| Webinar Economics: Working Backwards to Determine ROI |
By Patrick Cahill While some companies lend themselves to a quick answer of "no" and others a "yes," many firms fall somewhere in between. Determining if webinars are the perfect tool to drive growth for your firm is not as simple as, “If you have a list of this size,” or, “If your clients are worth this much.” It involves an examination of many factors. Below is the exact process we used to determine if an aggressive webinar campaign would work for a client. Spoiler alert: It did. Step 1: Determine Growth Goals. How much would you like to grow this year? Our client gave the typical response: "By as much as we can." After evaluating their overall marketing plan together, we concluded that webinars would be a win if they could increase revenue by 15%. With the end goal set, we began determining 1) what it will take to get there and 2) if it makes economic sense. Step 2: Collect the Data. This takes significantly more time than Step 1. There are a number of variables to review:
Step 3: Work Backwards. In this instance, our goal was to increase our client's revenue by 15%. Based on the average initial engagement, 25 new clients through the webinar initiative were needed. With the desired new client count, the next figure to determine was the number of leads required to generate enough conversations that would result in the quanity of opportunities needed. The plan included multiple webinars, so we divided this number of leads by the number of webinars. The required number of registrations per event was clear. This is somewhat simplistic if you consider your sales cycle. For example: If you absolutely need the sales to occur within the next twelve months and you have a three-month sales cycle, you'll need to generate all the leads by month nine to allow for the sales process to take its course. Our client will need about 40 qualified leads per webinar to drive 25 new clients. The webinar marketing planning may begin. Step 4: The Marketing Plan. With the number of leads our client required (40), it's time to determine how to get that number to register for the webinars. We reviewed the following numbers:
If the numbers do not add up based on the above variables, you have a number of choices. You can look at spending energy on:
You may consider on-demand webinars, which are less compelling for marketing outreach campaigns but more affordable to implement due to savings around technology, support, and marketing. The Full Equation Here's an equation that will allow you to determine what your numbers may look like and/or identify areas that will need improvement to drive desired results:
Note: You can experiment with this equation right now. Click here to download an Excel file that has an interactive version of this equation. Patrick R. Cahill is a principal at Rally Point Webinars who specializes in marketing, business operations, and CRMs. Click here to email Patrick. |
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