Blogcast
Prefer audio? Listen to the blog article instead.
We’re all busy and have screen time and virtual meeting burnout, so enticing folks to attend another webinar takes some convincing. In fact, the average attendance rate for webinars is just 40-45% of registrants. There are lots of great resources out there covering the nuts and bolts of creating webinars, but if no one shows up, even the best webinars fall flat.
How can you promote your webinars to maximize attendance and engagement?
Email it
Send your webinar invitation by email to your contact list. I recommend starting at least two weeks before the date. Include all the basics: title, topic, speaker information, highlights of what you’ll cover, date and time and a link to your event sign-up form. Beyond simple details of what you’ll cover, try to include a value proposition, something like, “You’ll learn how our customers are generating a 100% ROI in just two months.”
Send another email one week before the webcast and yet another the day before since 29% of attendees won’t register until the day of the event!
Land it
Create a landing page with the webinar’s unique URL and include that link everywhere you promote the webinar. When a potential attendee clicks the link, it will bring them to the page where they can register for the webinar. The page doubles as an SEO tool helping promote your topic and surrounding keywords.
Hone it
Consider varying the value proposition included in your email messages based on what you know about the contact. For example, if you’re hosting a webinar about “AP Automation,” the value proposition for accounting managers could be, “Automate time-consuming manual tasks.” For the CFO, the value proposition might be, “Gain visibility and control over expenditures.”
Co-brand it
Co-branding your webinar with a marketing partner can increase your audience and boost attendance. Use both companies’ logos on all promotional emails, landing pages and social media. You might consider partnering with a vendor whose products you represent or another channel partner that carries complementary solutions. There are multiple ways to pull this off — you could tag-team the presentation, break it into sections each of you drives or ask the partner to host a Q&A section following the presentation.
Socialize it
Promote your webinar on all your social media channels and be sure to include the link to your landing/sign-up page. I’d also recommend you continue to promote the webinar via social media afterward, linking to the video on your company website or YouTube. Here are some other tips for maximizing your social media presence.
Influence it
Reach out to influencers in your professional community to see if they’ll help spread the word to their clients. Also, consider posting the date in online forums you (or your audience) participate in. And don’t forget influencers within your own organization — make sure all team members are helping notify their contacts about the event and promoting it on their personal profiles.
Blog it
If the topic warrants a webinar, it likely warrants its own blog article. Use your company blog to help promote the webcast and vice versa by promoting the blog in your email invites. By building out content (including webinars and blogs) surrounding topics of interest to your prospects and customers, you’ll not only boost your SEO standings for the topic keywords, you’ll help establish your firm as a leader on the subject.
Face it
Consider promoting your webinar with some in-your-face tactics like a hello bar/banner bar or an exit-intent popup on select pages of your website. You could even create a brief teaser video where your webinar hosts promote the event and share that video through social media.
Syndicate it
Make sure you get the most out of your webinar by syndicating your content. Syndication means taking the content and reformatting it to fit other marketing channels. After the event, repurpose the recording as video content. Send the video to everyone who signed up to attend – whether they attended or not. Next, upload the video to a Resources section on your website and YouTube to stretch your content. We recommend you gate the webinar content to capture leads. Consider turning the content into a whitepaper or a blog series and even cut it up into bite-sized bits for use in your social media marketing efforts.
Track it
It’s important to track metrics surrounding your webinar as the metrics can help you do an even better job promoting events next time. Most webinar platforms allow you to track basic metrics such as:
- How many people registered?
- What were the top sources of registrations?
- How many people attended?
- How much time did they spend watching the webinar?
Webinars are an ideal marketing tool to help generate qualified leads and engage them by providing real value. However, they require time and effort to create, market and host so make sure you maximize those efforts by enticing the largest, most engaged audience.
Join me next time when I’ll share some key tips for maintaining a “clean” CRM. Until then #HappyMarketing!