If you’re a professional who knows your way around social media and online spaces, chances are you’ve stumbled upon a webinar promotion or even been invited to one.
Suppose you’ve ever asked “Why are there so many webinars?”, consider Thinkific.
The brand wanted to break free from Black Friday noise but still make an impact, educate its audiences, and drive sign-ups. What did it do?
Using Demio (a webinar tool), it clocked paid conversions and proved ROI with a single webinar boasting 3821 registrations for the event, 866 attendees, over 384 conversations during the webinar, and over 50 immediate paid conversions.
It’s no wonder why marketers love webinars.
More than 95 percent of marketers consider webinars as an effective marketing strategy (to attract, educate, and even have audiences convert during webinars).
Some marketers (at least 57 percent of surveyed marketers) host up to 50 webinars annually.
According to Outgrow.co,
- The average attendee score of a marketing webinar is 44 percent.
- 73 percent of B2B marketers and sales leaders consider webinars as the most effective method for generating high-quality leads
- 92 percent of professionals are convinced that webinars are an effective way to engage sizable remote audiences.
How do you promote webinars in the first place?
How do you bring in the first line of visitors to even sign up for the webinars? (Attendee statistics, engagement, and conversions will come in later).
A combination of advertising and email marketing is the fastest, most effective, and largely controlled way to promote webinars.
Learn how to harness these two and you have a potent weapon in your hands.
We’ll show you the five steps to setting up your webinar funnel.
Create ads with urgency and social proof
The first step is to create ads for your webinar. To do it well, you have to think of:
Objective: Drive webinar sign-ups
Traffic source: Google? Meta? LinkedIn? Reddit ads? This depends on your audience and where they spend time.
Angles for ads: The copy for ads can take various angles. You could write copy with prominent testimonials by previous customers or take the “myth-busting” route, as Thinkific did. Alternatively, you can simply promise to “teach something”.
The ads: Create ads in pairs so that you can split-test these campaigns.
Some marketers (at least 57 percent of surveyed marketers) host up to 50 webinars annually.
Let’s take Thinkific as an example again (source: Demio). Thinkific took the myth-busting angle and ran an ad on LinkedIn promoting their webinar.
The subject was why online courses are still much needed. It was targeted to aspiring online course creators, influencers, and businesses who wanted to add an academic angle to their marketing efforts.
Create a simple landing page with clear instructions
Unbounce, a leading landing page builder software company, always suggests a “message-matching” approach to building landing pages.
The angle you use for your ad and the message on the ad is the start of the story. This story should continue on your landing page with the sole intent to drive conversions.
For Thinkific's example, this masterclass webinar by Aaron Morin reveals the truth about course-selling for creators and busts some myths along the way.
Landing pages are custom-built for each webinar and tied to the ads. Notice that there’s also a promise to send a recording of the webinar (even if someone can’t attend). We’ll come back to this later.
Create a thank you page to engage them further
As soon as a potential attendee signs up for the webinar (providing details such as their name and email address), the landing page redirects to what is often called a “thank you” page -- an interstitial page that acknowledges your action and can also be used for:
- next steps
- Instructions
- upsells and cross-sells
The below image is an example of a webinar sign-up thank you page (with thanks from Leadpages).
The thank you page acknowledges the webinar registration, shows a countdown timer to show you when the webinar starts, and instructions for you to follow to ensure attendance.
Send reminders before the beginning of the webinar
It’s a great idea to send email messages as reminders before your webinar starts.
One of two emails before the webinar would ensure a higher attendance rate.
Reminder emails are simple email messages that provide clear instructions on how to join the webinar, and the necessary steps to take (Download software? Connect audio and video? Take notes? Join a community?).
Here’s an example of a reminder email from Drip for a live coaching webinar. Notice a link to have people join a Facebook community as well.
Follow up automatically with webinar recordings
After the webinar ends, sending out the recording of the webinar is a terrific way to not only engage with all of your participants but also re-engage with those attendees who couldn’t make it to the live session.
Here’s an example of how Wistia, a popular video hosting service, sends out emails to automatically send webinar recordings after the event ends.
Notice how they keep the email simple, with a thumbnail for the video event right inside the email and links to additional resources.
Webinars, when you do them right and consistently enough, can be a powerful source of engaged audiences, high-quality leads, and sales (instantly during the webinar, and later during lead nurturing emails).
Do you conduct webinars? Does your marketing team swear by it? What are your thoughts?
FAQs
1. How can I promote my webinar through email?
To promote your webinar through email, send a series of well-timed emails, starting with an invitation, followed by reminders as the event approaches. Make sure to highlight the benefits of attending and include a clear call-to-action to register.
2. What’s the best way to promote a webinar using ads?
You can promote your webinar through targeted ads on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google. Focus on the value of the webinar, use engaging visuals, and make the registration process easy with a direct link.
3. How far in advance should I start promoting my webinar?
It’s best to start promoting your webinar about 2-4 weeks in advance. This gives you enough time to build interest, send reminders, and ensure maximum attendance.
