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Webinars are one of the more traditional marketing tools that businesses use to attract potential customers. Ever since the first webinar kicked off back in 1996, this type of virtual event has become commonplace in most marketing strategies because they’re superb at generating leads and educating your ideal customers.
If you’ve never hosted a webinar before, the thought of speaking in front of hundreds of people can feel daunting—but it doesn’t have to be. We’ll share how to incorporate webinars into your marketing plan, complete with a step-by-step guide on how to promote your webinar and deliver on your audience’s expectations.
What is a webinar in marketing?
A webinar is a virtual event hosted through a video conferencing platform. They’re most often used as a way to build a connection with your audience and generate leads since people will need to enter details, such as their name and email address, to register.
Benefits of webinar marketing
Lead generation
Webinars are the perfect way to showcase your expertise. With thought leadership webinars, in particular, people can see that you’re knowledgeable about a topic and begin to trust you—two key components in any purchasing decision. That, combined with case studies from previous customers, can nudge people further along in the buyer’s journey to becoming paid customers.
Plus, because webinars require the attendees to hand over their email addresses during the registration process, you’ll create a list of people who are interested in your webinar topic. Depending on the form fields, you can also discover their job title, company name, or biggest pain point. This acts as a curated list of quality leads that your sales team can follow up with personalized messages after the event.
Cost-effectiveness
Marketing can get expensive, especially if you’re shooting fancy videos and using paid tools to schedule promotional content. Webinars, however, are scalable and have low production costs, which is especially great for time-poor small businesses. Instead of reaching just one person through cold outreach or pitching, you can reach hundreds of people through an online event in a single hour.
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Repurpose content
It’s more difficult than ever to catch your audience's attention and raise brand awareness. Marketing channels are overrun with social media posts from creators and brands of all sizes. You’re competing against millions of people to claim the limited number of organic post slots in your audience’s news feed.
Most social media platforms are pivoting towards video-first valuable content. In other words: you’ll likely get a boost in reach and engagement if you’re sharing short-form videos.
Webinars give you a library of content to share without having to sit down and record individual pieces of content. If you’ve hosted a Q&A session at the end of your webinar, for example, use a video editor like Descript to clip this section, use a template to change the aspect ratio to vertical, and add automated subtitles. Just like that, you’ve got a video ready to post on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube Shorts—and it’s taken no extra legwork on your behalf.
Tips for effectively marketing your webinar
1. Give people enough time to register
How far in advance to schedule your webinar is an age-old question. Too far in advance, and people who register might forget about it when the time comes; give too little notice, and potential attendees might already be too busy to join.
Data compiled by GoToWebinar found that most registrations happen less than a week before the webinar. Some 17% happen within 24 hours of the start time. That said, promoting at least four weeks in advance of the live webinar results in 12% more registrations.
The same report revealed some interesting data on when you should promote your webinar, too. It found Tuesdays were the most popular day for people to register for a webinar, though posts scheduled Monday through Wednesday attract 63% of all registrations. Prioritize posting about your webinar early in the week to increase the odds of someone joining.
2. Choose an interesting webinar topic
People join webinars for several reasons: They might want to learn something, be entertained, or get inspired. All three motivations require an interesting topic—one that convinces people to not only register for the event but also join it and participate when the time comes.
Research your target audience or buyer persona to find out which goals and challenges they’re navigating. Choose a valuable topic that relates to these challenges so that in your webinar marketing campaigns, you can pull on their pain points and tell people exactly what they’ll come away with.
Pearmill uses this webinar marketing tip for its masterclass on agency planning models. They promise that attendees will walk away with insider knowledge on how agency sprints work and best practices to follow—two key takeaways its target audience of agency owners will aspire to have, and therefore want to join the webinar.
3. Optimize your webinar landing page
A webinar landing page is a dedicated page where people can learn more about your upcoming webinar. You’ll divert traffic here from your digital marketing campaigns across social media or email marketing newsletters.
In its most simplistic form, your landing page needs a headline to share the title of the event, a brief description (including the date and time), and sign-up form. But it helps to optimize the webinar landing page—and improve on the 30% average conversion rate—with:
- Call-to-action (CTA) buttons with descriptive text like “I want to learn” (instead of “register”)
- A short bio about you—and why someone should trust your advice as a thought leader
- Engaging visuals that break up text, such as videos, images, or illustrations
- Countdown timers that show how long someone has left to register
- Testimonials from previous webinar attendees
- Exit intent popups that appear as someone shows an intention to leave the page
- SEO optimization, including descriptive keywords, to get found in search results
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4. Promote the event as a free preview of paid products
Chances are, you’re using the webinar as a way to qualify leads and turn attendees into paying customers. One smart way to do this is to promote the event as a free preview of paid products.
Fitness coach Ashley Barnsley, for example, hosted a webinar on nutrition. Clients in his paid community got priority access, but he promoted the replay on Instagram to give followers a glimpse of what they could get if they also joined. He says this strategy “allows me to showcase the value I can give to people for free so that when they think about needing a coach, I am top of their mind.”
