Webinar Promotion Best Practices: Before, During & After Your Event

Webinars… They either work as a powerful way to land more leads, or turn out to be that “another useless marketing tactic.”

Most times, though, if you put in even a little effort, the rewards can be huge. It’s no wonder B2B marketers love it so much.

Still, like all marketing activities, things can get intense real quick.

Sometimes, brands invest tons of time to create killer content and line up perfect speakers. And still get only a few people showing up at the actual event.

In fact, 83% of webinars get fewer than 50 live attendees.

So, how do you get a better outcome? By using webinar promotion best practices.

And that’s exactly what we’ll discuss in this guide.

Before the webinar: How to get people to sign up?

The first important task of organizing any online event is to actually get people to learn about it. After all, how can you get anyone to sign up unless they know of its existence?

If this is the part you struggle with the most, no worries. Here are our top tips to make this easier for you.

Source: Salesforce

Craft a compelling landing page

You know what they say about first impressions? They last longer than you think.

Your landing page is your chance to make a lasting first impression that wins your target audience over. And this is how you can achieve that:

Make sure the important info is obvious

This means you need a clear title, date/time, speaker info, benefits, and so on. No need to bury them and make people go on a treasure hunt to find the important details. Ideally, try to stick to the following:

• Go with a title that is descriptive enough to tell potential attendees what to expect. If they are learning something specific, mention that in the title. "The Latest Changes in Finance You Must Learn in 2025" is much better than "Finance and Changes".
• Include the dates and times of the event in the very first section of your landing page. Highlight them with clear fonts, colors, and placement so they’re easy to see.

Source: Google

• Got any expert speakers or popular guests giving a speech at your online event? You want to include your speaker bios with pictures to help raise interest. Plus, this can give you more credibility (depending on the experts you choose).
• Highlight the benefits in bullet points or a list so they are skimmable. Try to focus on the advantages people will get, instead of just mentioning the topics you’ll cover.

Source: Ahrefs

• Keep the page and paragraphs short. It should take a minute or two to get the whole idea. Being concise is often really complicated, but it’s worth it.
• Pay special attention to how descriptive your first section is. Ideally, after reading it, your users have to clearly understand what your event is all about, when it’s happening, who it is for, how to sign up, etc.

Source: Mailchimp

Is it beginning to sound like you have a lot of work to do? It could be, especially if you’re still a beginner. That’s why many marketers like to create templates for the whole planning thing.

But designing it from scratch is another task on its own.

So, we created a free webinar planning template to help you simplify your workflow.

It covers everything from content and customer profiles to the tech setup and actual steps to take to promote your webinar. You can use it directly in Notion or copy-paste it to another platform you prefer.

Strong CTA (go beyond the typical “sign up”)

Your CTA is what gets people to take the action you desire. So, don't just go with the most obvious choice like "Sign up" or “Register now.” You can always be more creative. How about something like:

• "Save me a spot now."
• "Steal the exact playbook we use."
• "Lock in my free spot today."

These are all action-oriented and at the same time quite compelling.

Source: Univid

If you prefer to go with the tested and trusted “Register” or “Learn more,” it’s also an option.

But you can still improve these CTAs' performance by adding urgency words like "now" and "today." They alone can raise conversion rates by 14%.

Source: Zapier

Another important detail to keep in mind is where you place your CTA. Placement alone can mean 84% higher interaction.

Where is the most converting spot?

Of course, in the top visible section. While this might seem obvious, don't forget about this while trying to squeeze all the other content in your hero section.

Integrate email marketing

Email marketing is an effective way of promoting a webinar.

In fact, 57% of webinar registrations come from email marketing.

And if you think about it, your email list is only one of the few channels you actually control:

• When it comes to social media, you leave it all up to algorithms.
• When it comes to paid ads, it’s mostly about budgets.
• But email? Email is yours, unless, of course, you screw your domain trust.

Yet, you still have to be smart about it. Here are a couple of effective strategies for you to consider:

Segment your list (prospects vs. customers)

You can split your customers into different categories based on demographics, interests, behavior, or other criteria. This will make it much easier for you to come up with personalized emails for each group.

