What kind of webinar strategy are you implementing prior to launching your upcoming event?

Let’s first consult your webinar checklist:

• Topic? Amazing.
• Speaker? Engaging and Charismatic.
• Presentation? Beautiful.
• Audience? To be determined.

After polling B2B webinar marketers like yourself, we found that 42.9% consider driving registration the most difficult part of delivering a successful webinar. Your audience has a busy workweek, and you’re asking for an hour of their time in the middle of the day.

It’s easy to notify your email recipients about your upcoming webinar, but hitting them with a message that is relevant to them when they’re more receptive is the real challenge.

Implement these 7 webinar marketing tactics during your planning period to overcome this challenge and start watching your viewership grow.

1. Use Clear & Concise One-Liners.

Your target audience has a busy schedule and will appreciate any gesture that will save their time. This starts with how you get their attention with webinar titles and email subject lines.

The webinar title should solve a problem your target audience currently faces. Include numbers if possible, as it will give your viewers a clear expectation of what they’re about to watch.

As a real-time example, you are currently reading this blog as it:

• Addresses a pain point to enhance your webinar promotional strategies.
• Provides an actionable solution to make 7 changes to your planning strategy.
• Leads to an attainable result: driving the number of registrants to your webinar.

Your email subject line should follow suit. Think of questions your audience would ask themselves for inspiration.

Webinar Strategy Tip #1: employ concise language that resonates with your audience.

2. Time Is Of The Essence

You’ve created a list of questions your audience would ask themselves which has given you a starting point for your email subject line.

Now for the email body.

Aim to describe your webinar in 1-2 paragraphs without giving too many details away. Create a narrative with your prospect as the lead, their common pain point as the story, with the solution found in your webinar. If this tactic doesn’t work for your content, write about your speaker instead. Explain why they’re relevant to your audience by talking about their expertise about the topic at hand.

While drafting your email, always optimize the layout and flow for a mobile device. Everyone checks their personal emails while in line waiting for lunch, so make sure your HTML email templates work seamlessly on mobile devices.

Webinar Strategy Tip #2: Use bullet points to tease the audience with your webinar content. It makes your email easier to read, especially on mobile.

3. Promote With Your Full Marketing Arsenal

LinkedIn and Facebook ads are a great way to tap into your prospects’ network. Repurpose existing webinars or videos into evergreen content by taking snackable bits and using it for video ads across your social networks.

Video marketing is great for engagement. It’ll also show your audience a brief snippet of who you are and how you can help solve their problems with your unique solution. Previously, we discussed leveraging the Multimedia Hub in order to accomplish this.

You can also promote your webinars through different email formats:

• HTML is eye-catching because it emphasizes your brand’s look and feel.
• Plain Text makes the recipients feel like they’re receiving a personal message.

Webinar Strategy Tip #3: A/B test with your email formats and ad messaging. See what resonates best with your leads.

4. The Power of Personalization

Eloqua, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, and Marketo utilize the wealth of information stored in your CRM. Who has been opening your emails and seems the most engaged with your content?

These CRMs will let you know.

Create a nurture drip campaign with your MQLs that bring them closer to your end goal; registering for your webinar. Start by making a content calendar and schedule in what marketing assets you will email to your leads list. The next step in this campaign should be the registration form.

The personalization comes from your marketing automation software, like Active Campaign or Drip. Add “first name” tags in your subject lines in order to stand out from the rest of the emails in your leads news feed.

Webinar Strategy Tip #4: Get personal. Analyze what lead magnets or white papers your leads are downloading. If there is an evident pattern, categorize them into a separate list from your CRM and ensure that your messaging addresses this pattern.

5. Leverage Social Networks to Increase Engagement

Social media is still underused when it comes to webinar registration. Just like your ads, it’s a webinar marketing strategy that needs to be amended on a regular basis through A/B testing.

Here are our marketing tips to help you fully leverage your social networks:

• Get creative: Don’t reuse the same content across your social media on the same day. Switch things up by posting articles that touch upon a challenge your target audience currently faces.
• Use hashtags: Create a hashtag for your event that will get your audience talking and use it in all of your promotions. Provide incentives and reminders to use the hashtag during your event to keep it relevant.
• Bitly is a friend: Shorten the links used in your tweets and posts. It will look more credible and help with character count limits.

Webinar Strategy Tip #5: If you have a social media calendar, ensure that you aren’t sending out promotional posts at the same times. Spread out the timing to capture a wider audience.

6. Start Early to Give Yourself a Runway

Our benchmark data indicates that over 26% of registration occurs more than two weeks before the event itself.

Think about your own schedule. You know how busy you are next week, but you might be able to squeeze something in 2 weeks from now if you plan ahead.

If creating a nurture drip campaign doesn’t align with your timeline, aim to execute a maximum of three emails. The first two should be sent out two or three weeks before the event starts. Refer to the narrative about their pain points in these emails. The last email should be a reminder on the day of the webinar, including details on when and where they need to show up.

Webinar Strategy Tip #6: Inevitably, you’ll have registrants who signed up two weeks prior to the event but still don’t show up due to unforeseen circumstances. Don’t forget about them. Send a separate email to registrants who didn’t show up with an on-demand version of your webinar so they can watch it on their own time.

7. Maintain One Brand Tone At All Times

Pair a beautifully constructed HTML email with an equally impressive and eye-catching registration form.

If your audience sees two different tones, it’ll lead to confusion. Confused recipients are more likely to leave your form. Avoid this by ensuring that your logo, font, colours, and imagery are all up to date and have a similar look and feel to them. They should all have a common theme.

Webinar Strategy Tip #7: The same concept applies to plain text emails. Focus on the messaging and ensure that it falls in line with the rest of your campaign.

Webinar registration can be daunting, but not impossible to manage.

Grab the rest of our webinar promotion strategies with the complete guide right here.