Webinars are an excellent business development strategy. It’s a fast way for you to establish the know-like-trust factor with your prospects. It’s also an efficient way to get in front of a large number of webinar attendance at the same time.Third, webinars can quickly position you as the go-to expert in your field when you share valuable content that was truly useful for your attendees. For your webinar to be a success you need to boost your audience – and these 6 powerful tips are designed to help you increase webinar attendance quickly and effectively.
1.Incentivize attendance with promotions and free resources
If you want to increase webinar attendance, you need to make your event irresistible; and the easiest way to do that is through free resources and promotions. Alongside the obvious benefits of your knowledge, experience and advice, you can boost your attendance by offering exclusive promotions and benefits. Anything, from a free eBook or guide, to a money-off coupon for your services, can be used to lure in your audience – allowing you to increase webinar attendance, and boost the value of your event.
2. Host your webinar on the right day, at the right time
As a general rule, professional webinars fare much better when they’re hosted on week days. Weekends represent much-needed time off for most business professionals, and holding your event on a Saturday or Sunday often amounts to a choice between webinar and family-time. Understandably, that’s a decision you shouldn’t force your audience to make. Stick to weekdays, during standard business hours or the early evening. For my own webinars, I have found that Wednesday and Thursday between 12-1pm favors higher sign ups and greater attendance.
3. Create a landing page to promote alongside your webinar
Landing pages are used to highlight the importance of your offers and resources, and encourage your website visitors to take a particular course of action. By creating a landing page for your webinar, you can highlight the benefits of your event; outline what your audience can expect; encourage sign-ups; and increase webinar attendance.
I find that having a landing page is more effective at increasing webinar sign up’s rather than trying to promote it on your company website because on your website there are many more options your visitor has that can distract them from the one action you really want them to take (which is to sign up for your webinar). On a landing page there is ONLY one action they can take – to sign up for you webinar. There are no other choices for them to click.
4. Send reminder emails
Promotion shouldn’t stop once you’ve organized your webinar. You can significantly increase webinar attendance by sending one simple email to your registered attendees – reminding them of the date and time of the webinar as well as the valuable information they will take away you’re your webinar.
Chances are that your audience is composed of business professionals. There’s no busier demographic of people. As a result, it’s easy for your attendees to simply forget about your webinar – something that can be remedied by sending reminder emails a day before, a few hours before and even on the hour the webinar is due to start.
5. Promote through Social Media
Social media and webinars are a match made in heaven. Hugely popular sites, like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, allow you to easily host a virtual event – promoting the date, time and topic of your upcoming webinar and encouraging your followers to engage, attend and share information about your event. As well as leveraging your existing networks, you can benefit from paid advertisement across the most popular sites. Both LinkedIn and Facebook offer PPC (Pay Per-Click) and CPM (Cost Per impression) advertisements, allowing you to pay only in the event of someone engaging with your social media ad.
6. Present multiple speakers, and ask them to promote it
When you have 2 speakers presenting on one webinar (interview style) or 5-20 speakers on a webinar series (also known as a telesummit) you can dramatically increase your webinar sign up’s from both or all speakers promoting it to their individual lists and social media communities. Leverage your network of referral partners who all serve the same target market as you do. This is a fast way to grow your own in house list while you increase your webinar sign up’s because you are cross pollinating your lists, your network and your communities.
QUESTION: What techniques do you use to promote your webinars? Let me know in the comments!
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