Streaming in the European B2B Space: The Next Big Opportunity

Webcasting is the first step on the journey for most businesses, as this can simply leverage pre-existing material and package it for consumption online rather than in a real-world environment. This gives companies the opportunity to cheaply and effectively communicate market leadership, brand values, and CSR beyond the boundaries of an event. While not cannibalising the audience for real-world events (attendance figures to such events remain constant since they offer important networking opportunities), this model simply increases the reach of the event.

Web briefings tend to be adopted early in this journey as well, as they require less commitment of resources due to the fact they involves the simple leveraging of existing thought leadership/positional material that can be presented by a key member of the organisation.

Web seminars require considerably more work and commitment from the organiser, as while they do not necessarily involve the creation of brand-new material they do require existing resources to be adapted into a suitable script for a standalone programme. The standard interactivity available through most web streaming platforms—Q&A, polls, and surveys—enables stakeholders to interact live with participants who would be unable to meet them in person and vastly improves the retention and impact of the programme.

With a live broadcast using any of the three formats, there is a greater level of both risk and reward. The risk comes from the inability to edit live programming, while the potential reward comes from the increased interactivity live programming offers to the audience. Therefore, few businesses will attempt to produce web seminars until they are internally comfortable with the processes involved in webcasting or web briefing.

Previous company experience in web streaming also offers the ability to apply existing return on investment (ROI) models to this new application, which can considerably ease the task of getting internal buy-in for the activity.

BT: Case in Point
This progression is clearly demonstrated within BT, which has moved from case studies and sharing best practices to the development of proactive programming to engage their key stakeholders. BT is using online programming in the form of web seminars to complement its new technology events by producing content based around key product issues facing its Small Medium Enterprise customers and partners; e.g. the Service Provider group, a collection of businesses who sell products based on BT’s Broadband offerings. The online programmes are billed as interactive discussions around particular topics, ranging from outsourcing to international collaboration, and are used to strengthen BT’s thought leadership credentials.

Real-world events continue to be used as an important forum for BT, but these online programmes have the power to reach far beyond the scope of the in-person events and be accessible to people across the UK and beyond.

The content is in the form of a discussion programme lead by a presenter and features guests from external organisations to contribute their real world experiences, as well as BT’s own internal experts. Users watching live are able to answer polls, the results of which are then fed back directly into the programme and discussed amongst the guests. Questions can also be submitted by the viewers and are answered during the programme by the panel.

The key benefit for these kinds of events for BT is that they enable key stakeholders to interact with experts in a particular field who would not necessarily be accessible or available for a real-world event. It cuts the amount of time that the viewers themselves have committed, as it takes considerably less time than attending a real world event.

It also enables BT to build an archive of on-demand content that has been built into a knowledge library, to which key stakeholders can be referred at any time. The various topics can also be revisited once technology has moved on and the programming is out of date.

The statistics have been very impressive. The viewership statistics for the live programmes have been in line with the number of attendees for similar in-person events. However, the on-demand viewership for these events is many times the viewership of their real-world counterparts. In addition, of those watching live 65% interact with the programming by taking part in polls or submitting questions, enabling BT to gather intelligence on their stakeholders needs and concerns. “These events complement our real world events by expanding the audience able to attend,” says Neil Faber, web service programme manager at BT Business. “The level of interaction the web seminar programme is enabling us to have with the audience is allowing us to expand the audience we can communicate with effectively and create content which has a long life span.”

Just the Beginning
This is just one example of an increasing trend across business to use direct web programming to engage supply chains by setting up dedicated channels which offer direct communication to these key stakeholders by providing live and on-demand programming.

At the current stage the B2B streaming market is just beginning to take off. The types of companies currently exploring these platforms and classes of communication fall into the usual categories: technology-based businesses and businesses that have significantly dispersed internal audiences who are already consuming streamed content over the corporate intranet.