Promote webinars - 12 tips on how to attract participants

Of course, a webinar also needs participants. We show you how to promote webinars successful and fill the digital audience.

You have organised the hardware, set up the webinar strategy and the schedule and presentation are in place. What’s missing now: participants. You have various channels at your disposal to draw attention to your webinar. Use your contact network and different platforms to get the most out of your webinar! We show you how to promote webinars, both for free and on a budget.

Place your webinar in the right places for free

Your social media channels (1)

Do you have a Facebook page? A Twitter account? Your company is on Instagram? In any case, you should use social media to draw attention to your webinar, at least free of charge. What many people forget is that in most cases you and your employees also have your own social media profiles. Of course, you can’t force it on anyone. But a friendly request to share a special social media post is rarely turned down. It is at least worth a try if you also tell a little story about it on social media like – but please do so by private message and not via the official post. However, if you do this with every other social media post, the effect will eventually fizzle out and you will burn your own network. Here is a small list of possible channels, which you are welcome to add to:

Facebook Page
Facebook profile(s)
Facebook Groups
Instagram
Twitter
Linkedin
XING
Youtube channel
[…]

Your own newsletter (2)

If you have your own newsletter, you can of course use it to market your webinar.

Digital events and trade fairs (3)

The great thing about a webinar is that it is scalable. Once you have created it, you should constantly optimise it, but the worst is done. Rarely do you create a webinar for one-time use. However, you should not only hold your webinar several times on your own channels. Digital trade fairs are becoming more and more common and are therefore an ideal platform to present your webinar to a larger audience. They are a good way to reach a whole new audience. However, you should be aware that at digital conferences you are part of a well-organised line-up. And that participants have high expectations of form and content. So make sure your webinar meets the highest standards. You can read our webinar guide again here.

Enter webinars in various event calendars (4)

Another proven method you can use to promote webinars are event calendars. Whether generalist or industry-specific: a lot helps a lot. Find the calendars that are relevant for you and your target groups and put your event there. Xing also has a separate area for webinars where you can enter your webinars. At contentmanager.de we also have our own event calendar for digital events.

Place in the network and with the help of influencers (5)

Webinars are currently very popular, both with users and providers. You can use this to your advantage. Activate your existing network and expand it further. On the one hand, you should actively look at other webinars and get in touch with the organiser. Following the principle of “one hand washes the other”, you can each draw attention to the other’s webinar. In this way, you not only increase your reach, but also offer your customers added value by pointing out webinars on topics that you may not have in your portfolio. In general, you should think about influencer marketing as part of webinar marketing. Who are the important minds in your industry? How do you get in touch with them so that you can either draw attention to your webinar or perhaps provide input or act as a speaker?

Professional communities for exchange and attention (6).

If you want to promote webinars, you should know your audience: Find relevant communities where people are active for whom your content is relevant. These can be Facebook groups or specific forums. Especially the professional social networks Xing and LinkedIn offer their own groups for almost all professional groups and fields. Once you have found like-minded people, you can not only drum up publicity for your event there. You can also use the direct exchange with the community to find out what moves them. What content should you cover in your webinar? What questions should you answer? Don’t use these groups purely as a promotional event, but as a dialogue. You may even come up with a completely new topic that you can use for the next online seminar.

Use “Webinar PR” to position your trainers (7)

In the long term, you should also think about PR and content marketing in your webinar marketing. You should not immediately write a press release about the online seminar. But you can offer media and journalists interviews or expert contributions from speakers and trainers. In this way, you can raise your public profile and perhaps also place a link to the webinar.

Second-use existing material on social media (8)

Content marketing and SEO play a very crucial role in marketing your online seminar. The good news is that once the webinar is up and running, you have a wide range of content options. Because you can recycle your existing material extremely well. You can share key learnings and individual slides on Facebook or Twitter. Use a short excerpt from the recording and publish it as an appetiser on Instagram or in the Instagram story to attract new users for your upcoming webinars. It is also advisable to write blog posts on the respective topics that outline the topic or explain other aspects. Make sure that there is a “symbiosis” between blog and webinars: Both refer to each other with links. This way you offer added value to customers and interested parties on both platforms.

Paid newsletters: Activate existing target group (9)

Newsletters are one of the most reliable elements of the marketing mix. That’s why you should also use it when promoting your webinar. The basic variant here is, of course, the classic sending of a newsletter that refers to the event. Make use of your existing target group and send out an information mail to your customers. You can also use these newsletters to ask questions or get input on topics from your audience! By the way, you can of course also use our newsletter.

Marketing Automation (10)

You can also use automation solutions, which unfortunately cost money, so these are also in the chapter “Budgets”, but perhaps you already have marketing automation software. For example, you can ask participants of a webinar whether you can also inform them about upcoming events. Newsletters are also essential to remind participants who have already registered to attend. Because there is often a difference between registering and actually attending the webinar. Experience shows that the “no-show” rate is around 20 percent when you offer free webinars. Email reminders are an immensely important step in increasing attendance.

Reminder emails calling for participation can be automated to be sent at specific intervals. In addition, you can use automation to send a recording of the webinar to participants after the event. In the same step, you can collect feedback and point out further appointments. You can also use an automation tool to check whether participants have registered for an appointment but not yet confirmed it. If you are interested in the topic of “marketing automation tools”, you can download our software comparison.

Promote webinars with social ads (11)

Target advertising and social ads have become an integral part of everyday marketing. And especially for digital products like webinars, they are indispensable. You can “bake” your target group on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn. Determine the exact personas you want to reach: This targeted approach is just one of the diverse advantages of this form of advertising. Another: Interested parties can register directly from the template. In this way, you can address and attract participants extremely precisely.

You can specify various factors for the target groups:

Location
Age
Gender
Languages
Connections (Which pages have you already subscribed to or liked? Particularly helpful to reach specific interest group for your topics).
Which pages do users interact with?
Devices used (Important if you cover technical topics).
Which ads have users already clicked on?

If you have your own website that offers different categories of topics, you can create your own audiences on Facebook from the visitors. To do this, use the Facebook Pixel. In this way, you also create the possibility of targeting your advertising based on interest, independently of target group segments. Of course, you have to pay attention to the data protection framework.

Use a listening tool to find other platforms (12)

There are millions of websites, forums and blogs that deal with your topic. Google search will give you some clues, but if you want a reasonable number of sources in a hurry, use a listening or monitoring tool. This will show you which sources have a particularly high frequency of posts based on your search input. It also helps you find influencers and other topics as well as the most viral posts. We have compared social media monitoring tools, you can download the comparison as a PDF here.

Timing to promote webinars

Depending on your budget and resources, the approach will vary. A general roadmap for promoting your webinar could look like this:

Before/ During webinar creation:

Contact influencers to see if they would like to participate or refer to the webinar.
Plan content (blog, social media)
Research relevant digital events
Research media (possibly pre-plan guest post)
Seek input in professional communities

When the date is set:

Enter webinar in relevant diaries
Announce via own channels (blog, homepage, newsletter, mail, social media)
Influencer posts
Launch social ads
Media approach
Posts in specialist communities

After the event:

Mail with link to recording via automation to participants (and collect feedback!)
Secondary use of the recording for content marketing

Conclusion

Whether free of charge or with a budget: you have various options at your disposal if you want to promote webinars.. Always remember that it should not be done with one webinar. You will need to do a whole series of webinars until you are so far along on your learning curve that the effort pays off. For this, it is always advisable to develop a webinar strategy at the beginning.

Do you already offer webinars or are you planning to do so? Then we recommend our market overview “Webinar Software Solutions”. There we have compared seven providers based on over 120 criteria: