How I Increased Online Webinar Attendance Using LinkedIn
Use LinkedIn Branding to increase webinar landing page conversion
Webinars have been taking over organic marketing by storm. If you’re a marketer trying to find organic ways to increase warm leads for your business, webinars are your jam.
More than 60% of marketers use webinars for their content marketing strategies.
The reason is simple.
Webinars work as a trailer of precisely what the customers can get from your product/service. There’s no gatekeeping but a direct walkthrough of how you can help them resolve their problems.
If you can show the solution, you can sell.
Not having proof of work is one of the leading reasons customers hesitate to buy from you. They don’t want to be trapped alone on a mysterious island.
Webinars help get the customers’ foot in the door by showing what they can expect from you. After attending webinars, they don’t fear trusting you as a solution.
But you don’t need expensive funnels or paid marketing to attract the initial eyeballs to your webinars.
Using LinkedIn content strategy, I generated a 21% conversion rate from the webinar landing page for a Construction Executive Search Consultant.
I’ll show you why organic content marketing works for webinars, how I increased webinar registrations, and how you can do the same.
Why do webinars work?
Simple enough.
Content marketing that influences customer decisions works, and webinars can influence customer decisions.
When a lead registers for the webinar, they can walk in freely without any expectations from them to make a purchase. The only intent is to inform.
Nothing works better than a webinar to convey information in the most effective way possible.
They:
- Reach a global audience without geographic limitations
- Allow for live interaction and Q&A with attendees
- Can be repurposed as evergreen content by recording and repurposing
- Allow you to generate leads and build your email list
- Help establish yourself or your company as a thought leader
- Provide an opportunity for product demos or training sessions
- Enable you to nurture prospects through your marketing funnel
- Allow you to get direct feedback from your audience
And they work for almost every single niche.
– Are you a founder who 3xed their business within a year?
– Are you a startup owner who got investments from the biggest angel investors?
– Are you a coach who has proven results for your clients?
Neil Patel consistently has a 22% lead conversion rate on his webinars.
Whatever field you might be in, webinars give you the opportunity to take your leads from a doubtful state to a ready-to-invest state in no time.
50–60 minutes is the sweet spot for a webinar length. You can enjoy maximum retention for an hour-long or slightly less-long webinar. Show me an ad that can retain the audience’s attention for that long. I’ll wait.
And that’s the key to webinar’s success. It gives the audience the hand-holding they need in an hour, which is more than any free resource out there. They also get hands-on experience with how you are to work with.
Even if they don’t invest in your service right away, the webinar will stay in their minds long enough to make them think of you first when they need help.
How To Get Webinar Registrations Using LinkedIn
Now that we’re out in the field cheering for webinars, let’s look at how you can use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your webinar landing page and get that registration.
Note: It works when you’ve been actively creating content on LinkedIn related to your niche.
I was creating content for the Executive Search Consultant for four months and had built an audience before we started promoting the webinar. Let’s call her Joe.
Why do you need content to get registrations?
Many webinars fail because they fail to get traffic on the landing page. Without reaching a large audience, you can’t get them to convert.
That’s why it’s imperative to reach as many people as possible to get them on your landing page.
When you have a personal brand or an active presence on LinkedIn, you already have an active network that knows what you stand for.
You have carved out a place for yourself. You’re not starting from scratch and don’t need to deal with cold leads. So, you don’t need much to get traffic on the landing page.
Since you’re actively engaging on LinkedIn, you’ll not get crickets on your webinar promotional posts. On the contrary, you’ll find your audience promoting the webinar for you.
Isn’t that what you want?
That’s why content strategy is such an integral part of this method.
Let’s go through the content I used to promote the webinar.
The strategy started with chalking out content for three weeks. It panned out into three content pillars:
Week 1: Informing Joe’s Audience About The Need For The Topic
Even before announcing the webinar, you need to target the biggest pain point of the audience.
Get them talking about your topic. Make them crave for a solution before you present the webinar as one.
Joe ran the webinar on setting healthy workplace boundaries. Construction employees easily let their physical and mental health suffer at the workplace. And Joe hardly saw any conversations happening about setting workplace boundaries in her 20+ years in the industry.
