How Expert Marketers Use AI to Enhance Webinar Programs

When creating campaigns, B2B marketers usually have one goal in mind: engagement. That’s because digital engagement unlocks a lot of potential. Potential to understand buyer intent, customer needs, drive revenue and much, much more. 

But driving engagement isn’t as simple as publishing a blog post. It takes planning and — crucially — the capacity to scale your content and digital activities. But there’s only one you, right?

That’s where generative AI comes in. AI has the potential to make our lives easier by cutting down on busy work and the amount of time it takes B2B marketers to create or repurpose content. 

ON24 expert Palak Lakhani, along with Plante Moran’s Video Production Strategist, Vince Selasky, spoke at the 2024 ON24X panel session about how to make each webinar full of meaningful interactions. Let’s take a look:

Drive Engagement with ON24 

Efficient engagement means being user-centric. And, often, being user-centric means anticipating user concerns and preempting easy-to-solve issues. For example, at the end of its Continuing Professional Education webinars, Plante Moran would routinely get a number of emails asking the team about how to access and download certificates. 

To address this, the team built a small segment into their certification events that would remind attendees how to download and access certificates. The team also gave qualifying attendees a direct link to the certificate in follow-up emails.By taking these simple steps, Lakhani’s team reduced the volume of questions they received about accessing certificates. This allowed the Plante Moran team to focus on the insights, data, and engagement that could drive deals forward.

Surveys and polls are another great touchpoint for engaging audiences. But webinar surveys and polls require a degree of strategy to make a measurable impact on engagement. For example, a poll that pops up at the beginning of the webinar may generate more engagement than one that appears closer to the end. 

If housekeeping mentions at the beginning of the webinar that they will include some polling questions, presenters should draw attention to these questions when they are asked. This will remind the audience to participate in the poll, further driving engagement. 

Success Metrics

According to Lakhani, it’s important to review the performance of a previous webinar before jumping to the next. “It pays to take a moment to just self-reflect — hey, are we hitting the benchmark that we’ve set?”

Success metrics help B2B marketers measure whether they are meeting goals. For example, Plante Moran’s goal is a 60% conversion rate by attendees vs. registration. When the team doesn’t reach this goal, they review the webinar program to understand what happened and what the team could do better next time.

In some cases, not hitting your goals may just be a case of bad timing. For instance, the Plante Moran team realized they missed the mark on a webinar because it launched the Wednesday before a holiday weekend. 

“It pays to take a moment to just self-reflect — hey, are we hitting the benchmark that we’ve set?”

—Palak Lakhani, ON24

Engagement Tools and Techniques

An easy way to boost engagement is to reimagine the webinar console and its potential. For example, you can include links and CTAs that blend into the console background or follow include QR codes. By reimagining the webinar console, you can encourage attendees to: 

• • Register for future events
  • Subscribe for content
  • Sign up for a demo

B2B marketers can also create test events and send them to colleagues for their feedback on placement of QR code, and how it may look among the rest of the CTA buttons and console features. 

Lower-third banners are another way to draw the audience’s attention to a central part of the screen without interrupting the presentation. Production can use these banners to drive engagement. For example, if the Q&A feature doesn’t have many questions, lower-third banners can remind audience members to ask any question.

Personalization and Customization

Personalize your content

Would you pay more attention if your webinar welcomed you by your first name? Chances are, you probably answered yes. That level of personalization is possible with ON24’s console, which empowers you to display the viewer’s name in your webinar console. 

Selasky and his team do this all the time at Plante Moran, using tokens on the backend that update the name for each viewer. “It takes it from being just a webinar to their webinar. This isn’t a webinar. This is Ron’s webinar now.”

It takes it from being just a webinar to their webinar. This isn’t a webinar. This is Ron’s webinar now.”

—Vince Selasky, Plante Moran

Customize for different audiences

Customize your webinar console by dynamically displaying logos and text relevant to a particular account. Through segmentation, you can customize your content for two different audiences. For example, your console can feature a certain set of logos and colors for your AM audience and include another set for your PM audience, elevating the audience experience. 

The take action tool library found in the ON24 platform can help you find the tools you need to drive engagement. With a few clicks, you can change CTAs, colors and layout, giving your webinar a completely different look and feel.

AI and Digital Engagement

Regarding engagement, AI is here to save the day by doing all the work for you — content marketers simply have to sit back and watch, right? Not quite. While AI may help cut timelines and kickstart promotions, B2B marketers still need their input to drive engagement and success.

Leveraging AI

For Selasky and his team at Plante Moran, AI allows for more efficiency when creating content materials from an event. For example, the ON24 Analytics and Content Engine can generate e-books drafts, key takeaways and transcripts, which can be quickly shared with content teams. Social posts and follow-up email campaigns can start that much sooner, with AI-powered efficiency.

AI as a tool

Generative AI can deliver promotional drafts quickly, helping B2B marketers to get e-books, blogs, one-pagers and more out to their audiences much faster. 

Of course, AI is a tool meant to help marketers, not replace them. Selasky explains, “A lot of people think AI is going to be this thing where the robot overlords are going to come and take over the planet. And then many people said, ‘Oh, God, I can put my feet up and not have to do anything.’ It’s neither one of those … it’s just an additional tool to help you do your job.” 

B2B marketers still have to make content in their voice and brand — tools like ACE simply offers suggestions and guidelines. B2B marketers are still in the driver’s seat of their marketing plan, and the ACE-provided content is meant to accelerate the campaign.

“A lot of people think AI is going to be this thing where the robot overlords are going to come and take over the planet. And then a lot of people said, ‘Oh, God, I can put my feet up and not have to do anything.’ It’s neither one of those … it’s just an additional tool to help you do your job.”

—Vince Selasky, Plante Moran

Future AI plans

Besides content acceleration, how else can AI help with B2B marketers’ campaigns? 

• • Segmentation allows marketers to personalize a single event to different audiences. For example, a webinar targeting higher education audiences can display different content depending on the attendee. No matter if the viewer is an administrator or a faculty member, they will receive content relevant to their role.
  • Personalization also helps marketers tailor follow-up content and experiences that directly deliver relevant, timely content to attendees so you can better engage with them and accelerate the buying journey. Personalization is another way that B2B marketers can show viewers that they know who their audience is.

Both CTAs and breakout segments can help funnel users to specific industry-based directions. Breakout rooms can also make for more intimate sessions. 

Key Takeaways and Best Practices

1. 1. Personalize and customize your console so that attendees feel seen and special.
   2. Use your engagement tools to drive interaction if audience participation is low.
   3. Lean on AI to shorten campaign timelines and kickstart promotion.
   4. Take time to reflect and see if you are hitting your benchmarks by using success metrics.