So you’re ready to host your webinar! You already know that webinars are excellent for building your brand and generating leads, maybe you even know that for B2B webinars 73% of attendees turn into lead generation.
In other words, you know the power of webinars and you’re ready to share your expertise with the world!
But how exactly do you get those attendees in the first place? How do you get people to register? How do you promote a webinar?
Don’t fret, we’ll share 5 top tips to get you going on your webinar journey and keep those attendees rolling in.
1. Promote for prime time
This may seem obvious, but in order for people to come to your webinar, it needs to be easy for them. To begin your webinar promotion you need to start with your webinar, specifically the scheduling of your webinar.
When people contemplate going to your webinar, the first thing they want to know is, is it convenient for them to go? Do they have the time?
No matter what your webinar is about, if it's early in the morning, during work meetings or late at night because of different time zones - then your attendee will be a lot less likely to go.
Industry studies have shown that Thursdays, Wednesdays and Tuesdays are the best days - with midday being the best time.
Midweek webinars are good because they avoid the beginning and end of the week, when you're just getting back to work or are about to start the weekend. Midday webinars occur right after lunch, avoiding morning meetings and the end of the day slump. An added benefit of midday meetings is they can work for attendees tuning in from different time zones!
We get more into timing in this article here, but essentially - think about when you would be most likely to go to a webinar!
2. Have a solid landing page
So you’re working on how to market your webinar, but what do you do with potential attendees when you’ve caught their attention? You give them somewhere to go, a landing page.
A landing page is the place people interested in your webinar click to land on for access to more information. For example, someone may click on a hyperlink or a banner at the top of their webpage page in order to learn more about your webinar.
These clicks take them to a landing page, a page where they can learn more about the webinar and register for it. This page is your pitch to get people to sign up for your event, so treat it as such.
Why not try and elevate this page to have persuasive content and graphics with lively text to keep your audience on your page. You’re selling your webinar to possible attendees, you need to establish credibility, create hype via video terminals or social proof from past webinar attendees and funnel your clicks into emails.
In fact, 95% of purchasing decisions are subconscious according to Harvard professor Geral Zaktman - meaning if you want to get registers you need to appeal to people's instincts of trust and reliability.
An extra bonus? Create a branded template for your landing page that you carry through in your emails, social media posts and in your webinar platform. Something as simple as integrating your brand's colours can make a huge difference.
Did you know that colour improves brand recognition up to 80%?
Consistent branding across platforms has been proven to increase revenue by 23%! Consistent branding also keeps the event feeling like a holistic experience, rather than more scattered.
Another smart move? Include CTAs. A CTA is a Call to Action, think webinar banner ads or webinar posts on social media. Basically a CTA is any form of webinar advertising that encourages attendees to sign up and register for your webinar.
Multiple CTAs can work together to funnel the visitor into signing up for a webinar. Once they’re ready to sign up, make it easy for them. Make the sign up simple and keep the process smooth from beginning to end.
The landing page is where you introduce yourself, your webinar, your brand. In other words, you’re selling your webinar just as much as you’re selling your company expertise! So spend a lot of time and dedication making it just so.
3. Partner
If you want to know how to promote your webinar on social media, one marketing tool you’re probably already familiar with is using influencers. Influencers can make a huge difference not only the amount of people you reach, but the type of people. Influencers are such an effective way to market that by 2025 the influencing market size will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 32%!
A relevant industry influencer will reach your target audience specifically making those views more likely to sign up for your webinar compared to just sharing broadly across industries.
For example, if you’re hosting a webinar for sustainability in the transport sector, then you should enlist a relevant influencer or brand. An influencer should be someone with exposure and credibility. In this example they could be someone who blogs about new sustainable transport technology.
When this influencer shares your webinar with their readers, they will be reaching a target group of people already interested in what your webinar has to offer - making them more likely to register and attend.
To do this, reach out to the top influencers in your industry, and make it easy for them to promote the webinar, give them all the relevant text and visuals across social media platforms so that they feel more compelled to share your webinar.
Once they share your webinar on their social platforms, don’t forget to re-share their posts. This allows you to build on their credibility and to create hype for your event, as well as showing the collaboration and creating new forms of content for your own channels.
