Have Webinars Replaced Roadshows And In-Person Meetings For Investor Relations? Ask Skyline Corporate Communications Group, LLC

Many public companies seem to know that how you present your industry position or communicate your current business model and revenue is often instrumental in how investors view your company. 

This puts a company’s investor relations (IR) team at the forefront of communications initiatives.

Not only are company IR teams called upon to develop strategies around brand and operating performance, they also are instrumental in handling complex communications issues — some of them negative — regarding performance and financial standing.

Because the investor community is such a vital element to a company’s growth and support, the ability to provide updated and transparent communications with them can end up being key to developing trust.

An IR Team — In-House Or Outsourced?

The second question for many companies is whether to bring their IR team in-house or outsource the work. Outsourcing IR teams has been fueled partly by the current national economic conditions and the high cost of adding new employees. Don Duffy, president of one of the nation’s largest IR firms, told Business Insider that paying his firm an annual retainer generally costs half as much as hiring a full-time IR person. 

“There’s been a trend toward newly public companies getting assistance,” Duffy said. “It speaks to the incredible value of outsourced IR.”

Webinars are also seemingly becoming a key element in delivering timely information to investors and shareholders and driving business. According to software and services review site Findstack.com, around 73% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers think they can get high-quality leads using this platform. There are also more B2B companies using webinars than there are business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, with 61% of B2B companies using the tool compared to 7% of B2C. 

Common webinar vehicles such as those offered by companies like ON24 Inc. ONTF, Zoom Video Communications Inc. ZM, LogMeIn's LOGM GotoMeeting and GotoWebinar and Adobe Inc.’s ADBE Connect have proliferated — especially during the pandemic.  

A Personalized Webinar Experience  

But many companies are also looking for a more personalized experience. Skyline Corporate Communications Group LLC (www.skylineccg.com) reported that it launched a new proprietary branded live webinar event, providing public companies with what they are touting as a convenient and effective forum to communicate stories. The Skyline-branded webinar is designed to reach a diverse audience of financial professionals through live virtual presentations from CEOs.

Skyline says it offers a suite of multilingual outsourced IR services, providing (non-legal) counsel to designated officers and employees of the company that relates to financial markets and exchanges, competitors and other capital markets — the company has a reputation for providing advanced assistance in introducing, building and maintaining relationships with company supporters, including institutional investors, sell-side analysts and retail investors.

The Skyline Signature Series webinar is by invitation only, and participants include current and prospective shareholders, institutional and retail investors and buy/sell-side analysts. Skyline states that it offers the ability to participate in the Skyline Signature Series to its full-service investor relations clients and as a stand-alone service to qualified public companies not currently clients.

Rather than just introducing a new webinar platform, Skyline says it supports its presenting companies before and during the event — on the day of the live event, participants have a Skyline host who introduces the presenting company and speaker’s biography and run a narrated question-and-answer session at the end, making it easier for presenters to focus on answering questions.

Skyline says its team has worked with more than 100 U.S. public companies from around the globe across diverse industries and various market caps and also has extensive experience with shareholder activism and crisis communications. 

For more information on Skyline Corporate Communications Group, LLC, go to www.skylineccg.com. 

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Featured photo by Paul Einerhand on Unsplash