The Value of The Webinar For B2B Sellers

Digital commerce is the norm for many consumers, both individual and corporate. But in B2B online shopping, complexities arise not always seen in B2C eCommerce. For example, B2B sellers can provide a product or a service, like software, for business buyers, and those procurement officials often demand demonstrations and in-depth explanations of what they are about to purchase for their business.

That’s where the capabilities of digital video and webinars come in. Recent research from Webmarketing 123 found that 66 percent of B2B executives find webinars to be effective content marketing vehicles, compared to just 34 percent of B2C officials. The findings not only highlight the key differences in approaches B2B companies must take to sell their products, but also reveal how B2B companies are getting on board with digital tools to meet their customers’ needs.

In a separate study, Demand Gen Report concluded that 62 percent of B2B sellers used webinars in 2014 as part of their lead nurturing campaigns; more than half of the study’s respondents agreed that they were effective tools.

The medium is also showing up more often among procurement officials. Eccolo Media’s study found that more than one-third of B2B technology decision-makers attended a webinar to aid in their buying decisions last year.

Still, researchers are finding that there is still a long way to go in making the webinar the norm in business buying. For example, Percolate researchers found that just 20 percent of U.S. corporations produced a webinar last year. Part of what could be preventing growth of this tactic among B2B suppliers and manufacturers is the high cost of webinar production. Last September, Software Advice found that one-fifth of B2B sellers agreed that the cost of having a third party make a webinar for their business relative was “very high,” and an additional 45.5 percent said those costs were “somewhat high.”

According to industry experts, however, businesses are catching on to the effectiveness of webinars, and more than 25 percent of B2B respondents told researchers that they would be increasing their budgets this year to spend more on third-party webinar production. Half reported that they would not be reducing their webinar production budgets.