1) Pick a killer topic.
It's really, really hard to get people to attend your webinar if your topic stinks. Try to select a topic that's broad enough to attract a large audience, yet targeted enough to provide actionable advice that attendees can implement the second they hop off your webinar. For our recent webinar with Salesforce, for example, we decided that we wanted to select social media as the overarching theme (who doesn't love to talk about social media?) but focus on how to use social media and inbound marketing in unison.
2) Establish a good track record.
Having an established history of providing quality, educational content -- whether via your blog content, written lead generation content, or previous webinars -- can help boost your webinar attendance. If you've hosted plenty of webinars in the past, it also helps if you don't run into things like sound quality or hosting issues on a regular basis. I mean, things happen, but attending a webinar is a time commitment ... that occurs during their workday, no less. If there's a lot of negative sentiment around your past webinars, admit your mistakes as you market your next webinar, and explain how you'll do a better job this time around. It may not be easy, but over time you can regain a solid audience.
3) Set a registration goal.
Having a goal will inspire you to hit it, and help you measure success. In order for us to break the Guinness World Record for webinar attendees, for example, we knew we had to hit almost 30,000 registrants. You should track performance on at least a weekly basis to see whether your marketing efforts are moving the needle. That way, if you need to dial up your promotion due to low initial registration numbers, you'll know what to do to fix it.
Note: Just because people register for your webinar does not mean they will attend your webinar. Which brings us to our next tip ...
4) Set an attendee goal.
Webinars typically get a 30% attendance rate, so to determine how many registrants you need, you should think ahead to how many actual attendees you want. Continuing with our Guinness World Record example, we knew we needed 10,000 attendees to break the record. So doing a little backwards math, we took the 30% attendance rate into account and figured out that we needed 30,000 registrants in order to hit 10,000 attendees.
You will see the word “remind” quite a bit in the rest of this post. That's because getting people to attend your webinar requires lots and lots (and lots) of registrant reminders. People often sign up for webinars weeks in advance -- they may have every intention of attending when they sign up, but with the myriad distractions that pop up every day, it's critical you play an active role in keeping your webinar top of mind.
5) Give attendees something special.
At HubSpot, we’ve given away tickets to events, free marketing consultations, ad spend coupons to Facebook and LinkedIn ... tons of cool stuff! We’ve also inspired the audience by asking them to be a part of something huge, like breaking a world record. Try to think of things that will get people excited, feeling special, talking with colleagues, and remembering their experience on your webinar in the future. Excited registrants turn into excited attendees.
6) Choose the right day of week.
Do not host your webinar during the weekend. Okay, you probably knew that one. But did you also know that it's best to host your webinars on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday? Monday and Friday always seem to get filled up with “catch up” and “last minute emergency” happenings around the office. In a recent poll done by WhatCounts, the data suggested that their audience preferred Wednesday or Thursday for webinars, and we tend to agree.
7) Choose the right time of day.
HubSpot typically runs webinars at 1 p.m. EST or 2 p.m. EST, because it's the most convenient time for the largest chunk of our audience. But if you have a huge audience in ... I don't know ... Jakarta, you might want to reevaluate your timing. Right? Right.
If you have no clue what time would work best for your audience, you can always ask. Include a field on your registration form that asks attendees to confirm the time slots that work best for them, and schedule your webinar based on that feedback.
Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33540/18-Ways-to-Guarantee-Nobody-Misses-Your-Next-Webinar.aspx#ixzz25aXGdYMB
