That sound you keep hearing… you know, the one that keeps interrupting the conference call?

That’s an experienced marketer chortling at the term “content marketing” every time s/he meets someone who think they’ve bumped into something new.

The truth is many marketers have long held to the idea that marketing should have some real value, real substance.

“Content marketing” is the popular colloquialism of late, and while over the years many other terms have meant the same thing, as Juliet opined of Romeo, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” And it is popular with good reason:

Today’s consumer is in charge, and their favorite means of informing themselves is search.

Juliet, meet the webinar program.

Webinars offer distinct benefits which I’ll not recount here, but webinar programs actually achieve a “force multiplier,” a physics term that suggests that a combination of tactics produce better results than those tactics individually.

To be sure, I’ve met some folks who simply knock it out of the park with individual webinars (which isn’t “wrong”), but when webinar programs meet content content marketing, some additional benefits occur.

Eight ways webinar programs can create more value

1. Approach: single webinars are often “one-offs,” while programs better enable overall content marketing strategies
2. Style/form: single webinars usually are one-size-fits-all, while programs better enable multiple webinar types targeted to the needs of the sales cycle
3. Promotion: single webinars tend to be interruption-oriented “direct to registration” events, while programs also enable webinar-to-webinar promotion and SEO-friendly aggregation
4. Content: single webinars often try to cover much content, while programs make it easier to cut through the noise, targeting different audiences with topical precision
5. Risk: evaluation for single webinars is often “all eggs in one basket,” while programs mitigate occasional underperforms with a portfolio approach
6. Leverage: promotion always takes time and effort, but in a portfolio, many efforts can be complimentary, enabling force multiplier effect over time
7. Metrics: single webinar reports happen in isolation, whereas evaluation of trends, relative topic value, and changes in registration and attendance response rates come to light when comparing more than one
8. Leads and data: too many individual webinars focus on “just a name/contact info” lead generation, missing an opportunity to gather deeper data and progressively profile audiences over time

If you’re curious, the “how to” for transforming webinar programs into content marketing powerhouses is something I’ll cover in this webinar. *See* you there!