How to Promote a Webinar in 3 Easy Steps

When it comes to communicating your message to a group of people, there are few delivery mediums more powerful than a webinar. When people attend your webinar, they hear your voice, they see your visuals, and then get to interact with your directly.

Sounds good, right?

Well, as good as webinars are, there is one big problem: how to promote a webinar so people will actually attend!

The fact is that every week, there are a ton of webinars to attend, so if you are going to make yours a success, you need to be clever in how you promote it.

How to Solve The #1 Problem with Webinars

While the solution I’m about to explain isn’t perfect, it is definitely a step in the right direction because, rather than rely solely on the webinar itself to convey your message, this solution makes use of some other forms of media.

To help you understand what I’m about to explain, have a look at the graphic below.

This plan was given to me by the creator of a course called Media Buy Academy (affiliate link).

When I promoted the media buying course, I sent three emails to my list.

The first email in the sequence told subscribers about a free PDF report that they could download. The purpose of the report was to provide value, as well as to increase interest in attending the webinar. Here’s the body of the first email:

The second email in the sequence told subscribers about a video that gave additional insight into what media buying is and why someone might want to learn about it. Here’s the body of the second email:

The third email was the first one to actually mention a webinar. Here’s the body of the third email:

The Results

By taking this approach, I was able to sell 6 copies of the course and earn $831 in commissions.

Six copies is no world record; however, given that I have never talked about media buying to my list before, and this was a $300 course, I consider the results to be pretty good.

By the way, I chose to promote this course because I consider media buying to be an essential skill for traffic generation and it is a service that you could charge a client a monthly retainer for. If you missed the course and would like to grab a copy, here’s the link.

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Take a Multi-Media Approach

Whenever I have promoted a webinar in the past, I have only ever sent out emails to encourage people to register for the webinar itself.

What my ‘old’ approach lacks is the ability to provide information to those people on my list who might not want to sit through a 90-minute webinar – unless they were able to determine, in advance, that it would be worth their time.

By sending out a PDF report (easy to consume) and a short video (also easy to consume), I was able to build more interest in attending the live event than I otherwise could have.

How I’m Using What I’ve Learned for My Own Products

Having been given this promotional formula by a very successful marketer, I decided to immediately implement it in my own business to promote my content marketing course.

As you can see, I have followed a very similar approach in terms of the sequence of emails that goes out; however, as I don’t have a developer on staff, I have used Infusionsoft to help me with how emails #1 and #2 are handled.

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Using Infusionsoft Instead of a Developer

If you look at the flow chart above, you will see that email #1 and #2 sent traffic to the same opt in page.

Why is that? The reason is that not everyone is going to open email #1, and as a result, they would have missed out on getting the PDF report. However, some people will get the PDF and they will also want the video.

How do I give everyone who opens both emails both pieces of content, while still giving both pieces of content to people who only open email #2?

The solution to this problem, assuming you don’t want to write custom code (which I don’t) is to use tagging in Infusionsoft.

Check out the image below to see the flow of the campaign that I designed for this:

Figure 1

Notice the little diamond that follows the Download Content Marketing Success Report web form. The purpose of this ‘decision diamond’ is to look at a contact’s record to determine if they have a certain tag or not, and then route them down either the top sequence or the bottom one.

Here’s how this works: when email #1 goes out, some people go to the landing page and register to get the report. When this happens, they are routed down the top sequence. The image below shows what happens within that sequence:

Figure 2

As you can see, the first thing I do within this sequence is to apply three tags. One tag adds them to my newsletter list, one tag tells me that they have filled out the preceding web form, and the last tag tells me that they have been sent the PDF report. It is this last tag that will come into play in the decision diamond.

The next thing you see is that an HTTP post is sent. This is the part that automatically registers them for the webinar (I use GotoWebinar). To make this work, I also have to use PlusThis. Plus This is software that tightly integrates with Infusionsoft and makes it possible for me to do all sorts of advanced automation.

When email #2 goes out, because it offered an additional piece of content, I designed the campaign to send it out to everyone. I could have just as easily had email #2 go only to people who had not yet filled out the web form.

I thought about sending email #2 to a new landing page, however, if I took that route, the people that didn’t open email #1 would have missed out on the PDF report.

Rather than go that route, I decided to use the decision diamond to send a different follow up email out to the people that had already received the PDF report (the report also contains a link to the video I talk about in email #2).

Figure 3

As you can see, the decision diamond checks to see if the PDF report has been sent yet or not. If it hasn’t they are sent and email with the report (report has link to the video within it). If the PDF report has already been send, they are sent an email with a link to a different download page that contains both the report and the video.

Hopefully, this is all making sense!

Now there is one last sequence that everyone goes through and that is the sequence shown in Figure 1. This sequence, called “Apply Tag” has only one purpose and that is to apply a tag called “send webinar replay” to everyone who’s been through either sequence.

Let’s Review

Webinars are a powerful way to communicate your message but getting people to show up is a challenge
By taking a multi-media approach, you will increase the number of registrants you get
By using Infusionsoft, you can avoid the need for a developer

Additional Resources

2013: My Income Report and Lessons Learned
How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy: The First 3 Steps

What’s Next?

Want to learn more about becoming a Bright Ideas affiliate? Our content marketing course/book sells very well, get more details here.

Want to learn more about how you can use Infusionsoft in your own business? Book a 15 minute call with me (no charge)

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