Webinar Marketing: 7 Ways To Attract Attendees

If you have a service-based industry or if you sell information products, then there is a great chance that at some point, you’ve considered webinar marketing as a tool. Hosting a webinar is a super smart way to build trust with your audience, win over new prospects, and convert followers into buyers. In short, webinars work!

‍Here are just a few reasons why webinars work

Webinars are engaging

It opens up a dialogue between you and your audience. Many webinars are real-time, which increases trust. This is a huge benefit if you are a coach or a consultant because prospective clients will want to get a feeling for who you are and how you share information.

They give you a chance to extend your platform and spread your message

We live in a short soundbite clip type of world where we’re all trying to squeeze as much information into tiny posts as often as possible. Sometimes, you need a better way to engage your audience, and webinars provide that to you. With a webinar, you generally set a timeframe upfront. So your audience is prepared to settle in and learn, and you’re don’t have to compete for their attention as much as you would if you were sharing a social media post.

They are insanely valuable to your customers

The telltale sign of a great webinar is how much someone learned from you. Most webinars are set around a specific topic and are aimed at helping a customer solve a specific problem. So as the webinar host, you know that you are attracting an audience that is right for your service or course. And for your viewers, they know they will walk away with some solutions. (So make sure your webinar is actually jam-packed with knowledge and solutions!)

They work across the entire customer journey

Webinars can work with every lead you have, no matter how they’ve engaged with you in the past. Whether they are brand new to you or they have been a long-time follower, they can benefit from learning more from you.[sc name="ad1"]If you’ve ever been terrified at the thought of hosting an extensively thought-out webinar to one attendee or you’ve ever struggled to attract sign-ups to your webinars, then we have everything you need to know about how to host a webinar!

How to create a webinar

Find a “why” for your webinar.

This one is incredibly important and, often forgotten! Why are you hosting your webinar? There are many reasons to host a webinar:

• Reach a bigger audience
• Grow your email list
• Promote a new product

You have to know why you’re hosting a webinar and what you hope to get out of it.While you’re at it, be sure you have built all the existing like, know, and trust factors within your audience so that the webinar will actually help you reach your goal. For example, you may want to create a webinar to sell your new course, BUT if you haven’t built an existing social media audience or an email list, then you’ll be trying to sell to a cold audience. You can still host a webinar, but you might want to adjust your goals so that you’re increasing brand awareness, growing your following, and building trust.

Come up with an enticing title

Your webinar title is a major influence on whether or not your audience clicks to even learn more about your webinar! It’s the headline of every piece of communication and marketing material, and it communicates the value of your webinar.

The best webinars will solve a problem or teach your audience something new. Your audience will want to know how your webinar helps them before they consider registering for it. Consider common problems your audience struggles with, the solutions they want, and the common questions they ask.

Then you need to turn it into a catchy title! Great webinar titles are clear, concise, and specific.

Would you register for “A Few Things That Will Make Your Emails Better”

‍Or would you register for “10 Easy Tricks That Will Improve Your Email Marketing Open Rates”

‍With the second option, it’s clear what to expect from the webinar and what results you will see.

A few simple formulas for choosing a webinar title will make it much easier to find the right name!

‍How To’s

‍How To webinars immediately tell attendees what they will learn, and they present you, the webinar host, as a boss who is an expert in their niche.

‍Numbers

‍Concrete numbers give attendees a clear sense of what they will learn in your webinar.

‍Niche Audience

‍In a niche audience title, you clearly define your audience and use it to attract their attention. For example, “Pinterest Hacks for Mommy Bloggers.”

‍Timeliness

‍This webinar title is all about relevance and timeliness. For example, “Tax Season Tips for Entrepreneurs” or “2019 Social Media Marketing Trends.” It’s perfect if you are showcasing the most up-to-date knowledge or if there is seasonality in your industry.

You can use any one of these formulas, or you can mix and match them to find the one that best fits your webinar, its goals, and your audience!

Webinar marketing: how to promote a webinar

Once you’ve decided the goal and subject of your webinar, it’s time to get promoting. Here are some of the best ways to promote your webinar:

1. An email list

Being able to email your webinar attendees before and after your webinar is crucial for its success! That means you need an email list or an email marketing tool.

‍With your email list, you can:- Promote your webinar. Sharing an email address is a larger show of trust than clicking “follow” on a social media platform, so your email list will probably provide a greater opportunity to attract attendees. If they already receive your emails, then they already know a little bit about who you are and your expertise. Since they already know and trust you, they are more likely to want to sign up for your webinar and learn more from you!

