Update: We created a much more complete, and updated version of this article in our Webinar Promotion Checklist
Promotion comes as one of the main reasons people don't like hosting webinars. Here are some tips and advice to boost your webinar promotion.
This post is a checklist designed to help you get more people to attend.
Mandatory elements before you get started with your webinar promotion
- Set a great topic with a unique perspective. Just like SEO, do some content research.
- Set business objectives (metrics to watch)
- Spend time on your headline
- Create a killer deck
- Design a great landing page
- Set up a marketing pitch and visual elements for that webinar
- Pick something to offer your audience (coupon, exclusive content, free access to a tool...)
- Have a guest to bring expertise and value to the conversation
- Get to know your potential audience. Find out what marketing channel are relevant to them.
Things you can do before the webinar
One simple way to promote your webinar is to use your attendee's network. Use social shares during registration or during your webinar. You can also suggest email forwards.
Bring In your own network (A.K.A. messages you can control)
- Add a "learn more during our webinar" CTA in your most-viewed related blog posts
- Add a blog widget or clickable image in your blog sidebar or a the bottom of each post
- Promote it on your homepage (section, top bar, popup...)!
- If the topic fits, ask a high-level employee, or even your CEO, to publish a (short) LinkedIn post. LinkedIn posts, once published, will the notify the entire network.
- Build a Twitter list you find relevant and then reach out to them or create a Twitter Ad.
- Twitter cards with one a click signup (no friction equals more conversion). Use Zapier to hook the card to the signup form.
- Oldie but goodie: shoot an email to your database (or a relevant part of it).
- Never forget to send email reminders 1 hour before and 5 minutes before. Registering does not mean that they will actually show up.
Webinar related & market communities
- Related LinkedIn groups. Try to bring value to the community, otherwise, you'll get in trouble.
- Slack channels. Same as LinkedIn, you should bring value to the community. In general, it is better if you are already active in those groups.
- Forums or Facebook groups depending on your industry.
- Growthhackers.com or Inbound.org
*Pro tip: You can also apply those principles to your guest audience (if you have a guest). *
Promotion continues after you pressed start
People usually stop at step 1. They don't see their own webinar as a traffic drive. My advice is pretty simple, though. Give a great presentation, be insightful, and interact with your guest and audience.
- Give a great presentation
- Interact with your audience through polls, Q&A, etc.
- Share great, “twittable”, insights.
- If people think it's great, two things can happen. People will come back or they will share it with their own network.
Also, look for a share button during the webinar. Or, even better, a Twitter integration. We don't provide it yet, but it sure looks good...
Long tail promotion
- Try to deliver a special attention to your attendees after the webinar has ended. Send the video, the slides, a transcript of the questions, maybe even some data. This way, you ensure more visibility and a better conversion next time.
- Never forget people could not show up. Pick a tool that handles post-webinar emailing for non-attendees.
- Repurpose your content (blog post, Slideshare, public post-mortems...). Create awareness around your webinar and the value they can bring. Maybe people won't miss it next time.
