After much deliberation, you have decided to host a webinar. You worked tirelessly to finalize the topic, speaker, and content. You did it!
But how do you get the word out? You hope that people will find out about it organically, but that doesn’t always work to what you would like.
To ensure your hard work pays off, you must have the right promotion strategy that drives people’s curiosity and wants them to register.
Benefits of Promoting a Webinar
Drive Conversion: As per ReadyTalk, 20-40% of webinar attendees become qualified marketing leads. So, the more people attend your webinar, the more conversion you get.
Position as an Expert: The moment someone signs up for your webinar, they already consider you an expert in your field.
Make Sales Sans a Hard Sell: The most effective webinars sell while they teach, as their content showcases problems and solutions and delivers value to attendees.
Communicate with Big Groups: A webinar allows you to converse with hundreds of people simultaneously. Further, it also means finding prospects in places not gone before without ever leaving your office.
Engage Attendees: Webinars offer an excellent platform for attendees to ask questions, chat, express opinions, and participate in live feedback.
Read more about the benefits of webinar marketing.
Ideal Times to Promote a Webinar
It may sound like the alignment of the stars, but there is a system behind hosting the event on certain days of the week and at certain times.
Right Day: Tuesday
Statistically speaking, 24% of all webinar registrations occur on Tuesdays. However, that does not mean the rest are irrelevant. After Tuesday, Monday comes second, with about 17% registrations, followed by Thursday at 16%. Wednesday and Friday account for 15% and 14% of registrations, respectively.
Right Time: Early in the Day
Most webinar sign-ups happen in the morning's early working hours, i.e., 8 am to 11 am. 8 am is the time there is a clear spike in registrations. So, send your registration emails early to make it the first email anyone sees when they reach work in the morning.
Ideal Webinar Day: Thursday
Thursday is the preferred day for webinar attendees, with Tuesday and Wednesday not far behind.
Ideal Webinar Time: Late Morning/Early Afternoon
Sessions held between 8 am and 3 pm lead to strong registration rates. You can experiment with these time slots, as most registrants prefer a webinar before lunch. 11 am is the ideal time for maximizing the registrants.
Bonus: Promote in Advance
To host a successful webinar and have a large audience, ensure you get the word out two to four weeks ahead. The reason: about one-third of total registrations occur in this time frame. The largest spike, with almost 70% of the registration, occurs in the final week and on the day of the webinar.
Effective Ways of Promoting a Webinar
Whether it is a Hello Bar, an exit-intent pop-up, or a teaser video, there are many ways to spread the word for your upcoming webinar.
Let’s check out the ones you will find handy before you begin hosting your next:
1. Make It a Regular Calendar Feature
To make webinars a part of your regular calendar feature, organize each of your webinars as a slow sequential build-up of relevant, meaningful content. This way, your audience will eagerly wait and sign up for its sequel.
2. Broadcast on Your Properties
Some of the ways you can advertise your upcoming webinars on your site include:
Page Features: Add any upcoming webinars to your website's Resources or Events pages. Create this section in case of none, or create a dedicated webinar page if you plan to schedule webinars regularly.
Hero Banner: A hero banner on your homepage is another way of drawing attention to your webinar. Include the same banner in your blog too.
Confirmation/Thank You Pages: Connect with those curious about your products or content by advertising your upcoming webinars on pop-ups and follow-up landing pages.
Selected Content: You can also write content related to your webinar on your blog and include the webinar’s landing page link there.
3. Email
When email drives almost 80% of webinar registration, it cannot be too far behind in its promotion.
Craft personalized messages for your key clients with a little help from your sales team. The added individual attention will be much appreciated as part of your promotional strategy. Further, your sales team will also regard the client visibility in your campaigns and the marketing support.
Most webinar technology providers allow you to create email sequences and automate the process. Further, maintain a certain workflow for webinar promotion via email. The one mentioned here provides its framework, which you can customize based on your needs.
The First Invite
Send this email two weeks before the webinar. It should also contain all the details – what it is about, when it will be held, and a CTA to register.
The First Reminder
Send a reminder a week before the webinar. You can break this email into two based on who you are addressing:
- Those who clicked on the last email but did not register
- Those who did not click on the initial invite at all
Ask for feedback and their reasons for not registering.
The Second Reminder
This is optional as it could be a little too much for some of your contacts. However, it is always worth testing the waters and seeing if you still have a chance.
The Thank You Email
This is one of the most important emails of this workflow, right after the invite. Again, separate this email into two with one for:
The Attendees: Send a recording of your webinar to your registrants. Ensure they do not have to fill out a form to access it and share the next steps, like social links, e-books, offers, etc.
Don’t forget to add UTM tags to these links and bring registrants to a landing page before they can access that recording.
The No-Shows: Send the webinar recording to those who couldn’t attend. Share a link to the landing page created for the webinar recording to measure and record conversions.
4. Email Signature
The other place in your email where you can mention your webinar is your email signature.
5. Social Media
Social media is a force too powerful to be ignored for your webinar promotion. Reason: your followers are involved in conversations and know your online community.
The first basic thing you need is a landing page. Further, optimize it for social media sharing, making it easier for your followers to share webinar details.
