5 Ways to Get More Leads Out of Your Webinars

Webinars are one of the best tools for B2B marketers to gather and nurture leads. Having produced well over 50 sessions, I have learned a few tricks to get the more leads out of each one.

First, the most important thing you need to do to maximize your number of leads is create your own registration form instead of using the one provided by your webinar provider. You’ll see why in a minute.  Most marketing automation solutions have a build in integration with the major webinar providers. There are also a number of form providers that offer integration.  

Tip 1. Ask qualifying questions on the registration form.

Add a few qualifying questions on your registration form. The questions might be about their buying interest, what types of products they use now or what their role is in the company. This will allow you to prioritize your follow-up and identify hot leads before the webinar is even held.

Tip 2. Offer the opportunity for people to sign up for the live session OR sign up to receive the recording.

Many of your prospects have busy schedules and may not be able to make the live webinar. This is especially true in healthcare where a doctor may have to choose between seeing patients or attending a webinar. By offering the chance to sign up for the recording, I have doubled the registration for my webinars.

In order to offer people a choice, you will have to have a registration form separate from the webinar provider. Since this is not standard functionality, even for a marketing automation solution, you may need to search the product help to figure out how to make it work. If you can’t easily pull this off, put some wording near the registration button that says “Register Now! If you can’t attend the live session, the recording will be sent to you within 48 hours of the session completion.” You will still see an uptake in registrations and don’t be worried when you see a lower percentage of people actually attending.

Tip 3. Keep the registration page up after the webinar is held.

If you have sent out a lot of email invitations, someone will click the link and sign up after the webinar has occurred. I have seen an increase of 10% by leaving the registration form up.  This only works if you have a registration form separate from the webinar provider. As soon as the webinar occurs, change the functionality of the sign-up form so it presents the registrant with a message the webinar occured, a link to the recording, and sends an alert to sales that they registered late.

Tip 4. Use the webinar recording to generate leads.

Don’t just put the webinar up on YouTube and forget about it. Put it on your website and ask prospects to fill out a form before they can see it. Depending on the topic, you may want to ask for only an email on the form so marketing can continue to market to the prospects or ask for more information so the name can go right to sales. Then post the link to the form page on your social media channels, blog about it, give it to sales, make it featured content on your website and send out promotional emails about it.

Tip 5. Call everyone who signs up.

Some of the best leads generated by webinars never attend or watch the webinar. They have interest in the topic or products so they sign up and get overbooked or too busy to attend. Attempt to reach out to everyone who signs up. It is easy to just say you were follow-up with them because they signed up and didn’t make it so you wanted to be sure they got the recording and answer any questions they have.

While these tips should help you generate more leads and prioritize those you generate, I also encourage everyone to test other variables. If you do hour long webinars, test out 15 or 30 coffee breaks session.  Try different topics. Test out different times of day. Try some of the newer technology such as Blab to host an interactive session.  

Please leave a comment with any other tips you have and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.