How to Generate Leads from Webinars

Everyone and their Aunt Betty do webinars. But that does not mean that they get people to sign up and / or buy their stuff.

You've probably signed up for at least some webinars in the past, is not it?

Even if you signed up, that did not mean you were going to attend.

And, if you attended or watched a rebroadcast, chances are you did not buy the promoted products or services.

Here's the hard truth: Most webinar conversion rates are not high.

You can only get 5% to 15% conversion on your webinar registration page.

From there, you could have a conversion rate of 35% to 45% for enrollees.

Then you cross your fingers that you have the right audience participating in the webinar so that they can actually make a purchase.

Most people expect a single-digit conversion rate.

There are many hurdles to overcome before you can generate substantial income from a webinar.

You will need a lot of people coming in at the top of your funnel. You will need to promote your webinar and make sure you get the right people to sign up.

Then, optimize your funnel by asking those who have registered to attend the webinar or watch the replay in the hope of making a purchase.

Sounds complicated?

Let's make it simple.

Here's the key to getting the most out of your webinar: You need to generate as many high quality leads as possible.

So, what is the secret sauce for generating leads and turning them into sales?

Here is what you need to know:

Attracting High Quality Leads to Register

To generate leads and increase return on investment, you need to focus on increasing the conversion rate. Here's how you can do this:

Identify your audience

Let's do some reverse engineering here …

If the goal of your webinar is to sell a product or service, you must first determine who will buy the offer.

This means that you need to know exactly who you want to attend your webinar.

To clearly define your audience, create a buyer character card like this:

A buyer character card will help you focus on their demographics and psychographics.

Your buyer character should cover the pain points, frustrations and desired results of your target market in relation to the product or service you promote in the webinar.

There are several ways to collect this information:

• Survey : Asking your current customers, email subscribers or social media subscribers a pre-webinar survey is the best way to find out what your target market wants. Phone calls are great ways to get detailed information while an online survey allows you to gather more people's feedback and have a broader perspective of what your audience wants.
• Online Search : Identify individual perspectives and learn about their habits, behaviors and preferences on social media profiles, publications and other websites. Pay attention to how they describe their challenges and read between the lines to find out what makes them tick.
• Client Data : Find customers who bought the products that were similar or similar to the webinar.
  In this way, you can begin to understand which messaging or which positioning they are most responsive to.
• Webinar Registration : You can continue to refine your buyer character during the registration period for the webinar.

Start by collecting additional information on your registration page.

Setting up a landing page with targeted messages

With the information you gathered in the character of the buyer, you can now create a webinar registration landing page.

Use content that targets the challenges, weaknesses, needs, and desires of your ideal customers.

The one and only purpose of this registration landing page is to entice potential participants to register for the event.

Facilitate them for them by entering their information, such as name and e-mail address.

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The copy and images on the page should communicate to visitors why they should sign up for your webinar within seconds of their vision.

Here are some essential elements of a registration page for a high conversion webinar:

• A convincing title and a meta description will boost your SEO. And get the right audience to click on your landing page.
• A short video to explain the event and generate excitement.



• An easy-to-read copy that highlights the benefits of the webinar and a value-driven incentive to action.
• Social proof (eg comments on social networks, testimonials) to reinforce your value proposition.
• Urgency and scarcity, like a countdown or a note on small spaces, to encourage visitors to act.
• Brief biography of the speakers (you or other guests) to strengthen your credibility.

If you use webinars for lead generation, there is a good chance that you offer it for free.

Do not forget to point out that it's a no-cost event, so you can get more people to sign up. I know this sounds obvious, but many businesses must remind customers that it is free. If you do not do it clearly, you will definitely have questions about the cost. Or worse, they will not ask and instead assume that there is a free and will not register.

Offer on demand or rebroadcast

In 2017, one-third of webinar attendees only watch an event on demand.

People want to consume content whenever and wherever they want

In particular, mobile access has shifted the pattern of media consumption to on-demand formats that allow the viewer to control his viewing schedules.

Offering a rebroadcast or allowing prospects to access your webinar on demand can encourage more people to sign up for your event.

Access to the application also gives you the opportunity to continue to promote the event after the broadcast date and continue to generate leads.

Co-host with a partner

The organization of a webinar with a joint venture partner can give you the opportunity to access a new audience and generate more leads.

Your webinar partner should share a similar audience with your company and offer complementary products or services instead of being direct competition.

To maximize the lead generation potential of the webinar, you must market the event in your respective lists.

And do research on potential partners to make sure that they offer high quality content that suits your followers.

Promoting Your Webinar to the Right Audience

If you build it … they will not come. (Sorry!)

