This article will take a closer look at what exactly webinar marketing is, and what you need to create your own webinar marketing plan.
Webinar marketing is increasingly popular, because in this saturated online world, webinars help you actually connect with your customers.
And it isn’t just me saying that – the statistics support it: according to Adobe, attendees typically stay online for up to 70% of a 90 minute webinar.
This means that people are really paying attention to what’s being said, making it a super effective way to communicate with your customers.
If you have a high ticket product, a complicated sales pitch, or a new feature that your customer must know about, webinars are the perfect medium for you to get the word out.
Why Webinar Marketing Rocks
As I mentioned, webinar marketing is great because it captures an engaged group of people and really holds their attention. But that isn’t the only reason this marketing strategy is effective. Webinars are also great because:
High Conversions
Webinars are awesome tools for converting leads into customers, because these people are ALREADY interested in whatever you are selling. This means you’re certainly going to see a higher conversion rate with your participants.
In fact, the average webinar conversion rate is 19%. That’s a serious revenue generator. Conversion rate is one of the most important metrics marketers use to measure the performance of nearly everything they do.
Engagement
Webinar participants will stay online for an average of 54 minutes – that’s a ton of time for them to understand your product offering, get any of their questions answered, and ultimately get closer to converting to a buyer.
Attention for Your Product
How many advertising channels give you the opportunity to showcase the multitudes of your product?
If you’re like most businesses, the answer is very few. That’s why webinar marketing is so awesome: it gives you the chance to delve into the depth of your offerings with an audience who is ready to listen.
Related: 7 Webinar Invitation Email Examples to Boost Attendance
How to Plan A Webinar
Decide on a Topic and Title It
Choosing a topic should be pretty simple – do something that relates to your business! It probably shouldn’t be just a webinar on what your business does, but it could be something you’ve had success with that you want to share with others.
Once you’ve decided on the topic, pick a fun title! The best webinar names tell users what they get, while roping them in with a hook. Maybe throw in a statistic about your offering to grab people even further.
For example: “Learn how to grow your SEO traffic by 50% in a matter of months.”
We’ve often found that statistics or success metrics are the best way to get attendees to take interest and show up.
Decide Who’s Hosting and When to Do it
Plenty of webinar software tools will allow you to have more than one host at a time, so decide who it’s gonna be and roll with it!
Your webinar hosts should be experts on whatever the subject matter is. They should be a steady, clear speaker, and preferably someone with some public speaking experience.
Then, decide when it’s all happening. Schedule a time when you know you and your hosts will be available, and give yourself several days of time to do marketing beforehand.
Market Your Webinar
Imagine throwing a whole webinar and having no one show up. That would be tragic. Thankfully, proper webinar marketing can help prevent that.
Use all of your resources for this webinar marketing: your email lists, social networking profiles, blog, and website. T
ell everyone you know about your upcoming webinar. Here are some other marketing tactics to make your webinar a smashing success:
Email Marketing
It’s said that email marketing can return up to 30x your investment. From order confirmations to newsletters, email marketing must be a part of your marketing toolkit.
When it comes to webinars, you can’t remind your email list enough about your presentation. We find that it’s best to ask them to sign up at least five times before going live.
Make sure to remind them the day of and even a few hours before to ensure a high turnout rate. You must activate your email list if you’re going to run a well-attended webinar.
Need an email marketing service to promote your webinar? Try Brevo for free!Brevo’s free plan includes access to core email features, 300 emails/day, 40+ email templates, and customizable signup forms to grow your blog email list. |
Create a Landing Page
When you’re advertising your webinar, you need a place that synthesizes everything your readers need to know about the webinar. This should focus on what your audience will learn, and give them the opportunity to sign up directly on the page.
Use a landing page software tool to create an eye catching, pixel-perfect experience for your customers. Make sure to include social proof and/or customer testimonials to really grab their attention.
Use Your Social Media
You know what your social media is? FREE access to a group of people that already know you. This is ripe with webinar participants, so use it wisely! Use it for all of your marketing. But it can be particularly effective for advertising webinars.
Paid Media
With paid media, you can go beyond the bounds of your own network. Try creating some targeted Instagram ads or Facebook ads to garner more signups for your webinar.
If your webinar is about a business topic, we’ve found that LinkedIn can be incredibly effective — both with organic and paid LinkedIn posts — to bring viewers to your webinars.
Ask Partners to Promote
Ask other industry experts or colleagues to promote your webinar. You could also ask them to partner up with you and co-host, which means you will be able to attract their network, too! A win-win-win.
We’ve found that teaming up and co-hosting webinars is a great way to combine audiences and sell both companies’ product offerings.
Find Your Webinar Platform
Feel ready to get started on your webinar now?
Great! The next step is to choose the best webinar platform for your business.
The best platform will vary depending on what stage of growth your business is at, as well as what type of product you are selling.
Brevo connects with several of the best webinar platforms including Zoom and GoToWebinar, with a simple one-click Zapier integration.
That being said, there are a few factors that you’ll want to look at, regardless of your specific needs:
The Look
You (read: nobody) wants their webinar to look super lame and low-tech. Because it makes you look super lame and low tech. So make sure you choose a platform that allows you to customize your brand with your own colors, logo, and more.
How Easy It is to Use
You don’t want to have to worry about any sort of technology that will give you pause, especially when you are going to be hosting a webinar.
Additionally, you definitely don’t want a platform that will be difficult for webinar participants to access and engage with. Make sure you are choosing one that has a user-friendly interface, to minimize those technical troubles.
Does it require an installation?
Some webinar softwares require the user to install a program on their own computer, while some allow online functionality. Make sure you’ve decided which you’d prefer before making a webinar software purchase.
Evergreen Functionality
Are you able to record your webinar and convert it into an evergreen webinar? For those unfamiliar, evergreen webinars are (as I said), recorded webinars that you can use over and over and over again.
If this is interesting to you, then make sure you choose a software that allows you to do it!
Free Trial Offerings
Do they offer a free trial for you to do a road test? This is crucial, because you want to make sure that the software checks all of those other boxes before committing. So make sure you check in on that free trial before doing anything else.
Now that you’ve found the software that checks all of those boxes, it’s time to plan.
Prepare and Execute!
Before the big day, make sure you prepare. You might think you can just wing it, but we can assure you: you can’t.
Write down some of your main talking points, or better yet, write a script!
Got any other webinar marketing tips? Let us know in the comments.
Post by Mark Spera. Mark is the founder of Growth Marketing Pro, a blog focused on SEO, marketing software, and growth hacking. He lives in San Francisco where he surfs and eats pizza for nearly every meal.
