5 Ways to Drive More Visitors to Your Webinars

The sweet, humbling experience of webinars.

When done right, you can pull of an attendee list that looks similar to the standby line for the Hollywood Tower of Terror in Disney World. (And I'm talkin' pre-Fastpass days.)

On the flip-side, many companies conduct webinars only to find their attendee list looks much like a tree farm the day after Christmas; barren.

Depending on your industry, we all have different ideas of what a well-attended webinar looks like, however the basic principles remain the same. As a way to assist you in your quest to fill your webinars, we've detailed five basic principles for greatly increasing the likelihood of a big turnout.

If you're interested in learning more about boosting your lead generation, check out our free ebook "How an Inbound Marketing Agency Does Lead Generation."

There Is No “One-Size-Fits-All” Webinar

All too many times businesses get lazy with their webinars and create one or two that try to cover a huge, broad topic to satisfy all of the masses.  This just isn’t going to do you any favors.  When you create webinars, you need to make sure that you don’t take the one-size-fits-all blanket approach.

What works better is if you create webinars that cater to your different lead segments (if you aren’t sure how to segment your leads, check out our free download “The Immediate Solution For Lead Generation” which goes through the step by step process of lead segmentation).

Find out where people are in the sales funnel, and then figure out what their primary concerns are.  You can gather this information through lead intelligence, surveys, social media, or even blog posts.  Best thing is that you can now create “automated webinars” so that you don’t actually have to be physically present to run a webinar (though if you offer a live Q&A session afterwards, you better be around for that!).

Choose Topics That Aren’t Boring

If your webinars are all about showcasing your new products, then you’ll be hard pressed to find a lead who’ll want to stick around and watch it, apart from your family and friends.  Choose topics that are interesting and that are of interest to your leads, while again not forgetting to choose topics that are of interest to a particular segmented group.

Try to come up with titles that will get people to react emotionally (emotions help people remember and become engaged with a topic).  This is how you’ll get the quality prospects that you’ve always dreamed of.

Your Webinar Is Not About You

The worst thing that you can do to your attendees is try to get them to sit through a presentation that’s all about your company.  Your webinar is meant to educate your audience about a particular topic and not educate them about your business.

You can drop your company’s name a couple of times during the presentation, sure, but you don’t want your content to scream “me, me, me!”  Remember, your webinar is all about helping your attendees overcome their obstacles and reach their goals while also then posing your product or service as a way to help them out.

Misusing Your Slides

There’s no better way to get attendees to leave your presentation than to have a webinar that’s based solely on your slides.  When creating your slides, ask yourself, “Am I creating this slide to make a point?  Or to deliver information?  Or to teach?”  If so, then you’re doing it wrong.

The reason why you’re present at the webinar is so that you’re the focus, so you need to be the one delivering the information and teaching your attendees, not your slides.  Here’s what slides are good for:

• Posing a question
• Displaying an illustration or a visualization that helps further demonstrate the point that you’re making
• Help highlight a great result behind a point or a story that you’re telling
• You want your slides to help keep your attendees’ attention, while also then directing the attention back to you.

Back Up Your Information

Don’t leave people just taking your word for things.  You want to back up everything that you say with proof.  This means backing it up with qualified research studies, with testimonials, with case histories and visual displays like charts, graphs, and even before and after pictures.

Your goal here is to sell your product.  Your attendees are looking for a reason not to buy.  Give them every reason to buy your product and they won’t be able to justify not buying it.