Webinar Marketing
Marketing your webinar is the next step. Without promotion, you won’t have registrants and without registrants, you won’t have attendees. Webinar success depends on marketing. There are a few must-have elements of webinar marketing. First, is an event website where attendees can register. The second is an email marketing campaign. Third, an additional promotion like social media and paid ads.
Webinar Event Website
Your event website can be as simple as a webinar landing page or as complicated as your creativity and technology allow. But the key to any webinar website is registration and key event information. The webinar website is the home base for attendees. It’s where they learn more about the event, are convinced to attend, and register for your webinar.
As online webinars rise in popularity, the cost model for live webinars has changed. In the past, webinars were largely free, the only cost was filling out a registration form. Now, there are certain events, depending on the popularity of the speaker and the value of information, that do charge for attendance. To figure out if you should charge, consider the cost of your event versus what you’ll get in return, as well as what is standard for the industry, you’re in.
Email Marketing Campaign
Email is a quick and easy way to spread the word about your event. Pull contact lists from your database based on your defined audience. Then, start promoting! In a traditional webinar campaign, you’ll send multiple emails. As you go, you can track open rates, click-through rates, and track registrations. Email is easy to change, so watch the data and if it looks like something isn’t working – change it!
As for your emails, build emails that aren’t too text-heavy and utilize great visuals. When writing a subject line, keep it short and engaging. The goal of these emails is to drive the recipient to the webinar website. Be creative and have fun with these. Think about what would make you open an email as you write them.
An email marketing campaign isn’t one email – it’s a series. Here is a list of the typical emails in a basic webinar email marketing campaign, as well as when the emails are sent based on the webinar date.
Basic Email Marketing Campaign Email Timeline
• Invite 1: One month before the webinar date
• Invite 2: Two weeks before the webinar date
• Final Invite Reminder: One week before the webinar date
• You’re Registered: Sent when an attendee registers
• Reminder for Registered Attendees and How to Join: One day before
• Thank You for Attending Follow-up and Survey: Sent after the webinar
• No Show Email: Sent after the webinar
Email Marketing Automation
An email marketing campaign requires the right tools for the job. No one expects you to send a staggering number of emails manually – that would take forever! This is where marketing automation is your best friend. With an event marketing tool, you’re able to integrate with marketing automation systems and track relationships with prospects and customers. Not only that, you’re able to automate the email process, schedule emails, and track data with ease.
Social Media Webinar Promotion
Social media continues to be the cheapest form of promotion with the potential to have the widest reach. Create posts to promote your webinars. Social media is a place where you can get creative and have fun. Another way to promote is to enlist brand ambassadors or tap others in the industry to share your webinar. Just remember, the more eyes see a post, the higher chance it will lead to registrations.
Digital Paid Ad Webinar Promotion
A slightly more, costly solution, digital ads can be effective in promoting your webinar. Create ads that rely on visuals and clearly state what is being promoted. Digital ads come with data. You’re able to track effectiveness easily. If they don’t work or aren’t worth the cost, it’s easy to change your strategy.
Finding Sponsors
While sponsorship is a must for larger events, it isn’t always considered for webinars. However, Sponsorship can help provide speakers, increase promotion, and defray the costs for simple trade of services, ads, or branding throughout the webinar, or a contact list after the event. Consider teaming up with sponsors for a single webinar or a series.
How to Create and Host Effective Webinars
There are various types of webinar formats to choose from. While you’ve chosen your content format, you still need to answer a few basic technical questions. Will the webinar be live? Will it be pre-recorded?
Here are a few webinar types to take into consideration:
• Live Video: The webinar occurs in real-time. Doing a webinar live can be more challenging as there is no room for mistakes, but it also allows more options for attendee engagement through live surveys or responding to comments in chat.
• Simu-live: This is a webinar that is mostly recorded ahead of time, but the presenter jumps on to answer questions in real-time at the end. It can allow you to put more into the production value of the overall presentation.
• Pre-recorded: This is a webinar that is recorded ahead of time so that attendees are logging on to watch a video. This format allows you to push right to on-demand.
• Whiteboard: A creative way to express concepts, whiteboard webinars draw out concepts and points made by speakers in real-time. It’s a great way to keep attendees tuned in. Whatever your webinar needs Movazi events is able to meet your needs.