Putting out content related to the webinar targeted every employee’s pressing need.
Joe shared personal experiences of severe burnout and spotlighted other industry veterans who went through similar times.
Even without mentioning her webinar, she got many eyeballs and people talking.
Her audience jumped right into the conversation about mental health and setting boundaries.
We knew we had the target audience onboard right away.
How can you do this:
— Divide your content into three sections: Problem introduction, consequences of not solving the problem, and your solution to the problem (introduce the webinar).
— Open a window of direct conversation in the comment section by making people feel the need for a solution to their problems. Once they’re in need of a solution, present yours.
Week 2: Showing Why She’s The Right Person To Speak On The Topic
Webinars work best when the speaker is a thought leader in the niche. Or at least a person having first-hand experience in the subject matter.
It becomes important to show why Joe is the subject matter expert. After announcing the webinar, I shared what motivated Joe to work in that area.
Joe had had severe health complications due to her ignorance of workplace boundaries.
Overwork led to burnout, which led to hospitalization.
Now, here’s the perfect example of how the problem of her target audience can escalate if ignored. We capitalized on that.
We also invited other C-levels in Construction who’ve experienced burnout after neglecting healthy boundaries. Seeing the higher-ups open up made the audience curious to find a way to stop burnout.
How can you do this:
— Share your personal experiences.
— Show the results or transformations you brought.
— Invite guests to the webinar who can work as social proof of your claims.
Social proof is a powerful tool. It assures the audience that they’re investing in the right resource. Making them want to invest time in you is an added advantage.
Week 3: CTA To Get Registrations
When it comes to CTAs, this is your chance to jazz up the content with all of the LinkedIn post features. Using polls, videos, carousels, and text posts can help you increase webinar registrations.
It’s because these options help you give free value when you’re asking for registration.
I created a free online quiz for the Construction employees.
The questions were leading and ensured to trigger FOMO if the employees didn’t attend the webinar.
The quiz had situational questions that helped the audience understand whether they’re letting burnout get the better of them or setting workplace boundaries to take care of their well-being.
Each time we placed a CTA, it was followed by a link to the quiz. They got the answers right after the quiz, which led them to the webinar’s landing page.
I used Zapier to integrate TryInteract with Kajabi to generate leads with this freebie quiz.
TryInteract helps you create responsive live quizzes that you can customize any way and the audience gets results right after submitting the quiz.
Since these quizzes can ask for emails before starting, they also help you save your audience's emails in case they choose not to register for the webinar after completing the quiz.
So, if your goal is lead generation, integrating such interactive elements on the landing page and promotional posts can help you achieve it faster.
Entrepreneur Amy Potterfield has generated thousands of leads using quizzes. Here’s a YouTube video of her explaining how to use quizzes as an effective marketing strategy.
Note: You can go a step ahead by promoting the webinar using LinkedIn audio events and Lives and collaborating with other creators. I’ve talked about it in depth in my blog.
It’s important that you give this process 2–3 weeks. Don’t just promote the webinar a few days before the event. It doesn’t give your audience the time to familiarize themselves with the topic and feel confident enough to register.
When you take at least two weeks to establish the webinar, you create a promotion funnel that meets your audience at their stage.
This way, you ensure more attendance.
Results
Using this strategy, I brought 272 visitors to the landing page, 56 of whom converted, and 100% showed up for the webinar.
Joe’s main goal was generating leads for the community she had planned to launch.
We conducted five webinars after this one to lead people to her product.
The result?
We gained 120+ members in less than two months. Using webinars to spread awareness and educate her audience was an added advantage.
After listening to Joe live, people instantly trusted her and joined the community.
Webinars have become a favorite tool of marketers because they have better results than paid ads.
Imagine you invest in one webinar, but that results in increased leads, multiple content pieces after repurposing, and increased brand reputation and trust.
Who wouldn’t want that?
Make sure you use your LinkedIn personal brand to drive more organic and targeted traffic to your landing page.
Give the visitors some freebies and social proof compelling them to register.
And see the count of registrations increasing!
Thank you for reading!
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