10 Best Practices for Driving Webinar Attendance

So you’ve decided to hold a webinar. You’ve got a date in mind, a riveting topic picked out and an all-star speaker lined up. Now what?

You know that your B2B prospects are incredibly busy. So, how can you entice them to take time out of their already hectic schedules to attend your webinar? We’ve outlined ten of the most effective techniques for driving better webinar attendance.

Targeting Prospects

Target Your Efforts: Rather than attempting to attract the whole world to your webinar, only invite prospects who you know will have a real interest in your subject matter. In reality, drawing in 30 qualified attendees is a lot better than 300 non-qualified individuals. This is particularly true in the capital markets. For example, for fin-tech vendors that are targeting the tier 1 and tier 2 institutional sell-sides, there are only about 500 companies globally that will meet their target profile.

Consider Persona: When deciding on your webinar topic, you should first identify your target buyer persona, or the type of person that would purchase your product. From there, you can build the webinar content around their needs. Don’t try to meet all of your niches’ needs on one webinar. Instead, schedule multiple webinars that appeal to different niches and to the different roles of the target buying committees. The more targeted and relevant you are, the more likely your content will resonate.

Remember…Content is King: Focus on topics that your audience wants to know about—and that are not self-promotional. Topics that work well for fin-tech include regulatory updates, educational events and case studies. Industry participants always like hearing about what their competitors are doing. But be careful with this one. Ensure you’re protecting non-disclosures and don’t make it appear like you’re disclosing clients’ secrets.

Webinar Promotion

Use Video: Create a short “movie trailer” for your upcoming webinar. Organizations like NETSEA have reported a 300% increase in email click-through rates by integrating video with event marketing. Include details in your script like—What’s the webinar about? Who’s speaking? When is it? For maximum impact, have your webinar speaker narrate. Then you can send contacts a link to the video in an email. Keep the video brief—30-60 seconds is ideal. Also, be sure your accompanying email copy is concise and to the point, in order to let the video tell your story.

Ask Presenters for Marketing Help: Extend the reach of your message even further. Have your presenters get the word out about your webinar via their own personal connections, social media accounts and email contacts. Leveraging the connections of guest speakers who are industry thought leaders can help you attract the right target audience and achieve positive brand affiliation.

Consider a Multi-channel Approach: When promoting your webcast, don’t limit yourself to outbound email communications. Instead consider a multichannel marketing approach that includes outlets, such as: advertising, blogs, phone calls, partnerships, internal and external websites and social media. At PropelGrowth, we’ve extended our reach by paying 3^rd party publications to send out emails for us that promote our events. Using the marketing help of another trusted name in your industry lends extra credibility to your brand.

Fire Up Your Blog: Use your blog to promote the concept of your webinar and the actual event itself. This will help you get people familiar with and excited about your topic. You can use the webinar prep session as a guideline for developing this blog content. Another good way to promote your event is to guest blog on other industry websites. But make sure these posts offer real insights and are not just thinly veiled advertisements for your firm.

Webinar Interaction

Emphasize the Interaction: Webcasts differ from published documents in that they offer prospects the opportunity to interact with a subject matter expert. In promotions leading up to your event, stress the fact that attendees will have the chance to get their specific question answered by the speaker. Also, encourage registrants to send their questions before the event, allowing the speaker time to prepare thoughtful answers.

Give Attendees Access to other Attendees: Encourage attendee interaction by holding a live Twitter chat either during or immediately following your event. This can help you improve social engagement. Some virtual event platforms like ON24 and BrightTALK have built-in functionality for attendees to chat with each other during a live event.

Reach Them Post Event: For registrants that were no-shows, you can send a post-event email saying, “Sorry you weren’t able to attend.” Include this message with the webcast recording and slide materials, plus a registration link for the next relevant webinar in your series. At PropelGrowth, we publish event recordings on our website. In most cases, more people view the recording than the live event. For example, with a recent webinar we conducted, only 18% of the total audience attended the live webcast. The recording attracted 82% of the overall views. That was with NO additional promotion. So recordings are a great way to quadruple your audience post-event, especially if the topic is evergreen.

Final Words

Webcasts are an integral tool for promoting your company as a thought leader in your industry—particularly when they are integrated into a larger marketing strategy. But your contacts have to be convinced that your content is worth their while. Leveraging the best practices discussed above can help you attract more qualified leads to your event.

For information on how to get more traction from your webinar after the live event, read our related post, 13 Ways to Repurpose Webcasts for More Content.

Learn what not to do during webinars.