To attract the right audience, you must actively promote your webinar via multiple channels:

Make the most of your current audience

Sharing your webinar with your existing subscribers is a good starting point for spreading the word.

They already know you, so it's often a lot easier for them to say "yes" to registering for your event.

This also gives you an excellent opportunity to cultivate relationships with them and build the trust you need for conversion.

Here are some ways to promote a webinar to your current audience:

• Send an email to your list. Concentrate only the content of the e-mail on the webinar and point all CTAs to the webinar registration page.



• Include a brief paragraph, online link, or CTA in your blog posts or email newsletters that take your readers to the registration landing page.
• Post updates on social networks and create a Facebook event to inform your subscribers about the webinar.



• Use appropriate images and hashtags on posts to capture attention and reach more people.

?Don't miss my webinar with @hatchbuck and @JonathanHerrick to learn more about the 10 loopholes to keep your Facebook reach and impressions ???

Sign up now ? https://t.co/dkSdOVvdyW face #facebooknews #facebooknewsfeed #Facebookstrategy pic.twitter.com/YbBiJzs5D6

– Larry Kim (@larrykim) February 9, 2018

• Set up an affiliate program to encourage your followers to spread the word.
• Ask your loyal customers or customers to share the event with their friends and colleagues.
• Ask your sales team to personally contact their contacts and share information from the webinar.
• Use track capture mechanisms, such as a pop-up window, scrollbar, health bar, or exit-intent pop-up to promote the event to visitors of your website.

Using paid advertising to reach new audiences

Paid advertising is an effective way to reach new audiences quickly and in a targeted way.

Most online advertising platforms allow you to segment the audience granularly.

This allows you to get a targeted message in front of the right people to maximize click-through and conversion rates.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords is ideal for targeting people who are already looking for solutions to their problems.

You can optimize your landing page with search terms used by your ideal audience based on the challenges your webinar solves and the solutions you offer.

Make sure you write a compelling title and description that matches the search terms for which you are ranking.

In addition, you can use ad customizers, such as the Countdown feature, to dynamically enhance the ad copy.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is ideal for B2B marketing.

You can actually segment the target audience based on the size of the company, its title / role, skills, groups or geographic location, and so on.

In fact, 46% of B2B social networking traffic comes from LinkedIn, making it a platform you can not ignore if you're targeting a B2B audience.

In addition to sharing the event via content, group and updates, you can also use paid advertising on LinkedIn to reach a wider audience:

• Sponsored Updates : Maximize your visibility beyond your immediate subscribers by boosting up-to-date updates that complement each other. Use LinkedIn's targeting options to make sure the message is delivered to the right audience.
• LinkedIn Ads : These ads appear on the sidebar and are billed at CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per print).
  Test them with a small budget to see if it's effective for your target audience.
• LinkedIn Leads Forms : This new feature can help you maximize the effectiveness of your LinkedIn ads. You only need to include the CTA of the webinar on your ad and link it to the main form. When users click on the prompt for action, they will be directed to an already filled out form with their information extracted from their LinkedIn profiles. All they need is to click on the Submit button.
  This user-friendly and seamless experience is especially effective for mobile users as they do not need to type their information on the phone. And you can be sure that you are collecting accurate information about these tracks.

Facebook

Facebook has more than two billion monthly users on the platform, making it an effective channel for promoting a webinar for almost any type of audience.

However, the approach needs to be more nuanced.

People use Facebook to relax, relax and socialize.

They do not go out there to find a solution, think about how to do their job better or look for a webinar to attend.

Consider Facebook Ads as a series of interactions with your target audience that tells a story and builds relationships that will ultimately lead to registration for your event:

• Promoting Content : Clicking on a link and playing your content is a low commitment action. It allows you to expand the top of your advertising funnel, build brand awareness and reduce the cost per prospect of your potential web ads. In addition, when you bring visitors who are interested in your content to your website, you can create custom audiences or retarget them with ads about your webinar.
• Hearing Engagement : To find a way to get better answers to your webinar ads, you can share posts that encourage public engagement. Use the opportunity to generate awareness, build confidence, identify the best leads, and understand how your ideal audience speaks to their needs and challenges.
• Webinar Lead Generation : When you promote your webinar using Facebook Ads, be sure to pay attention to correspondence of the audience messages. Talk about the public's pain points and explain your solution. Be kind and trustworthy because people use Facebook to communicate with others. Do not forget to point out that it's a free event to attract more prospects to sign up.
• Cohesive User Travel : Experiment with different advertising texts and images to target different audience segments. You can create landing pages of dedicated webinars to match the messaging of each ad. This allows you to offer a consistent user experience that will help increase the conversion rate.
• Lookalike Audience : When you start generating leads from your ads, you can use people's information to create an audience that resembles the one you're interested in.

