3 Ways to Get More Webinar Sign ups

Are you struggling to get people to sign up and actually show up live to your webinars?

You are not alone.

The second most common question I get from webinar hosts of all levels is “How can I get more people to sign up for my webinar?”

I’m glad you asked!

In this post, I share the 3 P’s of Webinar Traffic so you can create a stampede of webinar signups for your business. Enjoy.

Overview of the 3 P’s of Webinar Traffic

The 3 P’s of webinar traffic are…

1. Personal
2. Partner
3. Paid

Personal Traffic

When you are launching a new webinar with a new offer, I generally recommend starting with your own personal traffic. Here are a few sources for you to draw from…

• Your Email List. Email is not dead.  In fact, email is 40x more effective at driving sales and webinar sign-ups than social media. Building an engaged mailing list is still priority number one for the majority of online businesses.

• Email Tip: Don’t email your list too early. I never start promoting my webinar sooner than 7 days prior. I’ve found that earlier promotion leads to fewer people actually showing up.

• Your Social Media Following. A distant second to email is your social media following. Think of where your ideal customers may be online and start building relationships there. For many niches, Facebook is a great place to start. Create your own Facebook group centered around your niche. A Facebook group is a great resource for engaging with those in your tribe and yes, driving webinar sign-ups.

• Social Media Tip: Create a Facebook event in your group letting people know about your webinar.

• Your Website Traffic: This is a forgotten resource of webinar sign-ups. I know I am guilty of not using it. Placing a clickable image on the homepage or sidebar of your blog posts can help to get more eyeballs on your webinar. Use something like Hello Bar which can display a pop-up with your webinar registration page linked to it.

You may be saying,” Jon, I don’t have any of those, what do I do?”

We all start at zero. I remember in the fall of 2014, starting over in the marketing industry with no list at all. I hosted two free, non-pitch webinars to two different Facebook groups (I got permission) and added my first 132 subscribers in 5 weeks. I then hosted my first sales webinar to only 30 people but made 10 sales at $197. I then took that same program to other people’s audiences and soon found myself with my first 1,000 subscribers. All using webinars. How did I grow quickly? I leveraged the power of partner traffic.

Want to Double the Sales of Your Next Webinar? Click Here to Grab My 27 Webinar Conversion Points Guide.

Partner Traffic

Without a doubt, one of the fastest ways to grow without breaking the bank on Facebook Ads and other paid sources is partner traffic.

When I refer to partner traffic, I am talking about developing relationships with people of influence, in or around your industry and looking to do a webinar together. People who already have an audience (email list, social following, website traffic) of your perfect customers.  

Some Ways to Partner with Webinars

• Non-Pitch Webinars or Q&A Webinars to Their Audience
• Interview Style Webinars with One Person or a Panel of People
• Sales Webinars Selling Your Program to Their Audience

Kim’s Story

Kim Ryan is a grief and loss coach over at yourgriefandlosscoach.com.  She utilized an interview-style webinar to quickly build her audience.  She continues to do regular webinars interviewing other experts in her industry.  Check out the results from her first partner webinar.

“Over 230 registered for my first webinar and over 200 new people were added to my email list!! 70 attended live and word keeps spreading through the replay. My guest had never participated in a video-based show before and she was wowed.”

How Do You Find Partners?

Good question. I recommend that you start with the people you already know who have some influence or connections. Start with your current social media contacts or close friends and try to get a personal introduction. Have a genuine interest in creating a friendship, not just a business deal.

Another way to connect with new partners is to make a list of 10 people or organizations who are in or around your niche that aren’t a direct competitor. Think of bloggers, Facebook or LinkedIn group owners, associations, or software companies.  Who do you want behind your movement?  Don’t go after the biggest names in your industry right off the bat. Most of them are busy with other big players and it won’t make sense for them to partner. Make friends with industry peers that are a few steps ahead of where you are.  

Block off time in your calendar each week to network with those folks.  Subscribe to their email lists and reply to their emails with a kind word. Comment on their blog post. Follow them on social media and comment on their posts. Build a real relationship.

Live conferences can be another great source to meet potential partners. Nothing builds rapport and friendship like meeting face to face.

How Do I Approach Partners?

