As digital communication becomes the business norm, we’re all hungry for engaging, human-led, and conversational content that helps us feel like we’re part of a conversation and a community.
Webinars (or webcasts) have provided that kind of content for millions of us, and as a result, they’ve become some of the most sought-after and impactful marketing happening online right now.
Webinars represent a simple and convenient method for tapping into video, but they represent an even more exciting opportunity, as well. When set up as interactive experiences, webinars allow you to open direct, interactive channels between your brand and your customers. Not only does this help you establish trust and authority in your industry or niche, but it will help you engage with your customer base directly, not just as a brand but as part of the community.
Done properly, webinars are a game changer. In a recent survey:
- 64% of content marketers said virtual events, webinars, and online courses made up a key part of their ongoing content strategy.
- 58% of these respondents also said their webinars produced the best results of all the content they produced all year.
- 66% of the respondents who indicated the success of their webinars were the respondents LinkedIn had marked among “top performers.”
It’s clear: moving forward, the webinar will continue to be a critical part of digital content strategies. But if you want your webinars to truly engage your audience, you have to do a lot more than just put on a show. You also have to promote it, to ensure the right audience finds it and tunes in for the right reasons.
Promoting your webinars is a strategic challenge all its own, and nailing it is a crucial step to benefiting from all the work you’ll do putting together your content. We want to help. Here is our expert’s guide to both putting together an effective B2B webinar AND promoting it on LinkedIn for maximum impact.
Step 1: Choose the Perfect Format for Your Content & Audience
Before you set up your webinar, the first step is to decide what you want it to be. The term “webinar” is quite broad, and can encompass anything from filmed conversations to narrated slideshows to product demos and beyond. Hands-on instructional sessions are often very popular when they address a persistent challenge for your audience.
Any of these formats can be suitable for the right purpose. Sync the webinar closely with your overall content strategy and editorial calendar, ensuring that it fits contextually and aligns with coinciding activities.
Like any other form of content, webinars are most effective when they fit into a larger strategy. Help the audience understand how this latest content fits with your overall message, and introduce new audience members to all the other great content you’ve got coming next.
Step 2: Narrow Your Audience
Once you understand what you’re making and why it’s time to drill further into who it’s for. In fact, one could argue that this should take place even before you determine the content of your webinar because the people you’re trying to reach should dictate the way you try to reach them.
This is where LinkedIn’s tools really start to come in handy, as you can drill down your demographics and create a distinct audience.
If you’re using an account-based marketing approach, you’ll want to learn as much as possible about the company (or companies) on your radar and construct the webinar accordingly.
If you’re pursuing a more traditional and broad audience, we still highly recommend using advanced segmentation features. Refine parameters to filter your ideal participants by company size, location, vertical, job function, seniority, and so forth.
This is an important consideration for any marketing campaign, especially B2B webinars. Professionals are busy and won’t commit time to their schedule unless the value offering truly speaks to them.
Step 3: Pick the Right Time and Place
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. The adage rings especially true with B2B webinars, which require thoughtful and specific contextual preparation to yield strong results.
Scheduling is vital. Although these presentations can often be viewed later, drawing an audience to the live session is far more engaging, not to mention crucial if there will be interactive elements like a Q&A segment or poll questions.
You’ll want to pick a day and time more likely to be available on the calendar of possible participants. Although the optimal time slot for a webinar can vary depending on the audience, we find that Wednesdays and Thursdays around the lunch hour tend to work well.
It is natural for something like a webinar to slip someone’s mind, even if that person is genuinely interested in attending. That’s why we always recommend including “Add to Calendar” links in webinar invites and setting up automated email reminders for people who have signed up. A day-of reminder 30 minutes ahead of a live webinar can drastically increase participation.
This functionality is built into LinkedIn Events; anyone you directly invite will get three automatic reminders to tune in: seven days, three days and 15 minutes ahead of time
Step 4: Promote For Context, with an Eye on Optimization
Once you’ve figured out the makeup, direction, and scheduling of your webinar, it’s time to focus on driving attendance. LinkedIn can be one of your greatest assets here, especially with B2B webinars tailored to specific professional segments.
First, plan out some organic content to support the webinar theme. Share a post from your company blog that ties to the topic and teases the information you’ll be covering. Spread the word in relevant LinkedIn Groups (preferably ones where you’re already an active contributor).
Publish a few LinkedIn Page updates in the weeks and days leading up to the webinar to build awareness among your followers. If there’s a featured speaker or presenter, encourage them to post about the event to leverage their personal network.
After taking care of owned and earned media, you’ll want to add paid media to the mix. Since you already narrowed your audience earlier, it will be easy to set up targeting filters and make sure you are delivering ads to the right members.
LinkedIn Sponsored Content will help you gain visibility on the feeds of professionals who might be intrigued by your webinar subject. You could also amplify a LinkedIn Page update that performed well organically or create a new campaign. Meanwhile, Message Ads offer an invaluable tool for sending highly personalized invitations to prioritized attendees.
With both Sponsored Content and Message Ads, you can add Lead Gen Forms – which populate automatically based on a user’s LinkedIn data – to collect information and feed your sales pipeline.
It’s an especially good idea to use unique tracking parameters for each disparate webinar promotion tactic, on LinkedIn and elsewhere, so you can monitor and see which ones are performing best. Like all tracking data, this will be invaluable for helping you learn how to promote webinars even more effectively in the future.
Step 5: Follow Up, Measure and Learn
The job isn’t done once the webinar ends. A day or two after the event, we like to send “Thank You” notes to those who attended, or “Sorry We Missed You” notes with an executive summary of the webinar’s content to those who couldn’t. Use these follow-up notes as an opportunity to ask for feedback and share supplementary materials or related content.
This is a good opportunity to drive next-step action with a direct CTA. Recipients will be more receptive if the webinar effectively moved them forward in the funnel.
It’s worth repeating: Jowever you decide to promote your webinars online, the most important thing you can do is continually test and measure every aspect of your promotional process. Track the effectiveness of your content, targeting, logistics, ad copy/visuals, and follow-ups with an eye on optimization. This will help you develop insights to sharpen your strategy in the future.
Do you have a webinar or event on the horizon? Access a full suite of guides and resources in our Webinars and Videos Success Hub.
Topics: Content marketing
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