Are you planning to host a marketing webinar to improve and maximize your sales rate?
Or did you recently host one that did not work out?
Well, having an unsuccessful webinar can be pretty discouraging considering how much effort is usually put into making it work.
Unlike your office meetings where you all sit at one round table, webinars are quite different. They are a sort of virtual event or conference.
It takes some extra flair to keep your audience engaged and focused on what you have to offer.
That’s why this article is for you.
We will be looking into some webinar marketing hacks to prevent us from making common webinar mistakes. The world is evolving, but some of these webinar marketing hacks remain evergreen – at least for now.
However, there is a need to first understand the concept of webinar marketing.
What is Webinar Marketing?
First of all, what is a webinar?
We have earlier written an article on what is a webinar.
However, a webinar is an online platform that allows a person or group of people to present an idea or information to a specific audience.
Webinars are unique because of the interactive interface they create with the audience. The audience gets to ask the presenter questions and receive instant responses.
Although webinars were initially for educational purposes in schools, business owners have now adopted the strategy.
By providing vital and useful information, your audience can be persuaded to try out your product or services you have to offer. When used solely for marketing purposes, 73% of marketers confirm they gain quality leads from hosting webinars.
Marketing webinars provide the perfect avenue to showcase your expertise, promote your products and services to increase sales and engagement.
Source: Outgrow.co
Hence, we can say that webinar marketing refers to online marketing activity targeted at the promotion of products and services by educating an audience via the use of webinars.
However, marketing webinars have an average of 36.6% attendees rate compared to 65.5% for training webinars. Hence, there is a need to strategize on improving participation and organizing more successful marketing webinars.
The Webinar Marketing Hacks that still works in 2021
The success or failure of a webinar is dependent on how you plan for it. No amount of planning can ever be too much. One part of planning involves persuading people to attend your webinar.
It’s an excellent strategy to ensure that your participating audience will be getting quality information for their time. Another scope of this planning process is the thought of reaching out to those that were unable to participate in the webinar eventually.
That is why we will be breaking our webinar marketing hacks into three categories: the Pre-Webinar Marketing Hacks, Live-Webinar Marketing Hacks, and Post-Webinar Marketing Hacks.
Pre-Webinar Marketing Hacks
Choose an Engaging Topic
Inviting people to attend your webinar involves making them see what they stand to benefit by attending. As such, your audience must find your topic to be useful and have interactive content.
An engaging topic is one that aligns and relates to what the audience needs. Having a good understanding of what will interest your audience is crucial.
For those who already have an active audience base for their website or blog, you can gain customer insights into what your audience needs by skimming through the comments section under your posts. You should also try going through questions via your social media platforms.
Another approach to knowing your audience’s interests is asking a controversial question that will spur people to give their honest opinions or vote (in the case of surveys). It provides the leverage to pick the best topic of general interest.
Whatever topic you decide to choose should be addressing a significant challenge with solutions promised during the webinar.
Using “how to” titles can work well for an audience that needs practical information or hands-on experience. “List topics” are also good, especially for helping the inquisitive audience in search of ideas.
Addressing vital issues that relate to your audience determines how they will turn up for the webinar. If all things go well, you will be leaving them impressed and ready to try out products, ideas, or courses you recommend.
Schedule the Webinar Date and Time as Early as Possible
You might not know, but 69% of eventual attendees register just a week before the webinar. This explains the importance of announcing the date of your marketing webinar on time. There is a need for enough publicity time before the final rush-hour.
Source: GoToWebinar
Besides, it gives you enough time to plan and promote the webinar. It also provides adequate time for interested people to sign up.
A major scope of this webinar marketing hack is picking the best possible time and weekday for your webinar.
The trick lies in the fact that the day of the week you choose to host a webinar depends on your potential attendees’ personal schedules.
Generally, Mondays and Fridays are not good options. Mondays are the start of a busy week or return from a relaxing weekend. So, most people aren’t that balanced yet.
Also, Fridays are the end of the week, and there are many unfinished tasks to do. So, both days are usually busy or tiring for people.
That leaves us with the mid-week days. As seen below, choosing a time between 10 am, and 2 pm gives many registrants.
Source: Daniel Waas
In addition, the time range is still high at 10am when it comes to the number of attendees. As seen below, picking a webinar time between 10-11am will likely give you the highest turn-up rate.
Source: Daniel Waas
However, the day of the week is also essential. As we said, the mid-week days are better when it comes to picking a day during the week.
As we can see below, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays racked up higher numbers for both registrants and attendees.
Source: Daniel Waas
These all suggest that the recommended time to have the best results in your webinar is in the middle of the week, around 10am – 11am.
However, there is a need to observe what works best for your audience too. This is only a recommended time; there might be high traffic of webinars within that time.
Optimize Your Landing Pages
Only 51% of those that view your webinar landing page eventually complete the event registration or sign-up process. Of that 51%, only 36% later attended.
However, our focus is on 51%. What could have hindered the remaining 49% from completing sign-up?
There is a need to evaluate what could have discouraged the 49% from increasing leads conversion next time.
