In-Depth Comparison)
Todd Parmley
If you're struggling to set goals and objectives for your next webinar then this guide will walk you through:
Let's dive in!
Examples of webinar goals and objectives
To help you set your webinar goals, let's look at examples of objectives that webinars can help you achieve:
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Brand awareness. A successful webinar doesn't need to have an immediate ROI. Your webinar marketing goal might simply be to boost brand awareness and get more people talking about the product or service you offer.
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Lead generation. In other cases, a webinar's success may be directly tied to the number of qualified leads that the presentation can drive into your funnel. Of course, this will depend on how many attendees you can get into your webinar and what percentage of them convert.
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Repeat attendance. Getting webinar attendees to come back for future webinars so you can increase attendance over time. You can even use post-webinar surveys to gather insights that you or your marketing team can use to run retargeting campaigns on previous attendees.
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Customer engagement. While webinars are powerful customer acquisition tools, they can also be used to nurture existing relationships and onboard or train new customers. You can even integrate CRMs to automatically send webinar attendee data to your lead management system.
Setting realistic webinar goals
Setting realistic webinar goals is essential to make sure you can actually achieve them.
Here are four things to consider when setting your webinar goals:
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Business alignment. Identifying your business objectives (e.g. more sales, traffic, or awareness) from the start will make it easier to align them with your webinar goals. If the business needs to get more leads in front of sales reps then converting MQLs to SQLs should be the webinar goal.
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Webinar strategy. Creating an effective webinar strategy will increase the odds that you achieve your goals. In most cases, you'll want to set goals ahead of time and then build your strategy around those objectives.
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See it through. If you constantly switch webinar goals then you'll end up with a dozen half-built bridges but not a single objective that came to fruition. Quickly adapting when things don't work out is important but pivoting prematurely could take you off the right path before it pays dividends.
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Analytics. Having robust webinar analytics capabilities on your software of choice is paramount for tracking goals. This will help you regularly monitor key metrics (like attendance rates or average watch time) so you spot problems early and course-correct as needed.
Webinar goal frameworks
To help you set and achieve your webinar goals, the sections below will go over two goal-setting frameworks that you can use for current and future webinars!
SMART goal methodology
The SMART goals framework has become a bit of a cliché due to its broad overuse — but it's actually a great option when setting goals for webinars:
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Specific. Instead of setting a vague goal like "making more sales" you should set a specific webinar goal like "I will run weekly demo webinars to convert marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales qualified leads (SQLs)" to maximize clarity.
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Measurable. Phrasing your goal in a measurable way is crucial when setting webinar objectives. Sticking with the example above, you can update the goal to "I want to convert 20% of MQLs to SQLs by running weekly demo webinars" so it becomes more measurable.
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Achievable. You need to be realistic in order to set an achievable webinar goal. Hoping to have hundreds or thousands of attendees during each demo webinar (aka deminar) is unrealistic for most companies and will put unnecessary pressure on your team to hit impossible targets.
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Relevant. Are the webinar goals you're setting aligned with overarching business objectives? If increasing revenue is the underlying business objective then converting MQLs to SQLs is a relevant goal. Conversely, businesses focused on acquisition might prioritize trial signups.
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Time-bound. Finally, have a clear and attainable timeline for your webinar goals. This could come in the form of monthly, quarterly, or annual milestones. For instance, converting 1,000 MQLs to 200 SQLs each quarter using weekly demo webinars would be a time-bound goal.
Using this framework will help you determine what your goal is, how you'll measure it, whether it's achievable, how it relates to your business, and when you want to achieve the results by.
Objectives and key results
Objectives and key results (OKRs) are a widely used goal management approach that helps businesses execute planned strategies. The same framework can be used to set webinar objectives and outline the key results you hope to achieve.
We'll use the MQL-to-SQL example from the previous section in an OKR format below!
Objective
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Convert 1,000 MQLs to SQLs by the end of Q4
Key results
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Run 13 weekly webinars throughout Q4
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Get at least 80 MQLs to attend each webinar
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Complete 200 sales calls with SQLs by the end of Q4
If you're a math whiz then you might've noticed that you only need 77 MQLs to attend each of the 13 webinars to reach 1,000 that quarter. However, it's a good idea to leave some margin for error in your OKRs in case conversion rates deviate from your track record or projections (in this example: 20%).
Confidence levels
There are three levels of confidence for OKRs:
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On-track. Current data indicates you'll achieve the OKR.
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Off-track. Results aren't on track but the OKR is still achievable.
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At-risk. You most likely won't achieve OKRs within the set timeframe.
In most cases, an OKR is considered achieved once you reach 70% completion. If you're constantly reaching the 100% mark ahead of schedule then you or your team may be setting goals too conservatively.
Instead, strike the balance between realistic goals and continued improvement.
Conclusion
As you can see, achieving your webinar objectives comes down to setting realistic goals, using proven frameworks, and measuring webinar performance. The information you've acquired through this guide should be all you need to start driving results through the power of webinars.
If you're running the same webinars over and over again to achieve your goals, you should consider automating the presentation to help you increase reach while reclaiming your time. Automated webinars serve as evergreen lead machines and sales engines that work towards your goals while you're away.
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