Before we start, I just want to hope that you have enjoyed my guides on using organic social media promotion tactics and advertising to drive traffic to your webinars. Now, I want to go into some other ways that you may or may not have thought of to drive people to your webinar registration page.
We all know that webinars have become an increasingly popular way to connect with audiences and share valuable information. However, with so many webinars out there, it can be challenging to stand out from the crowd and make your webinar memorable. That’s where creativity comes in!
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- Ten unique ways to pack your webinars with engaging content
- Importance of an effective webinar that will keep your audience hook
- How to implement the webinar marketing strategy today
Whether you’re a seasoned webinar pro or just getting started, these ideas will help you take your webinars to the next level and make them truly unforgettable. So let’s dive in and discover how to pack your webinars with a punch!
1. Promote a free lead magnet with the thank you page going to your webinar registration.
If you’re having trouble converting cold traffic (traffic that isn’t familiar to you or your business) into webinar registrations, take a step back and promote a lead magnet instead. A lead magnet is a simple, free piece of content that helps people learn more about the knowledge you can offer.
The reason a lead magnet works is that it requires little commitment. People seeing information about a webinar from someone they don’t know may feel hesitant because even if it is free, it’s a commitment of at least one hour of their time.
With a lead magnet, people know they will get instant satisfaction with little commitment. Ideally, if you want to ensure that the lead magnet is going to convert people to your webinar, make the lead magnet a worksheet or checklist. It should be something that is highly valuable, but at the same time, it is missing just enough information that they would need to watch your webinar to fully understand it.
When people go to download your lead magnet, they will have to give you their email addresses. This gives you two opportunities to convert them to your webinar.
- First, it is on the thank you page for your lead magnet. This page should thank them for downloading your lead magnet and then invite them to sign up for your upcoming, relevant webinar.
- Second, the conversion opportunity is through your autoresponder. If the person hasn’t registered for your webinar and has been moved to another list or segmented, an automated email will let them know about additional dates for the webinar they were invited to on your thank you page.
2. Create an automation that sends visitors to specific pages on your website a matching webinar invitation.
Most of the popular email marketing services have an option for setting up automation. Automation simply tells your email marketing platform that if someone who is a member of your email list does a particular thing, something specific will happen.
In MailChimp, for example, you would create a Custom Automation Workflow. This automation would say that anyone who visits a specific blog post from your email list will receive a follow-up email about an upcoming webinar related to the topic of that blog post.
Depending on the schedule of your automated webinars, you will want to adjust the timing of when your emails are sent accordingly. Also, consider whether you want to use segmentation conditions to ensure that people who have attended your webinar in the past do not receive another invitation.
If you have multiple automated webinars running on multiple topics, be sure to match those webinars up to popular posts or pages on your website and create Custom Automation Workflows to send email subscribers who visit those posts or pages an invitation to your webinar.
To determine what the most popular posts or pages are on your website, use your Google Analytics. In particular, use the All Pages report in the Site Content section under Behavior. This will show you the most trafficked posts and pages on your website.
Aim to create email automation for at least your top ten posts or pages, with the exception of your homepage (noted with the / in Google Analytics). Depending on the amount of traffic you receive, you may want to expand that to your top twenty posts or pages. Also, if you are regularly posting new content to your website, be sure to update your automation for new popular content.
3. Retarget people who visit relevant pages on your website with a matching webinar.
The same posts and pages you use for your email automation can be used for retargeting ads on Google, Facebook, and Twitter. With retargeting ads, you can reach anyone who visits specific posts or pages on your website with advertising promoting your upcoming webinar.
Google AdWords
For Google AdWords, you will want to use Remarketing Audiences through Google Analytics. This will allow you to reach anyone who visited specific posts or pages in the Google Display Network with your webinar invitation through text links and banner ads.
Facebook Ads
For Facebook Ads, you will want to use Custom Audiences built with your website traffic. This will allow you to reach anyone who visited specific posts or pages on Facebook through sponsored posts in the news feed or ads in the right sidebar. You also have the option to create Custom Audiences from the email list of people who have attended your virtual event so you do not promote it again to them.
Twitter Ads
For Twitter Ads, you will want to use Tailored Audiences built with your website traffic. This will allow you to reach anyone who visited specific posts or pages on Twitter through promoted tweets in the news feed. You also have the option to create Tailored Audiences from the email list of people who have attended your webinar so you do not promote it again to them.
Remarketing to your email list and retargeting through paid advertising will ensure that people who visit specific posts or pages on your website are exposed to relevant automated webinars. Since they are already familiar with you and your content, you will have a higher chance of converting them over cold traffic.
4. Create custom redirect URLs for your webinar registration page.
Depending on the number of webinars you plan to automate, you will need one or more custom redirect URLs. These will be URLs that are easy to say or spell out for people that will redirect them to the webinar registration link for the webinar(s) you are promoting.
The idea is that no matter when you share the redirect URL, you can always update it to go to a new webinar registration link. So let’s say that you plan on running one automated webinar at a time. Your redirect URL could look like this http://yourdomain.com/webinar. If you plan on running multiple automated webinars at a time, you will need multiple redirect URLs.
For example, if you are a social media consultant and you will have virtual events on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, you will need to redirect URLs like these.
- http://yourdomain.com/facebookwebinar
- http://yourdomain.com/twitterwebinar
- http://yourdomain.com/linkedinwebinar
- http://yourdomain.com/pinterestwebinar
Note that the redirect URLs you use (like yourdomain.com/webinar) cannot also be pages or posts on your website already. If you already have a page at yourdomain.com/webinar, any traffic to that page will be redirected to your webinar registration link instead.
