Multichannel marketing. A guide for analysis and follow-up. Part 3. Webinars

When a concept such as "multichannel marketing" becomes an increasingly clear part of a company's everyday work and affects many different departments, the employees need a higher level of digital awareness. In this series, consultant and digital strategist Fredrik Holmboe goes through the most common strategies within multichannel marketing and how they can be used and followed up through the KPIs you set, to increase the company's digital competitiveness in the market.

Having covered the digital engines email and websites as two channels within multichannel marketing in two earlier articles in this series, the focus now moves to more direct channels that offer a closer and more personal interaction with the customer. In this article we look more closely at webinars, and in the next issue of Pharma Industry the focus lands on eRep and eMSL meetings with customers.

When the attention of individual people starts to become scarce, and every marketer is fighting in one setting after another to capture yours, what has come to be called an attention economy appears.

Attention becomes a limiting resource, every person has only a certain amount of it, and information exists in abundance and is immediately available.

For companies attention is hard currency, and all of us who work in marketing burn to capture it.

The company that has captured a person's attention for a while has won a small battle. The company that manages to keep that attention across several steps over a longer period has won a bigger one.

And the company that comes closest to its customers wins.

But we only come close if the individual makes a choice.

Because every second the customer spends with your company is a second in which the customer is turning down every other possible stimulus, competing companies, friends, family, television series and so on. And to end up there we always have to offer the customer a real value, in the right format, at the right moment.

Marketers work to place the company's offer top of mind, and that is a challenge and a craft if anything is. Especially today, when "broadside campaigns" that go out far and wide work less and less well.

Every craftsman knows that doing a job well takes the right tools, and that applies not only to carpenters and plumbers but to today's modern marketer too.

Webinars

Within multichannel marketing a little over 50 different channels, or tools, have been identified as useful for marketers of medicines [1]. Among them are the personal meeting with a sales rep, the postal or digital mailing, the website, the colleague, the medical publication and the webinar.

There are studies showing that a webinar can have a greater impact than even a personal meeting, though with a lower reach [1]. My thought is that the latter is probably down to the number of webinars still being relatively small, which means fewer prescribers are reached.

And the reason for that impact is most likely that webinars offer not only information in real time but also the chance to interact.

And the webinar format catches attention.

Virtual attendance explodes

In one of my lectures I describe how the scales tipped in 2014 and how we came to have more "digital natives" than "digital immigrants", seen from a European perspective. I also show how the two differ from each other. By 2020 it is estimated that around 67 percent, two-thirds, of all healthcare professionals (HCPs) will be digital natives [2].

This trend and what it means for the market have left clear marks on international specialist congresses.

2014 was the year the number of virtual attendees at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) was greater than the number physically present, 25,178 virtual attendees against 24,622 physically present. Last year, 2016, the number of virtual attendees taking part in the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) was twice as high, a little over 17,000 attendees, against around 8,000 the year before.

Taking part in the information easily, without having to be there in person, is a strong draw.

A sense of closeness

Questions need to be answered and the customer needs to feel secure in the decision to go ahead with the deal. Preferably through information conveyed by credible sources such as internationally or nationally recognised role models, whether those work in medicine or in popular culture.

If we are strengthened in the belief that we are on the right track, that our questions have an answer, and that the information we base our decision on comes from credible sources, there is very little that can stop a deal.

Figure 1. The buying process according to one explanatory model.

Where a website can supply answers to many of the questions asked during the information and consideration phases of the buying process, and email can give more precise communication based on the customer's needs, there is in the last phase, the decision phase, a greater need for interaction [Figure 1]. A sense of closeness.

And that is largely what webinars can offer.

Potentially at scale, combined with a feeling of personal character and contact.

Meet the customer where the customer is

In 2013 the company CMI/Compass ran a study of when different specialist physicians consumed medically relevant information. It found that healthcare professionals are three times more likely to seek out information outside office hours, above all on weekday evenings after work [Figure 2] [3].

Figure 2. CMI/Compass 2013.

A webinar can be planned together with the presenter to fit that pattern, and the recording is available around the clock.

The advantages of webinars

Apart from the personal sales meeting or its "little brother" the e-meeting (eRep and eMSL), which will be presented in the next issue, few tools leave the same cost-effective, powerful and usually very positive mark on the business as a webinar.

The other side of the coin is that the more technically skilled healthcare professionals become as a group on the way towards 2020 and beyond, the higher the demands on our industry to meet them in that arena.

