97FL (00:00)
Hi, welcome. In this podcast, we talk B2B marketing and what it takes to know your customer, innovate and profit. We're glad you made it. This is the campaign by 97th floor.

Pax (00:20)
Hello, everyone. Happy Friday. I am Paxton Gray, CEO of 97th floor. We are a performance marketing agency focused on generating revenue and leads for mid-level and enterprise organizations through both organic and paid channels. Thanks for joining us today. This is the campaign, a B2B marketing podcast about better knowing your audience, innovating beyond best practice and converting visitors into customers.

The campaign is a weekly conversation with B2B marketing leaders designed to fit as much value as possible into 30 minutes. You can catch the campaign live on Fridays at 2 Eastern and you can find episodes on YouTube, iTunes and Spotify and at 97thfloor.com. We've got a great topic today, something that touches the entire B2B marketing world and that is webinars. Webinars have become one of the most powerful tools in a marketer's arsenal.

They bridge the gap between awareness and direct revenue impact serving as a conversion machine when done right. Yet despite their widespread use, most marketers are still getting them wrong. What separates a webinar that actually works from one that just takes up space on a marketer's calendar? Well, in this episode, we're going to be diving deep into the evolution of webinars, the biggest mistakes marketers make, and the bold future ahead for virtual events. If you're still treating webinars like glorified PowerPoints, it's time to rethink everything.

There is one person who's been ahead of the curve for over a decade and that is our guest, Matt Murdock. Matt is the vice president of marketing at Franklin Covey. He is an expert at combining brand building with lead generation strategies that convert to drive unstoppable business growth. He's mastered this balance over the past 20 years, leading teams grounded in purpose and performance. Matt is the author of the webinar manifesto, which he wrote over 10 years ago, right as webinars were gaining traction.

Now webinars are a staple of B2B marketing and Matt is best at the game. In his time at Franklin Covey, Matt has increased webcast and event registrations by 1600 % generating millions of dollars in pipeline. So Matt, welcome to the show. We're so glad to have you.

Matt Murdoch (02:20)
Thanks Paxton, great to be here.

Pax (02:22)
I can't wait to learn more from the father webinars. and, which is, is the title I'm giving you, ⁓ unofficially. ⁓ so first let's start at the beginning, ⁓ when you wrote a webinar manifesto, what inspired you to write that?

Matt Murdoch (02:41)
Yeah, know, it was honestly, it was, sheer frustration was my biggest motivator. And I also saw an opportunity, but I attended way too many webinars that felt more like, you know, the kind of like corporate hostage situations, you know, the kind where you're trapped with no escape and you're looking for that leave, leave now button. And I remember thinking that this is so painful, but does it have to really be like this? And so my colleague and I sat down and decided to really tackle the problem head on and, ⁓

our thought was how do we create a guide that would help shift webinars from this dull monologue into an engaging conversation? And hence the webinar manifesto was born. And it was fun. We traveled around the world teaching people how to do webinars, which seems really weird that we go to a physical location to teach people how to do a webinar, but that's kind of the way it started. But we really wanted webinars to feel less like punishment and more like a meaningful interaction.

Pax (03:35)
Mm.

Matt Murdoch (03:35)
Right,

so I mean, Paxton, how about you? Have you noticed any improvement in webinars over the years or are we still stuck in the PowerPoint Stone Age?

Pax (03:41)
Yeah, I mean, I feel like there have been some slight changes, but largely, yes. You know, that's the, my opinion, one of the biggest crimes that marketers make, which is they're really focused on what they get out of their marketing activities. And that leads to company focused productions rather than what value can we add to this audience and will they find this valuable enough to dedicate their time?

Just because this, this thing in and of itself is valuable. ⁓ yeah.

Matt Murdoch (04:12)
Yeah, know,

progress is happening, right? It's slow, and our goal is to kind of speed that up. And honestly, one of the best compliments I received about the book was from somebody jokingly who said they called it a humanitarian act for webinar attendees worldwide, right? So I'll take that, right? If we can just save a few thousand people from another boring webinar, think that'll be mission accomplished for us.

