With dreams of a packed house and big bucks, you set out to create the perfect webinar. You conducted all your research, both market and competitor, and you studied your subject matter until you came up with a cohesive outline that would flow nicely. You then created your slides and multimedia, practiced your script until you were blue in the face and now you are ready to host your very own, perfect webinar. Now what? Well, now is the time to shoot off a flare, so to speak, to alert your audience that registration for your webinar is open. How do you do that, especially with the market so saturated? Does webinar marketing really work? As many experts can attest to, webinar marketing certainly does work and it’s likely you already know what to do.
Webinar Marketing 101
As any expert can attest to, you must begin your webinar marketing efforts at least six weeks in advance of the date of execution. This gives your audience plenty of time to jump on board before the webinar goes live. The experts know that webinar marketing works very slowly. Most people won’t sign up until they’ve seen your email or social marketing post at least three or four times. And some won’t sign up until the very last day of registration.
People have short attention spans and on top of that they’re very busy. You have to accept that as a reality. Most new marketers who don’t know how webinar marketing works expect their webinars to fill up the moment the registration link goes out.
You can trust that most experts don’t fill their webinars until two or three days prior to the webinar. That’s a fact. Don’t think you’re doing anything wrong if nobody signs up on the first day. As long as you are consistent with your marketing message, and as long as your marketing message is strong, and as long as you’ve done a great job putting together the perfect webinar, you should have no problem stuffing the seats on the big day.
Ok, now we’ve managed your expectations. Our next step is to get the message out six weeks beforehand. How do we do that? We rely on all the tools at our disposal. Let’s look at a few of those tools now.
Webinar Marketing Tools
The following tools will help spread the message about your upcoming webinar.
Email Lists: If you haven’t spent time building a subscriber list comprised of your prospects and customers, it is recommended that you do that before you begin marketing your webinar. An email subscriber list is like having your very own private marketing audience. If you want to know how webinar marketing works, it’s most effectively done through subscriber lists just like these.
Social Marketing: Just as you need to cultivate an email list, you should also spend time building your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn presence if you hope to excel at webinar marketing. Don’t just snatch up friends and followers like they’re going out of style, but instead be a little selective. If you can manage to accumulate a loyal band of friends and followers, and then you blast your registration link on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, every webinar you announce will fill up before you know it.
Popular Forums: Find some popular forums in your niche and start becoming well-known. When someone starts a thread that has to do with your specialty, dive in and offer some free advice. Soon, other forum members will start to recognize you and you’ll build a following. If you put your webinar registration link in your signature and you send out PMs to a select group announcing the day of action, you’ll soon see why so many experts include forum marketing when teaching how webinar marketing works.
Offline Marketing: Just because your webinar is going to be hosted online doesn’t mean that you can’t market your webinar offline. Put your webinar link on flyers or business cards and start passing them around. Put an ad in your local new or trade paper or get a commercial on TV. Think big, think expansive and you’ll soon see how webinar marketing truly works.
Now that you know which tools to use, it is important to mention one more important factor. You must be consistent with webinar marketing. You must send out your marketing message daily, every other day or at least twice per week. Your audience needs to become familiar with your message and the fact that registration is about to come to a close. Build up hype, let them know this is only around for a limited time and that registration is now or never, and your message will soon get through.
Does webinar marketing work? Oh yeah, it works. It works very well, as long as you spend time cultivating your online presence. Build an email list, a social media presence and don’t forget about the offline crowd, too. You must think outside of the box, but most of all remain consistent, and webinar marketing will work very well for you, too.