5. Limit the number of webinar participants
Humans are wired to value things more if they’re limited. Apply this to your webinar promotion strategy by limiting how many spaces are available. Even if someone didn’t intend on joining when they saw the event in their news feed, simply knowing that it could be their only opportunity could entice them into registering.
If you’re unsure of what this maximum capacity should be, start high and bring the limit down as you learn how many attendees your events tend to attract. This might not be sky-high—the vast majority of webinars have 50 or fewer attendees. Almost half have fewer than 25.
6. Invite popular hosts to join the event
You don’t have to be the sole host of an online webinar. You can find other people to join with you and use their audience as a way to promote the event.
Let’s put that into practice and say you’re the owner of a children’s supplement brand. You’re hosting a webinar to show people how they can improve their children’s health, so you invite a pediatric doctor and a children’s dentist to co-host the event with you.
The most obvious benefit of this webinar marketing tactic is that you’re diversifying the expertise on offer. People don’t just learn from a brand that’s selling something—they can get advice from unbiased, trusted experts who are trained and knowledgeable about the topic.
If possible, choose co-hosts with their own audience and encourage them to promote the webinar on their own social media channels. This helps you attract attendees who don’t already know of your brand. Product designer Noah Levin, for example, promoted the AI webinar it co-hosted with Mia Blume and pushed the event to his LinkedIn connections:
7. Encourage people to sign-up for the replay
If the scheduled date or time of your webinar doesn’t work for someone, they might be reluctant to register. Promising to make the replay available gives them an incentive to register. They can watch it on demand at a time that best suits them.
GoToWebinar’s report found this happens more than you might expect. The average attendance rate is 65% for corporate communications webinars, 53% for training webinars, and 44% for marketing webinars, so don’t be afraid if people don’t turn up on the day.
Optimist, for example, sent this email to promote its on-demand webinar co-hosted with freelancer Lizzie Davey. It promised the replay would be available after the event to anyone who signed up.
How to deliver a successful webinar
You’ve done the hard work of marketing your webinar and attracting attendees. Make sure you deliver on what you've promised with these tips:
- Outline and rehearse a script. It’s easy to get intimidated or lose your train of thought when hosting a webinar. This is where a script comes in handy. Write down the things you want to talk about (or get AI to do it for you) and rehearse it before delivering the presentation.
- Use a teleprompter. If you’re watching the replay and spot you’re spending too much time looking at the teleprompter, fix it (before sharing the replay with attendees) using the Eye Contact AI video effect.
- Remove filler words. There’s a reason why professional speakers limit how many “umms” and “ahhs” they use—filler words can make you sound less confident and knowledgeable. Remove them in post-production with Descript.
- Encourage audience participation. It’s hard to gauge what your audience is thinking when you can’t see their face. Encourage them to give their feedback and interact with your webinar through polls, Q&As, or breakout sessions.
- Diversify your content formats. Not everyone shares the same learning style or content preferences. Experiment with segments where you’re just speaking to the camera, hosting visual presentations, or moderating discussions to make sure you’re meeting as many preferences as possible.
Descript: your one-stop-shop for webinar marketing
Say goodbye to a mismatch of different tools, each requiring monthly subscriptions, when you use Descript for work. Its all-in-one video creation suite has everything you need to host successful webinars, including:
- Screen recording functionality to create and record webinar presentations
- Professional editing features to perfect your webinar before publishing the replay, including background noise removal, filler word removal, and Overdub to fix audio mistakes
- Transcripts and automatic subtitling to improve accessibility
- Collaboration tools to work with your marketing team in a single platform
- Find Good Clips to repurpose noteworthy parts of your webinar on social media
- Easy exporting of your recorded webinars to video hosting sites like YouTube
More than six million creators, professionals, and teams already use Descript to create professional videos. Sign up for your free trial today to get your webinar strategy rolling.
Webinar marketing FAQ
Is webinar content marketing?
Webinars are a type of content marketing that allows you to build stronger connections with your audience in real time. You can teach them something, inspire someone, and demonstrate your expertise with a webinar. They’re also great for generating leads, especially if you’re asking for someone’s email address in order to register for the webinar.
How to create a webinar strategy?
- Define your target audience
- Choose a topic based on their pain points
- Set a measurable goal
- Schedule the event
- Design a presentation
- Write a webinar script
- Create a webinar registration page
- Promote the event on social media
- Share the registration link in email campaigns
How do you attract people to a webinar?
- Choose an interesting topic
- Pull on pain points
- Tell people what they’ll come away with
- Ask webinar hosts to share the registration link
- Optimize your webinar landing page
- Limit the number of attendees
- Promise to share the replay
How far in advance should I promote a webinar?
Studies have shown that webinars scheduled four weeks in advance get 12% more registrations, but the majority of people sign up within a week of the event’s start date. Get the best of both worlds by scheduling the event a month in advance and ramping up promotion as the date approaches.
