Hosting a webinar involves a substantial effort, at least in the beginning. Multiple tasks demand your complete attention, such as inviting speakers, creating event material, choosing a reliable webinar platform, ensuring easy registration, promoting the webinar effectively, and more. And of these myriad aspects, webinar promotions is something you simply cannot compromise on.
Advertising and promotion is one of the key parts of a webinar planning process. It is just as important as selecting the best webinar topic and crafting content. Failing to effectively communicate your event message to target audiences can negatively impact your webinar registrations & attendance and even overall webinar performance.
Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about any of this, because we’ve got you covered.
In this article, we will look at some amazing promotional strategies and tactics that will help you reach your target market and achieve your webinar goals.
1) Launch an Email Marketing Campaign:
Email marketing is one of the best channels to promote your webinar because it allows you to personalize your approach and reach potential attendees directly.
Research shows 57% of webinar registrations come from email marketing campaigns. They are 4 times more effective than the second-best channel for driving registrations. You need to focus on creating well-planned email promotional campaigns to reach your target demographic, maximize webinar registrations, and get people excited to attend.
Leverage popular platforms like Mailchimp, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Moosend, and MailerLite to launch email marketing initiatives.
They offer features like automation, segmentation, analytics, and more which can help boost the performance of your email marketing efforts. Plus, they have capabilities to automate email sequences, saving you a significant amount of time.
Here is a step-by-step guide to running an email marketing campaign:
- First, build an email list of your target customers
- Create a simple event registration form with name, email, and contact details
- Craft compelling email subject lines that inspire action
- Personalize the email by recipient name
- In the main content of the email, mention all the important details like the webinar date, time, topic, benefits of attending it, speaker bio, etc., and create a strong value proposition.
- Incorporate visuals to make the message more engaging
- Include a Clear Call to Action (CTA)
- Don’t rely on a single email. Instead, build a series of emails like initial invitations, registration reminders, thank-you emails, event reminder emails, and last-minute pushes the day before the webinar.
- Finally, track your campaign results with key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and registration numbers.
Here is an example of a webinar invitation email message
Suppose you are hosting a webinar on “Digital Marketing Strategies” then the email template would be
Subject: [Webinar Title] – Join Our Insightful Webinar on “Digital Marketing Strategies”
Hi [Recipient Name],
Do you want to take your business to greater heights? Join our two-day webinar on “Digital Marketing Strategies”.
Come, be part of our webinar, taking place on [Date] at [Time]. You will learn everything you need to know about the latest digital marketing practices, tips and tricks, to strengthen your brand’s online presence.
In this webinar, you will learn about:
- Social media marketing
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Email marketing
- Influence marketing
- Content marketing
- Video marketing
- Mobile marketing
- Pay-per-click
Don’t miss out on this opportunity. Register now [Registration Link]
Looking forward to seeing you there,
Best Regards,
[Your Name]
2) Utilize Social Media Platforms:
Another popular channel for promoting your webinar is social media, which is a whole different world. It allows you to connect and attract a vast network of potential attendees.
According to this stat, 5.07 billion people around the world now use social media. Audiences visit social networking platforms to engage with the content in real-time. Thus, social media channels can be a treasure trove for you to reach a target marketplace.
Consider promoting your webinar on the following social media platforms:
- Facebook:
Facebook is the biggest social networking site. Compared to other social media sites, it has the largest user population.
According to Statista, Facebook has over 3 billion monthly active users. India is the largest Facebook audience country in the world with 366 million users. Additionally, the US, Indonesia, and Brazil each had over 100 million Facebook users.
Facebook is a great platform for you to have a brand presence. You can spread the word about your webinars through organic posts like images, infographics, and short videos. Additionally, add stories so that they appear prominently at the top of users’ feeds.
Plus, with its Facebook Groups and Facebook Ads Manager, it enables you to broaden your account’s reach and attract more followers.
