8 Effective Ways to Promote Your Webinar and Increase Attendance!

Are you planning to host a webinar soon?

73% of B2B marketers said that webinars are the best way to generate high-quality leads (Zoominfo).  Unless you want to be the only one showing up in your upcoming event, it’s crucial to promote it to increase attendance rates.

After all, webinars no longer benefit from the novelty factor. I now get the same number of webinar invites as tasks on my to-do list. Don’t try to guess.

Before starting the promotion phase, some general guidelines can support you on what will come next.

What Is a Webinar/Webcast?

A webinar (often called a webcast) is an online seminar or workshop conducted live over the internet.

The host, which is you, manages the event and invites participants. These participants are usually fans of your work already, from your blog, social accounts, or email list.

What is it about a virtual event that makes it so appealing? Hosts, as well as attendees, may be located all around the world.

Be Educational

To run a successful webinar, you need to provide value to your audience and educate them.

That could be on a new product you think they might like, a service, or a tool you’ve made to help streamline their workflow.

Whatever it may be, you need to educate these people on it. Then, they will feel like they haven’t wasted their time with you and your webinar, making them more likely to interact with you and your brand in the future.

Communication Is Key

Webinars are great ways to scale your brand and touch base with more of your audience. Some of these people may have never heard your voice or seen that beautiful face of yours!

Even if your idea for a webinar is fantastic, if you don’t make sure that your points are in order and your slides are smooth, your webcast will not succeed.

Make sure you do a trial run in front of a friend to help get the kinks out before the big day.

Most Importantly, Be Entertaining!

All great webinars are entertaining.

You might have some of the best SEO information, digital marketing advice, or copywriting tips to offer. 

But if you don’t deal with this information in a fun and exciting way, your audience will fall fast asleep.

It can be pretty hard to find the balance, but just remember, you’re talking to like-minded people.

You ARE the audience, so create a webinar that YOU would like to spend your time watching.

And don’t be too salesy.

Yes, the chances are that you’re advertising some course or product, and that’s the whole reason behind the webinar. 

But if you act like a salesman, your audience will treat you like one.

Hint: No one likes salespeople!

Deliver the information they’ve come for in a fun manner, and your webinar will be a success.

Webinar Promotion: General Guidelines

First of all, start your webinar promotion as early as possible! A month or two before the event would be ideal. This will give your target audience enough time to organize their calendars and make arrangements to attend.

Second, create a catchy and attractive title for your webinar topic. This is the first thing webinar attendees will see, so make sure it’s captivating. Have a designer work with you to create attractive thumbnails and graphics.

And third, don’t ignore the marketing strategy behind your next webinar. You wouldn’t be the first fascinating live webinar with only a few attendees.

Now to the meat of things, here are some of the most effective ways to promote your webinar and get higher attendance.

•  Build an Optimized Webinar Landing Page

Building a webinar landing page is a great way to boost webinar attendance. 

However, make sure it is optimized for sign-ups, where you can collect emails from your target audience.

The registration page should be mobile-friendly, so your potential customers can quickly sign up for the webinar using their smartphone or tablet.

Also, ensure the website includes all the webinar event details such as time (and time-zone), date and duration, external speakers, and the webinar content summary.

The design and structure of your landing page are crucial to maximizing attendance and sign-ups. 

And obviously, the webinar registration form should be easy to find to boost registrations. Here is a great example. 

Once all the relevant information is complete, you can promote your webinar landing page everywhere! That could include on your website, social media, on flyers you give to customers, or you could even attend a convention with your own stand and promote it that way – if that sounds like a good idea, take a look at some event stand ideas to people notice you and you can give them the information.

*As an additional webinar marketing strategy, you can add a video on your webinar’s landing page explaining why users should attend it, content from previous webinars, and even a couple of testimonials highlighting specific pain points that were solved.

•  Write an Engaging Blog Post on Your Website

Apart from the webinar landing page, publishing a blog post teasing your upcoming webinar is a great marketing strategy to increase the number of attendees and even reach a broad audience through Google searches.

What do we mean by engaging? Make sure you use compelling copy. Write in a personalized manner, and be sure to craft headlines that get right to the benefit of the webinar and why they should attend. Don’t ramble. Use bullet points to break up the text and include plenty of graphics.

If you want to take things a step further, you can create a content calendar around the main topic of your webinar and launch a blog-post series. This is also useful in post-production for an SEO benefit and to get more views.

Don’t forget the clear call-to-action in each of your blog posts. Make it clear where they can sign up for your webinar and why they should.

•  Leverage High Ranking Posts

Continuing on from the previous point…

Utilize already well-ranking blog posts!

You might already have high-traffic posts that talk about the topic, so use them to your advantage! Consider including internal links to the webinar page and adding a call to action (CTA) at the bottom.

You may also try placing the CTA inside the body of your material to catch readers’ attention at the very start of the article, especially if your audience might not read all the way through.

