Today, marketing and sales teams see webinars as an effective tool to promote business. Why? It provides certain benefits, being not only a lead magnet but an instrument to support your brand.
Moreover, the popularity of online events, mainly social media webinars, offers digital marketing experts great opportunities. However, much depends on how one uses webinars for marketing and promotion.
Read on to know more about the usage of webinars for marketing and how to promote them to attract leads.
What Is The Meaning of A Webinar?
Before all, a webinar is an event organized by an organization, person, or business actor to educate or present information to a specific online audience.
Interestingly, there are different types of webinars. They include web seminars, presentations, workshops, and lectures. Also, they differ by goal and audience. For instance, the company may hold a webinar to educate people, discuss trends or present a product.
One can distinguish learning, thought leadership, and product demonstration webinars in this regard. Among other types that are likely to be corporate, the particular ones can attract leads due to the value they bring.
In terms of marketing, the insight the business actor provides in the webinar allows it to contribute to the brand or product promotion, lead generation, and engagement with future clients.
How Effective Are Webinars
Webinar marketing can be very effective and beneficial to the brand if it answers the needs of the audience it is targeted at. They allow the companies to:
- Connect with and generate leads. You may find leads on a database, start extracting emails from LinkedIn or use webinars as lead magnets. Yes, the latter can bring more quality leads and encourage people to subscribe to you, sharing their email.
- Engage with the audience via dialogue. Lead generation often is about establishing deep relations, while webinars can help you to do so.
- Support the image. Significantly, if you create a specific image, for instance, of an expert, in your sales webinar, you will add to your brand’s reputation. Providing educational materials will help you to be a trendsetter and have more trust in leads.
- See the real needs of the customers. Also, as the webinar has research and engagement at its basis, you will have an excellent platform for better understanding your buyer persona.
- Learn insights about your leads. Webinars that have Q&A sessions are helpful for knowing what your leads think. There, you can collect information and then answer the issues of the leads.
Notably, the statistics on webinar marketing only support the efficiency of webinars for marketing. In particular, around 75% of marketing specialists say that a sales webinar can extend brand reach, while almost 70% of them underline that it can scale marketing efforts.
How to Use Webinars for Marketing?
Whether you organize webinars for marketing or lead generation, many things depend on the topic, content, guests, and promotion.
Thus, to use webinars for marketing, you need to:
- Have a clear goal and audience to reach. First of all, determine what you need the webinar for. For instance, you may use it solely for lead generation or developing your community. In each case, you will have a different audience.
- Select the appropriate topic. Next, consider the issue that will interest your audience and answer their needs. However, ensure it is not too basic and has enough room for essential insights.
- Prepare materials or invite a guest. Also, make sure that you provide quality content full of insights. For this reason, you may invite an expert and simultaneously add to your image.
- Pick an appropriate platform. For a proper sales webinar, you need to have good webinar software. There are a lot of them, even though some people use Zoom.
- Promote the event. Without promotion, your marketing webinars are likely to attract no people. Thus, select the data and define the terms for your promotion campaign. Use email, ads, and social media to target the necessary audience.
- Support it with the content. Lastly, during the promotion stage or after the event, you need to back up your marketing webinar with the content. In the case of promotion, use video pieces from previous events. Simultaneously, to engage with people after the event, use the articles, slides, or pictures you used to encourage the people to answer you.
Key Webinar Marketing Strategies
The strategies for webinar promotion differ and depend on your main channel. If your webinar aims to nurture leads, you will likely use emails. Social media and ads can be your option if you are looking for new leads due to their significant reach.
If you already have a robust online presence, you can use content marketing to promote your webinar via social media, landing page, or blog.
Applying good old email marketing
Specialists often use emails for contacting and engaging with marketing leads. With emails, one can target segmented groups, nurture leads or implement outreach to share news of upcoming webinars.
Notably, the tactics for email marketing webinars are concerned with the right pitch, timing, and email sequence. Sending one email about a webinar is not enough. Thus, you should consider at least a three-email sequence for contacting the leads. In this regard, finding email software that will help to find leads, verify emails or send emails in bulk may be a good idea.
Also, it is crucial to add some personalization depending on the person you are writing to. For instance, a person who bought a business solution may be interested in an email webinar about its application in other spheres. At the same time, a marketer can send a webinar announcement to a lead who has downloaded a guide and provide more value, making them more interested in the brand and its solutions.