Pax (04:27)
Yeah

I love that. So the phrase webinar is based in seminar, I assume. And I remember when I started in digital marketing in 2008, the only thing that I knew about webinars were SaaS companies doing demos of their product, you know, how to generate this report. And it was very, very dull. How have you seen it change since?

you know, people started first running webinars.

Matt Murdoch (05:07)
Yeah, when I first started webinars were there, like you said, they're PowerPoint marathons, right? Long, tedious presentations, minimal engagement. It was just a PowerPoint slide deck. And you'd you'd log in very optimistic and you'd log out feeling almost emotionally drained. Like, what did I just do at that hour? But today it feels like the webinar landscape is completely different. I presentations are a lot more visual. Hosts are using multiple video feeds, for example, branded overlays.

production, the production value is almost like a professional TV broadcast in many instances, right? So it's really interesting that the evolution has been happening over the years. And the shift is really towards shorter punchier formats, I feel. I audiences have shorter attention spans, meaningful content needs to grab their attention really, really fast, and then maintain it through the entire session using polls, live Q &A, and...

Dynamic storytelling is a big piece of what people need to think about today. And obviously technology is just like, it's table stakes, right? Everybody has it at their fingertips today, as opposed to 10 years ago where you needed to have like a producer on there, you'd actually help you get the whole thing done. Now anybody can do one. So it's really interesting what's happening with webinars today.

Pax (06:18)
Right.

So our goal with the campaign is to have these episodes be as actionable as possible. So great webinars begin at the planning stage. Where do you feel like most marketers go wrong when they begin planning their webinars?

Matt Murdoch (06:45)
Yeah, I think one major mistake that marketers frequently make is assuming that if they build it, the audiences are going to magically appear. It's the field of dreams mistake, except sadly, no one's just going to show up because you built it. I think we've all had that experience as marketers. You need to be really aggressive. You have to have strategic promotions. have to use all your channels possible. A second common mistake, I think, is treating webinars like sneaky sales pitches.

Right. We've all seen those before and nothing annoys attendees more than signing up for a webinar that's promising value. And they're only they're subjected to, you know, 45 or 60 minutes of buy, buy my product messaging. It's a credibility killer. And as marketers, we need to make sure we prioritize genuine value above the immediate sale. Like pull them in, teach them what you have to offer and give them something of value.

and build that trust with them. It's far more valuable long-term. I think another, probably the third thing is marketers often rush the content creation phase. They skip these crucial steps like testing, like beta testing and feedback loops. And so you need to make sure your webinars should always be beta tested. Treat it like a real product. This is a product that you are putting out there to the world. And so how would you build a product? How would you treat that product?

This is just a, it's a webinar product. And so treat it the exact same way.

Pax (08:16)
Hmm. I love that. Yeah. Adding. I always say as a litmus test, and perhaps this is too strong, but is your marketing good enough to where the consumer would almost pay for it because it itself is so valuable. ⁓ I think that's a heart that's a high bar and probably too hard to clear, but aiming for that, ⁓ I think is, is what marketers should be doing, especially in the webinar space where, know, effectively they are paying, they're just paying in their time rather than in dollars. Right.

Matt Murdoch (08:46)
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I how many times, Paxton, have you gone to a webinar that wasn't clearly tested, and it showed painfully? I mean, you've got to get that audience feedback. You've got to test it. And you want to make sure that your audience enjoys it. I like your little litmus tester. Would somebody actually pay to come to this? That's a great test.

Pax (08:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

So, ⁓ what would you say in your experience of doing webinars are some of the most common elements that make up a successful webinar? Like what, what are the common ingredients that they always have?

Matt Murdoch (09:22)
Well, it's interesting. In my book, The Webinar Manifesto, there are ways that you should really consider building your webinar. And a great webinar boils down to really three main components. So it's around valuable content, engaging delivery, and audience participation, like real audience participation. First, the content's got to resonate immediately with the audience's needs. It has to feel urgent.

and valuable and directly applicable. Secondly, you really need to think about the delivery. If you have enthusiasm, you have the energy and clarity to hold someone's attention, that's great. It's not enough just to know your stuff. You have to really convey it compellingly. If it's boring, they're going to multitask, and that's the worst case, just on there, not doing anything. Make sure it's somewhat entertaining.

