Everything you need to know about running a lead generation webinar (Part 1): how to get people to register for your webinar

Have you ever signed up for a webinar but never attended? Perhaps you've signed up and attended a webinar but left halfway through or you didn't end up buying? The majority of people fall into one of these categories, so how do you get more high-quality leads that actually convert? Running a successful lead generation webinar takes an entire process that needs to be carefully orchestrated from pre-marketing and signup to follow-up. The first step being, 'how to get people to register for your webinar.'

This article series is based upon a virtual (paid) workshop we did on how to run a lead generation webinar. Here is part one of a four-part series (which you can also watch if you click on the embedded video below).

People buy emotionally, not rationally (and it's the same for webinars)

eggs with faces drawn on them to represent the emotions you have to trigger to get people to register for your webinarOur blog series on 'running a successful lead generation webinar' kicks off with advice on how to get more webinar attendees. Makes sense when you think about it as there would be no point running a webinar if you had no audience to present it to.

So how do you get people to register for your webinar?

Before we outline the exact steps that you need to take to encourage people to sign up, we first need to remind you that people buy emotionally, not rationally.

For example, I've seen many accountancy practice websites that state "I'm going to help you save tax" or "I'm going to increase your profit." While this may be true, these rational reasons aren't going to get people to want to buy your service.

Great taglines are ones that paint a picture for the client and trigger certain emotions. Emotions that drive the decision-making, motivating them to reach out and get in touch with you. I'm talking about taglines that say to the client "we can help you live the life that you want" or "we give you time back with your family."

Your content always needs to address the pain points that your ideal clients have. If you do this with your webinar, then this is what will get people to register for your webinar. This is what will motivate them to attend because they want to find a solution to their problems.

Read: How to market a webinar so your clients and prospects actually turn up

6 crucial steps to get people to register for your webinar

painted steps to symbolise what you need to do to get people to register for your webinar

To get more webinar attendees, you need to have a process that hits these 6 crucial areas. You need to have a process that you can streamline and repeat every time you run a lead generation webinar to ensure it's a success. Here is what you need in place to get people to register for your webinar:

  1. A catchy title which promises value - if it sounds boring, people won't register. It's as simple as that. Make sure that your title addresses a specific pain point that your ideal client has. Download the exact same system we use to put together our webinar titles here in our free cheat sheet.
  2. Objectives which promise value and raise curiosity - the majority of people register for a webinar because of the subject matter or topic. Make sure yours is interesting, relevant and useful to your ideal audience. Tell them what they'll gain from attending with your objectives. Download the exact same system we use to put together our webinar objectives here in our free cheat sheet.
  3. A time and day that is appropriate for when your ideal audience are able and want to attend - you want to plan your webinars for the days that pull in the biggest audiences. For many, this means scheduling your webinar in the middle of the week, when people are focused on productivity. On average, the most popular days for webinar attendance are Wednesday and Thursday (they pull in a combined 55% of all webinar attendees).
  4. Scarcity - you have to get the balance right throughout the year. If you run webinars too often, people will get annoyed and it may reduce the 'perceived value' of the content that you're putting out. If you run different webinars every month or two, people are more likely to attend as the content is new and relevant, and 'worth more' because it's not getting repeated often.
  5. A way to spread the message far and wide - if you want to get more webinar attendees, you need to market your webinar and get your message out there. You need to not only advertise the webinar to your clients and your ideal audience, but to their connections too.
  6. An email marketing tool to assist with registrations - typically, over half of webinar registrations come from people who heard about your event through email. This means that you'll need a tool to assist with these registrations. It's good practice to explore what's out there (e.g. ActiveCampaign, CampaignMonitor etc) and choose what works best for you.

