8 Tips for Marketing With Webinars

For B2B marketers, webinars are one of the most popular marketing tools around—behind only conferences, trade shows and exhibitions as an event marketing method, a survey by Regalix reports. More than half (55 percent) of B2B marketers in the poll report marketing with webinars as a way to attract prospects.

If you haven’t tried marketing with webinars yet, why not give it a try? Here are some tips for marketing with webinars.

1. Determine your goals. What do you want to gain from the webinar? Marketing with webinars can help you educate prospects about your products or services, generate new leads or build a thought-leader reputation. Knowing what you want to achieve will help you set goals, such as number of leads from the webinar or sales calls resulting from it. This will also help you determine what information you want to capture from attendees.
2. Choose a topic. Your webinar topic should be useful enough to spark signups, relevant to your business and your expertise, and offer a new twist that users haven’t seen before. Think about questions that your customers and prospects commonly have; these can lead you to the right topic to choose. For example, if you own a recruiting firm and customers often ask you for advice about onboarding new hires, you could do a webinar on that topic.
3. Plan your presentation. Webinars are typically 30 to 60 minutes in length. Create a rough script (you don’t want to follow it word for word) and a visual presentation. Avoid using lots of words in your visuals. You don’t want to present a PowerPoint that users could just read on their own; instead, employ striking images, surprising facts or funny stats to keep them engaged and listening.
4. Choose your webinar tools. There are a variety of tools you can use to record and present your webinar; Webex, GoToWebinar and ReadyTalk are just a few. Find one that offers the functionality you need with the simplest operation. Be sure to give it several test runs before the big day.
5. Promote early and often. Marketing is key to a successful webinar. Start spreading the word about your webinar at least eight weeks prior. Promote it on your website, in your marketing emails and on social media. You can increase signups by creating a sense of urgency (“Attendance Is Limited—Only 25 More Spots Available!”) Also consider hosting your webinar with a complementary business so you can share marketing duties—and your customer lists.
6. Send reminders. Generate excitement about the webinar (and ensure attendees remember to show up!) by sending reminder emails. Include a “teaser” with some information from the webinar, like an interesting fact or useful tool, to get them psyched up for the event.
7. Do a Q&A. Always leave a little time for attendee questions and answers at the end of the webinar. It helps boost engagement and can also be used as a way to ferret out attendees’ pain points or concerns for later sales.
8. Re-use it. Recording webinars is a great way to keep marketing with webinars long after the event is over. Archive them on your website and you can use them as marketing tools again and again.