What does it take for content marketers to put on a webinar worthy of a blue ribbon? A lot of forethought. We’ve already covered some of the steps you can take to plan a kick-ass webinar. This week, let’s take a look at the best ways to promote one.
The first and most important thing to think about when promoting a webinar is who you’re going to invite. Don’t just blast your entire database. If you target your invitations to people who really care about the topic, your registration and participation rates will benefit.
Ask yourself: Will the recipients be excited about the speakers? Will they find the presentation useful? Why? By targeting the right personas, your database can be the most effective driver of registrants. In Kapost’s latest webinar, for example, our database generated 80% of the total registrants.
Leveraging owned social media channels should be a given when it comes to promoting your webinar. Your posts should be succinct summaries of the webinar topic, and some should include the date, time, and a dedicated webinar hashtag that participants will use during the event. Also, be sure to tag speakers and webinar guests, and encourage them to promote the details across their own social channels.
Your blog is a great channel for promoting your webinar, but it’s important to leverage it in the right way. Simply announcing that you have a webinar coming up isn’t going to provide a lot of value to your readers.
Instead, create posts related to the webinar topic and use the registration page as a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of the post. That way, you’ll not only be providing valuable content for your readers, you’ll attract engaged, interested webinar participants.
Your influencer base can be a valuable asset when you’re ready to promote your webinar. But you have to follow some ground rules.
When you draft your request, make sure you’re up front about why it’s in the influencer’s best interest to promote this webinar. Why are you reaching out to them, specifically? What, if anything, will they get out of it? If influencers don’t feel like they have a stake in your webinar, they won’t be excited to help you spread the word about it.
Webinar listing sites are an often overlooked part of the webinar promotion process. While they may not drive the bulk of your registration, they provide an easy way to spread the word about your webinar and boost your SEO at zero cost. Here are a few sites worth listing your webinar on:
- webinarlistings.com
- webinarbase.com
- eventspan.com
- teleseminarlive.com
- webinarboxoffice.com
Following these webinar promotion steps is an easy and cost-effective way to drive registration. It’s not rocket science—all you need is time and a step-by-step plan.