Webinar Marketing Best Practices: How to Promote a Webinar

Are you looking for a way to engage with your target audience and maybe even boost sales in the process? Well, you are not alone. Many entrepreneurs and marketers out there today are constantly looking for ways to effectively reach out to their target audiences. One way that has been tested – and proven to be effective – is using webinars or online seminars. Currently, over 50% of online marketers and promoters use webinars in their campaigns. Webinars have proven themselves to be an effective tool in generating income for many businesses and companies out there today.

However, hosting a webinar is not the only thing you need to do to promote your product or service. You have to have a comprehensive webinar marketing strategy if you want anyone to attend your online seminar. You can easily create a huge online following by promoting your webinar to your target audience. A series of successful webinars can help you to position yourself as a well-known expert in your niche.

If you are eager to learn how to go about webinar marketing, then this guide is for you. We'll highlight several webinar promotion best practices that you can implement in your webinar marketing strategy. These best practices will guide you on how to prepare your webinar for maximum outreach, how to promote a webinar on different platforms, and how to follow up with your audience after the webinar.

How to Plan and Prepare Your Webinar for Maximum Outreach

For your webinar to be successful, you will have to cover some marketing aspects from the very beginning. This means planning and preparing your webinar accordingly to make sure it meets the highest standards. It goes without saying that you need to find an interesting topic or agenda to cover in your webinar. Your webinar will need to be properly structured and timed. You'll also need to create a landing page that will allow people to sign up for your webinar. Here are some of the marketing aspects you should cover when planning and preparing your webinar:

1. Have an Engaging Topic or Agenda

First and foremost, you need to get an exciting and captivating topic or agenda for your webinar. You may already have a topic in mind, but if not, you can use Google Analytics to find out what your target audience is searching for on the web. It's advisable to tackle trending topics that are currently being discussed in your specific field or niche. You can also look through some of the questions you get from your customers and see if there are any that arise often. Another great source of topics for your webinars is social media. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are a focal point for trending conversations which you can easily turn into topics for your webinars.

2. Develop Your Webinar Structure and Outline

After establishing which topic you want to cover, the next thing you need to do is come up with an appropriate structure or outline for your webinar. Ideally, you should break down your topic into different sections that make it easy for your audience to stay engaged throughout the webinar.

Also, look for a product or service (solution) that will match the topic you are covering. You can include a sales pitch for the product or service at the end of the webinar. Don't forget to include special offers and discounts for those who subscribe to your webinars.

3. Make a Slide Deck

A slide deck is a PowerPoint presentation that will help you visualize your webinar outline. An ideal slide deck should have:

A title and intro slide
A slide for each major point
Additional slides for explaining major points
A mix of text-only and visual slides
Graphics and images that make your presentation more engaging

The crucial thing here is to ensure every major point gets its own dedicated slide so that the audience does not get confused about what is being discussed. A member of your audience can easily lose interest and exit the webinar if they feel their time is being wasted by a poorly planned presentation.

4. Create a Webinar Landing Page

You will need to create a landing page where people who are interested in your webinar will come to sign up. There are many ways and tools you can use to create an amazing landing page. The most important thing here is to make it is as unique and appealing as possible. Your audience needs to see something different than what they are used to. The more appealing your landing page is, the higher the number of registrations you'll get. To put it in simple terms: Make your webinar landing page too good to resist.

5. Choose A Webinar Platform

You'll also need to find a reliable platform to host your webinar. The platform you choose will greatly affect the success of your webinar, so it's important to choose wisely. Your preferred webinar platform should be one that will optimally allow you to broadcast your online seminar to your audience. The platform will also allow you to communicate with your audience using Live Chat.

Different platforms offer different features such as video conferencing, screen sharing, email invitations, recording, custom DNS, private branding (white labeling), web conferencing, attendee registration, custom landing pages, live chat, secure meeting links, file sharing, API integrations, and many others. One of the most reliable webinar platforms is MegaMeeting.

6. Make a “Thank You” Page

After a participant has successfully registered for your webinar, it's advisable to redirect them to a “thank you” page where you share your appreciation with them for signing up. You can share your social media info on this page and include a call-to-action message that requests participants to share your webinar with family and friends. Having a “thank you” page can greatly increase the conversion rate of your webinar marketing strategy.

7. Send Confirmation and Reminder Emails

Last but not least, you should send out a confirmation email to each and every person that signs up for your webinar; the email should clearly state the date and time of the webinar. You can send subsequent emails thereafter to remind participants of an upcoming webinar that they signed up for.

Now that you know how to plan and prepare your webinar, let's move on to the next part of your webinar marketing strategy, which covers some of the best practices to follow when promoting your webinar.

