Bulldog Solutions in Europe

European B2B Marketers Will Catch the Webinar Wave

  
Why were so many editors in Europe surprised by the news that business-to-business technology marketers surveyed for MarketingSherpa’s 2006 Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide rate Webinars among the most effective lead-generation offers?

Many editors mentioned they don’t see the same popularity of Webinars here as in the U.S. That’s a shame, because smart, innovative marketers in Europe should see this as a huge opportunity:

There is no saturation or fierce competition for the Webinar viewer’s attention.

Technology companies (and others) are rapidly embracing new online techniques to improve their customer acquisition strategies.

The global trend of making marketing more accountable cries out for measurable solutions for lead generation—and Webinars deliver.

Localization critical to successful lead generation.

We have a few observations about why Europe has been slow to adopt Webinars for lead generation. Lack of localization has diminished the effectiveness of Webinars in Europe. Most Webinar programs today are being produced and managed by centralized functions—either headquarters or regional offices in the areas of marcom, product marketing and product management. This hurts the effectiveness of these campaigns in remote areas.

Due to fragmentation caused primarily by language differences, some marketing functions work on a country level, some on a regional level. These fragmented subsidiaries have "field marketing" operations, and the links between those field marketing operations and the corporate headquarters are far from optimal. Because most Webinar programs in the IT industry are generated from headquarters, it’s not difficult to understand why they are not yielding the same results in Europe as in their U.S. home markets.

Headquarters teams sitting far away from the local markets don't have the same relationships with the media landscape as they have in their domestic environment. For their global audience creation needs, they count on pickup that comes from international readers from U.S.-based publications. They also may fail to consider how to make the event accessible to their audience. In the worst cases, they might even host live events at inconvenient times in a language that isn’t the first choice of the audience. This makes it clear to the local audience that the Webinar is really not intended for them.

It’s a vicious cycle. Most lead-generation Webinar programs are headquarters-driven and lack the input from the field for audience development and message creation. The field marketing operations don’t see the value of non-localized events and, because they are spread so thin, don't support them. Localized solutions, obviously, are the answer to this. Localization is about more than just translation. Look-and-feel and language are important, but also just as important are the message itself and the selection of communication channels. Even appropriate creative design and style may differ from one location to another. It’s important to work with a company that has a dedicated European presence and can respond to localization needs without compromising economies of scale.

Marketers need measurable results.

Marketing is going through a global transition. Consolidation is all around us, mainly driven by communication technology. It affects the business landscape and also how businesses get organized, including the way we set up marketing and sales processes. Everything is benchmarked, and only the fittest survive.

The lead-generation business process is being re-engineered. The only way to manage it is to make it measurable. And the only way to make it fully measurable is to automate it and to include online elements. Webinars, white paper download sites, podcasts and other online vehicles are doing this. Turnkey lead-generation Webinars are process-oriented and metrics-driven, so every emotion can be taken out of the internal (political) dialogue. Ultimately, facts and data are what matter, and marketing and sales must work together and think in terms of ROI optimization.

Discussions about cultural resistance to some of these new communication vehicles will eventually be overtaken by the reality of the economies of scale they offer.

We look forward to sharing more observations about lead-generation Webinars in Europe in the coming months ahead.

Best Regards,

Bulldog Solutions