What does it take to run a truly scalable, customer-centric webinar strategy inside a large organization?
In the final episode of our B2B webinar mini-series - we go behind the scenes of the B2B webinar engine at Fidelity Investments with Steve Jones, Director of Employer Marketing, and Lauren Franklin, Senior Manager, Channel Marketing & Events Specialist. Steve leads work in social and paid media, as well as events and webinars. Lauren leads the strategy and execution of planned sponsor and advisor facing conferences and webinars.
Their webinar program is built on structure, strategy, and serious results.
Steve and Lauren share how they’ve built and scaled a high-performing webinar strategy that aligns with both marketing goals and customer education. From implementing a detailed 68-step planning process to navigating compliance and live delivery.
Watch the full episode below or keep reading for the key discussion points from our fantastic conversation.
A webinar program tailored to unique audiences
Understanding their audiences’ needs is critical to Fidelity’s success at juggling several successful webinar series at a time.
Lauren takes us through the journey from running two webinars, Fidelity University and TPA Today, when she first joined the team, to now running multiple webinars throughout the year.
Each series is audience-specific, shaped around the unique needs of each group. It was this understanding that led the team to create In the Loop, a twice-monthly webinar series focused on keeping employers, benefits advisors, and HR professionals updated on the latest trends, best practices, and insights in workplace benefits.
Alongside these, Fidelity also runs smaller, one-off webinars throughout the year to address mid-funnel topics.
How do they choose topics?
To get people interested in your webinars, take the time to figure out what topics resonate best with your audience. Also pay attention to your speakers and know which speakers naturally tend to pique your audience’s interest and which need a little bit of support.
The big lesson here: don’t treat your audience as one group. Tailor your webinar series to their distinct goals, challenges, and expectations.
Why live webinars?
Running live webinars, or any form of live online video content, can be daunting!
In our recent blog post and podcast episode, The Top 5 Most Asked Questions About B2B Webinars, Amy and Hayley shared lots of tips and advice on handling issues that can arise with live webinars - specifically when the dreaded tech goes wrong!
Steve and Lauren share the reasons why Fidelity runs live webinars and how they manage to do it successfully.
First, compliance is easier to manage live.
Second, for transparency. In an industry where trust is everything, live webinars can help you come across as more transparent to your audience. Your audience will connect with you better when they don’t feel like you’re hiding anything behind the edits. This is great for building trust.
Third, real-time interaction and audience engagement. With Q&As, polls and reactions built into webinar sessions. Questions are also collected during registration and shared with the speakers to give them time to tailor their responses.
From an audience perspective, what a great opportunity to have direct access to Fidelity and industry experts.
TOP TIP: Lauren shared a clever engagement tip - she joins webinars as an attendee and uses reactions like thumbs up or clapping hands to prompt the audience to engage as well. A simple way to get engagement flowing is to show people how and lead the way!
Never under-estimate the planning process
Lauren shared how she has brought consistency and structure to the webinar program, including introducing a 68-step planning process.
Lauren’s plan covers everything from registration site approvals and speaker outlines to compliance reviews and slide decks. This includes roles, timelines, approvals, and so on.
Having a precise schedule for the live webinar itself can help avert chaos on the day. A schedule that not only works for your partners and attendees, but also for your team, can be a real game-changer
Of course it’s not about how many steps you have, but it is about documenting and streamlining your process to bring about consistency, quality, and scalability.
We love this and can completely relate! We run our own webinars and support our clients with running theirs, we know first-hand how powerful strong planning is. Our ClickUp cards look like we’re planning a mission to Mars!
Planning and structure don’t stifle creativity - they create the freedom to deliver at scale and respond to changes and requests quickly.
We dive deeper into the topic of planning webinars in episode 334 of The Content 10x Podcast, called How to Plan a B2B Webinar.
Balancing Marketing with Customer Education
For many B2B marketing teams webinars sit in the mid-funnel marketing box. Fidelity has flipped that. They’ve positioned webinars as top-of-funnel education.
By pairing webinars with social and email promotion, Steve explained how this creates “surround sound” communication that drives awareness while showcasing thought leadership.
The result? A program that serves marketing KPIs while genuinely helping audiences learn, stay informed, and solve problems.
Measuring What Matters
How do you measure success when you’re running dozens of webinars a year? Lauren and Steve discussed tracking:
- Invite-to-attendee conversion rates
- Live engagement (Q&A, reactions)
- Replay views (a fast-growing metric)
- Post-event email engagement
Importantly, they connect these with business outcomes such as advisor engagement and sales penetration.
It’s not just about webinar metrics in isolation - it’s about proving impact on broader organizational goals.
Handling Compliance at Scale
If you work in a regulated industry, you’ll know the challenge: every webinar needs compliance review. For Fidelity, transcripts can run 30-50 pages.
Everything, including the webinar registration sites, decks, and sometimes the speaker scripts and outlines, go through a compliance review before the webinar goes live.
Their solution? Preparation and education. Speakers are briefed upfront on words and phrases to avoid. That reduces back-and-forth later and makes compliance a true partner in the process.
Some team members who aren’t used to being monitored by compliance may struggle with what not to say during webinars. Having clear guidelines can help ease the pressure (and of course you can always edit out the parts where speakers use the wrong words!)
The lesson here is universal: involve compliance early, set clear expectations, and treat them as collaborators rather than blockers.
How to Repurpose Webinars
Our favorite topic - content repurposing.
One of the many reasons why we love webinars so much is because they present so many repurposing opportunities.
For Fidelity, live delivery may be the focus - but the real long-term value comes from repurposing.
Webinar replays have become a cornerstone of the strategy, with thousands of views from their audience who couldn’t attend live.
An event hub is a great way to store past episodes of your live webinars. It provides an avenue for people who couldn’t be a part of the live event to become a part of your audience regardless. Lauren and the team at Fidelity have seen thousands of views on their replays by building out event hubs for people who missed the live show to still get in on the action.
Webinars are a goldmine beyond replays: short video clips, blogs posts, written guides, and more.
That’s exactly what we specialize in. In fact, we’ve helped Fidelity streamline replay editing, compliance checks, and wider repurposing, ensuring their webinars continue to deliver value long after the live event ends.
For more on webinar repurposing check out episode 336 of The Content 10x Podcast - Repurposing a B2B Webinar.
If you’d like help with repurposing your webinars, we’d love to speak.
Tips for starting your own B2B webinar
Webinars are an essential part of every B2B marketer’s toolkit, and 91% of B2B marketers agree. If you’re looking to start a webinar series Steve and Lauren’s experience leaves us with some powerful lessons:
- Document your process (it doesn’t have to be 68 steps, but it should be consistent).
- Listen to your audience and use their feedback to evolve.
- Invest in data analysis early, even if it starts manually.
- Break down silos between marketing channels to maximize impact.
- Repurpose strategically to keep your webinars working long after the live broadcast.
The Fidelity team has proven that with strategy, structure, and scale, webinars can be far more than just virtual events. They can become a customer education engine and a powerful driver of B2B marketing success.
It’s about planning everything down to the last detail, looping in compliance teams early, and constantly improving based on audience feedback.
Thanks for reading. We hope you found this helpful, let us know on LinkedIn.
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