- Instagram:
Instagram is another social media platform that is the 5th most visited channel globally, allowing you to share a wide range of content, such as photos, videos, stories, and reels, and go live to connect with your target market in real-time.
As of early 2024, Instagram had 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, reports Statista. The platform’s audience is far-reaching, and the country with the largest Instagram audience is India, with around 360 million users. The US and Brazil are in second and third place, with 169 million and 134 million users, respectively.
Visuals play a big role on Instagram, so make sure it’s highly attractive and engaging when promoting your webinar. Leverage Instagram stories and use a countdown post to stimulate your audience’s interest in the event. Additionally, partner with Instagram influencers or experts in your field in order to draw attention to your webinar.
- LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is the ideal platform for businesses, in general. It started out as a simple job search platform on May 5, 2003, but now it has evolved into a professional networking platform where you can build your personal brand.
According to this article, LinkedIn is the top professional platform, with over 1 billion members from 200 countries and regions worldwide. And about 134.5 million users actively use LinkedIn, each day.
Leverage LinkedIn to reach out to your professional target audience. It allows for precise audience segmentation, based on job title, industry, and other relevant criteria, ensuring your webinar message reaches the most relevant audiences.
- YouTube:
YouTube is a video-sharing platform where billions of users come to watch the videos of their choice, every day. It ranks as the second largest search engine after Google, which is its parent company.
Based on this article, YouTube has 2.49 billion monthly active users. That’s half of the 5.04 billion social media users worldwide, making it the second most used social platform.
People spend 48.7 minutes on YouTube every day, so this platform is ideal for engaging your target audience using video content. So, definitely add YouTube to your webinar marketing strategy.
- X (formerly Called Twitter):
X, formerly known as Twitter, is a widely used social networking platform, where users share short tweets either in text, images, video, or links. According to Statista, as of early 2024, there were an estimated 429 million X users worldwide, with over 106 million of these users being in the United States.
X is a great platform for sharing engaging tweets about your webinar. With relevant hashtags, you can tweet about your upcoming webinar and reach out to a potential target audience with ease.
3) Run Paid Ads:
Paid advertisement plays a vital role in any marketing strategy. It helps you reach a more targeted audience, by allowing you to narrow the demographic focus.
Statistics suggest that PPC traffic converts 50% better than organic site visitors. That means people who visit your website through paid ads are more likely to take a specific action, compared to those who come to the site organically.
To effectively promote your webinar, consider running paid ads on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads. These platforms offer robust targeting options, allowing you to reach your ideal audience based on demographics, interests, job titles, and more.
For B2B webinars, LinkedIn ads are best given that they cater to a professional user base. For B2C webinars, platforms like Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads are highly effective. Google Ads can work for B2B and B2C, depending on your specific marketing objectives and target demographic.
In Facebook ads and Instagram ads, you can use different ad formats like images, videos, and carousels to reach out to desired people and drive registration. In LinkedIn, single image, video, and carousel ads are effective ad formats.
For promoting webinars using Google Ads, use search ads, display ads, and video ads. Our advice is that you experiment with different ad formats to see which ones perform best and get you results.
4) Collaborate with Influencers:
Influencers are individuals who are experts in their respective niches and have a large number of followers. Collaborating with influencers in your industry can help you reach a highly engaged audience.
Statistics show that 69% of consumers trust influencer recommendations. People instantly believe what they say and do, because they view influencers as credible sources of information.
When social media influencers promote your webinar to their audience, your brand image and credibility increase, which encourages followers to sign up for your webinar. Influencers, in their own style, provide information about your brand’s products or services, highlight their benefits, and encourage people to take action.
When looking for an influencer to partner with, just follow the below steps:
- Set your influencer marketing budget
- Make a list of influencers who are relevant to your niche, with a similar target audience as yours
- Reach out to them and establish each influencer’s fees
- Finalize those that suit your requirements and are within your webinar marketing budget
5) Partner with Another Brand:
Partnering with another company to promote a webinar could be a smart decision. This approach allows you to reach a new potential audience pool.