You can then create an ideal customer profile (aka ICP) for each segment of your audience. This is basically a summary that helps you picture each group’s challenges and interests more clearly.

And if you have this information, creating powerful emails is much more straightforward.

The first and easiest thing you could do is craft different email sequences for frequent buyers and first-time customers:

1. For the first group, your focus might be on how your meeting will help them get the most out of the products they’ve already bought/subscribed to.
2. The second group and new prospects might get an email that highlights how your digital event (and your product) can help them solve their real-life challenges.

Of course, the more personalized your email is to the customer, the greater the chance of them signing up. Still, sometimes, depending on the topic, one email might work for several client segments. So, don’t overcomplicate things either.

But it might be something worth A/B testing. Just saying…

Source: ReallyGoodEmails

Use reminders

Chances are that you are going to need more than one email to really increase your turnout. After all, people are busy, and busy people forget things.

If you don't want your session to slip their minds, you will need a series of well-timed reminder emails to keep them interested.

In this case, the most widespread timing for an email sequence is as follows:

1 week before the event

The emails you send one week before the event are all about getting people excited. How can you achieve that?

• Add stories, testimonials, or case studies that inspired your event in the first place.
• If you have great speakers, make sure to share their expertise and stories in an interesting way.
• Remind your attendees of the benefits they will gain so they look forward to the event.
• Include snippets and insights that will serve as teasers.
• Share a last-minute limited discount or special offer.

1 day before the event

Think of this as a final call to action to those who haven't signed up yet. You want to remind them why your event matters and the value they get from it. Done right, this can drive your attendance numbers up, especially if you:

• Share the agenda or main talking points.
• Add a quick insight from a speaker.
• Reinforce the value of the session and use urgency to highlight why they can’t afford to miss it.
• Add access links and instructions to make it easier to join.
• Make your CTA easy to see.

1 hour before the event

Last chance registration call, but really, this is more of a reminder to get people in. You want to include a link to the live event so those interested can just join in from their inbox.

You can also create the “last chance” FOMO effect. But frankly, it depends on your audience. These days, everyone seems to be tired of those “last chance deals.”

Yet, if you have something truly valuable to share, go for it. A good insight goes much further than any of those empty FOMO CTAs.

• Some marketers also suggest messaging your prospective customers 30 minutes before the event starts.
• Others also send emails while the event is already happening, with some updates on what’s going on.

Yet again, it isn’t something we’d recommend to all because it smells spammy and can backfire. Still, you might want to test it.

When it comes to any email sequences, the smartest thing you could do is automation. Tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Moosend, etc., are all your best friends here.

Promote on socials

The socials are the perfect place to build hype around anything, including any online event.

So, here are some ideas on how to promote a webinar on social media:

Use countdown posts and behind-the-scenes teasers

You can create countdown teasers a few weeks in advance. This can help get people excited about what’s coming. Besides, psychologically speaking, a countdown creates more focus and that “limited” effect.

Here are some ideas of how you could use it:

• Create social media posts that say “X more days to go”. But don’t leave it at that, give something “meaty.” What should people be looking for?
• Do the same on your website, too, to help build anticipation.

Source: Google

• Use this time to highlight the credentials of each speaker. Something as simple as a headshot with a quote or a short video from a speaker sharing an insight can go a long way to build trust and make people want to hear more.
• Consider using behind-the-scenes videos and pictures to humanize the whole thing and build a connection. Of course, it isn’t an offline event where you have tons of behind-the-scenes content. But your speakers or even your marketing team can film their thoughts or the prep process, for example.

Create event pages (LinkedIn, Facebook)

Even if you aren’t a frequent user of LinkedIn or Facebook, you've definitely seen some event pages for webinars.

Source: LinkedIn

You can also do the same thing. This is an effective way of marketing a webinar and making sure it reaches the target audience, especially if you're in a B2B niche.

Here, you can apply most of the best practices we’ve mentioned above for a landing page. And just make sure to use eye-catching visuals or videos, but don’t go overboard on the bold colors.

Source: Facebook

Overall, event pages are great because:

• It's easy for people to show whether they’re attending, so you get to know how many to expect.
• Everyone gets notifications when you make any changes to the event.
• It’s super straightforward to invite others, which is really helpful to reach more people.

