Ask The Webinar Expert: How, and when, do we promote our webinars for best results?
When it comes to webinar promotion, there is no one-size-fits-all rule for success. However, there are several aspects that all webinar organisers should consider for the success of their webinar promotion. Firstly, each organisation operates in a unique set of circumstances, which means that your promotional mix should make the most of those circumstances. Secondly, there are a set of proven universal truths around webinar promotion that should not be ignored.
So, what does this mean in detail?
Objectively assess your organisation’s circumstances.
- Do you have a loyal community around your products or services? If so, make use of it for your promotions. You already have a fan-base – now turn them into attendees, advocates and perhaps event speakers for your webinars.
- Do you have a large and/or highly engaged social media following? This relates to the previous point about a loyal community, albeit perhaps in a different forum (no pun intended – do forums still exist?). The point is, use your social media following for your promotions. Conversely, if your social media following is small or inactive, promoting webinars may be a time-waster for now. There are other tactics better placed to grow your social following.
- Is your organisation well-known in a niche marketplace? If so, your webinars will be popular, because there a fewer organisations serving your market with information and insight. Capitalise on that. Proactively engage opinion leaders, either as speakers or promoters to spread the word about your webinars.
- Is your organisation operating in an up and coming sector or marketplace? If so, there will be a shortage of information and insight. This is a good situation to be in. Obtain value-add insight through your own research or opinion-leaders and turn it into webinar content.
If the answer to some, or all, of the above questions is “No”, there may still be more unique circumstances for your organisation. What has made you successful so far? Identify them and consider how they can work in your favour for webinar promotion. That said, there are some universal truths that apply to the vast majority of organisations:
- Email drives registrations. The vast majority of webinar registrations still come from email promotions. In the era of GDPR that may seem outdated and strange, but it holds true. That is, if you have a relevant and marketable database.
- Getting the promotional cadence right is important. Three promotional emails work best – over two weeks leading up to the webinar, with the third email being sent on the morning of the webinar (if your webinar runs in the morning, then send the last promotional email the day before)
- Sending emails too far in advance, means low conversion. Why? Most people’s calendars are free if you look 6 or 8 weeks ahead. Naturally, they may like the sound of your webinars and register, but when other calendar priorities take over closer to the time they will have forgotten their initial interest in or enthusiasm for, your webinar. Conversion to attendees goes down as a result. Whereas if you can create that enthusiasm closer to the time of your webinar you can reverse that trend. And that last email on the day of the webinar? Well, it is not uncommon to see 25% of all registrants to come in on the day of the webinar – after all, calendars are less likely to change over the course of a few hours.
Good luck. And remember to measure, assess, tweak, test and improve. It’s an iterative process.
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WebinarExperts supports organisations across a range of webinar topics, including webinar programme strategy, webinar programme design, and tactical webinar execution. To find out more, contact us or call today on +44 (0)330 001 5327.