Last week, marketers from around the world gathered at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco’s Union Square to learn more about the increasing role of webinars in digital marketing. The second annual Webinar World, hosted by On24, featured keynotes by executives from On24, Forrester, Gimlet Media, Heinz Marketing, and TOPO Inc, and breakout sessions focused on webinar best practices, marketing strategy, and webinar execution.

Here were some major takeaways from the event —

Webinars Can Play A Role At Each Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

Presenters at 2018’s Webinar World showed a range of goals and strategies for their webinar promotion and content. One thing that stood out among these differences, was the ability to use webinars to engage people at each stage of the buyer’s journey. Each stage requires a different promotion strategy and a unique approach to live content.

According to Annie Lei, CRO of the live stream audience development platform AmpLive and presenter of “You’ve Planned The Perfect Webinar — Here’s How To Make Sure People See It,” top-of-the-funnel webinars should be eye-catching and distributed to new audiences. That way, you can capture the attention of your target audience on a large scale, increase brand awareness, and deliver your message to people who haven’t heard it before. Nurturing content, on the other hand, can be more technical and promoted to your existing contacts and followers. In general, technical content like product demos are better for people toward the end of the buyer’s journey, when they’re making a decision about purchasing your product.

Also Read: Webinar World TechBytes with Annie Lei, Chief Revenue Officer, AmpLive

Webinars Are Going Global

Alright, #Webinerds. It’s time for our #WebinarWorld 2018 award ceremony! pic.twitter.com/v7hLkcRcDM

— ON24 (@ON24) March 7, 2018

With tools like On24, lots of companies are finding ways to overcome the challenges of streaming live to people in other countries, and scaling their content across the globe. Oracle’s Karim Mokhnachi, VP of South & ECEMEA Marketing, argued for a stronger international webinar strategy in his session, “The Role of Webinars in a Successful Global Digital Marketing Strategy.” Through tools that provide easy subtitle uploads and “simu-live” event hosting, differences in language and time zone are no longer substantial barriers to reaching global audiences. When companies have to reach audiences in other countries, simu-live webinars allow for more personal interaction and engagement than blog posts, emails, or static ads can provide.

Also Read: Webinar World TechBytes with Aaron Dun, Senior Vice President, Marketing, SnapApp

Webinars Are A Valuable Tool for Account-Based Marketing

In the B2B world, reaching target accounts with is one of the most important challenges marketers face. Account-specific webinars can play an important role in teaching teams at larger companies how to use your product. They can also make companies feel like you value their business. You can even use your live content to put your company on the radar of professionals at target accounts that haven’t yet engaged with your content elsewhere. This is thanks to a new partnership between On24 and AmpLive, announced by On24’s CEO and CTO during their Keynote on Tuesday afternoon. The specific feature that will help marketers use live content to capture the attention of specific accounts is called account-based distribution. It leverages a massive data pool to make sure specific job titles at over 8000 target companies see webinar content while it’s live.

Also Read: Webinar World TechBytes with Amy Holtzman, VP, Marketing, Splash

Webinar Producers Need To Be Storytellers

In his keynote, “The Power Of Storytelling in a Digital World,” Gimlet Media CEO and Co-Founder Alex Blumberg walked the Webinar World audience through a series of snippets of interviews and finished produced audio. He argued that good storytelling has a rhythm with regular points of interest each minute, and displays emotional honesty. Good storytelling is what makes people feel connected to your content and keeps them engaged, but it takes time, editing, and a thoughtful ear.

Also Read: Webinar World TechBytes with Fred Isbell, Senior Marketing Director, SAP