And I'm not saying you have to be a comedian online, but you have to come with some great stories, come with some great engaging pieces that'll keep people there. And then the third piece is probably most important, it's audience interaction. A lot of people don't think about this, but webinars really need to invite active participation, like use polls, Q &A, chat, even live dialogue. And it's the difference between a dull lecture and a lively conversation. So engaging those people.

transforms your passive listeners into active community members. And that's where the knowledge transfer really takes hold, right? That's what you're trying to do is teach these people something so they come back to you with more questions. And that's where it really takes hold is in that interaction.

Pax (11:02)
Hmm. I love that. Something that I'm seeing develop from COVID, which is, you know, these days quite a while ago is in-person events still aren't at the level that they were pre-COVID. And I think people have gotten accustomed to, you know, working from their office or just engaging remotely, which really opens the doors for webinars. But as you say, I also think it opens the doors for

multitasking, being distracted and not really engaging like one would at a, an in-person event. So when we're talking about engaging people on webinars, ⁓ you have a framework in your, in your book that I really like. Can you go over like, how, do you structure webinar to keep them engaged from the beginning to the end?

Matt Murdoch (11:49)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is such an important aspect that many people overlook, right? This is really critical. Because I think a lot of people think, I've got a slide deck. I'm going to put that up there and talk for 45 minutes, right? We've got to stop doing that. Because it's so important to be intentional when you're designing your webinar, because you can't hold people physically accountable. Let me talk about this a little bit. So think of it this way. When we're in a physical room, like Paxton, if you and I were in a physical room, we're naturally accountable to each other, because we can see each other.

Right, I can see you, you can see me. If you start dozing off, I'll know. If I'm doom scrolling on my phone, you're gonna know. If I'm daydreaming, right, it's obvious. But in a virtual setting, that accountability completely disappears. No one knows if you're actually listening to the presenter or doing your email, right? It's impossible. So to keep people engaged, you have to build something we call virtual accountability. And that happens in three ways, verbal, visual, and kinesthetic.

So let me talk about each one of these briefly so you get a sense of what it is. So first, let's talk about verbal accountability. So when you start up your webinar, you have to condition attendees from the very start, right? Many people think of webinars like going to the movies, right? I mean, do we still do that? Do we still go to the movies? I don't know. It's been a while. So they kind of sit back in the audience, they mute their mic, and they let the show go on without them. But the best webinars, my experience, make people feel like they're part of the experience, okay?

So there's a couple of ways to do this. So first of all, set expectations upfront. So at the very beginning say, hey, I'm gonna be calling up people by name and I'm gonna be asking for your verbal input. So stay off mute, right? Or keep the mute button handy, right? That way no one can just blend into the background. The second is a little brutal. Some people don't like this, but I've come to like it. It's calling on people by name. So nothing's gonna snap people back into reality.

then calling them by name. mean, you know, if you're in a party, Pakistan, and someone says your name off in the distance, you're going to hear it, right? And your ears are going to perk up. And so that's second thing. My favorite trick though is called the 10 second rule. I call it the hang 10 rule. So when you ask a question, give people a full 10 seconds of silence to answer it. It's going feel like an eternity at first. It's going to be so painful. But the pause does two things. Number one,

Pax (14:08)
Hmm.

Matt Murdoch (14:15)
It gives people a chance to actually think because people, you know, they have to think about the responses and most importantly, it's going to get them engaged. Okay. So a couple of big things there now with for example, you can't, you can't do verbal, you can't, you can't have people come up here. Like I just ran some webinars a couple of weeks ago, they had thousands and thousands of people on there. And you can imagine the chaos. I unmuted everybody, it's just not going to happen. In sessions of 30, 40, 50 people totally easy to do.

Pax (14:39)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Murdoch (14:44)
You can easily do this. So that's the first one, is this verbal accountability.

Pax (14:48)
I also imagine that if you call someone by name, that person's going to be alert, but then everyone else on the call is going to be alert because they're going to wait for their name to be called. You know? Yeah.

