Hosting and organizing a successful webinar is not rocket science, but it’s also not something that happens effortlessly.
Boost Your Webinar Attendance with these Key Strategies
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It takes more than just knowing your topic well. You also need to attract as many participants as possible to make your webinar attendance grow.
Best ways to boost your webinar attendance
You’ve practiced hard, revised the topic you will deliver. Prepared all the equipment you need for the event. And organized your desk and venue space to make your webinar more productive.
But… there are only three people that show up in your webinar.
It obviously feels uncomfortable and even a bit awkward. That’s the moment when you realize you should be more active in promoting your webinar and make sure more people know about it.
The more people attend your webinar, the higher your chances of getting more exposure as an expert. Also, you have more opportunities to encourage your audience to perform your desired actions and build a prospective relationship.
Despite the advantages of extensive webinar software features, many speakers like you still struggle to optimize results with their overall participation totals. And remember, attracting webinar attendees is not only about getting them to complete the registration form but also reminding them to show up and engage with your event.
Below are some best practices you can use to scale your webinar attendees from ten to a thousand.
Choose your topic wisely
No one wants to attend your webinar if you choose a mainstream, overused topic. People always strive and are curious about up-to-date topics that briefly discuss the latest trends.
Therefore, you need to find out what topics your audiences are interested in and excited to learn about.
The best way to choose the perfect topic is by solidly understanding your potential attendees’ pain points and the trendiest solutions you can offer them. An attendee will only attend your webinar if the topic you choose answers a question to which they still haven’t found a satisfactory answer.
Avoid using the webinar to promote your business and brag about the awesome features your products offer. No one likes to be sold to. So, remember, you need to offer value through your topics in the first place to entice more attendees to your webinar.
Offer incentives
You can attract more attendees by offering attention-grabbing incentives. Freebies or bonuses are a great way to give potential attendees a reason not to miss out on your webinar. After all, who doesn’t love to get something for free?
The incentives you offer do not have to be fancy and super expensive. You can provide them premium access to software, voucher gifts, or exclusive content (i.g., in-depth reports, white paper, e-books, explainer videos, etc.). The key here is to choose incentives your attendees need and find valuable.
Giving away extra perks during your webinar is also a light-heard way to add more value to your webinar presentation to strengthen your relationship with your attendees. When they receive something valuable for free, they will be more inclined to want to repay you. This will encourage them to return to your next webinar and become return attendees.
Go social
There are 3.4 billion social users worldwide, making social media an ideal place to attract more eyeballs and entice more attendees. They are ideal online places to hone your webinar ads and boost performance.
According to stats, social media ads help businesses increase the webinar registration rate up to 51%. Also, at least 20% of webinar attendees convert into customers.
Social media ads like Facebook or LinkedIn ads offer you a targeting option. This feature makes it much easier for you to narrow your lists to those most interested in your event. Therefore, you can target the right people at the right time and place. You can say that it offers you better results in no time compared to organic postings.
Feature a guest speaker
Featuring other speakers as guests in your webinar should help boost your event’s exposure. The reason for this is twofold. First, your potential attendees will be more excited to attend your webinar since they can get insightful information from another industry expert.
Second, the featured guest speaker will also promote your event to their audiences since they participate. That means you can expand your reach by attracting an audience base that was never possible without a guest speaker.
More professional speakers also mean that there will be more perspectives and points of view, making the meeting even more far-reaching, thought-provoking, and informative. Therefore, various speakers can even liven up a webinar and drive real engagement with the attendees.
With the higher engagement rate, you can tempt your attendees to keep showing up for your next webinars.
Choose the best day and time
Certain days and times work better when trying to attract the largest number of attendees for your webinars. It would help if you remembered that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to the best day and time to hold your webinar. It should all depend on your potential attendees themselves.
While it’s almost impossible to accommodate everyone’s schedule, a study shows that most people prefer to attend a webinar on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 11 AM or 2 PM.
And if you aim to reach attendees worldwide, you must deal with multiple time zones. In this case, you can prerecord your webinar, then schedule it to run multiple times. You can still include Q&A sections at the end to engage the attendees and bump up the interactivity.
Final tips on boosting your webinar turnout
Increasing the number of attendees is much more than creating a poster about your webinar and posting it on your Instagram Story. It would be best if you had more advanced strategies to catch potential attendees’ attention and explain why your webinar is worth their time.
With these five essential tips, you now know where to start and what to focus on to attract more people to your upcoming webinar and improve your webinar attendance.
FAQ
You need to study your audience’s pain points and current trends then offer solutions they do not already know. Ask your prospects what problems they struggle with and design content that fills a knowledge gap rather than repeating common ideas.
You can provide exclusive content access, bonus materials, vouchers or special reports. Choose something your audience values and use it to sweeten attendance without making the incentive more important than the core content.
You should use targeted ads and organic posts aimed at people who already express interest in similar topics. Use clear messaging about the value they will get and good timing for posts. Engage with comments and share reminders so your event stays visible.
Yes it can help because the guest speaker may bring their own audience and lend credibility. They can promote the event to their fans and provide fresh perspectives which makes your webinar more appealing.
First you should look at where most of your audience lives and choose a time that fits the majority. If your audience spans many time zones then you might pre-record the webinar and replay it at different times while still offering live Q&A at each session.
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
