Top 6 Ways To Ensure Killer Webinar Attendance

Top 6 Ways To Ensure Killer Webinar Attendance
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We kicked off December with a webinar on “Using LinkedIn Groups to Engage the B2B Buyer”. Ever since, we’ve been fielding tons of questions both about LinkedIn and the webinar itself ever since.

Webinars are a great way to educate your clients about your product or service. They’re mostly meant for individuals who already know what they are looking for, but may want to learn a bit more or want to see a more in-depth view of what you or your company provide. One of the biggest challenges, however, is getting people to sign up or sign on. No one wants to put the effort into a webinar if it’s not going to bring in new leads.

The “Last Minute” Email Problem

Yet, sometimes it’s a challenge to reach out to the right target market. When you find that target market, they’re often very busy. While they are interested in what you have to say, the “signing up” part of this process tends to slip their mind. We’ve found that many of the wonderful people who come to our webinars mean to sign up earlier, but end up waiting until they get our “last minute” email. That’s the emailing saying “The webinar’s tomorrow…did you sign up yet?”

Being that this “last minute” situation is all too common in the world of webinars, we want to give you top tips for getting folks to sign up as quickly as possible. There will always be those last-minute people, but we’re also fans of “better late than never”. We can’t guarantee that they’ll work every time, but as we’ve experimented with these a bit, we know they’ll give you an edge on webinar attendance. Here we go:

Top 6 Tips to Optimize Webinar Sign-Ups

1. Include your audience- On your registration page, be sure to include a place on the form where registrants can ask a question that they’d like to see covered during the webinar. They’ll be more likely to sign up if they know you’ll actually be covering information on the webinar that’s really relevant to them.

2. Sneak preview - Almost everyone knows what a movie trailer is. You go to see a film in your local theater and they show a short clip of an upcoming movie. You can promote your webinar and encourage sign-ups in the same way. Put together a video (or if you don’t have time for that, a couple of PowerPoint slides will work) and then share that baby via social networks and/or feature it on a blog.

3. “Is this thing on?”- Many webinar attendees don’t want to sign up until they know if they can actually be present during the big event. Remind potential attendees that even if they can’t make it for the live presentation, that you’ll be recording the webinar and it will be sent directly to their inbox. We actually did this for our December 9th webinar and our registration rate increased by 15%.

4. Spam folder issues… It’s always a good idea to send an email to those individuals who didn’t open the first email you sent about the webinar and also an email to those who opened the email, but didn’t register. The email may have ended up in their spam or junk email folder by mistake or they may have intended to register after they opened the email, but got a bit distracted. It happens to the best of us. Send a reminder or follow up email, but be careful or the email actually WILL end up in their spam folder.

5. “And the fans go wild…!”- Webinar marketing expert Lewis Howes, recently offered this gem on Michael Stelzner’s blog on Social Media Examiner. He suggests sending an email to your mailing list and then after they’ve actually registered. Be sure to provide them with a video or another piece of content to share about the webinar with others. In other words, use your current fans (read: brand evangelists) to help market the webinar and get sign ups via word of mouth.

6. Keep it real- One of the platforms we’ve used in the past is Citrix’s GoToMeeting. Recently the folks there interviewed Chris Dessi from Silverback Social and while his advice about getting folks to your webinars may seem obvious, it is indeed wise. Always be authentic and be sure to answer questions and be as responsive as possible. On many social networks, a quick and clear response is needed in order to get folks interested and signed up for your webinar (or any other type of event). So be available and be real.

There you have it. When you’re running your next webinar, try these suggestions and let us know how it goes. Do you have any tips that you think we missed or that should be included? Please leave us a comment below and we might feature you on our next blog!

 

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The Penguin Team

by The Penguin Team on December 18, 2014

As a leading B2B digital marketing agency, We help B2B Technology Companies, enterprise software, and hardware companies increase brand awareness, reach more qualified leads and close more customers. Penguin Strategies is a Diamond Partner of HubSpot.

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