When you collaborate with a reputable brand, you increase your own credibility in the eyes of your target audience. Partnering with a brand whose audience aligns with your webinar topic helps increase the impact and success of your webinar.
Make sure that the brands you are considering aren’t your direct competitors, but serve a similar demographic. You will tap into new and relevant audiences, making it a win-win collaboration for both.
Here’s how to partner with another brand for webinar promotions:
- Conduct thorough research on companies with similar target markets
- Craft a partnership proposal that will benefit both brands
- Make a list of potential business partners
- Reach out to each brand with a strong partnership proposal
- Seal deals with brands that fit your requirements and accept your partnership proposal.
- Create co-branded promotional content and share them on each other’s websites and social media channels.
6) Leverage Employee Networks:
Spreading the word about your webinar through your employees could be a brilliant idea. It will increase your promotional efforts and cost you nothing. Employees often have strong professional and personal networks. Encouraging them to circulate the news about your upcoming webinar, can significantly expand your event’s reach beyond your marketing efforts.
Here is an easy approach to leveraging employee networks:
- Provide employees with sharable webinar material, like infographics, or a short webinar teaser video
- In return, offer rewards to them like raffle or gift cards
- Encourage employees to share the post on their social media networks or with their friends, colleagues, or professional acquaintances.
- Thank and reward employees who actively promote the webinar.
7) Explore Facebook or LinkedIn Groups:
If you have a community on Facebook or LinkedIn, it is a fantastic opportunity for you to highlight your upcoming event. These groups typically include people who are looking for information about relevant topics.
Such a group of people actively seek information to learn more about a certain topic. Posting on these groups or communities about your upcoming webinar can certainly pique their interest in the event, increasing registration and attendance rates.
8) Leverage Retargeting:
Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is one of the best ways to reach out to audiences who have previously interacted with your brand or content. This strategy helps to remind people who had earlier shown interest in your event but haven’t registered yet.
56% of businesses use remarketing to acquire customers. Most companies implement it because it’s the only organic way to reach out to people who have already engaged with your business and drive them to conversion.
Use Google Ads or social media ads like Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Instagram Ads to retarget audiences. Install tracking pixels on your website, especially on your webinar landing page. It will help you to track visitors’ behaviors. Later, create compelling ad copies that highlight the key benefits of joining the webinar, and inspire them to take immediate action.
For example, A user visits your webinar landing page but leaves without registering. You can retarget them with ads that demonstrate the value of being part of the event, and reinforce the message.
9) Press Release:
Press releases can generate immediate media attention, so it’s a great idea to market webinars by issuing a press release. Compared to paid advertising, a press release can be a cost-effective way to reach a large audience.
According to this article, 1 out of 4 businesses have published more than 10 press releases every year, and 68% of businesses report raised brand/product visibility because of publishing the press release.
Consider distributing press releases to relevant media outlets, industry publications, and online news platforms. And yes, reach out to industry-specific journalists, to get adequate coverage.
10) Reach Out to No-Show attendees:
No-show attendees are the individuals who register for an event, but could not attend. Many of your “no-shows” may still be interested in your subsequent events, so don’t forget about them.
Make a separate list of your no-show attendees so that you can inform them about your upcoming webinar with a personalized message. Send them the same invitation you created to attract a new audience – just address them by their name for a personal touch. You’ll have many people on your no-show list who could be disappointed about missing your live event. So, they may not miss the event, this time around.
11) Ask Guest Speakers to Advertise the Webinar:
Don’t be shy about asking guest speakers to promote your webinar. Since guest speakers already have their own audience, followers, and connections, encouraging them to promote your webinar can rapidly expand your event reach beyond your own audience.
Guest speakers can create excitement about your webinar in their network and spark their interest to register for your webinar. When people see a respected expert in the field promoting an event, they trust them, which increases the likelihood of people attending the program.
