Businesses love investing in social media ads to promote their webinars because they have a high registration rate of 51%. Also, around 20% of webinar attendees convert to buyers. But the only way to achieve these high conversion rates is to ensure your webinars are attended by the right people. As such, social media marketing – with its advanced targeting options, is a great way to hone in your webinar ads and boost performance.
To help with this, in this post, I’m going to show you the six steps you need to take to best promote your webinar with social media ads.
Let’s get into it.
1. Get into the webinar promotion mindset
Promoting a webinar is very different from promoting any other lead magnet, as it’s a one-time live event. This is a key element to keep in mind.
As webinars differ from other lead magnets, you need to promote them in a different way. Hence, while setting up your webinar’s social media ads, and respective landing pages, always keep in mind that this is a one-time event.
2. Set up an effective landing page
As noted, it’s important to inform people that this is a one-time live event that they don’t want to miss out on. You should also note this on your landing page – the exclusivity and scarcity of the event is a key selling point.
You also need to add in all the other relevant details on your landing page, including the headline, body copy and call/s to action. Tease the reader with all the important topics you ‘ll cover in the webinar, and make sure you add all the necessary fields too. These could range from basic details, like the name and email, to extra details like company name, number of employees, position, etc. It all depends on your aim.
And of course, don’t forget to include the date and time at which the webinar will take place.
An optimized and effective landing page is key to all your webinar promotion efforts – as we’ll cover later in these steps.
3. Choosing the basic ad design
For creating the basic design of your social ad, you should consider following the conversion scent principle, where the design of the landing page matches the design of the ad.
Following this principle has been shown to increase conversion rates, as it creates a stronger connection between the webinar landing page and the ad.
Begin by using the same colors you’ve used on your landing page on your ad background image. Also, use the same font on your landing page headline in your ad copy.
Once you have this basic design in place, you can begin optimizing the ad copy.
You can easily create an ad image that resembles your landing page by using a free tool like Canva. They have various overlays, fonts, colors, etc. you can add to the image.
4. Don’t promote the webinar – promote the landing page
A common mistake I see people making with social media ads is promoting the webinar directly. Your overall goal is to get more people to sign-up for the webinar, but this doesn’t mean that your ad’s entire emphasis should be to get people to take this action.
If you want your ad to convert well, then you should take baby steps – only use the ad to send people to the landing page. If it does this job, and the landing page is well set up, your landing page will complete the task of getting more webinar registrants.
Hence, optimize your ad copy to only promote the landing page.
5. Create unique images for each social network
If you plan to use ads on several social networks to promote the webinar, you should create unique ads for each of them, and ensure you follow the guidelines and best practices of the specific networks. Using the same ad is simply not as effective, and won’t work at all in many cases.
For example, when creating your ads on Facebook, you’ll want to limit the image text to less than 20% of the entire image, as exceeding that amount can reduce the reach of your ad. And while creating Pinterest ads, you should use tall images, as they get the highest engagement.
Ensure you check out the best practices on each of the social networks before creating your ads.
6. Always test before investing all your money
Before you invest hundreds and thousands of dollars into your ad, you need to ensure it works. Therefore, test your ad by investing a figure less than $30 at the beginning. If the click and conversion rate are high, you can go ahead and implement the rest of your ad budget.
If you want to be even more meticulous, you can do a soft webinar launch to see how many of the attendees turn to customers. If you see good response, it shows that the ROI will likely be positive, lessening the risks.
Also keep track of which social networks are generating the best results so that you can invest more of your money into ads on these platforms.
Tools like AdEspresso and Adstage make it easy to track your results.
This is how you promote your webinar with social media ads. A good landing page is essential, promoting the key aspects of the webinar, then you need to create unique ads for each of the different social networks you’re using, and focus on bringing potential attendees across to your landing page.
But don’t dive in and invest your entire budget immediately. Start with low investment to see if the ads convert. Invest the rest of the budget only if you are happy with the results.