The two most important areas you need to focus on

While you need to do the research on when and what day is best to run your webinar, as well as having a great email marketing software in place, most of your time should be spent on your webinar synopsis and your marketing. Like we said, most people sign onto a webinar because of the subject matter and they need to hear about it in the first place to sign up!

a typewriter to symbolise the importance of content to get people to register for your webinar1. Writing a mind-blowing webinar synopsis  

The most important part of designing a webinar is the title and the objectives (the synopsis). This is what attracts people and hopefully causes them to take the action to register for your webinar.

To help you write your webinar synopsis, here is the process that we work through for every lead generation webinar we run:

  1. Outline the topic - we often have a rough idea of a topic but to decide on what we go with, we talk to our ideal clients. We ask them about their pain points and their frustrations and listen to what they are saying. After a few conversations or going back to our client personas, we write down their main 3 frustrations, their 1 big fear, their 3 wants, and their 1 big goal.
  2. Decide on a title - using the frustrations and wants that you've written down, come up with a title that promises specific value to the type of people you want to turn up to your webinar. This needs to be tailored to your audience and client personas. The best titles often start with 'how to' or 'X ways to.'
  3. Choose 3-6 main objectives - forget about SMART objectives, just finish this sentence, "delegates who attend will leave..." What are people going to get as a result of attending your webinar? Again, your topic notes will help you here.
  4. Write 1-5 paragraphs of context - now that you have your outline and your objectives, you can write a summary of what you will cover in your webinar. This is very useful for when it comes to writing the copy for the webinar too.

If you need help with this, download our cheat sheet on how to choose your title and synopsis for your webinar. 

a boy shouting into a speaker to represent marketing your lead generation webinar2. Getting your message out there

You need to market your webinar to get people to register for your webinar, so this needs to be another area where you invest some time.

To help you spread the word to the people who you want to attend, here are the best ways to get your message out there:

  1. Remember the purpose of your webinar - if your purpose is just to inform clients, then only communicate the message to your clients. If it's to get clients plus other contacts onto your webinar, then you need to think wider with your marketing approach.
  2. Email your list multiple times - you need to keep in touch with the people who you want to attend because people get busy and they forget. For example, 90% of our sign-ups come from emails and we email our list 5 times before a webinar. We tend to run our webinars on a Thursday and we email our list one week before, twice on the Sunday before (afternoon and evening), the day before, and the day of the webinar. Most of our sign-ups occur on the day of the webinar, 5 minutes before we go live!
  3. Use social media and get your team involved - share your webinar in a personal post on LinkedIn or any other channels where your ideal audience will be. Get your team to like, comment, and share too to circulate the message.
  4. Ring clients and warm prospects to ask them to attend - if the purpose of your webinar is to get people to convert or to warm up prospects, then give them a ring beforehand. Let them know that you're running the webinar and why it will be useful for them. If you don't want to do this, you could record a short video and email it to them as a special invite.
  5. Co-run the webinar with another business - if you want to spread the reach of your message to a whole new audience, then join forces with another firm or professional and co-run the webinar together. Just make sure it satisfies both of your goals.

Get more webinar attendees consistently

If you want to run a successful lead generation webinar (and do this consistently), you need to use these 6 key steps to encourage people to register.

The biggest takeaways from the first part of this blog series are to choose a topic that hits a specific pain point or want for your ideal client and to market your webinar far and wide. You want people to hear about your webinar and to not be able to resist registering for it.

If you want to know how to get people to turn up and stay on your webinar, how to get them to buy or how to run an ideal webinar in general, see part 2, 3 and 4 of the blog series. 

Learn how to quickly add an extra £2k of monthly recurring income to your practice (even if you are a reluctant business developer)

Download (for free) the workshop recording of 'How to quickly add £2k of monthly recurring revenue to your practice' and you will discover:

  • How to generate more income from your existing clients without putting in place a price rise
  • How to get your clients to pay for more services without seen to be profiteering or ambulance chasing
  • What marketing your firm can do right now which is going to cause new good clients to flock to your firm

Ready to kick-start the growth of your firm?