Webinars make it possible to:

• Increase contact frequency and have direct contact with your customer group. Both live and afterwards, when you can deliver the value the recorded webinar offers combined with your product or service offering.
• Do video-based multichannel marketing, one of the fastest growing marketing strategies today (video makes up around 75 percent of all internet traffic). Filmed material can be used in digital mailings, on your website, in social media and as part of practically every customer meeting. In full, or as short clips focused on one particular message.
• Interact with your customer group by offering the chance to comment on what is presented, to ask questions that can be answered live, and to answer polls.
• Make it simple for the customer to take part in your offering from their own home environment.
• Work with key figures for your business, both when you engage them for the webinar and probably on other questions too. An ongoing collaboration with the most influential individuals in your field lets you take the pulse of the market and be an important player shaping the way forward.
• Be cost-effective. Travelling to a customer costs time and money. The customer travelling to an event such as a congress costs time and money. Arranging a large lecture or training session with a speaker and a venue costs time and money. Webinars remove many of those costs.

KPIs

Footnote: in the previous article a printing error crept in and gave this as "cost per interaction", which was wrong. KPIs here stands for the usual "key performance indicator".

Fundamentally, a webinar should be informative and of value to the listener.

But even more fundamentally, there has to be a clear plan for how the business is to be driven on with the webinar as a springboard. What happens after the webinar? What possible steps are there, and which of them should be the focus?

Some of the possible developments from the webinar sit in the measures below, while others are covered in the section "key factors for success".

Exposure

• Number of invited attendees (per channel)
• Number of registered attendees and focus customers (per channel)
• Number of attendees who started watching the live broadcast (and "percentage of", see the explanation below)
• Number of attendees still there at the end of the presentation
• Number of views of the recorded presentation

The first point shows the total number of invitations sent out through the different channels (not how many registered). Prepare a routine well in advance that makes it possible to collect this data from physical meetings, preferably in the CRM system. Digitally you can look at the exposure (number of views) of the invitation on your website and through email, and at the exposure from digital and to some extent printed marketing. It then becomes possible to set the potential reach of these channels against each other and to shape the preparation for the next event on the basis of the result.

The second point sums up the total number of registered attendees. These can be broken down by customer segment to see how well you are attracting the right customers. If data has been collected according to point one above, it should also be possible to see which channel attracted the most priority customers.

The third point is the first of two measurement points during the event itself. The number of attendees who finally sit down to take part in your webinar shows how well the preparation was done and how well you chose the date and the time. Two figures can be calculated here, a percentage of the number of invited attendees (point one) and a percentage of the number of registered attendees and focus customers (point two).

The fourth point is the second of two measurement points during the event. The number of attendees who chose to stay to the end shows how well the communication before the event matches what was delivered, and how valuable the presentation was to the listeners. It also shows how many took part in your main call to action (CTA), which is often presented in full towards the end of the webinar, more on which under "key factors for success".

The last point shows how well you have managed to market the recording and the platform of filmed material you provide. It is at this stage of the process that you can genuinely lower the cost per interaction, since all the large costs have already been taken in connection with the live broadcast.

Interaction

• Ratio between started and completed views
• Number and type of comments and questions

The first point has the same basic explanation as point four above. A higher share of people who follow your webinar to the end signals a more successful event. This measure suffers, though, from the same dilemma as the "number of visitors" factor on your website, see the article in the previous issue. If it is not the "right" visitors coming to the site, and if the webinar does not result in more business-driving activity, a high ratio between started and completed views is more a castle in the air than a commercial gain.

The second point is a more concrete signal of a successful webinar. Questions signal interest. They are often a buying signal that can be worked on after the webinar. Make questions easy and make it clear from the start how they can be sent in.

Engagement

• Number of requests for continued communication
• Results from a satisfaction survey
• Message recall

The first point above is one of several different types of call to action (CTA) that can be used during and towards the end of a webinar. Every event, whatever type it is (webinar, congress, training), should have some form of primary goal. What do you want your attendee to do during the webinar? After the webinar? One goal can be requests for continued communication, where a company representative can take the discussion on the subject presented further at a personal meeting. In that case, make sure of a simple and intuitive sign-up procedure with as few steps as possible for the customer.

The second point is a good measure of how well your first communication about the webinar matched the message delivered, the quality of the webinar, the technical solution and the value the customer experienced by taking part.

The third point shows how engaged and present the customer was during the webinar. The data can mainly be collected in a couple of ways. Either through a follow-up email where the attendees are asked which points from the webinar they found most important for clinical practice. The other way is for the sales force to ask the customers who took part the equivalent questions. The answers on this point can be less exact, since they are rarely complete, but they can still serve well as a basis for planning coming events.

