Let’s face it. Webinars have become as common as coffee in the morning, and for a good reason. They’re an easy way for subject matter experts to distill information to a target audience and increase brand awareness, generate new leads, accelerate leads through marketing and sales pipelines, and retain customers.
In this post, we will share our best practices and favorite tools and technology for promoting a webinar to help you increase the quality of your next event.
Webinars are one of the most versatile tools in a marketer’s toolbox for engaging with a target audience. According to Live Webinar, at least 83% of U.S. marketers find webinars effective. So, it is no surprise that webinars are a vital part of the plan when marketers are planning event strategies. When done correctly, webinars can significantly increase your brand’s visibility and position your organization and personnel as thought leaders in the market. From hosting a presentation to conducting training, webinars are one of the most powerful mechanisms for sharing content and creating connections – not to mention one of the most cost-effective and easy to use.
A common mistake when advertising a webinar is failing to understand your target audience’s needs. Before kicking off any marketing campaigns, it’s bestto define your target audience and then research the habits and desires of your target audience. Knowing their extrinsic motivations (external drives and rewards) and intrinsic motivations (internal drives and rewards) will help you identify their challenges. Then, you can ensure your campaigns clearly communicate how the content in your webinar will solve these challenges.
Pro tip: use social media platforms such as Sprout or Oktopost and conduct social listening. Identify the words your target audience uses in their digital conversations, such as “anxious” or “excited,” and then incorporate them into your marketing. Make sure your audience knows you can speak their language!
One of the most effective ways to promote a webinar is through social media. This goes beyond routine posts on your platforms. To differentiate your webinar on social media, use visuals such as
original graphics and teaser videos that clearly communicate the purpose of the webinar. Ensure each post has an easy-to-understand CTA, so your audience knows how to register.
If the budget allows, consider running paid ads on social media. Paid ads will allow you to retarget people in your CRM and/or have recently visited your website, LinkedIn page, etc. You can also partner with industry influencers and ask them to promote your webinar on their social channels. Both strategies will help you increase and expand your reach.
Be sure to create a branded hashtag for your webinar and use the hashtag in your promotional campaigns. The hashtag will attract attention to your event and help develop a sense of community.
Landing pages should include a catchy headline describing what the attendee will learn or gain from the webinar, an agenda overview that showcases your speakers, and a clear CTA. Ensure not to confuse your audience with too many CTAs. Set one clear CTA that can't be missed. Similar to
social, create eye-catching graphics and visuals. If you have a teaser video, include it! According to wyzowl, 95% of Marketers said that posting and adding videos into their content strategy helped them generate leads. Check out the latest and informative 6Connex blog post on the five steps to creating a landing page that converts.
It’s also essential to ensure your page is optimized for sharing. Add two to four social share buttons to your page and encourage people to share your webinar’s landing page on their social channels. Another benefit to including share buttons is that they increase social proof. If you display the share counts, landing page visitors will see how often others have shared your page and intuit the experience as valuable.
Traditionally, webinars are held virtually. However, hybrid event solutions are becoming popular, and by incorporating offline attendees, you can up the “wow factor” and increase reach and engagement. Hybrid webinars are also an excellent way to attract hard-to-get speakers since travel isn’t required to participate. Remember, a hybrid webinar is more than just a live-streaming event. This an event that should be run on a platform that is beneficial not only to your in-person attendees but you're online as well.
One of the primary reasons people attend events such as a webinar is to network. When planning your event, identify several “touchpoints” for your online and offline audiences and then leverage state-of-the-art event technology to host your webinar. The right solution will enable online and offline audiences to interact through features such as chats, business card exchanges, Q&As, polls, direct messaging, and more.
Once you’ve planned your hybrid-webinar event, market it as a hybrid webinar
event! The webinar’s hybrid format can differentiate your organization by proving your global approach to business and flexibility. This is especially important after the event. With the right event technology, your in-person attendees can network with your online attendees, extending their networking opportunities globally.
Also, advertise the hybrid webinar format as a buy-one-get-one or value-add, and highlight how your online and offline audiences can connect with each other and network – in addition to consuming the webinar content. This can be extremely helpful if you work for a remote company and your employees are located globally. Some employees can attend in person, while others can attend virtually. It's a win-win!
An overwhelming majority of your target audience, regardless of their location, will most likely have access to a smartphone or tablet. Unfortunately, marketing content such as a landing page can render differently on a mobile device than on a laptop or desktop. If your promotional content isn’t optimized for mobile, you run the risk that your audience might not see the message correctly or interact with the content as intended. Therefore, ensure your email campaigns, landing pages, registration pages, and more are all mobile-optimized.
For pre-event marketing, you can consider a mobile event app, such as 6connex’s Eventory platform. Mobile event apps like Eventory provide an ecosystem of tools that help you streamline your events management, organization, promotion, reporting, and so much more. Stay ahead of the game with mobile-ready pre-event marketing and registration for your audience. But that's not all! They also offer in-event engagement tools, post-event marketing, and event statistics and reporting – streamlining all your event workflows to ensure event success. The power is at your fingertips, literally!
The more touchpoints with which your prospects interact, the more likely they will convert and attend your webinar. According to SalesForce, it takes 6-8 touch points to generate a lead, so the more visibility your webinar has, the better chance you can get people to attend. By publishing a high-intent blog post about your webinar, you can use an SEO strategy and website traffic to increase awareness and provide potential attendees with one more touchpoint.