Matt Murdoch (14:58)
That's exactly right. That's exactly

has that domino effect for sure. Absolutely. So the second element is called visual accountability. So if your slides look like garbage, you're in trouble, right? So remember, you have to remember people don't remember bullet points. They remember stories. They remember images. And so when you're, when you're creating your deck and in your, webinar, first tell stories and just instead of just presenting data.

Right, so, so critical. A great story is gonna paint a mental image that's gonna stick with them. Second is use visuals that are bold and memorable. Don't just use stock images. Like put just like one big picture on the screen and talk about that, right? Maybe even put unexpected images up there. Like no one's gonna remember another bar chart, but they are gonna remember a striking image that you can relate back to the story.

And the third thing is pretty basic, but it's kind of harsh. It's just like, you if your slides look like they came from a 1997 PowerPoint deck, people are going to zone out. So talk to your marketing team or go on Fiverr or something. Go find somebody that can help you actually design some decent slides. And so the third piece of this is kinesthetic accountability. And this is something that not a lot of people think about. We know Newton's first law of motion is that an object at rest stays at rest.

And that can also be your webinar attendees as well. And so if they're sitting passively doing nothing, you're going to lose them, right? They're going to go, they're going to zone out. They'll go to their phones. They'll do whatever else they want to do. So to keep them engaged, you need movement, both physically and some mental movement as well. So for example, you can give them a short real world task, right? Give them a problem to think through or a mental puzzle to think through. Give them 30 seconds, then report back to the group, right?

makes them feel like an active participant. One that everyone has access to that we don't use a lot of or nearly enough of are polls, whiteboards, chat, like all those tools you have at your disposal, use them and don't be afraid to overuse them. I think we're not using them enough, right? And I believe that we should have some sort of interactive activity every like five minutes or so just to keep people engaged. And here's a crazy one. I've done this a couple of times, but

have people pull in content from other sources, like have them go to Google and pull something in and report back. Or have people actually stand up, leave, go into another room, find an object you asked them to go find, and come back and report back on that object. Just get people moving. You can do some really fun, engaging things that'll keep them talking about the experience afterward. don't know, Pax, have you ever seen any of these types of activities done?

Pax (17:42)
To be honest, no, and they all sound amazing. I I've seen polls, but I have not seen tests. I haven't seen asking people to search something and report back. And I definitely have not seen getting people to actually move, like stand up and go find something.

Matt Murdoch (18:00)
Give it a shot next time. See what happens. Give me a call after, let me know how it goes, okay?

Pax (18:05)
I love that. such, such great action items here. ⁓ so let's say, you know, we've planned our webinar, we've planned some really great engaging things. We've got some good visuals. We are going to get them moving again. Like you say, we can't just build it and hope that they'll come. ⁓ sometimes I wonder where marketers would be without field of dreams. Cause that, that phrase is, is one of our favorites. ⁓

How do we actually now get people to these webinars? So FranklinCovey gets so many people to their webinars and the value is there, but there must be some sort of like distribution. What in your experience are some of the best ways to drive attendance for webinars?

Matt Murdoch (18:50)
Yeah, you you got to market it really, really well. Use all your channels. You know, market it like it's a rock concert if you can, right? Whatever you need to do. Make people feel like they're going to miss out, know, FOMO. I think too often we as marketers, we treat our webinars like just an ordinary meeting. And we assume that if we send out an email, people are going to fill up the virtual seats. And the reality is you need, you need, first of all,

very compelling titles that are gonna directly speak to the audience's urgent needs or their pain points. So for example, instead of just a webinar that we call like a comprehensive review of fiscal Q3 metrics, go with something a lot more intriguing like the top three metrics that are secretly costing your marketing budget millions or whatever it might be. It's like, you gotta think of what is the pain point that they're dealing with?

And then have a title directly related to that. I Paxton, have you ever signed up for a webinar solely based off the title that hooked you? Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's all about the intrigue and the immediate relevance to the problems that I have, right? And so you kind of, I mean, that's the first thing is really think through that. And then like you mentioned, leverage every available channel, email, social media, your partner channels, everything.

