Successful Business

30 Proven Ways to Promote Your Webinar

Webinars are a great way to deliver value, demonstrate your expertise in your niche and promote your offers. The conversion rates with webinars are far higher than they are with other forms of marketing such as email and paid advertising.

But if hardly anyone attends your webinar then it is a waste of time. Nobody is going to discover your webinar by accident so you need to do all that you can to promote it. The 30 ways in this powerful report are proven to work and will help you maximize your attendance numbers for every webinar that you run.

Get the Basics Right First

Before you start to promote your webinar you need to get the basics right first. You need to get the timing right and create a persuasive landing page for your webinar.

Plan your Webinar and get the Timing Right

It is really important that you plan your webinar in advance. You need time to get everything ready and rehearse your webinar so that it will run smoothly on the day. Getting the timing right is essential for a successful webinar.

High Converting Landing Page

There is no point driving hordes of traffic to your webinar landing page if it does not do a good job of converting visitors into attendees. You need a n enticing title for your webinar and some key benefits that will make attending your webinar irresistible. Test your landing page to see how well it converts and edit where necessary.

Promote at least 2 Weeks in Advance

To get the maximum exposure for your webinar plan to start your promotion efforts at least 2 weeks prior to the event. You don’t want to start your promotion too early and you certainly don’t want to leave it too late.

Now let’s take a look at the 30 ways you can promote your webinar…

1. Email Marketing

There is no better way to promote your webinar than to use email marketing. Surveys have shown that around 80% of webinar registrants originate from emails. If you have your own email list then use this to your advantage. You can leverage other people’s email lists by collaborating with them which we will cover later.

2. Make Your Webinar The Ideal Length

Research has shown that the ideal length for a webinar is between 45 minutes and an hour so plan your events around this and let potential registrants know the expected length of the webinar on your landing page.

If you feel that your webinar is going to much longer than this recommended time then you can split it into several webinars that cover important sections. Nobody wants to spend half a day on a webinar no matter how keen they are to learn what you will present.

3. Run Your Webinars on The Best Days

Research has shown that the best days to run webinars are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. People usually have a lot of things to do on a Monday and Fridays and the weekend do not work well for obvious reasons.

4. Send Out Invitations on The Best Days

There has been a lot of research into the best days to send out webinar invitations and the conclusion was that Tuesday or Wednesday were the best. You should experience the best open rates and conversions on these days. Again you need to avoid Mondays, Fridays and the weekends.

5. Promote Your Webinars on Your Site

This is obvious but you need to remember to do it. You could add a "webinars" section on your site if you are planning to run several webinars. Use a method to notify visitors to your home page and all of your inner pages about your upcoming webinars.

6. Add Your Webinars to Your Email Signature

Most people send and reply to a lot more emails than they realize. Adding a signature about your webinar to your email is a very easy thing to do. Don’t overcomplicate this. A one line signature with the major benefit of your webinar is ideal. Add a link to your webinar landing page from your signature.

7. Use Wordpress Widgets For Site Wide Promotion

If you use the WordPress platform for your website then you can use a widget to ensure that details of your webinar appear on every single page. Your home page is likely to be your most visited followed by your “About” page. With a site wide widget you can add a square banner to your sidebar so that visitors to any page on your site will see it..

8. Embed The Webinar Landing Page on Your Site

You need to make it as easy as possible for your site visitors to sign up for your webinar. One of the ways that you can do this is to embed the landing page (webinar registration page) on your site instead of linking to an external URL. If you publish a post about the subject of your webinar you can embed the landing page at the end for example.

9. Publish Content About Your Webinar Subject

You can publish content related to your webinar subject on your website and your social media profiles as well to generate more interest. Content marketing is very effective if you use it correctly.

10. Get The Word Out on Social Media

You will have social media profiles associated with your business so make regular posts about your webinar on all of your accounts. Add some value to your posts rather than just posting a notification. Use images and videos as much as possible.

11. Create Promotional Images and Videos

Have your promotional images for your webinar created in advanced. Videos are very powerful so commit to creating a short promotional video that you can use on your site and your social media accounts.

