edited by Bruce Newman
Webevents (webinars and virtual events) are rapidly becoming an important part of marketing. How would you market your event – particularly in regards to social media?
(Note: this question was asked by Bruce Newman on LinkedIn who found the following answers to be insightful. The link to the question can be found at the end of this article.)
Kimberly Barnes, Strategic Marketing Specialist
I’d begin with the social media basics by promoting on your organization’s Facebook wall and twitter page. Depending on the number of fans/followers you have, with the proper execution, this may be all you need to go “viral”. When posting, consider making the invitation more than a post by utilizing a teaser video (youtube), an interesting photo (twitpic, etc)… something to visually intrigue the consumer that allows you to incorporate various media outlets simultaneously.
As the event approaches, post something daily that suggests the “answer” or “solution” is available exclusively at your webinar. I’ve found that when creating a Facebook page event, the title is critical. I would create a title that speaks to the event’s benefit to the consumer, “WIIFM”, as opposed to simply the official name of the event. If you have a budget to work from, I’d recommend using multiple Facebook ads with keywords that uniquely target your audience (not just a single catch-all ad).
Utilize your network and partner with sister organizations, corporate partners and the managers of other Facebook pages to promote your event on your behalf. Joining pages or groups simply to promote your event can be considered spam, so your network is critical. Also, be sure to make use of @ as much as wherever possible to increase visibility across multiple feeds.
Ryan Parsons, Director of Development at Searcy Children’s Homes
I agree that the use of the social media sites would be vital. I would suggest the use of a Sponsored Facebook Story, a custom tab on your FB page with registration (also on your website) that would lead to the development of your email list in order to do a focused email marketing campaign to identify and register new participants. In regards to Twitter, it would be good to setup a special hashtag for the event and notify your participants ahead of time. This could possibly lead to more pre-registrations for the event and more than likely registrations for future events.
Linda Pophal, Communication Strategist Focused on Helping Clients Achieve Measurable Results
I think all of the responses so far have identified tactics that could be potentially effective in promoting webinars or virtual events, but Larry Chandler’s response points to what I think is most critical – thinking strategically about your market and goals before identifying the tools/tactics you will use. As he notes, social media may or may not be part of that mix and the specific social media outlets (e.g. LinkedIn vs, Twitter, vs FaceBook – or other very niche-oriented social media platforms).
Another important point, I think, is the communication mix that you will use. It’s not going to be enough to hit your target audience once or twice with one or two communication methods. To be most effective in communicating any message requires a combination of tactics that are used over times – multiple channels in multiple ways.
My bias is always for the development of a communication plan that starts with the identification of the desired goals and outcomes, the target audience(s) (defined as specifically and narrowly as possible, the key messages that are most likely to resonate with the target audience and the available communication channels. Then those channels need to be prioritized and timed, indicating which will be used when – and in what order. Importantly, these tactics need to be monitored and perhaps adjusted as you roll out your communication based on early results – some you may want to ramp up, others eliminate.
Having had some experience in promoting webinars and researching the preferences of individuals in certain fields for live vs. online or on-demand events, I would also add that this can be a challenging service to sell. Depending on your target market and its attributes, you will need to carefully consider the potential barriers/objections that they might have to this mode of delivery and how you might overcome those objections through your marketing mix – not just communication, but also the product itself, the pricing and place or access (e.g. how easy is it for people to learn more about your program and to register?).
Helen Dowling, Senior Partner, Exceptional Thinking
I guess the first question is whether your audience are aware of what webevents or webinars are. If the answer is yes, you shouldn’t have a problem attracting people to it as long as the subject is a good one. I would consider making the webinar free and providing a recording to people who can’t attend live. In return though, they must provide their contact details to you to tell you that they want to attend.
In terms of marketing, there are two things you want to consider: 1) Marketing to get people to attend in the first place and 2) Marketing once they’ve signed up to encourage them to actually attend the event live on the day.
For both, I would use email marketing. For the first category, I would issue at least three reminders – the first should tell people that your webinar is happening; the second should remind people and the third should tell people it’s their last chance.
Once they’ve registered, they need email confirmation and then a couple of reminders to remind them to attend the event.
After the event, you want a series of emails to those that have registered encouraging them to take further action.
Jane Wade, Global Marketing Manager at Flowmaster
Target audience is crucial here and our target audience tend not to be big adopters of social media, so whilst it is part of the mix we don’t rely on it totally.
We segment our base so that we deliver very specific content through webinars directly related to their work challenges. We then start with mass email alongside some hand-picked which the sales team will target personally either with mail or a telephone conversation. We then follow this up with telemarketing to improve the attendance rates. We need both – one of these on its own won’t work.
We encourage our own internal team to promote through social media using the forums and sites they most often frequent and we do promote through Twitter and Linked in but thus far only very limited success.
Note: This question was asked on LinkedIn. The answers were sufficiently informative to warrant a listing on the wwWebevents.com blog. Click here to see the original question and answers on LinkedIn.
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