B2B Lead Generation Webinar: Targeting Potential Business Partners
A webinar is a versatile and creative way for B2B organizations to talk to their audiences. But just like with any radio show or TV production, collaborating with business partners can make the programming better and stronger. By partnering with other organizations whose aims and audiences are complementary to yours, you can double your authority and credibility while expanding your reach with your business webinar.
Why Are Webinar Partnerships Such A Good Idea?
Co-hosting a business webinar highlights your credibility by telling your audience that others trust you and want to join their voices with yours. Whether subconsciously or not, validation from outside authoritative sources bolsters your reputation.
More than that, choosing a potential business partner with a level of expertise that you don’t have offers your attendees real value [1]. Having multiple thought leaders engaging with your webinar topic sets the stage for your audience to remember nuggets of information or insights from the discussion and then associate those things with your brand.
Partnering with other experts for your business webinar also adds dimension and the ability to engage. This is one of the reasons Emily Parker Woodland of Lola.com loves co-hosting. She says watching a conversation helps attendees relate to the webinar and stay engaged [2]. As long as the format is clear and the speakers don’t fight for air time throughout, having a dialogue rather than a monologue can help make your topic more compelling to your audience.
It’s not that you can’t host a business webinar by yourself—you likely have a multitude of interesting topics to discuss and a wealth of expertise at your disposal. But a potential business partner can add to, deepen, and diversify the impact your ideas and expertise have on those who attend.
Not only that, but strategically partnering with others in your space could bring a number of advantages to you and your team—not just your audience. You can share lists and expertise and join forces in your networks. There’s strength in numbers [3], as long as both business partners trust and appreciate each other.
How Do You Choose A Potential Business Webinar Partner?
There are many different potential business partners you can co-create your business webinar with. You could buddy up with another organization in your specific industry, which would offer an in-depth discussion of a niche topic, or you could jump to the other end of the spectrum and partner with an organization that has an expertise that contrasts with your own. Whatever you choose, join forces with a potential business partner who has a basic mutual interest in your webinar topic.
Even if you partner with a company that has contrasting expertise, make sure its interests are complementary to your own rather than competitive. Find those who can offer a new take on the problem that’s already on your mind, too. These are the potential business partners who will add the most value to your business beyond the business webinar and those who could become part of a community of like-minded people who support and inspire your ideas.
The key to making this work is to form a relationship early and develop a method of setting mutual expectations with each other. Avoid crossed wires by planning your project in writing, including goals for promotion and deliverables. These are the main ways your business webinar will either succeed or fail, so it’s vital to get them sorted before you begin.
Layout an agreement stating in clear terms what you expect regarding how you’ll promote the business webinar, the language you’ll use to describe it, which duties will fall to which partner, and so on. Dividing tasks while staying united on your message and purpose will keep the project healthy and result in good outcomes for both parties.
The Importance Of Quality
Choosing partners you trust to deliver high-quality content and products is vital for making your webinar a success. You need potential business partners who will add credibility [4] to and further your own discussion rather than just another person to be on stage simply for the sake of having a co-host.
For this reason, you need to vet the resources and products your potential business partners have to offer before joining forces. If a potential business partner is with a B2B brand, try out the company's services yourself. If a potential business partner writes a blog from which he or she will promote the webinar, read posts from the archives and make sure the tone and ideas will mesh well with your own.
Think about it in terms of your attendees. If you partner with a brand you don’t admire, you’ll expose your own audience to this brand's ideas and potentially tarnish your own name in the process.
Take a leaf out of Uberflip’s book. These content creators decided that webinars were a great strategy for their business, but they were initially tempted by potential business partners’ large subscriber [5] lists rather than the quality of their prospects. They found that focusing on social following instead of prospect quality and compatibility resulted in less impact and wasn’t worth the investment.
Amplify Your Event Through Co-Marketing
One of the best parts of having a partner for your business webinar is that you double the scale of your marketing efforts. If done in collaboration—and strategically—co-marketing your business webinar can bring audiences to your brand who might never have found you before, leading to more registrants than you would be able to attract with a webinar done on your own.
More than that, if you choose potential business partners who have complementary audiences to your own, those new people will be more likely to be intrigued by your brand and want to try it out. This is a great tactic for building a loyal following [6].
Choose potential business partners wisely. Form relationships with complementary, interesting, and high-quality producers, and set expectations for how you’ll work together. You’ll not only discover the many benefits of co-hosting, but you'll also create the most vibrant, far-reaching webinar you've ever done.
Wondering how to create top-notch lead generation webinars? Download our eBook Creating Webinars That Convert: Complete Webinar Marketing Guide For eLearning Companies and discover how to identify potential partners for your B2B lead generation webinar, among other superb tips on business webinars.
References:
[1] KC Porter, Make A Friend & Grow Your Audience With Joint Venture Webinars
[2] David Cunningham, How To Run An Effective And Engaging B2B Webinar
[3] Natalie Slyman, How To Host An Effective Webinar And Generate Leads For Your Business
[4] Andrea Jankelow, Why You Should Have A Guest Speaker On Your Webinar (And Tips On How To Do It Right)
[5] Tara Robertson, What We Learned From Hosting 35+ Webinars In One Year
[6] Liz Willits, The Not-So-Secret Tactic To Growing Your eMail Audience Really Quickly
