Create a webinar promotion strategy
Create a webinar promotion strategy
1. Select a webinar topic or theme that ties into your content marketing plan.
A webinar is not a marketing silo, it’s simply another form of content marketing designed to deliver education and promotions in a format tailored to a specific type of viewer and learner. When choosing a topic for your webinar, consider: Repurposing your most popular content on your website. Look at your web analytics and identify content that gets a lot of traffic and sends a lot of leads to your opt-in pages. Answering frequently asked questions. Review the common queries your sales team or customer support team receives to identify common problems your target audience encounters and solutions that they are looking for. Identifying solutions to unknown pain points. For instance, perhaps you sell a product or service that solves a problem people don’t realize they have. A webinar can be an easy way to help people identify these problems in their lives.
2. Choose a date and time for your webinar that’s designed for optimal conversion, with at least four weeks of lead time.
If you’re a local business with an audience that’s largely tied to a specific geographic zone, pick a webinar date and time that works best for your local clients. But if your audience is national or even global, take a look at your website and email analytics to see when your most engaged audiences are most active online. Consider the following webinar statistics: Tuesdays attract the most webinar registrants. Fridays and weekends are the least popular. Early or mid-morning webinars are usually the most popular time slots. Four weeks is the average amount of time that people need to be given in order to learn about the webinar, register, and save the date.
3. Build a webinar registration page that's part of your bigger conversion funnel.
Your goal isn’t to simply get registrants. Think bigger: What do people need to know in order to sign up and watch your webinar, and what data do you need from them in order to promote your business after the webinar is over? In most cases, you’ll need: A landing page that highlights the pain points or questions your webinar will address, and practical information such as the date, time and time zone, speakers, and cost. A registration form to collect names and email addresses. Consider collecting additional information that helps segment your email list in the future, such as their job role or company size. A thank-you page that tells them exactly what to do next, such as save the date, download a calendar reminder, or learn more about your business.
4. Create and launch an email drip campaign to promote your webinar.
Begin email promotions at least four weeks in advance and cover the following email segments: An initial webinar invitation email to your entire list, or to a specific segment of your list such as new users, leads who have never purchased before, or a reactivation campaign to past customers on your list who haven’t engaged with your brand in a while. A weekly webinar teaser campaign for those who haven’t registered. Consider highlighting the speakers, the value of the webinar, or some of the statistics, solutions, or ideas that they’ll learn in the webinar. An automated confirmation or thank-you email to those who register. A series of reminder emails to those who haven’t registered, such as a last reminder email during the last week, three days before the webinar, and the day before. A day-of email reminder to everyone who registered.
5. Promote your webinar through content across your social media channels.
Leverage your audiences on social media to generate buzz around your upcoming webinar. Post engaging content that relates to your webinar theme to attract users who are interested in learning more about those topics. Consider highlighting key topics and solutions that will be covered, or announcing guest speakers that will be participating.
6. Launch a limited ad campaign directed at your target audience, and a retargeting campaign to recapture leads who viewed your registration page.
Consider running the following ads: Banners and ads on your main web properties. Promotional images on all of your social media profiles. An ad campaign on a third-party platform, such as Facebook Ads and Google Ads, targeting demographics that are key to your business. A retargeting campaign for those who viewed your webinar registration page but didn’t register. The ad should invite them back to register and remind them what they’ll miss out on if they don’t.
7. Promote your upcoming webinar with a blog post that focuses on relevant information to your webinar topic.
Consider repurposing some of your material that relates to a key topic within your webinar presentation. This can be written into a topical blog post to attract potential leads who are interested in the topic, and include an engaging CTA that directs them to your webinar landing page. If you have a guest speaker joining you for the webinar, consider having them write a guest blog to help cross-promote between both of your audiences.
8. Follow up with your webinar registrants after the webinar is over to continue nurturing those leads.
For example: Send them additional material from the webinar that positions your business as an industry expert. Offer a special discount or gift for your products or services. Segment them into a new email list and sending them a special conversion email campaign designed to turn them into engaged users.