- Email reminders before the webinar. Remember that your audience is busy, and your webinar might slip their mind! We recommend sending email reminders one day prior and one hour before your webinar start time.

- Email post-webinar. Your attendees might have to leave early or they might arrive late so emailing a recording post-webinar can provide the value even if they aren’t able to attend live!- Email follow-ups if you make an offer. If you are using your webinar to promote a special offer, then you should send email reminders about your offer and how fantastic it is! You can use emails to provide more details and to remind attendees if your offer is expiring.

The good news is you can automate many of these emails, specifically those pre and post-webinar. If you don’t have an email list, don’t worry! Webinars are an excellent way to build your email list.

2. Create a descriptive landing page

A landing page will give your potential attendees some more detailed information on your webinar, and you can use it to capture email addresses and names of registrants so you can build your list and remind attendees about your webinar. We use Demio to host our webinars and they have landing page capability built-in but you can also create a page on your website or use a landing page software like LeadPages to create this.

On your landing page, be sure to include:

• Title
• Date and time
• Description of your topic and what your attendees can expect to get out of your webinar.
• Who is presenting and some background on the speaker
• Any extras or bonuses you’ll be offering! Use mystery to build excitement around this so your attendees will want to show up live!

3. Promote it on your website

Don’t let your website visitors miss out on your webinar. You can add an announcement as a pop-up or in the “News” section of your site. We love using HelloBar to promote upcoming webinars. It’s a sleek way to add an announcement without overpowering your website.

4. Add a call to action on your blog posts

If you are regularly sharing value-filled blog posts, then invite your blog readers to sign up for your webinar with a simple call to action at the bottom. A strategic way to do this is to write a blog post with a topic related to your webinar. If your blog readers are interested in that topic, they will be interested in your webinar!

5. Use social media

Your social promotion strategy needs to be just that - a strategy. Plan and schedule your updates across relevant social media channels and repeat 'em at regular intervals for maximum exposure. (Hint: Edgar can do that part for you!).Remember that many of your followers won’t see your post the first time you share it, so follow the old rule of “write once, promote twice.”

If you are a MeetEdgar user, you can create a specific category for your webinar and add it in with the rest of your content. This way, you know that you won’t be overly promoting your webinar, but you’ll still be consistently sharing about it.

Social media videos can also be extremely effective for promoting webinars because using a video gives your followers an idea of how you share information. When they watch your webinar, they’ll be watching you, so give them a sneak peek with a video!

Tease out reminders, build anticipation with supporting content, and thoughtfully schedule distribution (80% other valuable stuff, 20% promotion is a good rule of thumb).Rally your army of advocates (aka your team and your partner’s posse, if you went that route) to spread the good word to their network.

6. Partner it up

Teaming up with a partner outside your organization can help rake in the attendees if you’re smart about it. Make sure your webinar buddy is relevant to the audience and topic, provides a unique perspective, and will bring it (and then some).

Double thumbs up if you can land a guest webinar host with some clout. Triple thumbs up if they can promote the webinar to their followers and database of contacts (heck, if they aren’t willing to promote on their end, they probably aren’t the right teammate anyway. This is something they should be excited about, too!)

7. Time it right

Hosting your webinar at 7 p.m. on Saturday night might be convenient for you, but if it doesn’t mesh with your target group’s schedule, what’s the point? Consider time zone, typical work hours, and holidays when locking in a date and time.(In our experience, if you’re up against any holiday with taco dip and margs, the webinar will always lose).Ideal time varies for everyone, but studies show that Wednesday and Thursday are the best days of the week to host.(We tend to agree - we opted for a Thursday with our last webinar, Less Work, More Traffic, and it was a hit.)

However, if you're still unsure, ask people on the registration form for their preference via a few dropdown options, then set the timing based on the most popular response.

‍Keep spreading the word

‍Nope, not done yet! If you’re going to hit that attendee goal, you need to pull out all the stops.

Promotion of the big event doesn’t necessarily mean spending loads of money, but it will require time and strategic thinking.

Your Post-Webinar Action List

After the webinar is done,  it's time to upcycle it!

• Download it as a video and make a checklist of the main things you've learned.
• Cut it up into some smaller clips that you can use for videos on social media.
• Take snapshots, screenshots of some of the slides that you can reuse.

These upcycling tasks ensure you're capitalizing on all the hard work you put into the webinar and create more content for social media.

Test different strategies

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all promotional strategy, so consider a hybrid of options that will best satisfy your audience

Webinars can be one of the most effective marketing tools for solopreneurs, so why not give them a try? Follow these steps, and we’re sure you’re going to see success from your next webinar.