How to Promote A Webinar on Different Platforms

After planning and preparing your webinar, it's now time to do the actual webinar marketing. First and foremost, you should ensure that you have enough time between the beginning of your promotion and the actual the day of your webinar to market your webinar. You should allocate at least a week to this task, but statistics recommend marketing your webinar three weeks before going live. Here are some of the most effective webinar marketing best practices.

1. Paid Ad Campaigns

Paid ad campaigns like Google Adwords, Promoted Pins and Facebook/Instagram ads can help you to reach out to people who are not necessarily your followers, prospects or customers, but are a great fit for your content. You can make use of the targeted demographic and interests features of paid ad campaigns to get better results from your marketing efforts. This technique is very effective, especially if you are new to webinars and don't have a huge audience.

2. Email Marketing

If you already have a substantial email list, you can go ahead and send an email blast to your subscribers, informing them of your upcoming webinar. Share specific details about your webinar in the email and include an appropriate call-to-action that directs your subscribers to your webinar landing page. You can also share information about special offers, discounts and benefits that your subscribers will get if they attend your webinar.

Social media is an excellent place to promote your webinar. You can promote your webinar to your followers, fans, friends, customers and other people in your network. Through social media, your webinar is marketed to both your existing audience and new audiences as well, which increases the chances of people registering. You can even include the link to your webinar landing page on your social media profiles, along with a call-to-action that invites people to attend.

4. Announcement Bar

Another great way to promote your webinar is to use an announcement bar like Sumo or Hello Bar that will always feature prominently on your website . The bar will have a message that requests visitors to sign up for your webinar. The announcement bar should stand out and use friendly language so as not to put off visitors. You can include a link to your webinar landing page on this bar.

5. Blog Posts

Blog posts can also be effective tools in marketing your webinar. People who read or subscribe to your blog posts can easily be converted to become regular attendees of your webinars. This is because these people are already familiar with your content and will be more willing to hear what you have to say. You should include an appropriate call-to-action message at the end of your blog posts. Make sure the topic of the blog post matches or corresponds to the topic of the webinar.

6. Webinar Listing Sites

There are sites like Webinar Base and Tell Online that allow people to post and promote upcoming webinars. These sites are free to use, and they can come in handy in attracting new audiences.

7. Guest Posting

When used right, guest posting can be a very valuable tool when marketing your webinar. The secret with guest posting is to carefully plan and time your guest post with your upcoming webinar. Your post should be visible and appropriately timed so that readers get to know about your webinar before it takes place.

You can also use a custom email signature to promote your webinar. This is a simple but very effective way to let people know that you have an upcoming webinar. Considering the number of emails people send and receive every day, an email signature or footer can easily reach a large number of people. You can include a link to your webinar landing page in your email signature or footer to boost registrations.

How to Follow Up With Your Audience After a Webinar

Once your webinar is completed, you must aim to follow up with everyone who attended in order to get the best return on investment. Here are some webinar follow-up best practices:

1. Offer A Limited-Time Replay

Offer a limited-time replay for everyone who signed up for your webinar. This offer will allow anyone who had initially registered for your webinar to replay or re-watch it within a limited-time duration. You can send out a replay link that will be active for 48 to 72 hours after the webinar to give more people a chance to view your content.

2. Email Reminders on Special Offers and Discounts

If you highlighted any special offers or discounts in your webinar, it's important that you send out a series of emails to remind your audience about them. These emails act as follow-up emails that encourage people to take action as soon as possible in order to take advantage of the limited-time offers and discounts that were promised in the webinar.

3. Plan for The Next Webinar

If your webinar was successful and attendance was good, you can proceed to convert your webinar into a series of webinars, where you can tackle other topics that your audience may be interested in. Doing this not only helps you to position yourself as an expert in your field, but also to stay relevant in an ever-changing world.

Final Word

It's not enough to follow the pack and start hosting your own webinars to market your product or service. You have to invest both time and money to promote your webinar for it to have a positive impact on your brand and business. Following the webinar marketing best practices listed above should give you an upper hand and put you in a position to attract plenty of people to your online seminars.

If you’re interested in exploring how a webinar can work for you and your organization, consider MegaMeeting. Our easy-to-use, browser-based solution is perfect for your next event.

MegaMeeting solves the biggest challenges of modern video conferencing. For users, it is an all-in-one platform that delivers both video conferencing and webinars in a single, simplified interface. For attendees, it is 100% browser-based, making it highly accessible; joining a meeting is instantaneous from a single click. For enterprises, it is highly customizable, with white-labeling options for a private branded solution. For developers, it is API-driven and easy to integrate.

Powered by WebRTC, Node.js, React, and GraphQL, it is a cutting-edge platform that is fun and easy to use for users and developers alike.