“Why is no one watching my webinars?” has got to be one of the most frustrating questions a digital marketing has to ask themselves today. If you’ve ever taken the time to develop out a ton of content and prepare your webinar presentation, only to have a very small handful of people register or actually show up for the event, you know how tempting it is to pull out your hair in upset.

As maddening as this situation can be, don’t worry! There’s probably a pretty straightforward solution that you can implement for next time…developing a kick-ass pre-event webinar marketing strategy!

Although it’s going to take some time, if you commit to properly planning your pre-marketing strategy, you’ll be rewarded with many more registrants and webinar attendees.

Picking the Right Topic

If you’re struggling to get your leads to register for your webinars, the first question you should ask yourself is “would I want to watch this webinar myself?” If the answer is no, you’re going to have to go back to the drawing board in regards to your topic.

Make sure you’re actually teaching your audience something, not just cramming a sales pitch into a slide deck presentation! If you provide legitimate value and answer some sort of question that your prospect might have, you’re much more likely to generate webinar registrants.

Planning Your Email Strategy

The majority of your webinar registrations are going to be triggered based on an email that you send to your contacts. Be sure to put some thought into how you’re formatting your messages, what information you’re sharing ahead of time, and providing a taste of what’s to come in the actual webinar.

Unfortunately, the reality of email marketing is that you typically only have a matter of seconds to get your message across before your recipient decides to either delete it, move on, or stop and say to themselves, “Hey, this is actually interesting! I want to find out more!” That last response is what you’re aiming for—pique their interest quickly through bold messaging in your email and encourage them to click through to your landing page, where they can register for your awesome webinar!

Sharing Across Channels

However, you can’t rely solely on emails to get the word out about your upcoming webinar. Make sure to use all digital channels available to you to give yourself the best chance at success!

Think about it: your potential customers are exploring all over the internet. They’re checking out social media, searching on Google, consuming a wide variety of digital content. Are you giving yourself the opportunity to be found by them organically?

If you start to include social media, search engine optimization, and content development in your pre-webinar marketing strategy, you’re expanding your reach and inviting prospects to join you that you wouldn’t have had access to otherwise!

Picking the Right Platform

There is one last thing that you’re going to want to take into consideration: not all webinar hosting platforms are created equal. Especially if you’re using a marketing automation platform, you’re going to want to do some serious research about which hosting provider will give you what you really need to succeed.

For our own purposes, we chose to work with ON24, because it integrates fully with all the SaaS-based tools that we have in our arsenal, and allows us to really bridge the gap between sales and marketing. Understanding what you want (and need!) to achieve in regards to your webinar will help in your selection process.

There are definitely a lot of things to accomplish, and it might seem overwhelming at first, but I promise—if you take the time to prioritize your tasks, create content worth consuming, and focus on sharing your webinar with the people who need it most, you’re going to be far more successful than continuing a “spray and pray” type of approach.

Interested in learning more? Definitely check out our upcoming webinar, appropriately titled “Why No One Watches Your Webinars!”