By Eric Hammis, 3Sixty Interactive
Have you ever found yourself in this situation?
You’re about 3 days out from putting on a live webinar. You’ve been spending countless hours getting everything prepared and having a great presentation ready to deliver. But then you go check your register list and see there’s only 2 or 3 people registered.
Uh oh, that’s not what you were hoping for. So now you’ve spent all this time developing a great webinar but only to be seen by a few people. If you’ve got a history of running webinars, this most likely is a situation you’ve encountered. Or perhaps you’ve shied away from webinars because you feel like you won’t be able to attract enough people to register.
Thankfully there are great ways to get a full list for your webinars, whether you are a large corporation or a small business, so let’s take a look.
Plan Ahead Of Time
Waiting to the last second to get things up and running could be your downfall. A webinar takes time and commitment. Not only do you need time to figure out your content for the webinar, but you need time to attract a crowd.
You don’t, however, want to start promoting your webinar too early. Chances are many of your registrants are going to happen right away. So you don’t want these people having to wait a month for your webinar. I would say starting about 2 to 3 weeks out is your best bet. And starting anything less than 2 weeks and you’re doomed.
Pick The Right Day And Time
Yes, even your day and time has an impact on whether or not you have a sell-out stadium for your event. Let’s start with the day. Monday is typically a catch up day in the office while Thursday and Friday…well let’s face it, most people are tapped out by then and thinking about what outfit they’re going to wear for the weekend. So either go with Tuesday or Wednesday.
Now the time. Early morning and you might have a room full of sleeping zombies. You don’t want to hit up people on their lunch break and you don’t want to make people sit through your webinar while they are trying to wrap up on the day. So perhaps a late morning or mid-afternoon time would be suffice.
Develop Landing Page
Your landing page is very important to getting people to sign up for your webinar. If they land on a page and they don’t feel it’s the right page, Adios!! You have to make sure people know it’s the page to sign up for your webinar, so that means no extras on this page. Simply a quick welcome followed by the details of your webinar.
And while we’re on the landing page subject, your register form is important as well. It should be simple and to the point. You don’t want to scare people away by having them fill out 10 questions just to register. Keep it simple, with basic info. such as name, email address and company name.
Figure Out Your Platforms
Once you’ve got your landing page created, it’s time to get it noticed. Start with social media. Figure out the best platforms for spreading the word and post away. Also be sure to include your link with any outbound material. If you’re sending an email blast or a newsletter, be sure to include the link to your landing page. The more visibility, the better off you are for filling the seats at your webinar.
So those are the basics to getting your webinar up and running. A rule of thumb here at 3Sixty Interactive is to sit down and map it out well in advance. The more you are prepared, the better your chances are of not presenting a webinar to an empty auditorium.