One of these could be long registration forms. Nobody wants to sit down and fill a form that is like an interview.
So, what do you do?
Asides from using a very good landing page builder software, create a short sign-up form too. Limit the forms to ONLY information that’s so important. Do not make the form look like an interview.
Another trick is to add a calendar to your landing page. It’s a simple but effective tool, as well. Assist the audience in skimming through his schedule and seamlessly adding the webinar date to his calendar.
Actively Promote via Social Media & Email
When trying to create awareness for your webinar or any product, a success tip is to try as many options as possible. There is no fixed way to go about it.
One of these many options is the use of social media and email.
If correctly done, email can be responsible for up to 79% of your webinar registrations. All you have to do is ensure you kick start your promotion as early as possible.
Do not also forget to utilize your social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other groups you belong to. Follow social media statistics trends to stay updated on best advertising methods.
One thing about these promotions is consistency. Consistency in your promotions. Consistency in crafting a memorable branding. Consistency in the use of hashtags.
In creating your personal brand, there is a need to use the same set of logos, designs, or pictures if possible. What this does is that it allows your audience to quickly identify your promotional ads or messages whenever they pop up.
The same goes for Twitter, and we even recommend that you use the same hashtag to trend every webinar you host. You can use a hashtag generator to create one easily. It’s more like creating a unique identity in the advert space.
Live-Webinar Marketing Hacks
Use High-Quality Video & Audio
Using one of the best webinar software is not enough. Your audio and video quality should be top-notch too.
Imagine seeing a movie with low video quality; it will feel like a waste of time. The same goes for low-quality visuals during a presentation. Nobody wants to spare their time for that.
However, as much as poor visuals can be annoying, low audio is even worse. You might still try to see a YouTube video with low imagery because of network issues but not with muffled audio.
So here are some of our tips to help you out:
- Close all unnecessary apps that you are not using to focus the full bandwidth on delivering high audio and video.
- Turn off all possible sources of noise like phones or even your air conditioner.
- Minimize echoes during a speech by using a quality headset.
- Test run your sound equipment to see everything is fine.
Include Visuals & Imagery in Presentations
Rather than using presentations stuffed with texts, consider using visuals and images. People believe what they see over what they hear. This is why the inclusion of videos is rated 7.8 of 10 for webinars.
Asides from videos, also include images, charts, or infographics in your presentation. Just try and back up your points with visible proofs.
In the case of slide presentations, ensure the points are well bulleted, and the slides are not stuffy. Do not let the attendee go through the rigour of squeezing their eyes to see what you have on display.
Use Pre-recorded Meetings
As humans, impromptu events may come up that distorts our initial plans. This happens to anyone, including your promised attendees. A shift in work schedule and office emergencies can make your registrants end up missing your marketing webinar.
As such, it is advisable to record your meeting live so that it can be available for replay later. That way, you will be getting value both during and after the webinar.
Audiences that were unavoidably absent during the webinar will be happy to see a replay of what they missed. It also builds their trust in you, and they see you as reliable.
Pre-recorded meetings also play an important role as far as meetings between different time zones are concerned. You can decide to replay it as many times as possible for your different set of audiences.
Engage Your Audience
Having a good topic, good audio and video presentations is essential. Nevertheless, all these would not count if you fail to carry the audience along.
One very effective way of doing this is by organizing a question and answer (Q/A) period after your presentation.
Research shows that having a Q/A period offers the highest type of engagement. This should not be a surprise since it’s the perfect way to get you and the audience to interact at once.
Post-Webinar Marketing Hacks
Follow-Up with Emails
Assume you just finished hosting a marketing webinar successfully. Kudos! However, is it time to relax?
The truth is there is still a lot to do even after running a successful webinar. Remember, not all your registrants attended your meeting. Some wished to participate but were unable to do so.
For these absentees, there is a need to send a call to action or link to your marketing course or product for those that attended.
To do this, consider email marketing and follow-up. You can also go through our guide to successful email marketing.
Sending an email within 24 hours of completing the live webinar creates the impression in your audience that they are important. You can use any of the leading email template builders to draft one quickly. The email should include the link to watch the replay of the webinar.
An example of such an email can be:
“Hi there, I noticed you were unable to attend the webinar. Here is what you missed. You can watch the replay anytime within the next 72 hours. You might also like to check out my new…”
By putting a limited availability time on the webinar replay, you are creating the urgency it deserves. People tend to procrastinate when there is no time limit.
Besides, having a separate “Thanks for attending” email list will show you care about your attendees and customers. As we did for the absentees, it allows us to market a new product (eg course).
Conclusion
The bulk of the strategies and hacks towards hosting a successful marketing webinar lies more on the pre-webinar marketing hacks. The effort you put in the early stages of the planning phase determines the motivation level to continue.
As we have seen, planning never really ends. Even after hosting the marketing webinar, there’s still a need to follow-up and keep track of leads. Following up involves not only sending emails but knowing when is the best time to send the emails.
Author: Anastasia Belyh is a 3x serial entrepreneur with a deep passion for digital business models.
