You want as many people as possible to attend your webinars, but it seems like you’re just not getting the number of attendees you want.
With lots of different webinars going on – plus plenty of other things competing for your audience’s attention – you might think that people are busy and there’s not much you can do about it.
Or you might think that getting more webinar attendees will mean spending a huge amount of time marketing your webinar, for uncertain results.
The good news? There are plenty of ways you can boost your webinar attendance – without doing a lot of extra work.
Here are 7 effective strategies to boost webinar attendance, some of which will take just minutes to put into practice.
1. Let Your Audience Know About Your Webinar Well Ahead of Time
If you only announce your webinar a few days ahead, that may not be enough time for people to plan to attend live. They may have other commitments, or it may simply be difficult for them to make time for your webinar in a busy week.
Give at least a week’s notice of your webinar – 10-14 days may be better. Make sure your audience knows well ahead of time when it’s going to be, and encourage them to sign up as soon as possible to secure their place.
2. Run Your Webinar at a Day and Time That Suits Most of Your Audience
Should you hold your webinar on a Monday lunchtime? Or on a Thursday evening? Perhaps a weekend would work better?
There’s no one “right” time to run a webinar: it really depends on your audience. It’s important to figure out what day and time would suit them. Even something as simple as a quick poll on social media could give you some indication of when best to run your webinar.
Tip: If you have an international audience – and most online businesses do! – then make sure it’s easy for people to convert your webinar time into their own timezone.
3. Design a Landing Page for Your Webinar
One highly effective way to boost sign-ups is to give your webinar its own landing page. This can include details of what to expect, and perhaps even a video of you briefly introducing yourself and the webinar topic.
Your landing page is also a great place to put a countdown timer, helping to create a sense of urgency as people can see exactly how long is left until the webinar begins. You might want to include testimonials based on previous webinars, too.
4. Create a Lead Magnet to Get People to Sign Up to Attend
Although your webinar itself will hopefully be enough incentive for people to attend, you can boost sign-ups by offering something more immediate. If your webinar is still 10 days away, giving attendees some materials in advance can nudge them to sign up, as they’ll receive an immediate reward.
You could use almost anything you want as your lead magnet, so long as it’s tied to your webinar topic. That might be a short quick action guide, a list of useful tools and resources, or even a free recording of a previous webinar on a related subject.
5. Encourage Guest Speakers to Promote Your Webinar
If you have guest speakers at your webinar, encourage them to promote it to their audiences in advance. Hopefully, they’ll be pleased to let their email list and social media followers know that they’ll be speaking during your webinar.
Even if your guest speakers have a smaller audience than you do, they’ll be able to reach people who otherwise wouldn’t hear about your webinar.
6. Recruit Affiliates to Promote Your Webinar to Their Email List
If you’re selling a product or course at the end of your webinar, then you could encourage people to promote the webinar by offering them a percentage of sales that they generate. So, if someone signs up for your webinar through their affiliate link and later makes a purchase, then your affiliate gets paid.
This can be a great way to get more attendees without doing any extra work as it incentivizes other people to promote the webinar for you!
7. Send Out Reminder Emails as the Webinar Approaches
Often, people will sign up for your webinar, then completely forget to attend. This can be frustrating for them as well as for you, as they may well have been looking forward to your webinar.
Your webinar platform should let you create custom reminder emails, perhaps even branded with your company logo. You should send out several reminders as the webinar approaches, including one about a day ahead and one within an hour or two of the webinar’s start time.
Following the strategies above should help you easily boost your webinar attendance. Even if you don’t have much time, you could put several of the above strategies into practice – and you’ll quickly see results.
