Marketing a Webinar: 3 Proven Methods

Why Marketing a Webinar is Important

Creating a webinar can be challenging, but marketing a webinar is a whole other beast.

If you’ve been looking into sales tactics and tips, you’ve likely been pitched for a webinar (or 10).

There’s a reason… it works!

These events can be massively valuable. Most hosts put out their very best content in hopes to get you to listen to a pitch toward the end.

Have you thought about using cold email for marketing a webinar?

These are things that we’ve been pondering recently and have created our own regular webinar (that you can check out here if you’d like).

3 Components of a Good Webinar

This isn’t a pragmatic subject. You won’t find any good advice that says, “Follow this X Step Formula”. Sure, there are a lot of awesome webinar resources out there, but you don’t necessarily need to pay for them. If you’re a business owner, you understand your leads (at least a little).

There’s really only ONE thing you’ll need to come up with a webinar that people want to attend.

VALUE. It’s all about the value.

Figure out what your ideal buyers want to know. A subject that relates to your products/services. Doing so will allow you to easily segue to your pitch.

The value has to be shown and given in three stages.

1. Pre-Webinar
2. During-Webinar
3. Post-Webinar

1. Pre-Webinar Value

Remember, it’s value to THEM… not to you.

Getting people interested in showing up is the first step in a good webinar. To do this, you’ll have to follow the old Carnegie quote and “tell them what you’re going to tell them”.

Display the value you’ll be giving away to everyone who signs up (those who’ll attend and those who won’t).

There should be some sort of downloadable resource, access to a paid product, a free trial. Something that entices anyone your ad or email reaches to join the mailing list. If your main goal is sales, the secondary goal should be new leads on your list.

Key to Pre-Webby Value: Lay it Out Quick (and in various ways).

Look how HubSpot does it on one of their registration pages. First, you’ll see a video. It’s like 45 seconds long and gives a brief, yet effective overview of what you’ll learn from watching.

Right below the fold is a bit more information. Notice that the page has “something for everyone”. There’s a video description. I wrote a few paragraphs for those who want it all, and bullet points for the just-the-facts types.

2. During Webinar Value

Make sure what you’re going to tell attendees is actually worth their time. If you want them to become customers at the end—the webinar itself should be worth money.

Since this will vary wildly depending on your industry and target market. All we can give are general tips. For instance:

• Make Sure Your Tips Work: Better yet, show they work. Case studies. Nothing says you know what you’re talking about better than a graph line that is moving up and to the right.
• Get “Little-Known” Stuff: If Forbes has a few dozen 500-word articles about your “secret” strategies, people are going to abandon your presentation. Get something that makes them say, “Oh, that’s good. Glad I’m on this call.”
• 80/20 (at least) Your Pitch: Everyone knows they are there to be pitched. Like a timeshare, everyone wants dinner for free, so they sit through the presentation. But, for webinars, it only works if you give them enough good content first.

3. Post Webinar Value

Ok. Post webinar value ranges from the tail-end of your pitch all the way to the people who actually become customers. Ask yourself one question.

Marketing a Webinar: 3 Proven Methods Click To Tweet

Obviously, these things should be involved in your pitch. Just as important, promises should be carried out. For instance, a SaaS product has a webinar and offers:

• A 30 minute personalized coaching/kickoff call
• Onboarding assistance for the first 30 days
• Assistance handling the transfer from their current solution.

It’s VERY important to get these things done ASAP. Likewise, it’s vital to NOT give these freebies to anyone but new clients that came in via a webinar pitch.

1. Step One: Offer some insane bonuses and extras exclusively for new clients that attended a webinar.
2. Step Two: Work your tail off to make them happen.

Another friendly reminder. We have a webinar. In it, we’ll give you 22 different offers to send cold leads in order to increase the number of responses you see in your outreach campaign. To see all the value we offer, you can click here.

Further Reading: Here’s a fantastic and detailed look at creating a webinar from start to finish.

3 Methods to Use in Marketing a Webinar

There are different methods in marketing a webinar and here are some proven ways:

Method #1: Facebook ads

If you’ve attended a webinar, or have done your own—Facebook ads have probably been involved. Yes, B2Bs can and do use FB ads to fill them up with cold traffic (We use them to do it).