There are a couple of ways you can create redirect URLs. If you use WordPress on your own domain, you can use a plugin called Redirection. This plugin allows you to enter a short URL on your domain and redirect it to any link.
If you’re not using WordPress, you will want to talk to your web hosting company or webmaster about creating a .htaccess file. In this file, you can include multiple lines that tell your website to forward all of the traffic coming to your redirect URL to your webinar registration page instead.
Each line will look similar to this. Redirect 301 /webinar http://onlinemeetingnow.com/register/?id=aefd2ef653. You can also generate a .htaccess file yourself using the online generator tool and upload it to your website’s folder on your web hosting account.
If you prefer to do this on your own, you can look up your web hosting company’s directions on how to do this by searching for the web hosting company name + .htaccess file. The beauty of your redirect URLs is that you can always update them.
If you share yourdomain.com/webinar in a bunch of places this year and you create a new automated webinar and registration page next year, you can go back to your WordPress Redirect plugin or your .htaccess file and update the webinar registration link you associated with yourdomain.com/webinar.
That way, all of the links you placed will still go to your current webinar. Best of all, since you don’t have to reference dates when using your redirect URLs, people will always be curious if they still have time to catch a webinar.
They will hope that they didn’t miss out. And they will be excited when they see that they can still catch a webinar, thanks to the automation. With that in mind, once you have your redirect links set up, you are ready to start promoting them in unique ways to generate quality leads for your webinar registration page. Here are some of those ways.
5. Update existing off-site content with your webinar registration link.
Similar to what you have done with remarketing and retargeting for your popular on-site content, you will want to update popular off-site content with links to relevant webinars.
For example, if you have popular Slideshare presentations, YouTube videos, Amazon Kindle books, podcast episodes, etc., be sure that the descriptions include a redirect URL to matching webinar topics. Since you are using the redirect URL, you will only have to do this once.
As people visit your off-site content, they will get the chance to be redirected to your latest automated webinar registration page.
6. Add your webinar registration link to your email signature.
You never know when casual acquaintances might be interested in your business. Your email signature is a great way to let them know that you have an upcoming (automated) webinar.
If you change your signature often, you can use your latest webinar registration link. Or, you can use your redirect URL, so you only have to update it once. If you have webinars or virtual events on multiple topics, you may want to create multiple signatures so that the topic of each email you send matches the topic of your upcoming webinar.
For those who get asked about a particular topic often, you may want to go beyond an email signature and create an email template (Gmail users can use Canned Responses for this). Let’s say that people always ask you how they can start marketing on Facebook.
Create an email template that offers your basic Facebook Marketing 101 tips. At the end of the email, include a line that says if you like these tips, be sure to catch my next Facebook webinar (linking to your redirect URL for Facebook webinars).
This kills two birds with one stone. It allows you to create a fast response for common questions that you receive by email AND promote webinars.
7. Guest post with your webinar registration link in the bio.
Do you contribute to popular publications in your industry? If so, be sure to promote your webinar in the author bio for your contributions. You can use a topic-specific redirect URL or a generic bio that tells readers if they liked your post, they should also check out your upcoming webinars. Since you’re using a redirect URL to an automated webinar, the link will never be outdated, even if the post is. And it ensures that you’ve optimized the content for conversions, just in case it gains in popularity over time due to search rankings.
8. Mention your upcoming webinars during interviews.
Having an easy-to-say redirect URL for your webinars will come in handy when you are invited for audio or video interviews on blogs and podcasts. Most of the time, people will be happy to allow you to promote something in exchange for your participation in the interview.
Use that opportunity to let listeners or viewers know that you do regular webinars and that they can sign up for your upcoming webinars at your redirect URL. Like guest post content, these URLs will never get old, whether someone listens to a podcast interview a day from now or a year from now.
9. Use live streaming video to drop tips about your webinar topics.
Live streaming is becoming the hottest way to engage with audiences. Periscope, Meerkat, Facebook Live, and Blab.im are popular live-streaming platforms that allow you to go live on video and start talking to your audience immediately. Because of their fast-growing popularity, people are always on these networks (and Facebook in general), looking for new live streamers to watch.
You can occasionally pop on, drop a quick tip about a topic related to your webinar, and then mention your redirect URL so that viewers can register for your upcoming webinar. Unlike Periscope, Meerkat, and Facebook Live, which are all meant for individuals to start live streaming, Blab.im is meant for up to four people to be streaming at a time.
This means that in addition to creating your own live-streaming session on Blab.im, you could be invited to participate in live-streaming sessions started by others.
If you contribute valuable information while you’re on, the host will likely allow you to introduce yourself to the audience, giving you a chance to promote your redirect URL for an upcoming webinar. Blab.im also offers replays, so unlike the other live streaming platforms, people will have the chance to see your appearance on a blab after the live event is over.
10. Promote your webinar offline.
In the past, people received tons of junk mail through their postal boxes and little email. Now, the opposite is true. Take advantage of the fact that many industries only market by email and market your webinars by postal mail. Send a simple postcard to former customers or your current customer database with a link to your redirect URL for an upcoming webinar.
It will likely stand out, and of course, since the redirect URL will always send people to your latest automated webinar, it will never be outdated.
In addition to mail on promoting webinars, be sure to add a redirect URL to your business cards and flyers too. This will allow you to do a webinar promotion where ever you go, including business and networking events.
In Conclusion
As you can see, there are lots of great ways to promote your webinars and get both people who know you and your business as well as people who are new to you and your business on your webinars. If you need help with your webinar, feel free to reach out for assistance here with a Webinar Exploratory Call.
And be sure to implement the above tactics to ensure that traffic is always coming to your registration pages, now and in the future. Are you using any of the above? What is working best for you? Do you have some unique strategies to drive traffic to your webinars? Share below.
