If you’ve ever developed, produced or promoted Webinars, you know they can be very labor-intensive (and stress-inducing) campaigns when managed in-house. Not including the cost of the actual technology (e.g. WebEx, audio) and developing the presentation content itself, how much would you pay for an agency or events company to manage the entire Webinar process – including expert creative (email, landing page), online registration, tracking and CRM integration, automated email follow-up (confirmation, reminder, thank you for attending) plus live event management? What price level would make you consider outsourcing the process to a vendor?
Assume for the purposes of this poll that in addition to the services provided you have the reasonable expectation of higher registration and attendance from outsourcing. If you already outsource this service, please indicate what price range you currently pay per event.
Don’t be cheap, be honest! Poll responses are anonymous and confidential. Comments also welcome.
Hi Howard,
If it’s just the creative and management, probably on the lower end, $5K. You haven’t included here the cost of any guest speakers. Analysts like Forrester, Gartner, and even lesser-known experts get expensive. Also there’s the cost of list purchases if it’s not just in-house. So if I also had to pay a full-service agency to manage, that probably breaks the bank.
If, like me in my corporate past, you already have a talented online marketing person in house, these events are not as difficult as you think. There are a lot of decent alternatives to the big, expensive Webex that your attendees may find a lot friendlier.
The hardest part of a webcast is producing quality content and developing good SME presenters. It is harder than one thinks to give a preso to a phone line. If you have these two things and a competent online staff you can run a stellar webcast program for much less than $5K hard cost.