12. Don't Forget Linkedin

If your webinar is business related then you should make a number of posts on LinkedIn about the subject. Invite likes and comments so that you can reply with details of your upcoming webinar. The more likes and comments that you get on your posts the better, as this will help to rank your posts higher with the LinkedIn algorithm.

13. Use Niche Related Forums

There are online forums available for most niches so make sure that you are a member of these and make valuable contributions. Write a post about your webinar subject and then let forum members know about your webinar. Be sure to follow forum rules and guidelines to ensure your posts are not deleted.

14. Identify and Contact Potential Collaborators

If you do not have a large email list in your niche then you can contact influencers and large list owners to discuss a potential collaboration with your webinar. There needs to be something in it for them when you do this so you could agree to provide a commission on sales through the webinar for example.

Influencers in your niche are going to have people on their lists that you are very unlikely to reach with your own promotional methods. Sharing commissions with these people is a small price to pay for building your list with their followers.

15. Invite Influencers to Participate in Your Webinar

Having a well known influencer in your niche contribute to your webinar can significantly increase the number of attendees. Many people may not have heard of you but they will know the influencer and that will be enough for them to register. They will get to know you during the webinar as well. It is a complete win-win.

16. Increase Your Email List With Solo Ads

You can find solo ad providers that have large email lists in your niche. If your webinar is about making money online then there will be no shortage of solo ad providers you can use. Check out the track record of any solo ad provider before you go ahead. You can find them on Facebook for example so be sure to read the comments about them.

It will cost you to build your list and your attendees using solo ads but if you plan to run more webinars in your niche then this can be a good long term strategy. Tell your solo ad provider about your webinar and they will write an email ad for you. You pay for clicks through to your landing page.

17. Use The Power of Youtube

YouTube is the second largest website in the world and it is hard to deny the power of video. Marketers tend to shy away from YouTube because of the work involved in creating good videos. You need to change your mindset here and commit to creating a number of value driven videos about the subject of your webinar.

You can add a link to your webinar landing page in the description box. When you create your videos mention your webinar and the benefits of it early on. Not everyone is going to watch your video until the end no matter how short you make it.

Once you have published your videos on YouTube you can then upload them to other video sharing sites such as Daily Motion and Vimeo. You can also use social media to direct your followers to the videos. Don’t forget to embed the YouTube videos on your website as well.

18. Use Banners on High Traffic Blogs

In most niches there are blogs that receive a lot of traffic. You need to find these blogs and then contact the owners to see if you can do a deal to place a banner on their site promoting your webinar. Of course the blogs need to be related to your niche.

Banners have lost their effectiveness over the years, but as your webinar is free you could get some good results from this tactic. Some high traffic blog owners will already have an advertising plan and pricing.

19. Use Banners on High Traffic Blogs

Still on the subject of high traffic blogs you can approach them about publishing a guest post where you can link out to your webinar landing page at the end. A lot of blog owners accept guest posts as it is a good way for them to publish more unique content.

A guest post needs to be of the highest quality and not just an ad for your webinar. Most blog owners are very choosy about the guest posts that they accept. When you get a well written and value packed guest post published on a high traffic blog you can expect to get a good amount of traffic from it.

20. Search Marketing

You can embark on a search marketing campaign using pay per click (PPC) ads from Google or Microsoft for example. Your ad will appear on the first page of the search results and you will only pay when a visitor clicks through to your landing page.

PPC ads are actually a great way to test the conversion rate of your landing page. You will normally get traffic almost immediately when you target high volume keywords. Be careful with PPC ads as it is easy for the costs to mount up fast. Set daily limits and test everything.

21. Social Ads

Almost all of the popular social networks have a paid ads feature these days. Facebook and Instagram certainly do and now LinkedIn has got in on the act. The advantage of social ads over PPC ads is that you can clearly define your target audience and you can create ads using images and video.

You need to check the cost of running ads on your social network as they can work out expensive. It can certainly be a good way to build a large email list so you can treat it as a longer term marketing strategy.

22. Use a Hello Bar on Your Website

If you are unfamiliar with a hello bar it is simply a banner that appears at the top of your website. There are a number of WordPress plugins that can create these if you have a WordPress site.