Your blog post should communicate how the webinar content will relate to the “big picture” and reiterate your event’s value propositions. Be sure to include at least two calls to action in the post that links to the webinar’s landing page and promote the blog post through your regular marketing channels, such as email marketing and social media. You can also consider asking one of your webinar presenters to write a guest blog and encourage them to promote the blog post to their own network.
Remember, too, that once your webinar is over, you can make the event available on demand and use your blog to drive traffic to the webinar content continuously.
It takes teamwork! Ask your employees to promote your webinar. Create different types of content for social media, such as carousel posts, quotes, video teasers, audiograms, infographics, and more, and then ask your employees to share the content on their social media platforms. Make the content available in a company-wide email or post itin a Slack channel to ensure everyone has received the content and instructions for posting.
Despite all the new digital tools available, email marketing can still be a cost-effective way to reach your target audience and drive webinar registrations. Remember that because your email reaches an opted-in audience, the reader is likely already familiar with your brand, so the content should be specific and concise. Be sure the email message focuses on the webinar’s value and answers the question, “Why should I attend?”
Also, give some thought to your email send strategy and create an email send calendar that staggers promotions over a set period of time. This way, you avoid inundating inboxes with a barrage of promotions. Don’t forget to pay attention to sending dates and times as well. If, for example, your target audience is enterprise professionals, they’ll be less likely to open a promotional email on a Monday morning.
Promoting a webinar can be a great way to generate leads and grow your business, but it can be challenging to get the word out. One effective strategy for
promoting a webinar is to offer incentives such as an e-book, webinar checklist, free trial, or registration discount. Offer this magnet in exchange for signing up for your webinar. Just make sure you choose incentives that tie into the theme of your webinar and that your attendees will find valuable. Pro tip: include an incentive for attendance, not just for registration. A live attendee is a higher-quality lead than one who registers and doesn’t attend.
One of the most overlooked methods of promoting an event is highlighting the speakers’ accolades. Speaker accolades can build trust and credibility with your potential audience, inspiring more registrations.
Most awards and certifications have branded digital logos and badges. Use these logos and badges in your event marketing: website, social media, email, brochures, etc. Also, include links to media coverage your speakers have received and links to their newsletters, websites, guest blog posts, LinkedIn pages, podcasts, books, and presentations. Pro tip: in addition to logos and digital badges, use pull quotes, video clips, and soundbites if available, especially on social media.
There are many effective ways to increase awareness and drive registrations for your next webinar. The right event technology provider will be able to share best practices and support the marketing with email send tools, mobile-app-enabled registration, and more.
According to Live Webinar, 78% of hosts used a designated webinar platform over a video platform like Vimeo or YouTube. The 6Connex virtual event platform is the most robust and holistic solution on the market. Through our unique approach to event experiences and with the support of our 24/7 live chat and other tools, you can be sure your next webinar will be successful. Request a virtual event platform demo today to find out why event organizers and their teams are choosing 6Connex.
4.0 invests in new, community-centered education models and provides coaching, curriculum, community, and cash to those with the imagination to create a more equitable education ecosystem. Over the last decade, 4.0 has worked with more than 1,500 diverse, inspiring leaders to bring hundreds of education-focused ventures to life. These programs have gone on to benefit more than nine million students across the country.
The 4.0 Essentials Fellowship is a longstanding program that serves as a gateway into education innovation. The program is geared towards individuals with nascent ideas who have yet to bring them to fruition. The fellowship takes place over four months in a virtual format and guides participants from concept to preliminary prototype development. After the fellowship, fellows organize a small-scale, temporary demonstration of their prototype for families, educators, and students to test and evaluate. Through participation in the Essentials Fellowship, fellows gain a comprehensive understanding of the education landscape, build community, acquire new skills, and learn best practices for kickstarting an education project and measuring its success.
To facilitate Essentials Fellowship events and activities, 4.0 had previously utilized virtual platforms and experimented with webinars and virtual panels. However, the 4.0 team quickly recognized that a meaningful virtual experience would entail more than live streaming.
Both the Essentials Fellows and 4.0 educators are hands-on, interactive educational professionals who relish meaningful conversations, and virtual presentations alone weren’t providing a satisfactory attendee experience. Therefore, the decision-makers at 4.0 sought virtual event technology capable of hosting meetings and fostering engagement.
6Connex partnered with 4.0 to support the Essentials Fellowship program and create events and activities that fit the audience well. With the 6Connex virtual events platform, 4.0 was able to:
Read the entire case study here.
6Connex is a leading virtual event platform that enables businesses to create and host in-person, hybrid, and virtual events. The platform offers a range of features, such as virtual exhibitor booths, live streaming, and attendee matchmaking for easy networking. It’s widely used in myriad industries for marketing, sales, recruitment, training, HR, communications, event planning, and more.
6Connex empowers you to engage and transform big event ideas into real-world results. Additionally, our company has fantastic customer service, and our clients enjoy a dedicated team always available. Schedule a virtual event platform demo today. It’s on us.
Dive into the future of events with our insightful webinar, "Embracing AI in Events: Navigating Opportunities and Challenges,". Join our esteemed speakers: Dahlia El Gazzar - Founder of DAHLIA+ Agency, Stephen Kaufman - Chief Product Officer at Inriver, and Henry Tran - CTO at 6Connex
Explore the transformative potential of AI in event planning, and engagement, and the challenges it may bring. Stay informed and inspired as we navigate the thrilling opportunities and challenges that AI brings to the dynamic world of events.