How Can We Get People To Show Up To Webinars?

Every brand and their mother (hi mom) is hosting a webinar.

The new it-kid on the block, webinars are a GREAT middle of funnel to attract high-intent customers and community members. They’re prime for authority hacking (by having TOP TIER guest speakers) and increasing the impact of your content strategy.

BUT, and there’s one BIG but, it’s hard to get people to actually SHOW UP to webinars.

Webinars (I actually prefer we call these virtual events – webinar is so dull) are substantially easier to get more registrations than a paid or in-person event, simply because the barrier to entry is lower, all you need to cough up is an email. But what that lower barrier to entry does, is make the pain of missing the webinar substantially less, so attendance rates for webinars are lower than that of in-person events.

Typical attendance rates for webinars are less than 50%. Yet according to Contrast’s study on 100,000+ B2B webinar attendees, 91% of B2B professionals say webinars are their preferred type of content. 

Okay so it’s by far the fav type of content for B2B professionals to consume, but most brands struggle to get attendance rates of 50%. Where’s the misalignment?

It ALL comes down to the little things that really get people to show up.

1️⃣. Add to Calendar:

In your event registration, you NEED to have an add to calendar integration. Whatever platform you’re hosting your webinar on, make sure they have a way to add this button to your event page.

This will do two things: 1., encourage site visitors to check their calendar before they register, so they know they can actually come before registering (this will help with attendance rates).

2., once they do register, having the event on the calendar will keep it top of mind in the time between registering and the event going live.

Everyone’s busy, stake your claim into your registrant’s calendar, and increase the likelihood that they ACTUALLY show up for the event they registered for.

2️⃣. Live Q&A’s:

Another subtle tactic to use is adding a live Q&A session to ALL of your webinars. And do NOT record the Q&A, so that if people want their questions answered they have to attend.

This works especially well if you have some FIRE (channeling my inner Gen Z lol) guest speakers whose opinions and thoughts are craved and respected in the industry.

Even though this seems like a simple feature to add to your webinar, it really can move the needle on attendance rates because personalized Q&A’s from experts in many industries is a RARITY. It’s something even the best podcasts, YouTube videos, and Twitter threads can’t offer (there’s your differentiation).

3️⃣. Compelling Copy:

Your copy on the event registration page, your copy when positioning the webinar, and even the name of your webinar will make or break attendance rates.

Obviously copywriting is important, but that level of importance substantially rises when you’re talking about a FREE VIRTUAL EVENT. You can’t compete on price or convenience, since all your competitors can offer free and virtual, so you have to compete in other ways.

Scarcity and urgency are solid tactics, but by far my favorite is using FOMO in regards to the people speaking at the event. I love love love to position potential registrants AGAINST their competitors. Let me explain:

Instead of saying “Register now (there’s only 17 seats left) to listen to the best Performance Marketer this side of the Mississippi.”

Which by the way that copy isn’t too bad.

Say something like, “You know that one competitor? Yeah that one. The one who is always at your heels, trying to win market share. Their team just registered to listen to the Head of Performance Marketing for Meta at our webinar next week. Grab the last seats so you can stay a step ahead.”

The second copy example paints a picture. It tells a story, it plays on scarcity, and it positions your webinar less transactionally and more intriguingly.

No more of the boring, “Come to our webinar at 12pm on October 3rd” (which btw you should).

4️⃣. Webinar Time:

This might sound too simple, but look where your audience physically is and base your webinar time on their time zone.

If the majority of your target audience is based in Asia, host your webinar at a time where the majority of them are at their lunch break. Simple as that.

Don’t just say you’re hosting it at 3pm because you think that’s a good time. If the majority of people who you’re targeting can’t make that time, then that’s a horrible time to choose. 

The last few years we’ve hosted webinars and decided 12pm ET would be our standard webinar time because most of the attendees were saying they were watching during their lunch break in the comments.

On top of that, take into account your target audience’s weekly workload, we knew Marketers are typically swamped on Mondays, so we would never host a webinar on a Monday. 

5️⃣. Growth Hack:

Unlike social media, building buzz for a webinar and getting mass amounts of people to attend and engage is way more of a lift.

Getting 27 people to see your company’s LinkedIn post is easy, getting 27 people to attend your webinar would be a HUGE challenge. 

Don’t overlook getting scrappy. I’m sure there’s a company that you can think of right now (stop and brainstorm) whose product or service SUPPLEMENTS yours, (aka they ARE NOT A COMPETITOR). 

Reach out to them, see if they want to host a webinar WITH YOU.

Leverage both of your communities and target audiences to get more eyeballs on your event.

Co-brand the webinar, both push the event out in your Marketing channels, both brands tap into the rich networks of experts they have to get event speakers, and both brands reap the rewards of collecting emails and sharing the joint credibility and brand association.

A win-win.

Implement these 5 things for your next webinar, and watch the attendance rates creep up. 📈