Practical steps towards a successful webinar

1. Make sure of a solid internal organisational structure, with an experienced project manager who works early with sales and marketing and with the medical, regulatory and legal departments.
2. Define the purpose, the goal and the target group together.
3. Choose a platform that meets high demands on the technical solution when it comes to streaming, recording in good quality and the ability to interact.
4. Produce presentation material that meets both the internal goals set and the attendees' needs.
5. Make sure the presenter approves the recorded webinar being used afterwards.
6. Define and carry out a multichannel marketing plan (such as the sales force, banners, digital and postal mailings and in some cases call centres) that starts several weeks before the event.
7. Set up a reminder and communication plan. See below.
8. Spread the responsibility across several colleagues during the webinar. Apart from the presenter, someone should be responsible for communicating with the listeners from their own computer (receiving and sending questions, passing questions to the presenter and so on). Where relevant, regulatory and pharmacovigilance staff should be present. Sometimes a technician can be present too, to make sure the webinar runs as planned.
9. Agree a follow-up process with the sales and medical departments.

Reminder and communication plan

Having recruited an attendee to a webinar is often only a small step towards attendance that actually happens. This is familiar from physical training sessions too, where attendees report absence at the last second or not at all. A physical meeting often creates a stronger sense of commitment in the attendee than an "anonymous", non-physical webinar does.

That is why it is important to have a reminder and communication plan prepared [Figure 3]. The following suggestion has proved to work well.

Figure 3. Reminder and communication plan.

Beyond the above, a reminder by SMS shortly before the webinar can also be valuable.

The email with the result of the evaluation can go both to those who signed up for the webinar and to all relevant segments in your email list beyond them, as a way of selling in this and coming events.

Key factors for success

• In a hierarchical healthcare system, the first thing that matters is a well-known, recognised and knowledgeable presenter with a current and interesting subject, in order to attract many listeners. That is obvious. Perhaps it is not as easy to skip a webinar if most of these points are met. Value for the customer is everything, and sometimes other channels are better suited to the message of the moment.
• Quality-assure the webinar in advance. Picture and sound have to work faultlessly. If anything beyond the presenter is to be shown (an image or a film for instance), it has to have been played through and tested across different connections, mobile broadband for example. The presenter should be trained in the format of the presentation. The function for sending in questions should have been tested. So should sending out a poll.
• Adapt the content to the target group and, where possible, build a structure with elements of storytelling, a narrative that increases the interest in staying to the end. On content: experience says that healthcare professionals in primary care prefer shorter summaries and more concentrated information. Specialist care appreciates the latest science along with case studies, deeper reasoning on the subject and panel debates.
• Recruit listeners in good time through several channels. Where possible, set up incentives that reward reach. Remind (and remind again) the listeners who have registered, following the example above.
• Vary the presentation with questions both to and from the listeners, to make the event interactive. Make it clear from the start when and how questions can be asked. Prepare a few questions together with the speaker in case few come in.
• Every event should have a purpose that is formalised through an intuitive and easily understood call to action (CTA). That CTA can be visually present through all or part of the presentation and presented in full towards the end of the webinar. An example could be "for deeper information, visit www.website.com/info" as a bar at the bottom of the picture, together with a closing slide carrying similar and preferably more developed information.
• Follow-up matters. Preferably through a personal meeting where that is possible. A suitable part of such a meeting can be a summary of the questions that came up during the webinar, with the answers.
• Recording the webinar is mandatory. Some of those who registered will not be able to join the live broadcast. They can be given the chance to watch the webinar afterwards. That recording, and every other recording you create, should (and this is a strong recommendation) be used as a resource in the marketing and sales activities that follow. Tell your customers where they can find your very best material at every possible opportunity.
• Analyse the whole process from beginning to end. Did you use the right channels to market the event? Did you meet the goals based on the measures you chose? What did the continued business look like for customer-facing staff? What can be done better next time?

I believe a webinar should primarily be focused on creating the conditions for a deeper discussion in the personal meetings that follow. With the help of the webinar, those follow-up meetings will have a clear focus that is valuable for the company and the customer alike.

"Understanding and maintaining attention is the single most important and decisive factor for a company's success today" - Thomas H. Davenport

That is the foremost goal of multichannel marketing: to capture the attention of the customer group through a balanced mix of contact points.

To come as close as possible.

In the next issue comes the last article in this series, and it is about eRep and eMSL.

See you then.

Fredrik Holmboe

Digital strategist and consultant

fredrik@dualia.se

www.dualia.se

Fact box

A webinar is a live video conference that connects a presenter with listeners over the internet, who can join from anywhere in the world.

Through video the presenter can show themselves and their computer desktop for slideshows or demonstrations. It is possible to invite other presenters.

There are interactive options for the listeners too, who can ask questions and discuss with the presenter. In the other direction, polls can be sent out to the listeners.

Some platforms are:

• GoToWebinar
• Adobe Connect
• Cisco WebEx

References

1. Across Health, Cross-Channel navigator data, 2015.
2. LBi Health, Digitally-native HCPs, 2014.
3. CMI/Compass, 2013.