But since this post is more about using email, we’ll just give you a couple of resources if you’d like to read up on using paid ads to draw people into your webinars.

• I’m Promoting My Webinar Series with Facebook Ads (via JonLoomer.com)
• How Facebook Ads Increased First-Time Webinar Registration by 450% (via Wishpond.com)

Method #2: Joint ventures

Using the audience of another company is a great way to get people to register for your webinar. There are literally dozens of ways to cross-promote, but the only way to get started is to strike up a conversation. Want to know how businesses still communicate? Email.

Email other companies that could benefit from your audience (and vice versa). Start talking with them, but don’t just jump to, “Hey, you want to do a webinar with us?” They don’t know you, but they may offer some value to give to your audience.

How about something like this;

Hi, Jane!

I love what you’re doing over at [site name/company name/etc.]. We’re putting together a webinar, [insert title here], and would love one or two of your best tips/ideas/research about the topic. 

It’s [insert short explanation about what it is you’re doing].

Your contribution would be credited. Look forward to hearing from you!

Best,

Josh

It’s way more likely that you’ll get a response with value for your audience. Then, you can gauge interest in the company being a part of the webinar itself.

Make sense?

Oh, and HubSpot uses JV webinars all the time. The one we referenced above included. Take a look at the screenshot and there are actually three companies represented in this one webby.

 

Method #3: Email people

This method for marketing a webinar hasn’t likely been listed in most sales tips or in many webinar guides you’ve seen. Our main focus for giving out these different types of offers is to increase the number of positive responses you get from your cold email efforts.

If you just send an email telling people what you do, it’s likely you’ll end up in the trash. People delete self-promotional material without a second thought.

You have to give them something they want. Broadcasting in their head most of the time is “What’s in it for me?” If you can’t give them an answer in your cold email—you will never have an opportunity to make the sale.

4 Email Webinar Invite Sequence

1See what your competitors are doing

Hi {{.FirstName}},

I’d love to have you attend one of our upcoming webinars where we show what some of your competitors like {{.CustomData.competitor}} are doing to grow. I thought you’d be a great fit since you’re in the industry we’ll be reviewing. It’s free, but we only have so many slots. You can register for it here.

(((Email Signature))) P.S. Not the person to talk to? Let me know! Don’t want me to follow up with you? You can let me know that too!

2Re: See what your competitors are doing

Hi {{.FirstName}},

want to see what other companies like {{.CompanyName}} are doing to grow their business? We’ll be sharing insights into how some of your competitors do their marketing, uncover the ads they use, where they advertise, and more. {{.FirstName}}, even if you can’t attend, I’d recommend registering anyway to get a copy of the recording. You can register here for free.

(((Email Signature)))

P.S. Let me know if you think it’s best I talk with someone else on your team to see what your competitors are doing!

3 Re: See What Your Competitors Are Doing

Hi {{.FirstName}},

Will you be attending the webinar?

Do you think I should, I speak with {{?CustomData.reference}} about this instead?

(((Email Signature)))

P.S. For quick reference, here is a link to register (it’s free!).  

4Re: See what your competitors are doing

Hi {{.FirstName}},

haven’t seen you sign up to attend this free webinar, so assuming you are good with your own situation and don’t feel seeing your competitors marketing efforts will be of value.

(((Email Signature)))

P.S. If you’d ever like some personalized recommendations on your marketing efforts, you can grab a time with me here.

How to Find Webinar Attendees to Email

Do you want to find email addresses of potential webinar attendees?

LeadFuze is a tool that helps marketers and salespeople find emails of potential webinar attendees. It has the most accurate data in the industry, so it can help you get more people on your list for your next event.

With LeadFuze, it’s easy to find email addresses with just one click! You don’t need to spend hours looking through LinkedIn or Google search results – all you have to do is type in a name and voila! You will be able to see their contact information right away. It saves time and gets you what you need faster than ever before.

Conclusion 

Marketing a webinar can be a difficult task, but it is not impossible. There are many factors that need to align in order for the marketing campaign to be successful. And we’re hoping you’ll be successful when you heed our advice above.