Maybe you’ve taken our advice and created a killer webinar event that you can be proud of.
How will you get the most out of it?
In this article, we’ll share best practices for webinars and give you eight tips on how to market a webinar for the best results. Learn how to attract the most attendees, create different kinds of content that can also stand alone, and flesh out your reputation as a thought leader in your industry.
1. Create a killer landing page
An optimized landing page for your webinar event serves a couple of purposes. First, you want to design it for the potential registrant.
Include detailed information about the topic, the speakers and their credentials, and the date and time of the webinar, and include a form for easy registration.
The most persuasive content here is a paragraph about how they can enhance their knowledge by attending—how to ease a company pain point or solve a management challenge or improve business or support employees. The list is specific to your webinar topic, of course. This is what’s going to motivate potential attendees to register.
Second, you want to direct potential registrants to your webinar landing page as a call to action in all your marketing efforts for your webinar event.
After someone registers, send them a confirmation that they’ve saved their spot for your event, thank them for registering, reiterate essential information like date and time, and include a link to the live webinar.
Consider encouraging them to ask initial questions or give input on things they need help on in relation to your topic—you can make your webinar even more relevant by addressing it if that makes sense.
If you simply want to gather information about your webinar audience, you can include an open-ended question on your form such as, “Why do you want to attend our webinar?”
2. Spread the word in your email signature
Put your own email signature to work for you immediately by including the webinar landing page link. If your company uses email to contact prospects, you’ll be reaching people outside of your regular database.
3. List your webinar on an event site
Whether free or for a fee, an event listing site will promote your webinar to people looking for events like webinars to attend. Free listing sites include Eventbrite, TellOnline.org and WebinarKhoj.com. Sites like Eventful let you search for events in your area—great for mobile users. Still others list events by industry or cater to specific markets, such as All Tech Conferences.
4. Use your blog
If you have an established blog, you’re already talking to potential registrants for your webinar. Write an article that announces your webinar event and topic and includes all the essential information and the reasons why people should attend, with a CTA that links directly to your webinar landing page.
Expand blog coverage by writing articles specifically on your webinar topics, then include a CTA to register for your webinar event. Or add a webinar CTA to relevant blog articles that you’ve already published. The CTA could appear at the beginning of the article, bringing attention to the new information.
5. Collaborate with partners and co-market your webinar
Finding collaborators to partner with on your webinar will likely double your marketing efforts. By leveraging two unique audiences, you can attract as many high-quality leads as possible to register. Invite a like-minded business owner to join your webinar panel. They can not only co-promote the event, but they can also talk up the topic and the event on their own blog.
6. Leverage your own website homepage
Give your webinar prime real estate on your digital presence by creating a lead magnet on your homepage. Great lead magnets are short, specific, valuable to your target audience—and usually give immediate gratification.
Along with the chance to sign up for your webinar, give your prospects a “prize,” such as an informative tip sheet, an infographic on a relevant aspect of your webinar topic, or an exclusive how-to video or celebrity message.
7. Write those social posts now
All this collateral you’re creating to promote your webinar? Tell everyone about it on your social media outlets. Increase your reach by posting on company pages, personal pages and relevant group pages. Consider paid social ads to increase awareness.
8. Create a comprehensive email promotion campaign
Successful email promotion campaigns use a series of targeted, timed email blasts to help you get the word out about every aspect of your webinar event. From the initial invite and reminders leading up to the event to the link information, the thank-you for attending and the offer of more exclusive materials such as webinar recordings, whitepapers and the like—email gets the message right in front of registrants whether they attend your webinar or not.
Email promotion campaigns usually last at least two weeks. Emails are sent more frequently closer to the event date and should continue after the webinar has occurred.
11outof11 for webinar marketing
When you want to leverage best practices for webinars, connect with 11outof11. Request a complimentary call with an 11outof11 expert. Contact us to learn more.