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Hosting a webinar or virtual event is a great way to share high-quality information and connect with your audience on a personal level. However, to achieve this, it is key to draw people in and inspire them to attend your event. A few key strategies – to include strategic promotion before and after the event as well as topic optimization – have proven to not only increase registration numbers but also attendee engagement.
1. Choose and Optimize Webinar Topics
Selecting the right webinar topic is crucial because it directly influences audience engagement and registration numbers. To choose impactful webinar topics, it is important to know what your audience is interested in. Pay attention to your audience's challenges and pain points. Use surveys, feedback forms and social media interactions to gather insights.
Another way to learn what your audience is interested in is by monitoring trends. These are likely to address current industry challenges and hot topics and will attract a larger audience. One sure way to choose a topic that will draw a large audience is to transform high-performing content into webinar topics. If you have found topics in blogs, articles or other forms that are performing well, it is likely that if you transform it into a webinar, it will draw the same size audience or greater.
2. Develop a Strategic Promotion Plan
A well-rounded promotional strategy is integral to driving webinar and digital event registrations. Start by identifying your target audience and their preferred channels of communication. These channels may include:
Email Marketing: Personalize your email list based on demographics, past interactions and interests. Add a compelling subject line that will make the receiver curious and more likely to open the email. Finally, make sure to include a clear and prominent call to action that guides the recipient directly to the registration page of your digital event.
Social Media Promotions: Include teaser content for your event such as snippets from previous webinars, speaker highlights, or intriguing statistics related to the event topic. You can also create a dedicated event page or group on social media platforms to centralize information and engage with potential attendees. Another way to gain audience interest is to collaborate with industry influencers, which can give your event more reach and relatability.
3. Create an Engaging Content Schedule
Engagement doesn’t end with registration; maintaining interest and ensuring attendance is crucial. Developing a content schedule that keeps your registrants engaged is important. The three phases of engagement are:
Pre-Event Engagement: Send countdown emails leading up to the event that contain valuable content, such as exclusive previews or educational resources. Interactive social posts are also important to keep your audience engaged. Use polls, Q&A sessions and interactive posts on social media to keep the conversation going and make sure that everyone who has registered for the event remains excited and will attend the main event.
During the Event: While the event is happening, you can continue to engage with your audience by encouraging live interactions through Q&A sessions, polls and chat features. This not only engages attendees but also provides valuable real-time feedback.
Post-Event Follow-Up: When your event has concluded, make the content available on demand. You can do this by providing access to the recorded sessions for those who missed the event or want to revisit the content. Last but not least, don’t forget to send out surveys to gather feedback and understand areas for improvement.
4. Nurture Leads and Analyze Metrics
The people who attended your event are the most likely to attend the next one. Because of this, it is important to nurture those connections. Post-event nurturing and analysis are critical for converting one-time attendees into a loyal audience, thus improving future events. There are a few key ways to keep your audience engaged long after the event has ended.
Advertise your next event during your current one: This is an easy way to capture an audience for your next event or webinar. Take a moment to invite your attendees to register for your next event and offer a clickable link to the registration page that is easy to access and navigate. Many attendees will quickly register for the next event while they are attending your current one.
Nurture Pages: Attendees like to be able to access the material for your event all in one place. To make this happen, create a dedicated landing page with follow-up content, additional resources and next steps for them to take.
Engagement Metrics: Analyze registration data to understand which promotional tactics were most effective, then use those tactics for your next event. Examine attendance rates to identify gaps between those who registered and those who attended. This can reveal a need for additional engagement with those who have registered. Finally, use the content from polls, Q&As and chats that were part of interactions during the event to measure interest and involvement.
Driving webinar and digital event registration requires a multifaceted approach, from strategic promotion to continuous engagement and post-event nurturing. By leveraging email marketing, social media promotions, personalized videos and a robust content schedule, you can ensure not only high registration numbers but also meaningful attendee engagement.
Do you have a webinar or digital event coming up that you need help with to reach your full audience potential? AOE has marketing strategy specialists who are just a click away. Contact us and we’ll work together to make your webinar or digital event a success.