Leveraging social media and ads
Another way to promote your webinar is to utilize the power of social media. Most of them grant you significant opportunities in terms of reach and targeting. Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn are convenient instruments for directing pieces of your content to the leads.
For instance, a webinar announcement can be a part of a LinkedIn strategy and reach your audience through page updates, separate messages, or news in the feed.
At the same time, when you have a significant online presence and enough followers, you can bring the usage of ads to a minimum. An appealing video or a picture with a catchy headline can interest readers. Next, if they see value in it and repost your post, some leads may register for the social media webinar or at least visit a page.
However, most leads need to be reminded of the social media webinar, especially if they failed to complete the registration but visited your landing page or interacted with your post. In these situations, you can send targeted messages to them to encourage them to come.
Using content marketing opportunities
Lastly, if you have a website with substantial traffic and many new visitors, you can use webinars for marketing with its help. Even though webinars fall under the content marketing category, sharing insightful content to promote webinars can also be effective. In this regard, you can use blog articles with the most visitors.
Place your pop-up with the webinar announcement there to encourage people to register. Simultaneously, you can insert a link to the landing page with the webinar for a registration form to be filled out. Another option is to create videos that will be included in the blogs with significant traffic to attract a specific audience.
Crucial Tips to Promote a Webinar
The promotion of a sales webinar requires you to consider certain things. The success of the webinar depends on the value it provides, the way it is perceived, and how you promote it. Check these tips to use webinars for marketing more effectively:
Pick a well-thought topic
Before all, spend some time preparing a topic that will interest the audience. How to pick one? Well, you should do thorough research, do social listening, ask your leads about their issues, and identify what you can cover. After you have a list of possible topics, focus on the following questions to pick the favorites:
- Relevance. How is the topic relevant to you or your product?
- Urgency. Is the topic generic or specific? Will it answer the trends or events happening in the market?
- Usefulness. Will the leads get actionable advice, or would they be able to apply the new experience in their work?
- Uniqueness. How unique is your topic? What makes it different from others, and why would people select your webinar?
If you have answers to these questions, you can provide interesting insights that will be valuable to the leads. Also, it will contribute to understanding and allow you to promote the product better.
Have a clear plan for the creation of a webinar
You have to develop a well-thought plan for the creation of the event. Why? The promotion takes several stages that depend on one another. Thus, determine the role and the time limits for the creation of the content, collaboration, and advertising.
After you determine the topic for the webinar, set a date for your webinar. You should have at least 2-3 weeks before the event to create a good promotion campaign.
Collaborate with experts
Moreover, having expertise is a must if you are using webinars for marketing. It allows marketers to have effective B2B LinkedIn campaigns, sell B2B services and build a solid image.
One of the tactics to add to your image is collaborating with experts. You should determine the specialist your audience follows and ask them to be guests or speakers. That way, you not only invite a quality content maker to the event but add to the promotion. The reason is that a part of the audience will come to the event upon the invitation from the very expert.
You can use B2B Linkedin search and databases to find the right opinion leader or specialist. Next, you can contact them on social media, extract an email address, and send a personalized email.
Define the right timing
Besides, think of the proper date for your webinar. Consider that some people find it challenging to have time on weekends or Friday nights. Other leads may fail to connect to the webinar in the morning. Thus, a good time and date may be in the middle of the week, right before or after the end of the work day.
Also, ensure that your date for the event does not coincide with the time for significant events or holidays. For instance, you may want to launch a series of free webinars on marketing, but set a date for it for the time when a significant B2B conference will take place. In this regard, many of your leads will choose the panel instead.
Thus, ask your leads and customers and watch competitors.
Remind, remind, remind
Lastly, whether you are organizing an email webinar or any other kind of marketing webinars, be sure to follow up and remember the event. It is vital to send several letters to the people. When?
After they register, one week before the event, one day before, the day the event starts, and one hour before it. Some brands send notifications even during the webinar to provide updates and send valuable materials.
Notably, the best webinar email subject lines focus on the time when it starts and underlines that people may miss it. It is another way to attract people and highlight the urgency or uniqueness of the email webinar. As a result, reminding allows people to remember the event and encourages them to join at the last minute.
Also Read: 5 Benefits Of Webinars
