It was critical for the marketing team to communicate that Walker & Dunlop was still alive and well. The company had to let clients and prospects know that financing deals were still getting done and that they could count on Walker & Dunlop to be a voice of clarity and confidence in a market that was suddenly facing uncertainty.

The Challenge

Given the large sums of money changing hands, commercial real estate finance is an industry built on trusted relationships. Historically, sales teams across the industry relied on face-to-face client interaction to showcase their expertise, build trust and close deals at conferences, on golf courses, over dinners and wine and maybe even cigars. So, how could the company build virtual relationships — at scale — to instill trust and client engagement when travel and events had come to a complete halt?

Marketing identified several key goals to solve this challenge, such as:

• Continuing to display a confident brand and extending its leadership in core markets;
• Building awareness and fueling expansion for high-growth start-up divisions; and
• Providing marketing and sales support for financing and property sales teams across the country, spanning 250 brokers and bankers.

Walker & Dunlop’s CEO, Willy Walker, saw an opportunity to create a high-visibility weekly webcast that would help establish the company’s reputation as a thought leader in the commercial real estate space. To that end, he tasked the marketing team with “building our brand as big and fast as we can.”

The Solution

After recalling that Walker wanted the webcast released “next week,” Zegal turned to Folloze, a buyer experience platform, to help his team build out a series of customer-facing webcasts featuring Walker and empower Walker & Dunlop’s 200-strong sales force to turn virtual relationships into revenue-generating opportunities.

The plan was to create an integrated, multichannel program with Walker on a virtual center stage, interviewing high-profile guests such as governors, NBA stars, Harvard professors and leading economists. The goal with “Walker Webcast” was to generate buzz for the company’s role in commercial real estate financing, provide fresh perspectives, create inspiration and foster education for all types of personal topics, including how to be a better leader, live a healthier lifestyle and become a better citizen.

The webcast series was launched in less than a week, with Folloze as the content and engagement hub. Walker & Dunlop relied on Folloze Boards, which are blank digital canvases that help marketers build content-rich destinations and campaigns across the entire B2B journey. The Boards are designed to transform customer data, such as firmographic, buying stage and intent, into memorable buying experiences that guide buyers through each stage of their journey.

Zegal said the proof of how easy it is to work with Folloze Boards is that no one on the team even talks about it — “it’s seamless: You create graphics, drag and drop and it’s done.”

Walker & Dunlop also built social media outreach programs around the webcasts, created a large YouTube following and turned the webcast into a podcast.

The Results

The webcast became a weekly engagement touch point with clients, investors, recruits and employees — keeping Walker & Dunlop top of mind.

“The weekly series has become the biggest webcast in our industry, with more than five million views across all channels — and we’ve surpassed more than 100 episodes,” Zegal said. “Folloze makes it easy to manage and showcase a huge amount of content every week.”

Key results of the collaboration with Folloze, the “Walker Webcast” and adjacent materials include:

• The podcast landing in the top 3% of all business podcasts, in terms of downloads;
• 1,500 registrations the first week of “Walker Webcast”;
• More than 5 million webcast views across channels;
• “Winning multiple awards and receiving several accolades,” according to Zegal;
• More than 100 episodes published and counting; and
• 150,000 visitors to Walker & Dunlop’s Folloze Board to date.

“People come to us for our expertise with something that’s pretty complicated, so there’s an element of trust and familiarity involved,” Zegal said. “Engagement is critical with this audience. Folloze helps us project that reputation as a company that our clients want to work with.”

Thanks to data from analytics integrated into the Folloze platform via partner Demandbase, Walker & Dunlop also discovered a high correlation between engagement with existing and net-new customers with the brand program: 69% of existing active accounts and 64% of new accounts participated in the Walker Webcasts.

“Most significantly, $7.5 billion of net-new transaction volume in 2020 came from companies that attended the webcast,” Zegal said. “So, we gained share, and we became No. 1 in our market in that year — while others were struggling, we rose to the top.”

From a CRM perspective, Zegal said the webcasts have proven to be great conversation starters and a powerful re-engagement tool.

“We had one client that watched 40 webcasts,” he said. “People are engaged, and engagement turns virtual relationships into real relationships and real monetary value. It also changes the dynamic with our CEO — when he walks in a room during a sales call, his presence has a halo effect.”