Try LinkedIn ads

Ads aren’t a new way of promoting webinars.

Sure, they will cost you more than, say, creating a LinkedIn event page and then sharing the link everywhere. But if you do have the budget for it, it’s a great idea, as you can target a very particular audience, region, occupation, age, etc.

If your webinar marketing strategy is targeted at the B2B market (and it mostly is), then you can't go wrong with LinkedIn ads. There are over 1 billion users on LinkedIn, so you could really make use of some of that audience.

• Narrow down your ads to only target people who fit your ICP. You can target ads by their job title, company size, skills, industry, and so on.

Source: SEJ

• Try the LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. In your Ad Manager, instead of choosing to redirect users to your own site, you can select Lead Generation > add a Lead Gen Form. It can really increase the volume of signups, so it’s definitely worth looking into.

Source: LinkedIn

• Consider sending Message Ads (formerly Sponsored InMail). It might not be the best strategy for a casual online session. But if you have something more serious coming up and you want to attract very particular leads, it could work great.

Source: LinkedIn

Yet, even if you focus on running ads, try to share some quality thought leadership publications to build trust and authority.

Even one post a month is better than nothing. Sure, this isn’t a one-day job, but it is really helpful for any future promotion (beyond just your online meetings).

And, of course, you have to analyze your ads to improve your campaigns and spend your budget wisely.

Press releases and guest posting

Want to know how to advertise a webinar and still drive traffic to your landing page? How about publishing press releases and guest articles on other relevant sites?

Source: PR Newswire

If you pick the right pages, you can increase exposure, get highly relevant traffic, and even improve your SEO. Often, the best way to organize this is to use a guest posting platform where you can effortlessly choose any website you want.

Partner marketing and collabs

Sometimes, what you really need to get proper attention for your event is to partner with another brand. Naturally, you want to go with one that has a product or service that aligns well with yours, but not your direct competitor.

If you look around, you’ll see many examples like this.

Take, for instance, this Content Marketing Institute and ON24 webinar. They are two connected businesses, but each specializes in its own thing.

Source: Content Marketing Institute

These could be paid partnerships, as well as free ones based on mutual benefits.

You could also invite some of your clients for something like a “live case study,” as long as it doesn’t come across too salesy.

This is, for example, what Informed Sport (a testing and certification company) did when they hosted a webinar with NOW Foods (a supplement company). NOW Foods is their client, and they shared first-hand experience about the certification process.

Source: YouTube

When you do something like this, both brands can cross-promote the event and help expand the reach. Think about it. It’s very likely that another company will also spread the word about your session on their socials, newsletters, etc.

So, generally speaking, it’s a great tactic if you can find a decent partner. And, of course, you can give your audience additional insights, which is another great benefit.

Collaborate with guest speakers and influencers

A big part of why people attend any seminars is to hear specific experts talk. That’s why every single online event highlights its speakers.

Source: Semrush

But it doesn’t end with just listing names. You can make sure that your partnership helps you hit your business goals, especially when you:

• Collaborate with experts who have a very targeted audience or some influence in your niche. Think about how you could make this collab even more interesting with them.
• Maybe you could even cooperate with some of your existing clients (less with a brand, more with an exact person). Who knows, they can make for a great guest speaker who brings an interesting perspective to the conversation.
• Partner with influencers in your niche. You can invite them to speak or just promote your workshop on social media. This way, you get to expand your reach beyond your usual network.

Similar to brand partnerships, you can get more exposure for your event because every speaker will likely share your posts.

As a result, you can end up with a new, fresh audience, better credibility (if you select guest speakers wisely), and more sign-ups.

During the webinar: How to get people to interact?

Now that we’ve looked at webinar promotion ideas, it’s time to learn about how you can make sure the big day is not boring.

It starts with the way you approach the event itself. If you simply create an endless PowerPoint and turn it into a one-person show, it won't be engaging. By default.

So, structure your session like a conversation.

All those gamifications, chats, and polls are just tools. But what you really need is a good strategy. One that keeps your meeting casual and energy levels high.

