Welcome to this episode of Likely Marketing! In this episode, we will:
Look at a short history of webinars
What led to their rapid rise?
Why sales and marketing teams adopted them?
What desaturates the canvas of webinars?
Focus on the understated vibrant spot
Explore the likelihood of expanding this understated vibrance
A short history of webinars
Webinars or web seminars originated in the 1980s in the early years of the Internet. Not known to many, InSoft had launched Communique, a teleconferencing software that allowed up to 10 users to communicate simultaneously, back in 1992. It offered features like app sharing, file sharing, chat and drawing tools. Features that were unheard of at the time. First public conferences became possible with Microsoft's launch of NetMeeting in 1996. WebEx Meeting Center, later named as WebEx became the quite popular. A host of tools popped up in the market, each offering their take on better user experience and interaction.
Rapid rise of webinars
Emergence of Potent Use Cases
By 2000, Internet video communication had become popular to address 5 use cases:
video calling between 2 people
tech support - same as video calling with provision of remote control of the computer
work meeting - communication between a group of up to 10 people
training - involving 1 presenter and unlimited audience size
conference - several presenters and unlimited audience size
Technological Advancements
By mid 2000's Internet had become an even more cool place to be. A good part of the credit goes to the tech companies that had survived the dot-com bubble and were focused on building new softwares and platforms that solved real-world problems. And created the ones we weren't even aware of or needed. To the best of my understanding, there were 3 broad technologies that made webinars attractive and viable:
Web technologies like Flash - Originally developed by Macromedia in the late 1990s and was eventually taken over by Adobe. Flash was one of pioneering technologies that made vector-based animation, graphic design and interactive objects using minimal data transfer. Flash helped unleash creativity that elevated user interactivity and experience. Did you know that the idea behind YouTube became possible because of Flash?
Faster download speeds - In a span of less than a decade starting with the year 2000, global average of Internet download speeds rose from 100 kbps to 1 mbps in 2005, touching 10 mpbs by 2010.
Smartphones and mobile technologies - brought mobile operating systems like iOS and Android which led to adoption of Web Real-time Communication or WebRTC protocol as part of the HTML5 development. This enabled video and audio communications directly through the device without requiring any special plugins or software.
Adoption of webinars by businesses
As webinars evolved, sales and marketing teams recognized a critical role they could play in accelerating, expanding, and strengthening their sales cycle. Webinars became an important ingredient in the sales and marketing outreach recipe because webinars enabled them to:
Reach wider audience by bringing prospects having wide range of profiles from target organizations. Webinars also helped discover new segment of audience for further exploration.
Engage with the audience in real-time with an opportunity to drive deeper, meaningful interactions.
Provide content to the audience on-demand so that they can self-educate on their schedule.
Drive conversions and generate leads.
Offer high quality content that helps build brand credibility.
Create pillar content that can be re-purposed for content marketing.
Desaturated canvas of webinars
Popularity of the webinars has grown because they have become a reliable medium for marketers from the perspective of brand awareness and recall as well as lead generation. But, this ubiquity of webinars comes with a price. It has led to desaturation of their sheen due to:
Decline in content quality as everyone have nearly identical things to say about a particular subject. This has led to diminishing returns for participants who are keen on learning.
Loss of distinctiveness due to over-familiarity with UIs of webinar platforms like Zoom, GoToWebinar, ON24 etc.
Thumbnailing of human experience as the speaker and the listeners are staring a 13 or 14 inch screen. The energy of an in-person interaction is completely missed. This also impacts the engagement levels as most participants are present as mute spectators.
Recognizing the understated vibrant spot
In the past 3 years, nearly every business has leverage webinars to promote their brand, offerings, and build thought leadership status. All of this happened with speakers and participants gathering in a virtual setup from their home. The speakers, who typically represented an organization and a brand, shared their ideas and opinions in formal attire but with a branded background wallpaper. There was a deep sense of consciousness with regards to how the target audience would perceive them and the brand if the room they are sitting in had an informal look. Like many people I know, I was attending a large number of webinars and hosting myself. It is during this time when I observed that:
an increasing number of speakers were getting comfortable being seen wearing a polo shirt as against a formal shirt.
Many of them stopped using a branded wallpaper, giving the audience a peek into their personal space.
The tone and language of the intros became more conversational and less formal.
It seemed as if more professionals became comfortable in their own skin with the removed pressure of being seen in a templated way.
Likelihood of expanding the understated vibrance of webinars
In the 2023 world of blazing social media and generative AI, brands are vying for new ways to connect and engage with their customers. The primal need for human connection in the virtual space has taken marketers to find creative ways to leverage virtual interactions appear accesssible and sociable to their customers. For instance, I recently attended a webinar by one of the top consulting firms in the world. The speaker, who was Partner and head of division, was presenting from the comfort of his home. While he presented wearing a polo t-shirt, his love for Messi was evident from a poster hanging on the wall behind.
For businesses, especially B2B brands, the informality or non-formality that webinars bring is a bright coloured spot to leverage. It has the potential to remove the glass walls created by suits and ties and find ways to build trust with prospective customers.
Webinars provide the businesses a pedestal for their brand, but if this trend of dropping the suits grows, there is an untapped potential to appear more accessible and relatable to customers. Businesses that will focus on using this bright colour in their customer interactions are likely to create a new whitespace for their brands.
What is the likelihood of this trend picking up? It seems quite likely because of:
undeniable need for building a digital brand at scale
increased adoption of digital platforms for customer outreach
the explosion in the startup space, and
growing presence of millenials and Gen Z's in business conversations
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