Zegal said he also plans to roll out Folloze to additional account teams across the business to create destination sites with personalized content for key clients.

“One of the reasons we went with Folloze was that we knew that it worked within our ecosystem, within our tech stack,” he explained. “There is a lot of potential to expand what we’re doing with Folloze, help build better relationships and cross-sell into our key accounts.”

The post How Walker & Dunlop Launched A Webcast & Generated 1500 Registrations In 1 Week appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

One of the most popular people in our office, Sheri Butts, Marketing Manager at G3 Communications, had a lot to say on this topic at her recent session at Webinar World 2019. She offered a detailed checklist for teams looking to build out a webcast series. During the first part of her session, she highlighted the three main decisions webcast producers must make to get a program off the ground:

1) Decide The Theme

Like with any content strategy, understanding and building a plan around a particular theme is vital to brand consistency and ensuring the main messages and takeaways that want to be addressed are the highlight of the webcast series.

According to Butts, the main theme is what drives the entirety of the webcast series’ production schedule. “The theme is going to not only help you determine a cadence for your sessions, but also what some of those sessions are going to look like — what format you will use, who can tell that story, what content will support it,” Butts noted during her session.

2) Decide The Format

Butts shared three specific format types being leveraged throughout the industry, while also highlighting how they can be beneficial to an aspiring producer:

• The “Mini Series.” This is essentially a blitz of webcasts within a relatively short period of time. In the case of G3 Communications, its series are week-long events that host anywhere from one to three webcasts per day, for five days straight. “This model works because the theme of our series is pretty time specific,” Butts added. “For example, we have our annual Strategy & Planning Series that takes place at the end of October into early November. It centers around the ways marketers can assess their programs from the year that’s gone by and think about what they might need to tweak or change for the year ahead.”
• The “Episodic Series.” This is the most common format that we’re all accustomed to when we think of a series of any kind — such as TV talk shows or podcasts. “For example, LinkedIn started a webcast series called “Live With Marketers,” and their main motivation was that they wanted to break away from the standard talking over slides format and create a more personal experience,” Butts said. “So, they began a morning talk show by marketers for marketers to help humanize their brand. An episodic approach can help you build a sustained brand presence. It can also extend the life of your theme and continue to bring it back top of mind, since you can host quarterly, monthly or weekly episodes.”
• The “Virtual Event.” This is when you aim to simulate a live event, in which the webcasts are positioned more like sessions of a live event. “You might want to consider this type of series if your topic is very targeted, or if you are encouraging completion of all the sessions for some reason,” Butts added. “For example, a certification course, or an online class might benefit from this format.”

3) Decide The Session Topics And Speakers

Session topics and speakers should tie back to the main theme, as well as support your format of choice. Butts shared some suggested sources for identifying potential speakers:

• Clients, who can fuel case studies or panel discussions;
• Analysts/Experts, who can provide detailed research and industry trends;
• Influencers, who can offer expertise and perspective; and
• Partners, who may share a common interest, goal and/or following.

Butts also stated that while you’re concurrently thinking about your theme, format and speakers, you may also want to consider a piece of content (or multiple pieces of content) that you can reference throughout your series to help tie all your sessions together.

“For example, our Buyer Insights & Intelligence Series happens around the same time [Demand Gen Report] publishes its B2B Buyers Survey Report,” Butts noted. “We use this report to kick off the series; we start the series with a session that focuses on the findings of that report, we dive deeper into it, we examine it, we talk about what it might mean for revenue teams. And then throughout the series, we have various speakers from all different areas of expertise, leading back to that same report. They might be talking from a completely different angle, but each one will reference that report and explore how it’s affecting their role, their organization, their discipline.”

Of course, developing a good theme is just the very beginning. To help guide fellow webinerds through the comprehensive process, Butts shared an awesome checklist that dives into the nitty gritty of kicking off a series, planning out promotion, rehearsal and production, tactics for when the series is live, post-series follow-up, as well as ongoing measurement of campaign success.

And speaking of webcasts, you can catch one of Demand Gen Report’s series in action this month, by signing up for the Campaign Optimization Series: What’s Working In B2B Marketing, which will take place April 22-26.

What intrigues you the most about webinar series? Leave a comment below to let us know what your favorite webcast tips and tools look like.

The post The 3 Key Decisions To Webcast Series Success appeared first on Demand Gen Report.