Provide your guest speakers with the materials they need to promote your event on their LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram pages like images, infographics posts, teaser videos, engaging captions, relevant hashtags, and more.
12) Go Live on Social Media:
Live videos are highly engaging and can generate significant buzz about your webinar. In fact, live video streaming allows us to build a genuine connection with the audience. It creates a sense of immediacy and authenticity.
By going live, you can share your brand story, demonstrate a brief snippet of your upcoming webinar content, and engage your audience in real-time. Plus, you can tell who the featured speaker is, and highlight their expertise which will help increase the hype around your event.
Additionally, you can drive registration by announcing special offers or discounts for those who register during the live stream. By leveraging live video streaming, you will not only generate excitement for your event, but also build trust with your audience, address their concerns directly, and collect real-time feedback.
For going live, use platforms like Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Youtube Live, and LinkedIn Live as they are popular channels for live streaming and primary sources of organic reach and audience engagement.
13) Market Your Webinar on Quora:
Quora is a question-and-answer platform where people can ask questions on any topic, and receive quality and genuine answers from other users. It is a place where people come to gain and share knowledge.
Based on this article, Quora receives more than 300 million unique visits every month and the majority of Quora users are from the United States at 37.94%.
With such a vast user base, Quora can certainly be beneficial to promote your event. By sharing valuable insights about your webinar topic, you can increase your event reach and visibility to a potential audience. You will also establish yourself as a leader in the industry by being a part of relevant discussions.
How can I promote a webinar on Quora:
- Create a compelling Quora profile with a concise and informative bio that highlights your expertise
- Search for questions related to your webinar topic
- Craft a high-quality answer with stats or evidence to address those questions
- Include your webinar link in the answer. For example, below the reply you could say “For a more in-depth discussion on this, I recommend checking out my upcoming webinar: [Webinar Title]”
- Submit the answer to the question
14) Use Referral Marketing:
Referral marketing is a type of marketing strategy that involves motivating current customers to promote your webinar or brand’s product and services to other consumers. It can be a great way to raise attendance at the webinar.
Statistics show that 92% of consumers trust referrals from friends and family over other forms of advertising. That means encouraging your current attendees or customers to refer the event to their friends and colleagues, can significantly help increase your event’s reach and boost registrations.
Offer your existing attendees enticing rewards for their contribution, like a discount on the event, exclusive early bird access, or additional bonus content. And provide them with customizable referral messages to spread the word about your event.
15) Webinar Promotions on the Website:
Your website serves as the central hub for all your webinar promotion activities. So it’s essential to have your webinar-related promotional materials on it. You can prominently feature a pop-up or a banner to promote your webinar on your homepage, blog, and other relevant pages, in order to grab the attention of website visitors and encourage them to register.
The ‘home page’ is the most visited page of a website, so it would be an ideal place to announce your future event. You can write a concise and informative description that highlights key points and value propositions for attendees. Put attractive banner ads to draw audiences’ attention.
Plus, include engaging bios of the speakers to build the credibility of the webinar. You could further include a catchy CTA like: “Join us For an Exciting Webinar! Register Now.”
Additionally, highlight past webinars in the form of images or videos on the home page, to pique the attendee’s attention. And don’t forget to upload positive attendee feedback for more social proof.
16. Write a Guest Post
It’s a fantastic idea to reach new audiences and get the message of your webinar across to them. The guest posting website is already an authoritative site with a high number of visitors. When you guest post on reputable sites, your article’s content trustworthiness increases, leading to increased audience engagement and webinar registration.
Things to remember when guest posting:
- The website should have high traffic, DA, and PA
- Make sure the guest posting site has a similar audience base to yours
- Check the traffic, and comment on one of the guest articles that have been published on the website
- Check out guest posting guidelines
- Check to see if they offer “do-follow” or “no-follow” backlinks
Important note – Keep 90% of the content in a guest post informative and 10% promotional. If the post is purely sales-oriented, the host site will reject it.