You could place banner advertisements across your website. Particularly on the homepage, to bring even more people to your webinar that might otherwise miss it.

•  Set-up a Workflow With Reminder Emails

I believe there’s only one thing worse than having zero sign-ups. It’s having a list of sign-ups that forget to attend your webinar! Ouch.

The only way to avoid this is to send multiple reminder emails to your registrants for all your upcoming webinars. Use the email addresses collected on your landing page and set up an automated email marketing workflow that sends out several emails before your forthcoming webinars.

A good rule of thumb is to send at least four emails before the event (including a thank-you email) and increase the frequency of the emails as the time comes closer.

Here is a quick workflow I put together:

4a) Email Workflow

It takes some trial and error to get a good email workflow in place.

While the below email flow might not be perfect for you and your email list, it’s a great one to build off of:

• 2-3 Weeks Before: The Invite
  • This is the beginning of your email campaign and should function similarly to your landing page. It should tell your recipients what the webinar is about, what they’re going to get out of it, and when it’s happening. And most importantly, an easy way to register.
• 1 Week Before: The First Reminder
  • Registrants: This email should be used to remind anyone who registered for the webinar. Just like the previous email, mention what it’s about, what they can expect to learn, and when it is happening. Get personal if you want to, say how you’re looking forward to speaking with them, etc.
  • Non-Registrants: You should also remind these people about the webinar. But in this one, you could also ask why they haven’t signed up yet. This will give you insight into your next webinar as you’ll get helpful feedback like the time doesn’t suit them, or the topic isn’t interesting.
• 1 Day Before: The Second Reminder
  • This email may be a little much for non-registrants, but it’s always worth a go to get the last few signed up for your webinar.
• 1-2 Days After: A Thank You Email
  • Registrants: First off, thank registrants for signing up for the webinar and attending. The rest of this email is up to you. I would recommend including a full video recording so they can watch it back (and if anyone who signed up but didn’t attend can watch it). You could also encourage them to share it with other like-minded people. And, of course, if the purpose of this webinar was to sell a course or product, you’ll want to talk about it/link it here.
  • Non-Registrants: This one’s really up to you. You might annoy non-registrants if you send them another email. But from experience, to sweeten the deal, I always give them an option to watch the recorded version if they’d like to. This way, although you might be initially annoying them, you’re at least providing some value and could even gain a new customer in the process.

•  Share Your Webinar on Social Media

If you already have a social media following, let them know about your upcoming webinar to help boost attendance rates. All social platforms are great for webinar promotion. Don’t forget to lead your audience directly to the registration page.

Include a catchy headline and a summary of the webinar topic on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, etc. You can also use images to grab attention and increase webinar attendance.

Don’t forget to throw in some relevant hashtags! 

Keep in mind that each social media platform will call for its own method of webinar promotion. On Facebook, for instance, you can be more playful; with LinkedIn, more professional. Instagram is where you can let your graphics shine!

•  Email Your Existing Subscribers to Help Boost Webinar Attendance

Another great way to resume your webinar promotion is by emailing your current subscribers within your database. They are more likely to attend as they are familiar with you and your business.

But don’t just beg for them to sign up, write content in the days running up to the webinar to create hype around it, and make sure to touch on topics that you’re going to be talking about.

Doing this will also give you a great way to promote your webinar every day without coming across as if you’re on your knees begging your audience.

And you’re providing free content while doing this. Also, think about where you’re going to be sending these subscribers.

You can either direct them to the landing page (and ask for their email again) or use a trigger link that immediately adds them to your list.

•  Ask Your Attendees and Creators to Share the News of Your Upcoming Webinar

After someone signs up for your webinar, incentivize them to share and bring in more registrants to help with webinar promotion. 

Some attractive incentives you can offer are the recording of the webinar, the presentation slides, a coupon code for the next purchase, or even the chance to submit questions to the speakers. 

You can incorporate these incentives in one of your webinar email sequences!

Let your speakers or co-hosts know that you can help them, share it with their following and their network by offering them assistance with some of the tools mentioned in this post. As the saying goes, “A partner in creation is a partner in promotion.”

•  Customize Your Email Signature

I don’t know how many emails I send per day, but they’re not just a few. A great way to increase webinar sign-ups is by including a quick reference in your email signature about the upcoming webinar. 

Quick and effective.

And best of all, you don’t come across as pushy as it just naturally appears at the bottom of your emails – something your audience is going to love.

Conclusion

Webinar promotion and registration can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. There are many ways to get the word out regarding your upcoming webinar. But if you start with these eight, you’ll be on the right track.

By building an optimized landing page, writing a blog post about your webinar, setting up reminder emails, and sharing it on social media, you can increase the reach and attendance of your upcoming event. And don’t forget to ask attendees to share it with their friends – that can help too!

You can always use content writing masters, like Strategically, to help you automate the process of webinar promotion. This agency offers a suite of SEO optimization, digital marketing, and content writing tools to help you promote your webinars, increase attendance and help you succeed!