Many ideas have great potential, but without effective execution, they remain unfulfilled. That’s why it’s important to take the time to test your ideas and be disciplined in judging which ones are worth pursuing.
Creating a webinar is an effective way to promote your brand and reach new audiences. However, planning and executing a successful webinar can be a challenge.
Identify Your Audience
When planning a webinar, it’s important to think about your audience and how they’ll react to the content. You want to ensure that the webinar is relevant and will appeal to your target audience’s interests. Having a clear understanding of your audience will also help you promote the event and gain registrations.
Before you start promoting, determine who your audience is and where they hang out online. Once you’ve done this, identify the most effective channels for promoting your webinar. Depending on your audience, these might be social media, industry forums, newsletters, paid ads, partners or even your own website.
Choosing the right date and time will also help you drive attendance. Ensure that your audience will be free on the day of the webinar, and that it doesn’t interfere with any other work or personal obligations. According to GoToMeeting, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days to host a webinar, as these days tend to be less busy than Monday or Friday.
The next step is to create a landing page that clearly communicates the details of your webinar. This page should explain what the webinar is about, and include a call to action for registration. It should also contain information about the logistics of the webinar, such as the date and time, time zone, length and whether registrants will be given access to a replay afterwards. Including this info on the landing page will make it easier for prospects to decide to register.
Webinars can be a great way to generate leads, build thought leadership and develop relationships with customers and potential clients. However, if you’re not doing a good job of promoting your webinars, you’ll find that you’re not getting the most out of them. Using the tips in this guide can help you plan and execute a successful webinar that generates enquirers and leads for your business.
Don’t forget to ask your sales and customer service teams to add a link to the webinar landing page in their email signatures. This will help to spread the word about your webinar to the people they speak with on a daily basis.
Create a Landing Page
If you want people to register for your webinar, your landing page must be visually appealing and easy to use. It should clearly identify the topic, speakers, and reasons to attend the event and make it as quick and painless as possible for visitors to sign up. A strong call to action – the button they click on that takes them to the registration form – should stand out and divert attention away from other elements on the page.
Webinar landing pages should be a one-stop shop for all logistical information, from time and date to the link to connect to the webinar. A clear, concise title and a bulleted itinerary break down the webinar’s key points. Using a single image instead of multiple images and large blocks of text helps to keep readers engaged.
It’s important to include your Unique Value Proposition, the benefits and value that attendees will gain from attending the webinar. This is what distinguishes your webinar from others on a similar topic and gives your audience a reason to choose your event over the competition. Make sure to take note that having translators for your online webinars can make things easier on your end.
The body of your webinar landing page should be brief, with content that focuses on converting visitors into registrants. This means writing in active voice, with words and phrases that speak directly to the audience. This isn’t the place for War and Peace – you need to communicate what attendees will learn and how your webinar will help them solve their challenges.
Try adding a countdown timer to your landing page to heighten the sense of urgency around registering for the webinar. Providing this type of visual cue helps increase the number of people that will register for your webinar before it’s too late.
It’s also important to promote your webinar on your website, blog, and social media accounts. Banner ads on your homepage and blog are a great way to give your webinar top billing, and pop-ups can be an effective attention grabber. If you have a budget for paid advertising, running Google or Facebook ads can get your webinar in front of more potential attendees quickly.
Schedule Your Webinar
A webinar can be a valuable tool in your marketing arsenal, but you must make sure that it is well-planned and promoted effectively. The key is to understand your audience and provide them with content that will solve their biggest pain points. Once you have that nailed down, then you can focus on getting them to register and attend your webinar.
The first step in planning a webinar is to select a topic that will appeal to your audience and align with your company objectives. Once you have your topic and speakers, you will need to decide on the date and time of the webinar. It is important to choose a time that will work for the majority of your audience. For example, a morning session may not work for parents who have children to drop off and pick up from school, while an evening or weekend event might suit those that are working during the week.
You will also need to consider the length of your webinar. It is important to keep your audience engaged and not let the webinar drag on for too long. A webinar with too much filler or irrelevant information can quickly turn people off and cause them to log out. Lastly, it is important to practice your presentation before the live event. This will help you to feel confident in delivering the content, as well as giving you an opportunity to test out any technical issues with your webinar platform.
Promote your webinar on all of your channels, from social media to online forums to paid advertising and your website. It is also a good idea to reach out to partners and ask them to promote the event on their platforms as well. This is a great way to reach a wider audience and generate more interest in your webinar.
In the weeks leading up to the webinar, post on your social media and include it in your weekly email announcements. Don’t forget to include a link to the landing page and an add-to-calendar feature that will ensure that your audience does not miss the event. The last thing you want is for people to miss the webinar and regret not registering.
Promote Your Webinar
Before you start promoting, it’s important to understand the type of people that will show up for your webinar. Using marketing personas can help you identify the primary attributes of this audience, such as ages, genders and places they live (if relevant to your business).
A landing page with a clear description and call-to-action is key to increasing your webinar’s visibility online. It’s also a great way to test out different call-to-action text, images and layouts. Using heat mapping software can reveal whether your audience clicks on a particular image or text and where their attention is focused.
The perceived value of the webinar heavily influences attendance, so be sure to make it clear why it’s worth their time. You can do this by sharing the content you’ll cover and providing a list of benefits. You can also include a sample agenda to encourage registration.
Webinar registrations tend to peak in the last week before an event. It’s therefore wise to focus on email promotion during this period. According to a report, 45% of marketers use email as their main promotional tool.
Another great way to promote your webinar is through social media, especially LinkedIn. LinkedIn has native webinar tools that allow you to collect registrants through its platform and create events that can be shared directly with your audience.
It’s important to remember that your audience is busy, and their calendars are full of events. Sending out regular reminder emails a few days and even the day before your webinar is an effective way to increase attendance. Plus, it gives your audience plenty of time to finagle the event around meetings and other obligations.
Consider partnering with an influencer to boost your webinar’s reach. This not only adds credibility, but it can also introduce your webinar to an entirely new audience. In addition, a paid social advertising campaign can be one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to promote your webinar. This is particularly true if you use hyper-targeted ad campaigns.
