ANN ARBOR – Most companies already know webinars can work. The numbers back it up.

According to industry research, 91 percent of B2B professionals prefer webinars as a way to consume business content, while 73 percent say webinars are one of their top sources for high-quality leads. Even more compelling, webinar leads can cost a fraction of traditional trade show leads—roughly $72 per lead compared to $800 or more for major events and conferences.

Yet despite those numbers, many webinars fail.

Attendance is weak. Engagement disappears halfway through the session. Follow-up never happens. And whatever momentum existed often vanishes within days.

That disconnect is exactly what ChannelSales.Pro and The Channel Crew say they are trying to solve with a new webinar strategy aimed at helping companies turn webinars from one-time events into long-term lead generation systems.

“We don’t just run webinars,” said Rick Beckers, CEO of ChannelSales.Pro. “We build multi-week content systems that attract, engage, and convert your target audience before and after the event.”

Instead of treating webinars as isolated marketing exercises, the company is building what it calls a “multi-week content engine” designed to create awareness before the webinar, deepen engagement during the event, and extend visibility long after it ends.

The initiative is being developed and executed by longtime Michigan media and video professionals Mike Brennan and Matt Roush, who are helping structure the editorial, production, moderation, and visibility strategy behind the campaigns.

The goal is to blend journalism-style storytelling, targeted digital marketing, and professional video production into a turnkey webinar system that companies can deploy without having to build the infrastructure internally.

Why Most Webinars Fail

According to the Channel Crew strategy documents, the problem is rarely the webinar topic itself.

The bigger issue is execution.

The company identifies several common failures that plague many B2B webinar campaigns:

  • Poor audience targeting
  • Weak pre-event promotion
  • Generic messaging
  • Lack of structured content
  • Minimal follow-up
  • No ongoing visibility after the event ends

In many cases, companies send a few promotional emails, post once or twice on LinkedIn, and hope people register.

The result is predictable: low attendance, limited engagement, and little measurable pipeline impact.

“We keep seeing companies invest in webinars, content, and partner programs without generating the pipeline they expected,” Beckers said. “The opportunity is there. Most organizations just don’t have a system behind it.”

The Channel Crew model attempts to reverse that by stretching a single webinar into a 6-to-10-week campaign that includes video content, LinkedIn targeting, webinar moderation, follow-up videos, and ongoing audience engagement.

The “Content Engine” Strategy

At the center of the strategy is a pre-webinar video series.

Instead of immediately promoting the webinar itself, the campaign starts by focusing on business problems channel organizations already feel.

Topics include:

  • Why channel programs fail to generate pipeline
  • Why partners aren’t engaging
  • Why webinar attendance struggles
  • Why content fails to convert into leads

The strategy is designed to build familiarity and trust before the webinar invitation even arrives.

By the time prospects see the registration link, they have already consumed weeks of related content.

The company believes that repetition is critical.

“Repetition builds familiarity. Familiarity builds trust. Trust drives attendance,” Beckers said.

LinkedIn Becomes The Distribution Engine

A major piece of the system revolves around LinkedIn targeting.

Rather than broad awareness campaigns, the webinar series focuses on highly specific business audiences, including:

  • VP Sales
  • Channel Directors
  • Partner Managers
  • CROs
  • CEOs of smaller organizations

Industry targets include:

  • SaaS companies
  • Telecom providers
  • MSP ecosystems
  • Channel vendors

The idea is straightforward: the tighter the targeting and the more consistent the visibility, the higher the quality of webinar attendees.

Brennan and Roush say the strategy borrows heavily from newsroom audience-building techniques, where repetition, consistent messaging, and ongoing visibility are used to build authority and trust with readers and viewers over time.

Extending The Webinar Beyond The Event

One of the more interesting aspects of the strategy is what happens after the webinar.

Instead of ending the campaign once the webinar concludes, the system continues with post-event content that repurposes the discussion into additional thought leadership pieces.

That includes:

  • Follow-up videos
  • Answers to top audience questions
  • Biggest mistakes identified during the webinar
  • Key takeaways and next steps

The goal is to transform a single webinar into multiple weeks of ongoing engagement.

In effect, the webinar becomes less of an “event” and more of a centerpiece within a broader content and lead-generation strategy.

A Shift Away From Traditional Trade Shows?

The timing may be significant.

As trade show costs continue rising and digital engagement becomes increasingly normalized in B2B sales, many companies are looking for alternatives that offer lower acquisition costs and more measurable ROI.

Webinars are attractive because they:

  • Scale easily
  • Generate reusable content
  • Reach remote audiences
  • Produce measurable engagement data
  • Require lower investment than major conferences

But many companies still struggle to operationalize them effectively.

That’s the gap The Channel Crew believes it can fill.

Bigger Than A Webinar

Perhaps the most important insight behind the strategy is philosophical.

The Channel Crew argues companies should stop thinking about webinars as standalone marketing events altogether.

Instead, they should view them as recurring content ecosystems capable of building visibility, authority, trust, and pipeline over time.

“You’re not selling a webinar,” Beckers said. “You’re building attention, trust, and ultimately pipeline.”

And in an increasingly crowded B2B marketplace, visibility may matter more than ever.