4. Email, Email, Email
Draw from your mailing list to send out catchy, fun invites to everyone you know and would be relevant to attend. While influencers are great at reaching target audiences, you still want to blast your webinar to your mailing list to really spread the word and show your value to your existing contacts, customers and community.
It’s pretty simple, the more people you reach the more people will register. For webinar emails are an especially powerful marketing tool. While the standard email open rate is 18%, webinar emails can have an open rate as high as 72%!
That being said, for big names, potential clients and customers you want to nurture it would be smart to send out a personalised email. These can be industry experts, potential business clients or long term clients.
Webinars are an incredible opportunity to grow your brand's value and nurture potential leads so it makes sense to spend extra time getting the big fish to make your webinar worth it.
Personalisation can be a big help in gaining or retaining new customers. A whopping 99% of marketers say personalisation helps advance their customer relationship!
However, sadly, there is no way to personalise every message. Though there are key tips to hitting your email list with a few different emails so that you can grow registrations over the course of a few weeks before your webinar.
Industry standards recommend that you start promoting your webinar 3-4 week in advance and increase promotion frequency as you get closer to your webinar. One industry study found that registrations went up 16% two weeks before the webinar, 69% the week of the webinar - with 33% of those registrations happening the day of the webinar!
So what does this all look like in practice? Well we recommend that your emails should follow this schedule:
1st Email: Introduce your webinar
Inform your readers of your webinar by sharing a blog post and include your first call to action. Include incentives, like handouts, PDF reports, training videos, Ebooks or even discounts. This is a great way to catch registers right at the beginning of your promotion process.
2nd Email: Introduce your speakers
Let everyone know who's speaking and why they should listen. Here you can give them a teaser of the webinar content while also creating credibility through your expert speakers and content.
3rd Email: A Reminder
People forget, it's natural. So remind your audience one day before your webinar.
4th Email: The last Reminder
Send this reminder an hour before, prep your audience and build hype for your webinar. After all, we know that over a third of registration happens on the actual day of the webinar!
5th Email: Say Thank you!
Be polite, thank your audience for attending your webinar and share the recording of the webinar. This is especially helpful for those who missed your webinar, and might make them more likely to attend the next one live!
5. Take advantage of the Internet!
Do you have a website? Social media accounts? Congrats you own some web property - now maximise it. Any open free space on your web property is an opportunity to advertise your webinar.
You can have banners, or popups on your website window inviting people to sign up for your webinar. If you hold multiple it may be smart to have a specific page dedicated to hosting and promoting upcoming and past webinars. This is a good way to create authority for your webinar and prove value.
But it’s not just your web pages that offer an opportunity to advertise, the internet is filled with discussion forums and niche communities. Find some that are relevant to your webinar and advertise there.
Avenues to find groups like this include:
- Public Slack workspaces
- Facebook Groups
- Reddit Forums
- Quora spaces
This is a great way to promote your webinar and grow organic interest in your brand as a whole. You should focus on increasing engagement across the web, this is the stage for your event after all!
So that's it folks! Hopefully we've got you fired up and ready to promote the heck out of your next webinar. Here at Tame, we offer free demos tailored to your webinar needs and personalised support so you won’t have to dive into this alone. Reach out to us and we’ll help you every step of the way.
References:
- Webinar Care: “39 Webinar Statistics 2022 – Effectiveness, Attendance and All”
- LiveWebinar: “Best time of day and week to host webinars”
- Inc.: “Harvard Professor Says 95% of Purchasing Decisions Are Subconscious”
- Forbes: “10 Marketing, Web Design & Branding Statistics To Help You Prioritize Business Growth Initiatives”
- GlobeNewswire: “The global influencer marketing platform market size to grow from USD 6.0 billion in 2020 to USD 24.1 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 32.0%”
- Campaign Monitor: “Ultimate Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2022: By Industry and Day”
- ActiveCampaign: “8 Emails to Include in a Webinar Email Sequence (Plus Free Templates!)”
- GoTo: “12 Secrets of Successful Webinar Promotion - GoToWebinar”
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