The 5 pillars of webinar marketing
You know how hard it’s to create a webinar—finalize the topics, coordinate with the speakers, host it, and engage your viewers. After investing this much effort, you would want more and more people to attend your webinar, right?
For that, you should master the pillars of webinar marketing.
Here are 5 of them:
1. Choose the right topic
An average webinar length is 60 hours. Why would anyone want to invest this much time listening to a topic they aren’t interested in?
If you do a webinar on any generic topic without accounting for your viewer’s preferences, your webinar will fail. So, avoid this.
Choose your topic by following the three processes:
a) Interview your viewers or analyze their social behaviors (read their comments) to find their pain points. Create a webinar around those topics.
b) Scan your competitor’s webinars and look for the ones with high views. You’ll know which topic is popular. You can then add your perspectives, insights, and style and host a webinar.
c) Find which content of yours (whether it’s a blog post, social media content, or a YouTube video) is attracting more attention. Create a webinar on it.
Along with choosing the right topic, you should also pick the ideal webinar format:
a) Will a speaker person host it?
b) Or will it be an interview-style Q&A presentation with two speakers?
c) Or a panel discussion with 4-5 speakers?
2. Invite a credible speaker
You can’t host a webinar on “How to do Twitter marketing” and invite an expert on Instagram marketing (and who doesn’t know Twitter marketing). It doesn’t work like that. You’ll lose the engagement and trust of your audience.
People want to listen to experts who have years of experience in their field and are well-versed with all the dos and don'ts. When you invite a credible speaker, it will persuade your viewers to attend the webinar.
Hence, before finalizing your speaker, ensure they have a:
a) Practical experience doing the work.
b) Proof of work to show their expertise.
c) Track record of knowing the best practices and navigating tough times in their industry
d) Social proof (other people vouch for their credibility).
3. Get the technical production details right
No matter the quality of the webinar discussion, it won’t matter if the show lags frequently or if the sound isn’t loud enough. Don’t compromise this:
a) Choose the right webinar platform. You can go with Live storm or GoToWebinar.
b) Ensure you and the speaker have a clean and noiseless background.
c) Use a good microphone to avoid noise echo and adjust the volume accordingly.
d) Check your internet, sound, and technical stuff before the webinar.
4. Write a good script
If you host a webinar, you should know what questions to ask, when, and how to engage your viewers. Preparing a script helps here.
Do in-depth research on the topic. Note down the key points you would talk about and ensure they are backed by data and examples.
You must also create a list of questions you’d like to ask the speakers. And make your slide-deck engaging (fill it with case studies, visuals, and stories). Lastly, write down when you can ask readers to submit questions and engage them through polls and comments.
5. Repurpose your webinar
By now, you would have understood how much time and effort a single webinar requires. Wouldn’t you want to maximize your ROI on each webinar? That’s where webinar repurposing comes in. With it, you can expand your webinar’s reach by posting on different platforms without creating content from scratch.
Here are the 7 different ways you can repurpose your webinar:
a) Transcribe your webinar and upload it to YouTube.
b) Pick insightful moments (<1-minute) from it and create Instagram Reel/YouTube shorts.
c) Turn your webinar into a carousel post summary for Instagram and LinkedIn.
d) Pick a quote/statistic/insight and post it as a standalone graphic on social media.
e) Summarize the webinar into a Twitter thread.
f) Write a blog post based on the webinar.
g) Send the blog tips as a series of newsletter tips.