While webinars and online events have been around for a lot longer than most companies realise (since the 1980s), they really surged into the spotlight during the pandemic. In the B2B industry, where sales and customer retention revolve around building relationships with consumers through thought leadership, great content, and great experiences, events are a valuable tool.
They offer organisations a way to not only find new leads and partnership opportunities, but connect with attendees on a human level, and showcase authority. Unfortunately, when the pandemic hit, the event industry was turned upside down, with countless companies cancelling in-person expos.
This pushed companies to embrace other “alternative” event experiences, in the form of digital events, and online webinars. In fact, 73% of B2B marketers and sales leaders now believe webinars are one of the best ways to generate high-quality leads.
But now we’re heading into 2024, and the restrictions around in-person events have all but died out. So, what does that mean for the future of webinars?
Will In-Person Events See a Resurgence in 2024?
For many B2B companies, the main reason to use webinars in the first place was to educate, entertain, and capture customers in an environment where face-to-face interactions weren’t possible. Now, in-person events are ramping up again, and they’re offering companies a host of benefits.
Around 76.6% of organisers consider in-person conferences to be critical to their success, and 82.8% still believe they’re crucial to their networking strategies.
While planning and hosting an in-person event requires a greater investment of both time and money, 68% of marketers believe they still drive the best leads, and have an average ROI of around 25-35%. In the last couple of years, diminishing restrictions have prompted countless companies to return to the in-person event landscape, and conference room bookings have begun to increase.
The main reason for this is that for B2B businesses, great profits are built on great relationships. In-person conferences allow companies an opportunity to forge meaningful connections that go beyond anything we can accomplish with a webinar. In fact, 8 out of 10 businesses say they build stronger relationships with businesses when meeting in person.
Plus in-person events eliminate some of the major problems of webinars. For instance, when an attendee comes to an event themselves, you have their full attention. When someone attends a webinar, they can divide their attention among countless things at once, from responding to Slack messages to writing emails.
As B2B companies continue to increase their focus on building strong, long-lasting relationships with customers, in-person events may become a lot more valuable. But does that mean they’re going to eliminate or replace the webinar entirely?
The Continued Value of Webinars and Virtual Events
Ultimately, since the COVID-19 pandemic passed, online events have lost a little of their popularity. Most people don’t want to sit in front of a computer screen to attend an eight-hour online conference. They’re craving human interaction and unique experiences after years of isolation and networking difficulties.
However, webinars are one of the few types of online events that continue to drive amazing results. Unlike full-blown online events, webinars are shorter, more convenient educational experiences for B2B buyers. They’re easier to access, less time-consuming, and great for conducting research.
This is crucial at a time when around 75% of all B2B buyers prefer to shop online without interacting with a salesperson. Buyers are handling more of their purchasing journey solo, and they’re searching for unique, useful content that can help them make the right decisions.
Webinars can help with this, providing behind-the-scenes insights into products and tools, discussing industry trends, and even offering step-by-step guidance. They can even be an excellent tool for improving customer success when used as part of a client onboarding experience.
Plus, webinars continue to offer a variety of unique benefits over in-person events, such as:
1. Improved Reach
Not everyone in a business environment can afford to spend their days travelling to different educational events and expos. However, it’s easy to simply load up a webinar, or check out a recording at a time that suits you.
With webinars, B2B businesses have a better opportunity to reach a wider variety of customers and raise awareness for their brand, all without spending a fortune on hiring conference spaces. Plus, because you can record webinars and share them on your website or social channels, you end up with content that you can use to support your audience for months or years at a time.
This means webinars continue to deliver value long after they’re initially created, whether you’re trying to collect leads, convert more customers, or improve retention.
2. Enhanced access to data
It can be hard to quantify the impact of an in-person event, beyond looking at the number of people you directly connect with or contact your sales team as a result of a conference or expo. However, with virtual events and webinars, you have access to a lot more data.
Webinar platforms make it easier to collect unique insights about the content your customers need, their sentiment towards your brand, and opportunities for future engagement. There are even webinar platforms that come with powerful AI tools that can show you exactly when customers lose interest in whatever you’re promoting or sharing.
Plus, simply looking at which webinars your customers view and when can help you learn more about their purchasing journey in the complex B2B world.
3. Reduced costs
Although there are expenses associated with hosting webinars, such as paying for software and accessing the skills required to create compelling content, it’s a lot less expensive to deliver a webinar to your audience than it is to create an in-person event.
In 2024, when companies are looking for ways to reduce their expenses to handle an uncertain economy, the affordability of webinars is likely to be an important benefit for businesses. Even companies that don’t have a great marketing budget can still increase their reach.
Plus, as mentioned above, once you’ve created your webinar, you can extend its value in various ways, sharing recordings with customers, or snippets on social media.
Will Webinars Change in 2024?
Ultimately, it’s unlikely webinars will disappear in 2024. Instead, companies are beginning to look at webinars as a “supplement” or “add-on” to their event marketing strategy, rather than a way to replace in-person events, like they did during the pandemic.
However, a growing need for deeper relationships between B2B companies and their consumers may cause the webinar landscape to change. Already, we’ve seen companies beginning to invest in extended reality and metaverse tools to create more immersive webinar and event experiences for business buyers in the digital world.
Additionally, companies are investing more heavily in communication tools that help them add “networking” elements to a webinar experience. The chances are, as we head into 2024, both in-person events and webinars will remain critical to the success of any B2B brand.
However, the way we interact with people both online and offline will continue to change. Webinar hosts will strive to create more human “real-world” experiences, while in-person event organisers may begin to use more technology to bridge the gaps between the physical and real worlds, with hybrid event strategies.
