How to Prove the ROI of Webinars to Stakeholders

Do you want to invest more money in your webinar strategy? Sometimes the best way to convince your stakeholders is with cold hard numbers. This means proving your webinars' return on investment (ROI). We’ve rounded up some tips to help you make your case. Let’s dive in!

Show how many new leads your webinars bring in

Stakeholders may not realize that webinars bring in new leads because most registrants come from email campaigns, so they’re not classified as new contacts.

If your webinars are generating new leads, it’s time to prove it!

Some webinar platforms make it easy to track and pull data on new leads from each event. Let’s say you’re hosting webinars with Wistia. You can use the Wistia + HubSpot integration to build a registration page with a HubSpot form. Once registrants sign up, their contact info goes straight to HubSpot, where you can quickly identify new leads.

Plus, if your company assigns a dollar value to leads, all you have to do is find the total number of new leads from a webinar (or a group of webinars) and then multiply it by the dollar value to find the ROI.

How to improve your numbers

Are your numbers not quite there yet? Here are some things you can try before presenting to the stakeholders:

Run targeted social media ads

This is a great way to find qualified leads who might be interested in your webinar content. Start by identifying your target audience and the social platforms they frequent. Use ad tools to define specific demographics, interests, or behaviors that match your target audience. Next, create an eye-catching ad with a clear call to action that leads directly to your webinar registration page.

Co-host a webinar with another company

This lets you tap into their audience and find new leads. The key is to partner with companies that share your target demographic but aren’t direct competitors. For example, we teamed up with Lumen5 to share tips and strategies to make your webinar shine and it helped us both connect with new people.

Host thought leadership or top-of-the-funnel webinars

These types of webinars appeal to a broader audience, including folks who may not yet know your business but are interested in learning about the subject. By sharing valuable insights without a hard sell, you can attract new attendees just starting their journey and capture their contact information when they register.

Highlight customer upgrades from webinars

You can also prove ROI when your webinars influence existing customers to upgrade and adopt more product features. Work with your sales team to gather data on customers who upgraded their plan after attending a webinar.

How to improve your numbers

If you want to influence more customers to upgrade, try hosting these types of middle-of-the-funnel webinars to highlight your product value and the common problems it solves for users:

• Group demo: A live demonstration of your product tailored to a specific audience, such as enterprise companies. These webinars show how your product addresses unique challenges for that group.
• Customer roundtable: A panel discussion where existing customers share their experiences and success stories with your product. These webinars show how your product solves real problems, and they can be all it takes for a customer to commit to a higher-tiered plan. Want to see an example? Check out this customer roundtable we hosted with Wisetail, CNTV, and Lumen5!
• Town hall: A presentation focused on introducing new or improved product features. These webinars can convince your customers to upgrade their plan if they find those features valuable.

Prove that your webinars reduce churn

Webinars aren’t just about gaining new leads or upgrades. They can also help you keep the customers you already have.

By sharing your product roadmap and showcasing new features, you can remind your customers why they chose your product in the first place and get them excited about what’s to come. Also, webinars open a door to real-time conversations that can influence their decision to stick with your brand.

While it’s hard to measure churn reduction in numbers, feedback from attendees can back up your case. Collect comments, questions, and survey responses to show how webinars strengthen customer loyalty.

Show the ROI of on-demand recordings

Your stakeholders might not realize it, but webinars can keep delivering results after they’re over. By making your webinar recordings available on demand, you can keep generating leads, driving upgrades, and reducing churn. Here are a few ways to prove their worth:

• Track high-quality leads from lead capture forms: If you gate your recordings with a lead capture form, compile a list of leads who entered their info. And don’t forget to mention that they’re high-quality leads because they were interested in your content in the first place!
• Track upgrades from sales and customer success conversations: Your sales and customer success teams can use your on-demand content to answer customers' or prospects' questions or show how it solves their problems to increase upgrades and prevent churn.
• Highlight the cost-saving benefits of your recordings: Your team can save valuable time and resources by repurposing your webinar recordings into blog posts, social clips, and more. With tools like Wistia’s automatic transcription, you can quickly create a blog recap without rewatching the entire recording. You can also save a ton of time with an AI-powered tool that pulls highlights from your recordings and turns them into social clips. List all the assets you create from your webinar recordings and explain how each one saves you time and resources.