How Can Animal Health Brands Turn Veterinary Webinars Into a Lead Gen Machine?

Veterinary webinars offer an absolute treasure trove of lead-generation opportunities. They give you the ability to double-, triple-, or even quadruple-dip when used as a full-funnel campaign, rather than just a one-time quick-hit lead-generation tactic. Long-format webinars can be repurposed into ebooks, checklists, quick-reference guides, video snippets for social media, testimonial quotables for email, and more. 

Webinars with the strongest lead-generation potential combine a relevant clinical topic, a credible Key Opinion Leader (KOL), targeted promotion, and structured post-webinar nurturing. Continuing Education (CE) can increase registration appeal, but is not necessarily the most important driver of webinar success. If your veterinary webinar topic is interesting, you won’t need CE to attract an engaged audience.

How are Veterinary Webinars Different from Other Industries

In some industries, webinars are a nice-to-have. Maybe they’re an easy way to do a group product demo for markets that want to talk about products head-on. 

In animal health, webinars are absolutely essential. This discerning buyer group requires a strong understanding of products before they are willing to take the next step to chat with sales (which they prefer to do 1:1, NOT on a group demo webinar).

Webinars have been an effective way to engage and educate veterinary professionals for well over a decade. And guess what? They’re still working today. Sure, maybe we ask more poll questions and use engagement tactics that were harder to do back in the day, but high-quality education will never go out of style with this group.

Why are Veterinary Webinars so Essential for Lead Generation

Veterinarians who are willing to spend 30-60 minutes of their time (more on ideal webinar length later) are much more qualified than those who download a cheat sheet from your Meta ads. Webinar leads should be considered middle-of-funnel because of the time required to consume the content.

Webinar content can also serve as a long-form piece that can be easily broken down into shorter formats for use across multiple channels (this is the double-, triple-, and quadruple-dip we were talking about). From a single webinar, you can develop:

• eBooks

• Checklists

• Quick-reference guides

• Video snippets for social media (paid and organic)

• Testimonial quotables for email

• Summary blog post

All these smaller-format pieces can be used as part of a comprehensive lead generation campaign, helping you connect with prospects at different stages of the buying journey.

During webinars, you can also poll the audience and ask questions to help inform future webinar topics, or to re-purpose as your own first-party research (which the AI Overlords looooooove!).

Connect Your Brand to KOLs to Establish Clinical Credibility

Partner with recognized expert key opinion leaders to boost your credibility. Strong KOLs, especially the kind willing to cross-promote your webinar, can also increase registration numbers.

KOLs should focus on educating attendees, not giving a sales pitch. We’re going for credibility, right? So even if your webinar isn’t CE-approved, treat it as if it is.

Webinars Create Measurable Intent Signals

One of the standout advantages of webinars is their ability to generate measurable intent signals. Various indicators can provide insights into participants' interests and engagement levels, such as registration topics, professional roles, practice types, live attendance, poll responses, submitted questions, resources downloaded, clicks on calls to action, and on-demand viewing. 

These data points lay the groundwork for effective lead scoring and further engagement, allowing brands to tailor their follow-up strategies effectively.

Webinar registration forms can also be longer than forms for downloading a checklist or other short-form content. These expanded forms allow you to ask key qualifying questions or even ask the registrant if they would like a demo or more product information. This key information can support the sales team in prioritizing leads post-webinar.

Does a Veterinary Webinar Need to Offer CE?

Nope. Someone told you that without CE, your webinar is no good? Well, we very respectfully disagree. Sure, CE gives that next-level credibility and can attract additional registrations, but those who attend a NON-CE webinar have something valuable… legitimate interest. They don’t even need to be lured in with CE!

Don’t let lack of CE approval get in the way of producing outstanding educational content. Besides, after you air the webinar, you can always get CE approval on it later for live delivery at a different time or for on-demand CE if you’ve got a learning management system to facilitate CE delivery.

We host at least a dozen non-CE webinars a month, and they really work.

Veterinary Webinar Pro Tips

• How long should an animal health webinar be?
  30-60 minutes. Veterinarians expect webinars to be long-format because they’re looking for a deep dive.

• How far in advance should an animal health webinar be promoted?
  Webinars require at least 2 weeks of active promotion. If you plan to use Meta to drive registrations, ideally allow for 4 weeks of promotion time on social media.

• Should all webinar attendees receive a sales call?
  Attendees who ask for more information or show high purchase intent should be prioritized. Those who were attending solely for educational purposes should be provided with additional training to prepare them for future sales outreach.

• Can a veterinary webinar continue generating leads after the live event?
  Absolutely. An on-demand recording can continue generating leads as long as it remains gated, searchable, actively promoted, and connected to an appropriate follow-up sequence.

• Where should an animal health webinar be promoted?
  Promotional channels include: organic social, paid social (with the proper custom conversion event setup), in-house email, partners, sales team, third-party media (Clinician’s Brief, VPN, DVM360, NAVC, etc.)

• Does a webinar have to be live?
  No, simulated live webinars are quite common. Simulated live webinars allow you to record the content in advance, reducing opportunities for technical errors or presentation hiccups.

• Is a webinar different than a Zoom meeting?
  Yes, webinars require registration (this is how you collect leads), and they allow the organizer to control participant muting to ensure a smooth presentation experience.

• On average, how many people show up for a live webinar?
  In animal health, approximately 33% of registrants usually attend the webinar live. This is why offering the content on demand after is crucial.

• Will my repackaged content perform as well as the webinar?
  In some cases, we see repackaged ebooks and guides perform even better than the webinar, and they often have a longer life span than the live webinar, too.

• What is an average CPL for an animal health webinar lead?
  The cost per lead (CPL) is highly variable by topic; the hotter the topic, the lower the CPL. On average, webinar CPL from paid sources ranges from $10-$35; we have seen CPLs from paid social for hot topics as low as $3 per lead. Use these benchmarks to decide how much budget to spend promoting your webinar.
  

Need help getting the most out of your webinar? Red Brick can help.

Planning a veterinary webinar but need help turning the event into a full funnel lead-generation campaign? Our team has been producing webinars since 2010, that’s…a LOT of webinars. We can help advise you on the best topics, promotional plan, KOLs, timing, and content repackaging opportunities to help you get the most out of your webinar.