Creating a webinar is a great way to educate people about your business and services, but it’s not enough to simply schedule the webinar and forget about it. In order to ensure that you get maximum numbers on the day, and take advantage of the flow on effect to your business, you need to promote the event in a variety of ways.
Before the webinar, follow the tips below to get the word out to as many people as possible.
Post it on your website. Having an events page on your website is useful even if you’re using a third party registration system like Event Brite. We often use space on our home page to list upcoming events and to feature the most important ones. A banner at the top of your web page can also be an effective way to attract traffic and give immediate information about upcoming events, without your audience having to look for it.
Write about the topic in a blog. A great way to cross-promote the webinar is to publish 1-2 blog posts about the subject matter in the month leading up to the event. Writing general posts about the subject will build interest and demand for the information you are planning to present. The webinar can then be used as a source of further information. Often the public doesn’t know that they want something or want to know about something until we tell them they do. Enticing the public in this way can be a great way to increase audience numbers and generate buzz.
Advertise it in your newsletter. Your newsletter is the perfect place to advertise your webinar, as your audience of readers are already interested in the information you share. Place a minimum of 2 ads to promote the webinar in the lead up to the event. You might think it’s all over once the webinar is finished, but you can get a lot of mileage out of the one webinar
AFTER the webinar, follow these suggestions:
- Upload the slides to Slideshare
Posting the webinar online through networks such as Slideshare allows for the webinar to stay alive after its initial publication. Recording the webinar and making it available to people who couldn’t attend on the day is another great way to maximise revenue and to leverage the hard work that was put into the webinar production. - Add it to your online library
Creating an online library of past webinars will not only keep the information available, but will also help to establish your business as an information database in the eyes of the public. When they next are looking for related information, they might head to your website as a first port of call. - Share it on social media
After the webinar has aired, the initial promotional text can easily be repurposed to create a review-style post such as, “Hey, you missed out on the great webinar last week. Here’s where you go to find out more.” This post can then be posted in your newsletter or on social media, and can even be used to cross-promote other webinars and events in the future.
Follow these tips to easily increase your webinar numbers and the shelf life of your webinar well into the future.
