Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

“Free” isn’t a selling point. If you want people to give up an hour of their time to come to your webinar, you need to give them real value in return.

I realize you probably think I’m stating the obvious, but I’m doing it for a very good reason. You see, I help businesses by writing e-mail promotions for their online events. I consider it a personal challenge to write content that drives interest and demand for their webinars, and after doing it for more than four years I think I know a thing or two about what works, and what doesn’t. Yet every once in a while, I encounter a webinar presenter who forgets the basic rule of value.

If you really want to kill attendance at your next webinar, here are three tips to do just that

Attendance-Killing Promotional Tactic #1: Emphasize how great you are

Forget about webinar content. Instead promote your vast experience, boast about big-name clients, and talk about how you’ve become independently wealthy with the products and services you sell.

Attendance-Killing Promotional Tactic #2: Reveal nothing.

If you decide to address webinar content, keep the reader in the dark, using vague descriptions, common, everyday language, and meaningless buzzwords to describe what you’ll talk about at the event.

Attendance-Killing Promotional Tactic #3: Throw in some unsubstantiated claims for good measure.

Finally, sprinkle that promotional material with unsubstantiated claims like “breakthrough sales” without providing any meat to back up your claims.

All kidding aside, your experience does have its place in promotions, and an element of mystery does sometimes work.

Don’t give away the farm in your promotion, but do provide enough teaser information to pique your readers’ interest in your event, and do sell them on the webinar content before you start to sell them on the value of YOU.

Then to make your webinar really convincing, offer up tangible proof that what you’ll be talking about works. Tease them with one, two, or three success stories that you’ll cover in-depth during the event, or share statistics that demonstrate success at your own firm.

One company that I think does a fantastic job with webinars is Citrix. Citrix sells a webinar service, but their strategy isn’t to invite people to an online event where they can learn about their product.

Instead, Citrix invites outside experts in to teach attendees webinar best practices, sales techniques, business strategies, etc. This approach is far more helpful, and as a subtle side benefit, attendees get to see how the Citrix webinar product works in practice.

Of course there will always be the odd case where a vague, boastful webinar promotion actually works, but if you want to improve your chances of a great turnout at your next event, strive to deliver great content, and sell the value of your content in the promotion.

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.