You can optimize your landing page for social media by adding share buttons. This is because it leads to a 7 times increase in the number of shares for a given page. The more social proof displayed, the more the landing page visitors would consider your webinar unique and not-to-be-missed.
The other things to keep in mind:
Optimized share message: Tailor each social media post according to the individual platform. One way to stay ahead in this promotional game is to pre-write the updates along with the right visuals, as the latter can increase engagement.
Social optimized thank you pages: You can also add the share buttons to the thank you page. This is where the registrants will be redirected once they sign up for the webinar.
Once you have taken care of these factors, your next step is to create unique updates for each social network.
Here’s how it is for different social media:
Twitter: Tweet often about your upcoming webinar while using appropriate hashtags. These hashtags must be unique for each of your webinars.
Facebook (Meta) and LinkedIn: Along with Twitter, schedule your promotions on Facebook and LinkedIn too. Ensure your content has high-quality imagery, persuasive content, and a strong, appealing CTA.
Share two kinds of updates on Facebook – first, link posts with a large thumbnail, and second, with photo posts. You can also share short videos.
Pinterest: Create portrait-shaped visuals for your webinar promotion on Pinterest. The text that is the title of the webinar should overlay this image. You can schedule it to reach your followers at optimal times.
Instagram: Visual appeal is key to Instagram. Your webinar promotion should also adhere to this expectation on this social network. Look for some background images optimized for Instagram as the backdrop to your webinar title and other necessary details like time, host(s), name, etc. Finally, it should end with a sign-up call.
Groups and Forums: If you are an active group member like Quora or Reddit, ensure you spread the word about your webinar in appropriate groups and forums.
6. Collaborate with Influencers/Big Brands
Collaborating with an established brand or influencer will gain traction for your webinar. Influencers have an added appeal because they multiply your access to social media channels and harness the power of their followers.
You can ask them to share your webinar info with their followers. Provide a pre-written message they can embed as a share button on their channels.
To increase the appeal of your brand to the influencers, create an affiliate program and grant a portion of the profits generated through attendees referred by them.
You can also mobilize your affiliates, partners, and big brands for your webinar. Your affiliates can provide popular, credible speakers to draw in the crowds. In return, you can promote them as part of your webinar advertising.
7. Mobilize Your Employees’ Networks
Your employees and their social networks are essential, too, for your webinar promo plan. They can be one of your greatest strengths in spreading the word. After all, a LinkedIn report claims employees have ten times more connections than a company has followers.
8. Use Paid Social Advertising
All social media platforms mentioned above have paid promotions too. Experiment with them to see how they draw attention to your webinar.
For instance, one good place for advertising is Facebook, with its massive outreach of 2 billion users. Your paid ads should be either warm or cold ads.
A warm ad is one seen by people familiar with your work. You can use these ads to retarget people on your email list and those who recently visited your website. Because people are familiar with your brand and work, you must include personal details in the ads.
If your website visitors do not register for the webinar, it does not mean they are not interested. As a matter of fact, only 2% of web traffic converts on their first visit. That's why retargeting ads are essential to your webinar promo.
A cold ad is targeted at people who know nothing about your work. Use Facebook's targeting settings to reach this kind of audience. Avoid personalization and use only the webinar title and details in the ad.
9. Use Google Paid Ads
With Facebook Ads getting all the attention, you should not miss out on mobilizing Google to your advantage. You can use Google Ads in these ways to promote your webinar:
Google Display Campaign Ads
Google's display campaign ads are usually static images on websites or apps visited by your customers regularly. You can put these ads on any website in partnership with the Google ad network. There is a good chance you've seen these ads without even thinking about it.
Google Search Campaign Ads
The most well-known is Google Ads, commonly known as Google AdWords. It shows up in different places on the web page – on the top of search results, on the right sidebar, below search results, and in other places on Google.
Google Video Campaign Ads
Google Video Campaign Ads feature in Google's affiliate channel, YouTube. These video campaigns usually last 6 or 15 seconds that appear during or before YouTube content.
Effective Tips for Webinar Promotion
Apart from promotional material, here are other tips that you need to keep in mind for making your webinar a success story:
Make Registration Easy and Effective: Nothing speaks more for your webinar’s success than an excellent registration page. Use a webinar automation tool to send emails and create an optimized landing page to boost registrations. Focus on the following these points for effective webinar management:
Less is More: Keep registration fields to the bare minimum.
Add a Video: By including a video, you can increase your conversion rates by as much as 80%.
Mention the Benefits: Telling your audience, in the briefest way possible, what they will gain by attending your webinar is essential to get the word out and your message across.
The Right Topic and Title: Do your research before you finalize your webinar topic. Your webinar should fill in some gaps that your audience seeks to fill. Your sales team can pitch in some ideas to get a better pulse of the time. This would make your webinar the hottest news around town once you begin promoting.
Once you have decided on the topic, go for a catchy title to ensure people sit up and notice.
Conclusion
There are many ways to promote your webinar, and you have a fair idea by now. Your promotional strategy will be even more effective when you ensure you have optimized your landing page, the right content, and a simplified registration process. Once you have ensured all these things and publicized your webinar on all the appropriate channels and at the right time, your event will be a success story.