No matter how you promote your webinar, do not forget to follow the effectiveness of each source.

In this way, you can invest more resources in what works best.

To track the effectiveness of your webinar, create a unique link for each ad with the help of Google URL Builder.

By adding a UTM code to each source, you'll see how each ad behaves in Google Analytics.

Construction of a webinar sales funnel

You do not generate income simply by getting a lot of people to sign up or participate in your webinar. You earn money by having them buy from you.

If you have already registered for a webinar, you know that you did not attend every event you signed up for. Neither your audience, if you do not stay on their radar.

After working to generate leads, you must make sure that they are excited to participate in your event.

To enthuse your participants, present them a series of contents after their registration to the event:

Registration thank you page / email

This is one of the most neglected steps of the registration process.

Many marketers simply point participants to a web page or send an email with a generic message without a clear next step or an incentive to action.

However, there are a few things you can do to maximize the "real estate" of your thank you page and / or email:

• Reiterate the benefits of the webinar and what the public can hope to derive from it to spark anticipation and excitement around the event.
• Include all "logistical" information – date, time, and directions to join the event, etc.
• Ask registered people to talk about the event to their friends. You can include social sharing buttons with a pre-written copy to allow them to spread the word easily.
• Include an "Add to Calendar" link to encourage recipients to place the event in their calendar.
• Encourage the public to visit your website or online store by promoting a special offer.
• Include a survey link with some questions to help you better understand your audience's pain points and desired results.
• This information can help you refine your marketing message and create a more impactful presentation.
• Share links to high value content on your website to build trust and credibility.

Registration Session at the Strategy Session

If you offer coaching, consulting or professional services, add a strategy session sign up for this workflow – before, after or as part of the thank you page for registration .

On the registration page for the strategy session, clearly state for whom this offer is intended and the value that it offers.

You may want to ask some questions to prospects.

You can better understand how they talk about their problems and challenges to better position your offer.

After prospects sign up for the strategy session, take them to a thank you page where you will give them a homework assignment.

Have them finish before the webinar.

Your homework will help you better frame the conversation. And, position yourself as the authority.

This will allow people to invest more in your process and eliminate those who are not serious about the conversation.

Pre-webinar indoctrination series

When you are hosting a live webinar, it can run for up to a week or two between the time you register and the one you attend the event.

A series of emails – a series of indoctrination – will help support anticipation. And establish rapport with your audience.

Here is how Mention made:

This series allows you to position your products or services in the right context.

A series of indoctrination emails should cover the following topics:

• Your personal trip. Tell your story to create the knowledge, love and trust factor while making you more credible and credible.
• Common solutions that your prospects have tried, why they do not work, and how your approach is different.
• Think of it as a targeted way to articulate your unique selling proposition.
• Response to potential objections to the solution you propose. You can anticipate these objections before they happen when the audience hears about the offer of your webinar.
• Case studies, success stories or testimonials about your company or the product or service you are promoting.
• Relevant and valuable content on your website, such as blog posts or videos, that relates about the webinar to position you as an expert and authority.

Reminder of the event

Your audience is busy and most people will not remember the date and time of your webinar.

That's why you have to keep reminding … many times!

After all, your prospects will not do anything they do not watch your webinar and do not buy.

Schedule a series of reminder emails or text messages.

Play with the calendar.

Try testing a day before, a few hours before, an hour before and at the beginning of the event – so that more people attend your webinar.

Reiterate the benefits of participating in the webinar and make sure to include the link to participate in these emails.

Replay and Follow-up E-mails

Remember that a third of people prefer to watch a webinar on demand?

Posting a replay link will help you capture that audience that prefers to consume content whenever and wherever it wants.

You should also create a series of follow-up emails to remind participants of the offer.

Even for those attending the live event, they may not be ready to buy right away, or they will not stay until the end to hear about your offer.

Do not take the interest of your audience for granted.

Conclusion

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to generating leads for your webinars, as well as maximizing the chances of participating in the webinar and making a purchase.

These good practices are excellent starting points but are by no means the end of everything.

You must compose all components along the customer path.

Test your approaches. And follow your stats to see what works for your business model, product category, and audience.

When you are able to maximize the number of prospects and the quality of prospects, you shoot in your funnel while making the effort to nurture relationships.

You can then optimize the conversion rate of your webinar and increase your sales.

What is your strategy for promoting your webinars?

About the author: Neil Patel is the co-founder of Neil Patel Digital.