Webinar marketing has been a go-to quick win strategy in our office for the last couple years.
Even though the idea of holding a webinar is pretty well known, almost all of our clients seem to hold similar misconceptions about webinar marketing.
1 - What's a great strategy for promoting your webinar?
Social media is going to be a big built-in audience to tap into for promoting your webinar. Use it.
When you're brainstorming a great webinar strategy, don't over think it. If you have a decent following, just use your existing social channels; linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, wherever you are and wherever your customers are.
This can all be done organically with a couple of posts a week roughly four to six weeks before your Webinar.
If you really want to capitalize on social media, try to put a little money behind some promoted posts.
What works really well for us and for our clients, is doing some paid promoted posts on social media. Mostly Linkedin and a little bit on Facebook depending on your industry and audience.
On linkedin, you can get real targeted with job titles, industries, interests, location, and basically anything else you can imagine. By building like a nice linkedin audience, you can tell you're not paying for people that are outside of your scope.
Stepping outside of social media, don't be afraid to look at your current email list. Start to segment a couple of lists for email marketing around the webinar.
Look at people who have registered for your webinars in the past, people who have recently engaged with your brand, or people that have downloaded material related to the upcoming webinar. These are all great places to start. You could even just sent the webinar promotion to your entire contact list, if you think it's a relevant enough topic.
So, in summary of how to get people to your webinar, there are 3 really easy ways to find some interested people.
- Organic posts to your current audience on social media
- Paid posts on social media to try and and get new audience to your webinar
- Email marketing to your current list of contacts
2 - How does a webinar work?
Now that you have a promotion strategy in place to get people to your webinar, you need to make sure that you have the tools in place for hosting a webinar.
There are two good apps that don't cost a lot of money. We have seen both of these work great:
If you have a preferred option, go for it! We have even seen successful webinars completed on Facebook Live.
We like to use Zoom here at Web Canopy Studio. They offer a free version that has more than enough features to get you started. This means that you can add webinars as a marketing tool for little to no money at all.
With a platform picked out, all you need now is to work on building a list of webinar registrants. To do this you will need a powerful landing page built with a form for people to sign-up.
Make sure your landing page has a lot of great information on why your audience should be attending the future webinar along with a clear date.
As people fill out the form on the landing page, you will collect these emails inside a list in your CRM. You will be able to send relevant content and reminders to the attendee weeks and days prior to the event.
3 - What content do I prepare for my webinar?
We have a lot of conversations with clients about what is appropriate content for a great webinar. It can be very difficult to break people out of the mindset that; they're effectively pitching their product to a large audience.
Because that's really what you want, right?
What's helpful is to have a webinar that touches on what you do. The topic should be something that your company is an authority on, but that can be implemented immediately by people who are never going to buy your product. Right?
PRO TIP: We have found that some clients already had a presentation ready. Here are some great examples:
- Presentations from recent speaking events
- Do a deep dive on one of your best e-books
- Break down one of your favorite blog posts
- Look for something topical in your industry to explain further
Think about a webinar being useful both as a re-engagement tactic for your existing prospects as well as a lead generating a technique.
What I also like for titles is things that are going to create a little bit of a sense of urgency. So like things like "four mistakes you're making on blank" or "three reasons that your product sucks."
Those usually do pretty well, they have like a nice little punch to them. There's a really wise quote that has always stuck with me, "People are more afraid of losing $100 than they are excited to find $100.
Meaning, the excitement of finding $100 does not outweigh the fear of losing.
To sum up the content ideas, make sure that you are providing valuable content to your audience that demonstrates your knowledge in the space. However, don't fall into the trap of turning the webinar into a 45 minute pitch about your product.
Trust us, the chance to sell to your audience will come.
4 - Crafting the perfect call to action for your webinar
Now that you created great content to present you need to tell the audience at the end of this webinar our sales person is going to do a two hour long deep dive consultation with you.
At the beginning of the webinar, say something like, "We don't typically do this. We only have room for five. If you're interested, sign up, if not totally fine, no problem."
What you've just done is you put scarcity on the amount that you do.
There are two key reasons we need an offer for the end of the webinar:
- When an attendee uses an offer, they are further qualified as an MQL who is likely interested in buying your products or services.
- This keeps your attendance up through the entire webinar. If people know there is a great offer at the end of the webinar, they won't hop off the call early.
You're now allowing people the opportunity to opt in to become an MQL right away. There's not a salesperson in the world that's not going to want to speak with somebody who is a good fit like that. This offer has just created a highly engaged person that wants to know about how you can help them solve their problem.
You need a big draw at the end of the webinar, don't do something boring. This call to action can't just be one of your popular e-books or the main CTA that already lives on your homepage.
The more exclusive the offer is, the more likely you are to find a qualified buyer.
I think along those lines you could always do a 24 hour 10-20% discount on your product. Especially if you're a B2C company, a webinar-only coupon code is a great offer for people who stay until the end.
5 - The webinar is all done, now what?
The webinar might be all done, but in reality, we are only a little over half way through our webinar marketing strategy.
Now that the webinar is done we have 3 things that you absolutely must do:
- Send the webinar to the people who couldn't make it to the presentation.
- Add to or create an on-demand webinar section of your website.
- Cut clips of the webinar to share on social media for future content.
Sending out the webinar:
Just because they didn't show up to your webinar, doesn't mean that they are not interested in your content.
Make sure that you send an on-demand version of the webinar to all of your contacts that said they were coming, but didn't make it there.
This can be sent via email. This email allows you to offer the same call to action you used in the live webinar to these people who were absent.
You will be surprised on how grateful people will be for getting access to something they thought they missed.
While you're at it, you can send the on-demand version of the webinar to everyone who DID attend, as well. If you can, give them the slides used in the presentation as well. Just make sure you're crafting a more BOFU centered email to the people who stayed through the whole presentation.
Giving these pieces of content away demonstrates a lot of value to your perspective clients.
Create an On-Demand Library on Your Website
Even if only 2 people attended your webinar, you're still sitting on a ton of value for your business.
Try to schedule at least three webinars before you give up on the idea. These three webinars can live as gated content on your website as a way to generate more organic leads.
We recommend using these webinars in the same way that you would an ebook. Create a landing page for each of these webinars that requires a person's email to view.
Share Clips on Social Media
Repurposing content is something we always preach here at Web Canopy Studio. This process doesn't have to be hard either.
All you have to do is pick three or four interesting parts from the webinar and cut them into their own video.
Now, you have some great video content that would be perfect on any of your social media channels. They can also be a great tool for generating leads for upcoming webinars.
Get on it!
That's more than enough to get you started! I would like to leave you with two key pieces of advice before you get started with a new webinar marketing strategy.
The first is to not over think it. If you follow the steps laid out in this blog, I am certain that you will be able to execute a great webinar.
If you're worried about attendance, be sure to remember that paid social ads are a great way to find new leads and build an audience for the event.
And again, even if only a handful of people show up, don't worry! The webinar itself will hold tons of value as content for your website.
The final thing to remember is not be nervous. This is much easier than talking in front of hundreds of people. You can even hide the section of the screen that shows how many people are watching.
As long as you have picked out a subject that you're confident about talking about, you will do an amazing job.