If it is a referral from a friend, I usually like to do an email exchange and schedule a Skype or phone call. Getting people from email or social media to a live call really helps to build a connection. On the call, I mostly ask about them and get a feel for their personality and business. I usually don’t ask to partner on the first call unless it comes up in conversation. Most people will ask what you are up to. You can then share your program and how you are looking to reach new audiences. I will often follow up a couple of times via email or social media private message before asking if they would like to work together.

If it is a relationship started on social media, I like to go from commenting on a post to sending a private message, to scheduling a Skype or phone call.  The goal is to get them off social media to have a real conversation. Follow up via private message and when the timing feels right, you can see if they are willing to do something together.

Without a doubt, the majority of my growth online has come from the friendships and partnerships I have created.

Paid Traffic

The final source of webinar traffic is paid. This one really is the holy grail of online business. If you can get paid traffic sources like Facebook ads to convert well to your webinar, the sky’s the limit. When you can put in $1 and get out $4 you can simply buy more leads and customers on demand.  

Sounds great right? Just turn on the spigot and in come the dollars…

There are two problems that most new webinar hosts have when it comes to Facebook which can cost them a lot of money.

1. They have no experience running Facebook Ads. Facebook ads are more complicated than you think. The right message to the right targeting audience needs to be in place if you are going to avoid flushing money down the drain.
2. They have an unproven webinar. A webinar is only as good as the offer, messaging, and strategy behind the funnel. If you have yet to test any of those things to your personal traffic, you have no data at all to go on.  

Let me save you a lot of money. If you have a new webinar, new offer, and are new to Facebook ads, DON’T USE FACEBOOK ADS to drive registrations to start with. I have seen newbies sink thousands into ads with zero sales. Test with your personal traffic first, no matter how small.

When Should I Use Facebook Ads?

• After you have tested your webinar and offer to your personal traffic with some financial success.
• Retargeting to remind people of your offer in the follow-up of your webinar.
• If you have the budget and have a product or service that is a higher ticket so you can more easily pay a higher cost per registration and still make a nice ROI.

The most important paid traffic webinar metric is Earnings Per Registration (EPR). EPR is calculated but simply adding up all the revenue from your webinar and follow-up sequence, divided by the total number of registrations for your webinar.  If we know our Earnings Per Registration we now know how much we can spend to gain registration.

Example: Let’s say you made $10,000 from your webinar plus follow-up. You had 200 registrations for your webinar. That means you had a Earnings Per Registration of $50.  This means you can spend up to $50 in paid advertising to get a registration and still break even. A pretty important number to have in mind.

What Types of Facebook Ads Can I Use for My Webinars?

There are three types of Facebook Ads that can be used for webinars.

1. Frontend Facebook Ads (ads used to get people to sign up)
2. Reminder Retargeting Ads (ads used to remind people of the webinar)
3. Offering Reminder Retargeting (ads use to remind people of your offer)

Frontend Facebook Ads

These are ads used to get people to sign up for your webinars. The most important thing when creating these ads is to make sure your ad message connects well with your ad targeting audience.

There are a number of different ad targeting audiences.  Here is a list starting with the warmest and usually the lowest cost per registration and highest EPR.

1. Email Custom Audiences & Website Traffic Custom Audiences
2. Fan Page Audiences
3. 1% Lookalike Audiences
4. Interest Audiences (targeting competitors fan pages with other interests)

I recommend starting with the first two and then looking at numbers three and four when you want to scale up your attendance.

Reminder Retargeting Ads

These are ads that will remind people who have signed up for your webinar to actually show up. Within a number of webinar software programs, you are allowed to place your Facebook Pixel on the post-registration thank you page. This will allow you to retarget people who have visited that page with reminders and other content like videos and blog posts warming them up and reminding them of the webinar.

Offer Reminder Retargeting Ads

This ad will remind people of your offer deadline after your webinar is over. These ads are some of the easiest to set up and provide a very high ROI. Often over 1000%. Make sure to include the date and time of the deadline as well as any benefits to buying your offer.  

What To Do Next?

Now that you know how to drive traffic to your next webinar, you might be wondering, how do I maximize that traffic and convert as many of those registrations into paying customers?

Want to Double the Sales of Your Next Webinar? Click Here to Grab My 27 Webinar Conversion Points Guide.