Pax (19:51)
yeah, absolutely. Many times.

Matt Murdoch (20:09)
And then also make sure you send out reminders, multiple reminders, even like up to an hour before, because signing up doesn't equal showing up. And people are going to forget. mean, their bosses are going to drag them into another last minute meeting, or maybe they just got distracted, or maybe your webinar is like four weeks later and they're just going to completely forget about it. mean, there's all sorts of things you need to do to make sure they're there. But I think one of the big things is once they register,

this is where many marketers drop the ball because at that moment registrants are saying, hey, I've got a problem and I think you might have the solution. And it's essential to that you get with them immediately because if you don't take that opportunity right now, your competitors will. And so when they register, that's the moment of need for them. That's when they're like, yeah, I've got this problem. I just saw this, I got this email from, from packs at 97th floor. I think they could solve my problem. So.

Pax (20:55)
Hmm.

Matt Murdoch (21:06)
You need to have a salesperson call them immediately. Don't wait three or four weeks until the webinar because three things are going to happen. Number one, they're going to forget about it. Number two, they're going to pulled in rather meeting or worst case scenario, they're going to find their solution through another vendor. So the company that delivers the value first is the company that's going to win. And webinar registrations can help you get to that win. And then if they attend, great, score them up even more.

Pax (21:19)
Hmm.

Matt Murdoch (21:33)
I think at the moment of need, they hit, if they're the right size organization, the right size, the right, the right target for you, should call them immediately.

Pax (21:42)
That's such a great insight. And most organizations are definitely not running that way. They've got their sequence that begins with, you know, registration and then take the webinar. If they attend, then we're going to have somebody reach out. But you're right. Like what we need to know about them is whether or not they feel this pain. And then as soon as we know that, and as soon as they raise their hand, that's the time to strike. And, ⁓ something that popped in my head too is.

What an amazing, what a better sequence to have them now get into your pipeline and then attend a webinar while they're in the pipeline versus attend the webinar and then get into the pipeline with the sales rep. That's a really great takeaway.

Matt Murdoch (22:29)
Yeah, exactly.

Pax (22:31)
So I'm interested in knowing your opinion on live versus on demand. If you had to break down the kind of value or traction that Franklin Covey gets in a percentage like from live versus after the fact, how like, what would that percentage look like?

Matt Murdoch (22:50)
Yeah, so I love this question because it's like a rivalry, right? It's like team live versus team on demand. And honestly, it's like trying to ask me to choose between chocolate and peanut butter, right? Why can't you have both? Right? So live webinars provide this interactive energy and this urgency that you just can't get at other places, right? It's almost impossible to replicate. It's like the difference between watching a football game in real time versus on your DVR, right? And so on demand webinars, however,

They offer this unbeatable convenience. Like people want to consume content when it fits their schedules, not in the middle of their hectic workday. So on-demand content really extends the shelf life of your webinars and makes them accessible anytime, which is a key ingredient to any marketer's arsenal. So the smartest approach is hosting webinars live and then cutting them up and putting them out there as on-demand. Or if you have a production, the production capability in a studio,

what we do is we actually record a separate on-demand webinar with our guests and put that out there. it's typically short, instead of like maybe a 45-minute webinar, it turns out to be 20 minutes long. It's much more consumable for people. And so that's been a big thing. And so we see a lot of people consuming our on-demand webinars. And you have to determine is, you know,

Pax (24:03)
Yeah.

Matt Murdoch (24:13)
somebody that does that, do they get the same point value as somebody that goes to a live webinar, right? So you have to balance that out. Maybe it doesn't have the same point value because they haven't given you that firm commitment of time. figure it out on your own. Like figure out which ones are working well and then, who knows, maybe there's a balance there someplace that you're just not aware of.

Pax (24:26)
and

Hmm. That's great. I hadn't considered them being different in value, but you're right. If this, this person's willing to make and keep an appointment and this one, you know, doesn't do that, then the first is going to be more, a bigger indication of like intent there. love that.

Matt Murdoch (24:52)
Yeah.

