One challenge that many webinar hosts face is to maximize attendance figures for their online presentations. It can sometimes be difficult to know the best strategy to boost the number of attendees at your webinar. The problem arises because you can’t always predict or know how registrants respond to your marketing techniques or how proficient they are with their technical skills.
The easier that you make the whole webinar experience for attendees, the more will attend your online event and the more sales you will make. To do this effectively, you need to target the right audience, make the registration page as simple as possible, and use an assistant to help with any technical problems users may face. Even, just deciding on the best time and day can do much to increase attendance at your webinar.
In this article, you will learn 5 practical ways to help boost your webinar attendance. These top tips will make it easier for interested customers, users, and potential clients to sign up and benefit from your webinar.
1. Promote Your Webinar Properly
The first and most important step to make the webinar experience easier for attendees is to promote your webinar properly. Obviously, the more people who find out about your webinar, the more are likely to attend it.
What are the best ways to promote your webinar to the widest audience possible? Here 2 of the best ways to promote your event:
- Use your email list to send promotional emails about your webinar. Make it easier for recipients to sign up for the webinar by having a clear call-to-action that only needs one click to go to the registration page.
- Create a buzz on social media by promoting your event on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. Make sure that the benefits of the webinar are clearly outlined to make it easier to decide to attend.
To make it easier for potential attendees to sign up, you should always direct your call-to-action to your landing / registration page, not your website.
2. Killer Landing Page
A landing page can sometimes be the difference between a person registering to attend the webinar or not. If the landing page is confusing, contains too much information, or lacks clarity, the person will undoubtedly leave in frustration.
What can you do to make sure that your landing page is as easy as possible for your attendees? Try some of these top tips:
- Clearly outline the benefits each attendee will receive. This could be done as a bulleted list to make the main points stand out.
- Clearly state the day and time that the webinar will take place on.
- Make sure that the registration doesnít take any more than 2 or 3 clicks.
- Avoid outbound links to other areas of your website. These just serve to distract the registrant and may lead to a lower webinar attendance.
- Use testimonials to make it easier for the potential attendee to take the decision to sign up.
3. Pick the Right Day and Time
Depending on the demographics of your audience, it can be difficult for some to attend your webinar if you donít pick the right day and time.
While there are no hard and fast rules when the best time is, here are a few helpful guidelines to choose when to host your event:
- Avoid hosting webinars at the weekend. Most people want to have time off and relax with their family.
- Don’t plan your webinar for the start of the week or the end of the week. People are either too busy after the weekend to attend the webinar or are starting to wind down at the end of a tough week.
- Take into account international and local holidays in the geographical areas you are targeting.
- If your audience is based in the U.S., remember to consider the different time zones before setting a time. A mid-morning meeting on the east coast may be too early for people in Los Angeles to attend.
4. Step-by-Step Instructions
Not everyone has the same level of technical expertise as you or your team has. In fact, many people are technically challenged and you can lose a nice chunk of your audience to something that can be better managed. Make the webinar experience easier for your audience by sending out step-by-step instructions on how to join the webinar.
For example, you could prepare a PDF file with screenshots to guide the registrant through the process of joining the webinar presentation. You could also have some instructions on how to participate in the online polls, surveys, and Q&A sessions.
This will help each attendee to know how to successfully log in to the webinar and what to expect, which will make the whole experience so much more pleasant for them.
5. Use an Assistant or Co-host
Using an assistant or co-host for your presentation can help improve the experience of attending your webinar. Your assistant can be on hand to resolve any technical issues that an attendee has joining the webinar or during the webinar.
This can also save you a lot of time to allow you to fully concentrate on your presentation. The assistant can also moderate the Q&A session by filtering out duplicate questions and prioritizing the most important ones.
An efficient co-host can do much to make the webinar experience more enjoyable for you and your attendees.