Marketers can generate more leads from their webinar content when they offer presentations as downloadable resources for B2B audiences.

Webinars have become a popular way for brands to generate leads and establish industry authority, but they might be most effective when offered as downloadable online content rather than live events, according to a recent ClickZ survey. Only 16 percent of the 400 B2B consumers that were surveyed said they prefer to see live webinars.

The other 84 percent said they don’t mind watching recorded versions of webinars and are willing to sacrifice the real-time value of these presentations. This doesn’t mean presentations are less effective. On the contrary, brands can generate more leads when they record digital content and offer it as contact data bait.

“We’ve seen average attendance of our own live webinars drop from about 45 to 50 percent to about 35 to 40 percent over the past year, but we’re getting three to five times that number of leads from the recording,” Anita Wehnert, product strategist at webinar solution ReadyTalk, told the source.

Webinars are the most valuable component of 19 percent of brands’ content marketing strategies this year, according to the BrightEdge 2013 Search Marketer Survey. This was listed along with social media strategies, blogs and news articles, infographic content and surveys.

Overall, the survey revealed marketers’ plans are becoming more complex to keep up with consumer demand. Search marketing success is no longer achieved by publishing keyword optimized articles – it requires strategic plans that deliver compelling information across a variety of channels.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.