Webinars continue to be an effective way to reach and engage your existing audience and generate leads since people are always looking for tips, strategies, and techniques that can help them at work or in their daily lives.
But, it can be challenging to make your webinar stand out if you are using the same email and social media playbook as everyone else.
Here are 8 creative strategies you can use to promote your next webinar.
1. Partner with a relevant B2B influencer
Partnering with a relevant B2B influencer can help increase your credibility, provide additional value, and help you reach a wider audience.
When you partner with an influencer, be sure it’s someone that fits your brand and audience. Additionally, you’ll want to make it easy for the influencer to discuss and promote your webinar. Consider creating some materials to share with the influencer, like branded imagery, registration links, and emails.
In addition to having them promote your webinar, consider getting the influencer involved directly with the webinar if it enhances the topic and experience for your audience. For example, the influencer can be part of the webinar or may attend the webinar to respond to comments and questions in the chat.
2. Cross-promotion with referral partners
Cross-promotion involves a collaboration between you and a referral partner to increase each other’s customer base, sales, and brand awareness. When selecting a partner, look for someone with a similar or related audience but who isn’t a direct competitor.
You can then create your webinar with the referral partner, showcasing both of your businesses and promoting each company’s products or services. This can help improve the content and give your audience a broader experience. Additionally, each company can advertise the webinar to help spread the word.
One example of a cross-promotion is by Wistia and Hubspot. This webinar focuses on showing viewers how combining Wistia and Hubspot can help with lead generation and automation, highlighting how users can benefit from both products.
3. Themed email series
Emails are one of the most effective ways to promote your webinar since you’re sending information to a warm audience who has already shown interest in your company.
But you’ll want to take time to craft a themed email sequence designed to focus on the theme of the webinar.
Make the promotion emails consistent with each other, focus on the theme selected, and even build on each other with supplemental content. For instance, if you’re a more personalized business, you can drip out a story that shows why the webinar will be helpful to the audience.
Additionally, you’ll want to keep the excitement of the webinar growing with your reminder emails after an attendee signs up. After the webinar, follow up with an email that includes a replay (if you’re supplying that) and resources to continue nurturing your audience.
Pro Tip: Here’s how you can set this up in HighLevel.
4. Create a trailer
A video trailer can quickly capture your audience’s attention and is easy to incorporate into your promotion across different channels.
For instance, you can share the trailer on your different social media channels and include it in emails and on landing pages.
The trailer is a teaser for your webinar, a way to intrigue and generate interest without giving away all the value. Keep in mind what your audience expects and the kind of content they’re looking for or problems they need solved.
When creating the trailer, you’ll want to:
- Show how the webinar will benefit viewers
- Include information that hooks your audience and builds excitement without giving away all value
- Create a strong webinar title to increase interest, like you would a headline for an article
- Include a powerful call-to-action (CTA)
- Keep it short
5. Create a blog post series
Your blog can be a powerful tool to help promote your webinar and help show the value of the webinar topic to your audience.
Consider creating a series of blog posts around the webinar’s theme and key takeaways.
Since it lives on your blog, you’ll want to focus on content that is evergreen and in-depth as opposed to a simple “webinar launch email.”
6. Create a challenge to go alongside the webinar
One problem that can arise with webinars is that people attend, enjoy the webinar, but then don’t take action or use the information provided to them.
You can help your audience experience the value of your content firsthand by incorporating a challenge for them to complete alongside the webinar.
You can also add a reward if someone completes the challenge.
Get creative when thinking about the challenge but also make sure the actions you’re asking your attendees to take are useful to them — not just busy work.
How you set up the challenge will depend on your topic, industry, service, or products. But consider:
- What types of actions your audience can take that helps them interact and start using the information you’re sharing
- Having prompts that are dripped out to them over email once they register to get them thinking about barriers your webinar will help them solve
- Having a resource they can use during the webinar that helps them immediately interact with the information you’re providing so by the end of the webinar they’ve experienced the value of what you’re sharing and promoting
- Provide a follow-up challenge post-webinar, where they receive prompts, suggestions, or challenges that get them using the information you provided
- Whether you want to have a reward or bonus for those that complete the challenge
7. Promote on your podcast
Your podcast is another way to effectively promote your webinar.
You can discuss the topic and inform them of any guests or special resources that will be shared to get people excited to attend. The key is to help show them why the webinar will be helpful to them and then make it easy for them to sign up after listening to the podcast episode.
You also promote your webinar when appearing as a guest on other people’s podcasts. Look for podcasts with a similar audience but aren’t a direct competitor. This can also open up future opportunities for cross-promotion with those companies.
When promoting a webinar on your podcast, consider:
- Your timing — how far in advance of the webinar do you want to start discussing it on your podcast
- Whether you want to have one (or more) podcasts that are related to the webinar topic to increase interest or just do an “ad” for the webinar on one or a few episodes.
- Creating a statement reminding your audience of the podcast that you’ll use in the closing of each podcast aired leading up to the webinar
- Posting information about the webinar and a link to register directly in your show notes
8. Create exclusive bonus content
When promoting the webinar, let people know they will get something exclusive if they attend the whole webinar. For instance, you may send participants:
- The replay
- A special discount
- A bonus training
- A downloadable resource that compliments the webinar training or topic
You can also incorporate this bonus content into your post-webinar emails by following up with those that received the bonus content to get their feedback on it.
When promoting the bonus content, be clear about your expectations for attendees to receive the content. For example, make sure they know if they have to attend the whole webinar or if it’s based on showing up.
When selecting bonus content, think about what types of content will help engage your audience and turn these leads into customers.
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Producing webinars can be a lucrative lead-gen channel. However, if you want to see significant growth, you’ll want to think beyond the traditional webinar playbook.