Yet, if you want more practical tips, here they are:

Create breakout rooms (for large groups)

One of the things you could consider is creating breakout rooms for your activities during the meeting. These are especially useful for workshops and other events that suggest more interactions.

Source: Tactiq

In each room, you can offer some discussion topics or experience sharing. Besides, it could also be helpful to use tools like a whiteboard to help your attendees brainstorm together visually or map out their responses.

When the time is up, everyone can come back together and share their insights. But if you decide to go for this, keep it short. You have to respect both your audience's time and your own.

Plus, it won’t really work for the typical online meetings where people simply connect to listen while working on something else.

Spread the word live

The most common way to encourage more sharing is to ask your audience to tweet a specific phrase or insight that resonated with them with a hashtag. Here’s how you could make this work:

• Highlight key points. If a speaker shares a new insight, a special stat, an interesting quote, or a new perspective on a popular issue, make it visually appealing with some slides. This way, it will be easier for your audience to screenshot and share it.
• Just ask to share personal takeaways. You can also ask people to share what they found most useful to them specifically and tag you.
• Make it a game. Offer special prizes to users with the most engagement on their posts or with the best publication.

This not only helps expand your reach but can also create discussions around your event online. Besides, it's a great social proof that can help build your brand credibility for future workshops.

Try interactive features

An event is not fun if it's just speakers, one speaker after another, droning on for half an hour. Many people will just log off before the end of the program.

This is no good, especially after you’ve taken so much time to learn how to promote your webinar.

The only way to avoid this is to make your meeting interactive. This will help you keep the audience's focus better and, as a result, get higher conversions. So, how can you do this?

• You can slot in a Q&A section. This gives you time to address any concerns that your audience might have.

Source: Tufts

• You can even acknowledge interesting comments in real-time.
• Speaking of comments, ask your audience to drop their questions in the comment section.
• Also, encourage them to use specific reactions during your presentation (whether they agree or not, whether they had a similar experience or not, etc.).
• You can also create live polls. This will definitely help you keep people engaged, as everyone likes to share their opinions, especially in such an easy way. But apart from that, it can give you a better idea of what your audience needs.

Source: Slido

There are tons of tools out there that can help you create a really interactive session, from built-in Zoom features to third-party solutions like Slido, MeetingPulse, etc.

So, if that interactive element is something you want to add to your events, explore at least some of those options.

Source: Connecteur

When using tools like chats and polls, start off with questions that are easy, like "Where are you watching from?" You can even read some of the responses to make your conversation flow. If someone drops a casual joke, support that if it fits your tone of voice.

But whatever you do, avoid sounding robotic.

A good rule of thumb is to get your participants to engage every 4-10 minutes. You could ask them to do something small, like use a specific reaction or respond to a question in the chat box.

Consider adding incentives

Want to give people a reason to engage? Consider offering exclusive discounts to those who take part in the polls or quizzes. You can also offer them bonus content or even a giveaway for live attendance. It doesn't have to be something extravagant, though.

Simple things could also work really well, like:

• A coupon.
• Free credits for your product.
• Some branded merchandise.
• Or even casual Amazon gift cards, etc.

It doesn’t have to be anything physical.

If you have a very popular industry expert joining, you can offer an opportunity for a live Q&A session with them towards the end of the show. It could even be a masterclass/tutorial with them. This way, your retention will be much higher.

Yes, we just circled back to choosing the right guests. While they don't have to be celebrities, they need very deep expertise in your topic.

Track the data

One of the most important webinar marketing best practices is to track important data. We all know that. But what kind of metrics should you be paying attention to?

It will differ, depending on your goals.

But overall, you can start by keeping track of vital KPIs of your registration/landing page:

• Traffic sources.
• Click-through rates.
• Conversion rates (to know if your landing page is working as well as you expected).
• Average time on page.
• The number of downloads (if you offered any).

Next, during your event, pay attention to the following:

• Signups vs. attendees (ideally, it shouldn’t be lower than 35%).
• Average watch time and where most people dropped off.
• Engagement during the meet. Try to look deeper into this, beyond just numbers. Take note of the questions people asked, the results of polls and surveys carried out, etc. These could be goldmines of data.

