How To Increase Webinar Attendance

A webinar is a form of online conferencing where small businesses, individuals, and companies can share content with potential customers. Webinars are one of the fastest and best ways to generate high quality leads, thanks to their high average attendee engagement time of about one hour. Since most content that businesses create is consumed so quickly, webinars can set a business apart from others and increase engagement rates.

However, in order to see these results from your webinar, you must first secure an audience of attendees. This task can be harder than it sounds. While you may be able to get a decent number of registrants, on average, only about 30% of registrants attend the event. Read on to find out how to quadruple your webinar attendance and rake in those high-quality leads!

Identify and Market The Event Towards Your Target Audience

Instead of trying to attract anyone and everyone to your webinar, work on attracting an audience that you know will have a genuine interest in your webinar’s subject matter. When it comes down to it, drawing in 50 people who need your service and are likely to convert is better than drawing in 500 random individuals.

Think about your target buyer persona. A buyer persona is the type of person who would purchase your product. After deciding on this target audience, you can use it to build your topic and webinar content around their needs and interests. One thing that you shouldn’t do is attempt to meet everyone’s individual niche needs in one webinar. Try scheduling multiple webinars that will appeal to different audiences and buyer personas.

Your content will resonate well with your audience if you keep it targeted, focused, and relevant. Content is the most important aspect of a webinar. Focus on topics that your audience will be interested in, things they’d like to learn or know more about. By offering quality content in all of your webinars, you will see an increase in webinar attendance, especially among your target audience.

Focused Webinar Promotion Makes all the Difference

Did you know that email drives 57% of all webinar registrations? If you aren’t using email marketing to promote your webinar, you should be. A solid email campaign for each of your webinars should be a top priority, especially if you’re interested in increasing your webinar attendance.

The other 43% of webinar registrations comes from a handful of different platforms, meaning you should work to get the word out about your event on as many platforms as possible. Consider a multichannel marketing approach that includes advertising, blogs, phone calls, partnerships, email marketing, and social media.

Allow for Multiple Types of Webinar Interaction

By allowing your audience to interact with the webinar in multiple ways, before, during and after, the webinar becomes a more interactive, inclusive experience that keeps attendees engaged and encourages new registrations.

Leading up to the event, in your promotional and marketing efforts, be sure to emphasize the interactivity aspect of your webinar. Be sure to stress the fact beforehand that attendees will be able to have their questions answered by the speaker during the event. You may also want to encourage registrants to send their questions ahead of time, so the speaker has time to prepare thoughtful answers.

During the event, encourage interaction between attendees either within the webinar platform or on an external platform. Some platforms, such as ON24 and BrightTalk have a built-in feature where attendees can chat with one another during the event. Another option to encourage interaction is by holding a live Twitter chat during or immediately after the event.

Final Thoughts on How to Increase Webinar Attendance

While there is no single definitive way to increase webinar attendance, there are several best practices that can be used to drive greater attendance. In addition to the practices mentioned above, consider this quick list of ways to increase attendance.