Perils of Recorded Webinar Hosting With YouTube
Recorded webinars are great for generating leads. Especially when people can’t attend a live webinar due to timing or sudden changes to their schedules and priorities.
One way of recapturing those leads is by sharing a link to the recorded webinar. The link is shared by email with the hope that the recipients watch the video and continue on to convert to a qualified lead.
To our surprise we found many Fortune 500 companies are using YouTube to host their recorded webinars. Conversions from these links are low. Below, we’ll discuss why YouTube isn’t optimal and what the best practices are.
YouTube fails for webinar hosting in 123 seconds
Two Benefits In Disguise
Many businesses rely on YouTube for sharing their videos hoping for additional engagement that can lead to increasing their brand reach and leads generated..
The benefits come at a cost and are often over-estimated.
Increasing brand reach and awareness on the 2nd most trafficked website in the world
However, 70% of videos viewed have been through recommendations algorithms
Ads or promoted videos from competitors might be present
Generating leads from recorded video webinars on YouTube
Lead generation would require additional setup on YouTube platform. You may need to link to your sales landing page from the description or through cards with thumbnails to be displayed on your video.
Traffic you send to your video on YouTube will be treated like new leads unless you advertise on YouTube.
Three ways your brand is compromised on YouTube
YouTube’s website and apps are optimized to increase watch time, staying on the platform, and monetization via Ads*.
*There are some viewers (23.6 million out of 2.6 billion) who are premium YouTube subscribers who don’t see Ads.
Display an Ad from your competitor (direct or indirect)
Display an irrelevant Ad that discourages the user from watching your video
Recommend videos that shouldn’t be associated with your brand
11 Obstacles preventing you from getting leads fromYouTube
The moment your lead goes to YouTube, the following things are likely to occur:
Recommend videos to watch
Recommend videos to watch as soon as your video finishes playing
Encourages you to read or write comments on the video
Interact by rating the video
Give viewer option to make a clip of the video
Nudges you to share the video
Display a video Ad before the video even begins
Display a video Ad while the video is playing (often in key moments)
Display banner Ad on the bottom of the video
Display a call-to-action to go to another website
Display another Ad on the right panel
4 popular alternatives to increasing recorded webinar conversions
There are limited options when it comes to improving webinar conversions, but many companies use the following techniques:
Create a link to a landing page where the video of the recorded webinar is embedded
Requires creating a landing page
Requires hosting video on a platform that doesn’t display ads
Create a blog post where the video of the recorded webinar is embedded
Blogging platforms tend to be great for content marketing but mixing webinars, blog posts and other content may not be optimal and can lower overall conversions
Tracking who viewed the video will be difficult to setup and separate from your existing blog or website traffic
Use a webinar platform to generate a link to your webinar
Expensive and may require you to use their email platform complicating how you track your leads
Those that offer Video on Demand may allow you to replace videos that are edited but often are complex to use
Use a video on demand service
Usually a stripped down service that is good at video hosting
Costs increases as as more viewers get watched
Best alternative, a video-on-demand provider that specializes in video delivery
A video-on-demand platform that can be used independently or with your existing marketing tools. For example, MediaZilla can host your recorded webinar videos and only those who registered for the webinar can access them. You also have the option to embed videos anywhere you want.
You can try this today with a previously recorded webinar and an email list on hand. In 5 minutes,
Upload a video
Create a call-to-action link for sales
Copy/paste your leads
Send your video using our email delivery platform
and watch your leads get re-activated
Alternatively, you can talk to our experts and book a demo here