And of course, after the session, you can also keep an eye on the following:

• The number of people who watched the recording.
• The open rate of the follow-up emails.
• The number of tweets, mentions, comments, likes, and retweets on social media (all of these can help you understand the overall level of interest).
• And, of course, conversion rates (if you were selling anything). Besides, over time, it could be useful to link different topics to the quality of leads they bring.

This sounds great.

But how do you track all that?

Most webinar platforms have a built-in dashboard that helps you track things like chat activity, attendance, duration, and so on.

To go beyond that, you can connect your CRM (like HubSpot or Salesforce) to track lead quality and conversions.

Now, what do you do with this information?

• You can use the questions asked as ideas for your future content or to personalize your follow-up emails.
• The data from the polls and surveys can help you segment customers and understand their profiles better.
• Overall, all this information helps you create much better online workshops in the future.

After the webinar: How to stay connected and convert?

As you may have suspected, your job doesn’t end with learning how to market a webinar and what to do during the program. So, now what?

Now you take those insights you gathered during the event and use them to turn the attendees into warm leads and then customers. It all starts with:

Send follow-ups

Show you value your audience’s time by sending a personalized email that says thank you for attending. Keep it short and sweet and add a link where they can replay the entire thing. Did they participate in polls or win any bonus content? Be sure to add it.

Your participants are not the only ones who deserve your attention. You should also send a “sorry we missed you” email to the no-shows. Adding a link to the replay here is very much needed as well.

There can be one message you send to both attendees and those who missed it, like Semrush did in the example below.

You can also notice how almost seamlessly they offer you to start a free trial of their software or buy a ticket for their event in Amsterdam. It’s a great example of how you can give people an option to interact with you/your product further.

Basically, it’s one of those creative ways to promote a product without being too salesy.

Repurpose your content

You can find tons of guides with ideas for your webinar content repurposing. And it’s for a very good reason. Those online meetups tend to be very informative. So, not using all those insights would be a real waste.

Source: Google

Here are just some of the examples of how your online event can be transformed into several pieces of content:

• Use the questions from the Q&A to create an FAQ. It could be written, or you could even turn it into short-form videos.
• Turn the best key takeaways into full-fledged blog posts or guides.
• Use your online session as a lead magnet by creating a downloadable guide or infographics out of it. Even the recording itself could be your lead magnet.
• Create short reels for social media by cutting out the most interesting clips. There is AI software to do this for you, so it’s super fast.
• Upload the entire thing to YouTube or create a digest with the most important information.
• Turn it into a podcast and upload to any podcasting platform if that’s what you do.

Nurture leads

The whole idea of pretty much any webinar marketing plan is to generate leads. But sometimes, it seems like it’s easier said than done.

So, here’s what you can do to simplify this process a bit:

• Take all those insights you gathered when you were monitoring the event and analyze them well. For example, if some people ask questions about your product, pass their contact information to the sales team for follow-up.
• The sales team could then send tailored emails based on specific behaviors. For example, those who asked questions will get an email that thanks them for their participation and references the question they asked.
• You can also go ahead and offer them a free consultation or demo.
• Those who were present but didn't engage (or only engaged a little) can be sent an email highlighting the benefits discussed, and a link to a case study that can help build more trust.
• Those who didn't show up at all get a link to watch the entire piece and a brief summary of what the event was all about.

You can also take it a step further by creating follow-up funnels that run for months after the workshop. But it will all depend on your business type and the quality of leads you get.

Collect feedback

Another great thing you could do after any online event is to send surveys to all your attendees. The insights you gather from these surveys can come in very handy for creating and improving any future online meetings you host.

Source: WebinarNinja

Plus, you'll probably get some testimonials that you can use as social proof.

And the best part is that this doesn’t have to turn into another task that takes hours, as your automation software can handle this easily.

Conclusion

We've looked at several webinar promotion examples. So, by now you definitely know your options. And it’s already a great place to start.

The next best thing is to test as many tactics as possible and find what works for your business. Over time, you will definitely find your favorite strategies that will help you turn your attendees into lifetime customers.