How to Promote a Webinar Event

The success of your webinar depends on the success of your pre-event marketing.

Given today's competitive markets and the short attention span of the human mind, a good promotion strategy holds the key to a successful webinar. When it comes to promotional activity, loud is not necessarily effective. What you need is increased visibility with the target audience and a technique that can get people interested. Remember that not all people are motivated by the same factors; some people attend because your speaker is well known, others sign on to gain information, and for some others, a gift may be the appeal. Therefore, the best promotional campaign is one that has something for everyone.

Instructions

1. Plan your strategy. Determine what will attract people to your webinar. Create special offers and discounts if they sign up by a specified date. Offer discounts on subsequent webinars. Provide reports, white papers or books on the webinar subject to all those who attend. Decide how much emphasis to provide to your speaker's profile.

2. Prepare promotional copy. Draft your promotional material from the perspective of the audience. Highlight what they can gain from attending your webinar. Write different versions of the same information in formats that suit the media you're planning to use for promotion. A press release version can, for instance, be lengthier than a post on a networking site. If you're planning to use audio-video promotional material, begin preparing this well in advance so you have sufficient time to develop copy that's attractive.

3. Perfect your timing. Many people take action to book their place during the last few days before the event. If you begin promotion too early, they'll just push it to one corner of their mind thinking there's still a lot of time to sign up. Don't leave the promotion for the last, though; you may find you've run out of time to do any effective marketing. Use the two-week period just before your webinar delivery date for promotional activity -- this will ensure maximum impact.

4. Target your contacts. Send a promotional email to people you know will be interested in the webinar. For those contacts whom you're not sure about, make your promotion a little more discreet -- create an email signature that includes a link to the webinar. Publish details of the webinar on your website and blog.

5. Use video sites. Post audio-video promotional copy on sites like YouTube and Vimeo. Put it on your website and include it in invitations you use elsewhere.

6. Publish on social media. Use social media where you're active like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to post events. Be careful not to overdo the promotion, though. People may not take kindly to it being rammed down their throat and this may generate negative publicity for your webinar.

Tips & Warnings

• Run a contest and offer winners a free slot at the webinar.

• Prepare promotional copy for your webinar page in a manner that's optimized for search engines. Use keywords and make them bold. Make sure there isn't an excess of keywords, though -- it'll reduce the page relevance for each one.

• Use press release sites like PR Newswire, Marketwire and PRWeb to improve visibility of your webinar.

References

• Webinar Wire: How to Promote Your Webinar or Webcast on a Budget
• Conference Plus: Ten Tips to Help Promote Your Webinar
• Rethinking Sales: Promoting your Webinar Event