We've written a lot about webinars, using our anecdotal research based on what we hear in the market and what we see posted on the GovEvents' site. This year's Market Connections Federal Media and Marketing Survey provided some hard numbers that back up the growth in webinars we've been seeing.
Market Connections has been surveying federal employees for seven years to get a pulse on where and how they get news and information to influence buying decisions. This year's survey of 3,400 had some great news about the rebound of the federal events market as well as some interesting insight into online events.
Webinar attendance continues to rise year-over-year. In 2011, nearly half of the respondents said they had not attended a webinar that year. In 2015, two thirds of respondents reported attending one to three webinars annually. But even more important than attendance numbers are the engagement numbers.
27 percent of respondents listed webinars as one of their most trusted sources for content. In fact, webinars ranked higher than editorial content. This tells us the federal community is looking to webinars as a viable source of learning and are not just turning them on, but tuning them in. In a deeper dive, Market Connections found that decision makers ages 45 and up are the most engaged in webinar content.[Tweet "The federal community is looking to webinars as a viable source of learning. #GovEventsBlog"]
Further bolstering the relevance of webinars is federal decision makers' use of streaming media. More than one third of respondents are using streaming media services, signaling a comfort with and access to online video and multimedia.
But the value of the webinar does not end when the user closes their browser on the event. The only content source that was ranked higher than webinars in the category of "most trusted" was "white papers and case studies." Think about ways to repurpose the content delivered in webinars into white papers (or vice versa) to get two very credible avenues for the same message.[Tweet "Think about ways to repurpose content delivered in webinars. #GovEventsBlog"]
For more details on the report findings, visit Market Connections' site.