And I think it always goes back to they're watching this in a moment of need. Right. And so if they register, mean, certainly gate your on-demand webinars. If they register, that's their moment of need. Right. So get after them as soon as you can.

Pax (25:08)
Yeah. So with the, the world changing at a rapid pace, you know, AI is coming in and marketing is seeing so many shifts. it's, it feels like as things are moving at lightning speed, what would you say are some of your predictions about, ⁓ where webinars are going and some of the trends that you think people should be paying attention to as they build out their webinar strategy.

Matt Murdoch (25:31)
Well, I think there's a couple of trends happening right now. So one of the biggest trends that we should talk about is shorter snack size webinars, like little micro webinars. I think people's schedules and their patience is sort of rapidly shrinking. And a friend of mine just joked to me the other day, said, if your webinar lasts longer than my coffee, you've lost me. Right? So that's pretty funny. But I'm also not saying that long webinars don't have a place. They're not dead.

Like I just ran some webinars a couple of weeks ago. were 90 minutes long and they worked exceptionally well. So if you use the design principle I talked about earlier, you can really keep people's attention and engagement and you can actually give them a lot more value in so doing. So I think, I mean, there are, mentioned AI, there's a lot of amazing AI powered tools that are coming out on revised platforms, right? I don't want to get into the technology aspect of this, but

You know, there are automated Q and a there's intelligent chat bots. There's real time analytics. There's all sorts of AI powered things that are, that are coming. That feels straight out of sci-fi. And I think that's something we have to watch and use and leverage. These are new tools we haven't had before. And so how can we incorporate all of that in? ⁓ and then I think this is, is it going to kind of sound old, but it's evergreen content. It continues to dominate, right? We see more and more content created. It's.

It's the Netflix effect, it's real. And it's reshaping everything we do from webcast to podcast, like the one we're on today. So there's so much happening right

Pax (27:09)
Right. ⁓ that's such a great insight. I've been taking some notes about some of my favorite takeaways and, to wrap up, I'd like to leave our listeners with some of these takeaways that they can go and use today. one, calling people by name, like the, the, you call it the cocktail party effect, I think is a really great, great way of engaging people. ⁓ and there's something that, you know, webinars.

have a unique ability to do that other media don't. And if we don't take advantage of that, then really we're leaving, you know, engagement and money on the table. So I love that calling them by name, engaging them in verbal, visual and kinesthetic and the kinesthetic, you know, give them tests and polls, have them search something and report back and then getting them to stand up and move, which I think is a really great standout takeaway.

⁓ the 10 second rule, giving them 10 seconds to answer questions and just being comfortable with that silence, ⁓ writing compelling titles. I mean, it's so true that many people only sign up because it's such a great title. ⁓ and yet we kind of breeze past that and focus on a lot of the content, which is great that we need to focus on that. But if we don't have a good title, they're not signing up, ⁓ and then continuing to market to them. Once they register.

Identifying the registration as the indicator and moment of need rather than waiting for them to attend the webinar. Great. And then looking at smaller snack size webinars, as well as focusing and exploring evergreen content. Such a great rundown of where people should be thinking as they build out their webinar strategies. Matt, this has been super, super helpful. Thank you for joining and sharing some of your wisdom today.

Matt Murdoch (29:03)
Of course, Paxton, thanks for having me and let's be in touch.

Pax (29:07)
Yeah, so I do want to also ask one more thing. If someone wanted to engage and connect with you, how should they do that?

Matt Murdoch (29:14)
Yeah, LinkedIn is the best way to search for me, just Matt Murdock, M-U-R-D-O-C-H. I'm happy to connect and we can keep the conversation going.

Pax (29:22)
Okay. Awesome. Matt, thank you again for joining today. It's been a pleasure.

Matt Murdoch (29:25)
All right,

thanks, and thank you.

97FL (29:28)
Thanks for listening. The campaign is produced by 97th Floor, a 20-year-old marketing agency that helps companies like McKinsey, Pluralsight, and Checkpoint know their customers, execute innovative campaigns, and drive profitable growth. If you have an allocated growth budget and product market fit, we'd love to do research and build a proposal for you. Visit us at 97thFloor.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe. See you next time.