Whether or not you work with a Linkedin advertising agency, you can utilise the platform to advertise your brand.
If you’re considering creating a webinar to reach a hot audience, LinkedIn can serve to help you create the ultimate ad (and audience) to market it.
Let’s dive deeper.
1 – Why Use Webinars?
Webinars may seem a little old school, but in reality, they can be a vital tool in your marketing belt.
Webinars date back to the 1990s, but they’re still a high-ranking and successful marketing strategy for informing and engaging audiences, and owing to the advancement of technology in the last twenty years, they’ve come a long way in terms of being creatively interaction- and immersion-focused.
Don’t believe us? Here’s some stats: More than half (52%) of present day webinars rake in over 100 attendees, and circa 24% of webinars bring in over 500 attendees.
So, webinars are indeed valid, and if you’re a B2B marketer, you should consider climbing aboard the bandwagon. And once you’ve done that, here’s how to go about promoting it.
Case Study: How We Helped a Security Analytics Software Company Generate 42% More SQLs Using LinkedIn Ads
2 – Promoting Your Webinar on LinkedIn
So, you want to whip up your webinar, dazzle your audience, and get a good conversion rate flowing? That’s all very well, but first, you’ll need to do a bit of promo planning.
Here’s how to do that in three easy steps:
1 – Make Sure Your Content & Format is Audience-Friendly
This means knowing your target audience, and what appeals to them.
Before you begin the webinar-building process, you’ll need to be clear on who your target audience is, what the purpose of the webinar is, and how to apply the right creativity to it.
As webinars go, there are usually three approaches: filmed conversations, narrated slideshows, and product demos.
Deciding on the right approach means having an idea of what you want to achieve via your webinar. Also, timing is important. It can be wise to coincide the date of your webinar with relevant other activities – such as product or service launches. While they shouldn’t all be scheduled for the same day, keeping them close can aid in the Buyer’s Journey.
Also, your webinar shouldn’t be the only component of your strategy – it should be a portion of it, so don’t forsake other marketing tactics.
2 – Pinpoint your Audience
This is crucial.
You’ll only want to market your webinar to people who you know would benefit from attending – so research accordingly. This is when it’s time to log in to LinkedIn.
Using this platform will allow you to narrow down precisely on the demographic you wish to attract, which is based on algorithm data of other LinkedIn users.
You have two options: account-based marketing, or broader spectrum audience targeting. Either will allow you to use the platform’s advanced segmentation tools to narrow down on the right audience.
LinkedIn allows you to be specific about your targets and search via location, job title, seniority, company, education, company size, etc, which enables a refined audience search.
Once you understand what the benefits of your webinar are, this will help you build your audience.
3 – Time & Place
Scheduling is a huge part of webinar success, because an important element of many webinars is interaction, which means you’ll want your audience to be live, as opposed to those watching it on repeat later.
So, with this in mind, you’ll want to pick a time when the majority of your audience will be available to attend live. A good suggestion is lunchtime on a Wednesday or Thursday, which are typically quieter lunch hours that won’t be occupied by meetings or errands.
Also, people are busy and events can slip minds, so including an “Add to Calendar” option on your webinar event ad will allow the attendees to be reminded in advance. And if you use LinkedIn Events to promote your webinar, you can allow for three reminders to go out to your audience, just to be sure.
4 – LinkedIn Updates
LinkedIn Updates allows marketers to harness the power of imagery to attract viewers to their ads on LinkedIn, as well as other social media channels.
The trick is to use good, high-resolution images from decent, copyright-free places, such as Canva, and make sure they’re in-keeping with the image dimension requirements of LinkedIn. Make sure your titles and other ad text is clear, concise, to-the-point, and grammatically accurate too.
When using LinkedIn Updates to promote your webinar, you’re well-advised to start advising around three weeks prior to when the date of the event is to give the ad enough time to successfully circulate and build momentum.
Case Study: How We Helped Kodo Survey to Generate 167% More Leads in 3 Months Using LinkedIn Ads
5 – Make Your Ad Promotion-Friendly
This means creating a campaign that is easy for colleagues, family, and friends to share via their own LinkedIn and social media pages.
If your brand has multiple team members/departments, encourage everyone to share the event. The same goes if you’re liaising with partners or influencers for the webinar. Get promotion flowing from both sides.
6 – LinkedIn Groups
Regular users of LinkedIn will know that the platform is rife with relevant groups – and no doubt you’re a part of one or more.
If you’re able to share your ad within these groups, do so – but don’t be spammy about it! No one likes a pushy salesperson!
7 – Relevant Content
A great tactic when promoting a webinar is to align it with sharing relevant content that expels a similar purpose to that of your webinar (being mindful, of course, not to share competitors’ content!).
This can be blogs, videos, and infographics – anything that backs up what your webinar is going to say and why it’s relevant to your audience.
When building your ads, it is imperative to make sure your call-to-action (CTA) is easy to see, therefore easy for the audience to click on.
8 – Sponsored Content
If your marketing budget allows for it, it can be useful to implement Sponsored content to promote your webinar, as they will literally advertise your content while you’re asleep, if you so wish!
This will help boost the visibility of your ad at times that are most relevant to your audience, which can be extremely beneficial if members are in different timezones; as well as targeting based on other attributes, such as skills, job title, etc.
9 – LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn Ads allow you to bolster cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) ads, which work slightly differently from Sponsored Ads, insofar as how they are shown to audiences.
Implementing these methods can only be done if you have a marketing budget, so do be mindful of this.
10 – Lead-Gen Forms
Lead-gen forms serve to optimise the registration rate of users to your content (in this case, your webinar), which then provides you with their data, enabling you to mark them as potentially relevant audience members for current or future campaigns.
And this can come in use for your webinar promo, because you can simply include a specific CTA within your current Sponsored/LinkedIn ads to garner this information, which will then automatically register them for attendance of your webinar.
This is particularly ideal for a more personalised approach to marketing, as well as targeting busy LinkedIn members who don’t like filling it form (fun fact: LinkedIn automatically inputs their data for them).
11 – InMail
Last but not least, your final LinkedIn tool is InMail Ads.
If your audience is rather small and/or niche, InMail Ads can be the ideal solution for targeting them. Also, LinkedIn’s targeting data will allow for you to connect with them in a personalised “DM-style” ad.
Additionally, using the platform’s Sales Navigator tool allows you to reach even more potential audience members and invite them to attend your webinar.
Final Thoughts
Harnessing LinkedIn to promote your webinar can open you up to a heavily pinpointed target audience via an ad campaign, as well as giving them ample reminders of the event, and maintaining their data to use for future campaigns.
If you’d like to learn more about how we help B2B SaaS and Tech companies grow their MRR through LinkedIn advertising, contact us online or send us an email today at info@getuplead.com to speak with someone on our team.
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