You can use a single sentence to create intrigue around your webinar. Mention your top benefit for example and then have a link for more information that can go to your landing page or a page on your site that has it embedded.

23. Use an Exit Popup

You can add an exit popup to certain pages of your site. When the visitor goes to leave the page the popup appears announcing your webinar. Keep this simple. Spell out the benefits of attending your webinar and provide a link to your landing page.

24. Provide a Free Incentive

You can create a free incentive to encourage visitors to register for your webinar. This needs to be related to the subject of your webinar and provide a lot of value. Use various methods to get the word out about your incentive such as your website and your social accounts. Have a high quality image created for your incentive.

Your incentive could be a special report on the subject of your webinar for example. Another good incentive is to provide access to a special video that is not available publically. Make sure that your incentive is high quality and provides a lot of value.

25. Use Webinar Listing Sites

There are several webinar listing websites available where you can provide the details of your webinar. Most of these are free but some will make a small charge. You are not going to get a ton of registrations using this method so don’t expect this.

One of the best reasons to make these listings is that people who visit them are actively looking for a webinar to attend. If they are able to find your listing and the subject matter is of interest to them then they are likely to sign up for your webinar.

26. Send an Invitation to Your Contacts

Most people have a large number of contacts which they have developed over the years and you can send them all a personal invitation via email. Don’t shy away from this tactic. You never really know if they will be interested in your webinar or not.

You can add a paragraph at the end of the email asking them to share this with people that they know. They might not be interested in the subject of your webinar but they may know people that are. It will not take you long to send these invitations and it could certainly be worth it for you.

27. Remind Your Registrants About Your Webinar

Don’t assume that just because someone has registered for your webinar that they are actually going to attend. People are busy and they tend to forget that they have registered so you need to remind them as you get closer to the event.

As a minimum you need to send a reminder via email one hour before the webinar starting time. It is also a good idea to send out a reminder email immediately after your webinar starts so that people can jump on at the last minute. You can do all of this automatically with most webinar platforms.

Some marketers go over the top with the number of reminders that they send. We do not recommend that you do this because you are likely to irritate people and they will unsubscribe and never attend any of your webinars.

You need to be realistic when it comes to people actually attending your webinar. Research has shown that an average of 50% of those that sign up for webinars actually attend. So if you have a maximum capacity of 1,000 for your webinar then aim for more registrants than this because you are never going to get them all to attend.

28. Record Your Webinar

It is always a good idea to record your webinar event. Don’t tell your registrants that you are going to do this otherwise it gives them a reason not to attend. You can send out the replay of your webinar a few days after the event so that the people who were unable to attend can watch it.

You can also provide access to this webinar replay to people that did not register for the event. Send details of how to access it using your email list and publish a post about it on your website and social profiles.

29. Create an Incentive For Attending Your Webinar

People will fail to attend your webinar after they have registered for a variety of reasons. They will see the reminder emails and still choose not to attend because they have something more interesting to do. Depending on where they are in the world this could be going to sleep!

What you need to do here is offer your registrants an incentive to attend your webinar. This is different to the incentive for registering in the first place. It needs to be something really valuable that they can only get if they attend and stay to the end.

You can create a secret report which reveals methods or tactics that you have never shared with anyone. Or perhaps you could have a competition during the webinar where they could win something valuable. Get your thinking cap on here because this is a great way to get registrants to attend that were on the fence.

30. Send a Satisfaction Questionnaire

After you run your webinar event it is a good idea to send out a satisfaction questionnaire to all of your registrants. Provide a link to the webinar replay if they were unable to attend. Tell them that you are always looking to improve your webinars and that you would really value their feedback on how you can do this.

You could incentivize the completion of the questionnaire if you want to. If your budget allows you could give out Amazon gift cards to those that complete the questionnaire. If you currently sell products and services you can offer a special discount to those that complete it. This will not cost you anything and it will raise the visibility of your offers.

Conclusion

You now have 30 ways that you can promote your webinar. None of these are difficult to apply and you should use as many of the tactics as possible. We recommend that you use all of the free or low cost methods first before you embark on paid advertising. Take action and use these tactics to get the maximum number of people to your webinar event.

Bertrand Allard