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Are you looking for new strategies for marketing your business? How about a marketing strategy that can land you high-quality leads in under an hour? 

If that sounds too good to be true, you haven’t been introduced to webinar marketing. With an investment of a few hours and a small budget, this effective marketing method will produce a steady flow of leads for months or years to come. 

To help you leverage the benefits of webinar marketing for the success of your business, we’ve put together this helpful guide. 

By the end, you’ll know: 

  • What a webinar is 
  • Why a webinar is an effective form of marketing 
  • How to build a webinar 
  • How to promote a webinar 

What’s a Webinar? 

A webinar is an online presentation offering something of value to your target audience to achieve a particular goal. 

The term webinar is a blend of web and seminar and is usually an online course.  

Marketing webinars make it easier for businesses to get the attention of their target audience. This form of lead generation is more engaging and captivating than other marketing methods because of the power of visuals. 

What’s Webinar Marketing?

Webinar marketing is how you promote a webinar to further your business’s goals. 

You can create an informative and engaging webinar, but if no one knows about it, you won’t experience any of the benefits.

With successful webinar marketing, you can accomplish a multitude of goals, including: 

  • Building your email list  
  • Establishing your business’s authority 
  • Introducing services or products 
  • Demonstrating your business’s capabilities 
  • Boosting brand awareness

How to Build a Webinar

Business owners often avoid webinar marketing because of its perceived difficulties.  The idea of writing, planning, and building a webinar may seem daunting and involved. 

As an expert in your field, you have the knowledge and skills to make an informative webinar from which people can benefit. 

Let’s break down the webinar building process to make it easier to follow. 

Pick a Popular Topic 

The first step in building a webinar is finding a great topic. It’s important to pick a subject that’s relevant to both your target market and audience.

For example, if you sell employee management software to small businesses, you might host a webinar offering entrepreneurs a guide for finding employees. 

Think about common questions, pain points, and problems your ideal customer might experience. As a leader in the industry, you can provide an answer or solution for these uncertainties. 

Here are some tips for generating webinar topic ideas: 

  • Expand on blog posts 
  • Go into greater depth on popular videos 
  • Take suggestions from your audience 
  • Visit forums your target audience uses
  • See what content your competitors are producing 

Make a Landing Page 

A landing page is a single webpage where users land after clicking on one of your promotional links.  This page acts as the funnel through which you take interested individuals and convince them to sign-up for your webinar. 

You can start by finding a reputable hosting provider that offers quick loading speeds and uninterrupted uptime. A quick and responsive landing page is essential for encouraging visitors to join your upcoming webinar. 

Your landing page should also include: 

  • Mobile compatibility 
  • A description of what’s included in your webinar
  • A call-to-action 
  • Reviews from previous customers 
  • Your contact information

Develop a Webinar Format 

Planning is critical when building a webinar. You don’t want to make things up as you go along.  Last-minute changes will come across as disorganized, unprofessional, and even lazy. 

Here’s an example webinar timeline:

  1. Presenter introductions 
  2. Overview of the topic 
  3. Discuss what viewers will learn 
  4. Main presentation 
  5. Question and answer section 
  6. Further information 

Notice the main portion of the webinar is in between introductory components and a breakdown section.  While the main presentation is the highlight and should comprise most of your webinar, you don’t want to jump right into it. 

Choose a Webinar Platform 

With an outline for your webinar, it’s time to choose a platform. 

If you’re comfortable with the basics and aren’t looking to spend any money, try one of these free platforms: 

  • YouTube 
  • Facebook 
  • Google Hangouts 

All of these platforms have livestream or videoconferencing features that support basic webinar functionalities. However, you’ll need to invest some money if you want a dedicated webinar platform with greater capabilities. 

Take a look at these effective options and their highlights: 

Platform Highlight 
WebinarJam One-click registration 
DemioEasy-to-read analytics 
Webinar Ninja Intuitive setup
EasyWebinar Simple design 

Webinar Promotion 

After completing your webinar, the focus shifts towards promotion.  For this marketing strategy to be effective, you need to promote to potential customers. 

Let’s explore some powerful webinar marketing strategies for boosting your webinar’s exposure. 

Write Helpful Blog Posts 

A widely-read newsletter or blog is a great resource to use in your webinar marketing plan. You’ve already gained an engaged target audience through these mediums by providing helpful content.  Considering your webinar covers similar topics, your blog readers are a perfect group to pitch to. 

While you can come out and mention the webinar directly, people are more receptive when it’s less upfront. You can include links to your landing page throughout your blog posts and mention it at the bottom of each post. 

Just make sure you don’t let this promotion overtake what your readers love about your content. 

Make Informative Videos 

If your business already uses video marketing, incorporate information about your upcoming webinar in your routine videos. 

The audience engaging with your videos has already shown a preference for visual content. This increases the likelihood they’ll be interested in joining a webinar because of its similar setup. 

The approach is the same with blog posts — you’re looking for relevant areas to mention the webinar. 

Use Your Email Signature 

With the average person sending 128 emails per day, you’re already in touch with dozens of potential customers. 

A great way to gently push your webinar to that untapped group is by including a link in your email signature. You’ll get the word out about your webinar without performing any extra work. It’s also less alienating than direct email marketing. 

Popular email platforms such as Gmail and Outlook allow users to customize and place links within their email signatures. 

Leverage Social Media 

Social media is essential in your webinar marketing strategy.  These platforms are primed for sharing information with a large group of people. 

If you have a large and engaged following, share a link to your webinar on your page and encourage people to share it. 

While sharing might not work as well for those with smaller social media followings, it doesn’t mean social media is out of the question. You can leverage the reach of more popular pages through a tactic known as influencer marketing. In short, you’re paying to have a well-established profile promote your webinar link to drive more traffic than you could with your own profile. 

LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are your go-to platforms because of their link-sharing capabilities. 

Paid Advertisements 

Paid advertisements are one of the most reliable forms of webinar marketing. 

Facebook and Google are some of the most powerful ad platforms due to their impressive targeting features. You can pinpoint a specific target group that is most likely to take an interest in your webinar and market directly to them. 

Instead of spending extra time promoting only to a small percentage of people who might be interested, you’re honing in on a group much more likely to engage with your content. 

How Long Should You Promote a Webinar?

Three to four weeks is the sweet spot for promoting your webinar.  Anything longer and you run the risk of people not taking action or losing interest because of the prolonged waiting time. 

Alternatively, a shorter promotion period might result in a low turnout as fewer people are reached, and those that are don’t have enough time to plan. 

As the webinar’s launch date approaches, you’ll want to steadily ramp up promotion to get the word out. 

Webinar marketing is a great way to get the attention of a large group of people within your target niche. 

By offering something of value in the form of a course or presentation, you’re establishing your business as a leader and influencer in the field. This approach has an impact beyond the limits of the webinar itself and can be used as part of a larger strategy to build your business as an authority.

Use these webinar marketing best practices, and you’ll be on the right path. 
If you’re looking to build a website to support your webinar marketing, Bluehost has the expertise and tools to help. Check out Bluehost’s top web hosting plans.

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