17. Hold Pre-webinar Engagement Activities
Having engaging pre-webinar activities will not only promote your webinar but also build excitement for it. Because a successful event begins with the initial pre-event engagement encounter. When your target audience interacts with your brand prior to the main event, they will feel more connected to you, resulting in increased registrations.
Whether you’re hosting a hybrid webinar, virtual one, or in-person, the way you engage with your audience before the event begins will determine the audience’s energy, engagement, and participation for the main event.
Here are some effective pre-webinar activities that will engage your audience and build excitement for the webinar:
- Conduct interactive polls or surveys
- Run contest/giveaway
- Hold “meet the speaker” sessions
- Publish visually appealing countdown posts
- Go live on the social media channel and run a live AMA (Ask Me Anything)
The following benefits you will gain by conducting pre-webinar activities:
- Registrations and attendance at the event will increase
- The no-show attendee rate will decrease
- You understand exactly what your audience wants
- Audiences get emotionally connected with your brand
18. Use Old-school Traditional Advertising Techniques
Even in the age of online marketing, traditional marketing is still just as effective and powerful for webinar promotion. According to this stat, The U.S. B2B traditional ad spending in 2022 was $17.7 billion. This is a 5.8% increase from the value in 2021.
Traditional marketing extends the reach of a business beyond digital platforms, that is, reaching audiences not easily accessible through online channels, thereby attracting a wider audience and effectively complementing marketing efforts.
Old school traditional marketing, such as print ads (newspapers, magazines), billboards, TV advertisements, radio ads, direct mail, posters on buses or subways, and more, provides a lasting and real brand experience. These older marketing techniques connect with various demographics simultaneously.
Here are some real-life examples of traditional marketing:
19. Be a Speaker at Another Event
Speaking at another event allows you to engage with their audience and build valuable relationships with them. As a speaker, you can get your brand and your message out there so that interested audiences will know about your webinar. Seeing you present the event yourself will make attendees more interested in the webinar. To boost your webinar registration, you can offer an early bird discount.
20. Collaborate with Podcast Creators
Collaborating with podcast creators for webinar promotion makes sense. This will boost exposure, expanding your brand’s reach to diverse and fresh audiences. Fresh content in podcasts allows you to engage and attract the audience in a unique manner.
Find a podcast creator whose audience demographics align with your webinar’s topic and content. Create an episode on the topic of your webinar that will naturally lead into your webinar.
Final Thoughts
Successful webinar promotion requires a strategic, well-planned, and multi-faceted approach. No matter how informative and engaging a webinar is, it will only be worth it if you promote it through diverse channels.
The advent of the digital age has expanded the ways to promote webinars. Advertising your webinars through diverse channels not only helps you reach your target market effectively but also makes more people understand your offerings and their benefits, inspiring them to register for your event.
Implementing the strategies listed in the article will help you with marketing your webinar effectively, attracting a large audience, as well as achieving your marketing and event goals. So start planning your next webinar promotion campaign today and experience the difference.
FAQs
To reach as many people as possible, it is essential to promote the webinar through multiple channels. Everyone will not be active on the same platform. So, if you spread the word about your upcoming event across all of the platforms, you can ensure that your message reaches a wide group of potential attendees, increasing the chances of attracting the right audience.
You should begin promoting your webinar 3 to 4 weeks in advance to hit the initial registration. This will allow you to send reminder emails, countdown posts, as well as run targeted ads in the final week to maximize sign-ups for the webinar.
Here are the places on your website where you can display the webinar’s promotional message:
- Homepage hero banner/slider
- Exit Intent pop-up
- Blog post sidebar
- Pages listed with past webinars, case studies, or white papers
The most effective social media platform for webinar promotion entirely depends on your target audience. For example, if your target audience is more active on Facebook, you will do more promotional activities there, resulting in more registrations.
