Yes, it’s true. Even your “newfangled gadget”-averse grandfather can effectively promote an eLearning webinar. It’s that simple if you are following the right webinar promotion best practices! Make the 5 following changes to your marketing plan, and you’ll likely see a considerable uptick in registrations.
1. Offer an OnDemand Recording
Too often do associations, Continuing Ed organizations and corporate training departments struggle to drive attendance to their digital presentations and online seminars. In fact, roughly one third of registrants who have signed up for internal training webinars don’t show up to the live event. However, this isn’t always the primary issue. Yes, webinars require attendees in order to generate good engagement – and for specific types of webinars, there is a substantial difference in the live participant’s user experience when compared to simply watching a video.
That said, recent studies show that 26% of webinar registrants only sign up for access to the OnDemand recording. Depending on the individual’s class or work schedules, logging onto a webinar at a specific time may create a conflict. That’s why it’s so important to record the session and offer it on your website, course catalog or resource center (or that your CE or webinar platform provider automates this process for you). Enable your registrants to watch the eLearning webinar at their convenience. If you don’t clarify this accessibility during the promotion process, you may be turning off your audience from even signing up in the first place.
2. Co-market the Webinar
Work with your eLearning presenter to come up with additional webinar promotion ideas. Why not request that your speaker taps into their own following by sending out supplementary social posts or emails? Depending on their position, she or he may have a strong, qualified database you’ve yet to reach yourself.
Other co-marketing tactics include leveraging the various eLearning and Continuing Education institutions, associations and organizations of which you or your presenter are members. By sending a polished write-up (or simply a blurb and a link to the registration page) to the communications or marketing coordinator at these locations, you’re likely to up your participant count without having to spend a lot of additional time on these efforts. Think about your connections in the greater education community, and make use of them!
3. Leverage Lists or How-to’s in Your Webinar Titles
Don’t bore your audience with factual titles. Although you might be catering to an academically-driven or highly technical audience, people still want to tune into something that appears innovative and exciting. According to new data, highlighting the latest trends or including the year in your headline’s copy boosts webinar registrations on average by 12%. Adding the words “how to” into the title increases registrations by 36%, and using a numbered list produces a 43% better sign up rate. So theoretically, a webinar title like “How to Rock Your Law Firm’s 2018 Retention Rate in 7 Easy Steps” would be following a fool-proof formula.
Interestingly for CE professionals, using the word “new” and offering entry level courses is likely to improve eLearning webinar registration rates by 31%! For your next webinar, talk to the presenter and see if you can enhance the title by following one of these tips. You might be surprised at the size of your event’s audience!
4. Promote on a Tuesday
It’s a no-brainer that the farther in advance you promote your eLearning webinar, the higher the chances you have of growing your list of registrants. But know that many people register for a webinar on the DAY OF the event, so don’t forget about those stragglers. In light of this, start actively promoting your webinar early, but be sure to finish strong – on social media, with a final email blast to specific segments of your database, or by using some of these other marketing techniques.
What you may not have considered is focusing your promotion efforts around the Tuesdays leading up to your virtual event. Webinar expert Daniel Waas, who presented at last year’s INBOUND marketing and sales conference hosted by HubSpot, advocated that 24% of webinar registrants across all industries signed up on a Tuesday (the next highest percentage was 17% on Monday). Of course, it’s important to test various times with your specific audience – maybe Tuesday morning sends won’t reap the greatest results. But if you aren’t sure, or email send time results have proven to be inconclusive, try this out!
5. Host on a Wednesday Afternoon
Piggybacking on number 4, Wednesday is actually the day that receives the highest attendance rates. So if webinar engagement is the name of the game, book your presenter for the middle of the week. Tuesdays and Thursdays are also good choices, but Wednesday statistically takes the cake.
Moreover, if your webinar audience is spread out across multiple time zones (which is likely the case), 3:00 PM EST / 12:00 PM PST is the way to go. People at work tend to have more flexible afternoon schedules and fewer standing meetings. But if your audience is dialing in from one time zone, 8:00 AM presentations also tend to drive higher attendance rates. Again, aggregate the data you have from previous webinar launches and identify any relevant trends. What works for one audience may not work for yours!
So there you have it – five super easy eLearning webinar promo tactics that are well worth the minimal effort you need to put in to complete them.
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