Webinar Lead Generation: How to Use Webinars for Leads

No business can survive without leads. That’s why businesses spend so much time and effort perfecting their lead generation strategy.

Have you considered webinar lead generation?

If you haven’t, maybe you should.

Webinars are an excellent way to offer value to your audience right away. You can impart knowledge while building a rapport and relationship with your audience.

You can then turn your real-time webinars into on-demand ones to provide value to those who couldn’t attend them too.

They can also be a great way to generate quality leads.

According to reports, 78% of marketers consider webinars valuable lead generation tools. In fact, 38% of marketers use webinars primarily for lead generation, while 32% focus on lead nurturing.

If your current webinar efforts aren’t yielding the desired results, there’s still room for improvement in turning them into a powerhouse for your lead generation process.

So, let’s try to decode how you can drive up your webinar lead generation to grow your sales from them.

Let’s dive in.

Why Use Webinar Lead Generation to Generate Sales Leads?

Have you ever produced a webinar? If you have, you know that a great webinar takes a lot of time and effort.

So, why should you dedicate so much time and effort into creating one? Why not focus on other tactics that are less time-consuming?

Here’s why.

Generate High-Quality Leads

If you produce an amazing webinar, you’ll get a lot of leads who’ll want to learn from you.

But, it doesn’t stop at that.

The leads you get are not just people interested in your product. They are high-quality sales leads, which means they are interested in buying your product.

If someone registers for and attends a webinar, they are looking for in-depth information on the topic. Such people are more engaged and ready to take action. And the right type of webinar can just do the trick for you.

Here is a webinar hosted by Gartner, an industry leader.

Image via Gartner

People who want to know more about Master Data Management would be more than willing to register for the webinar. They will also not hesitate to share their information during the registration process, which, in turn, helps Gartner collect high-quality leads.

Build Trust

When brands produce webinars, they usually do so on topics they are experts at. So, when you host a webinar, you position yourself as an authority. That’s what can get people to start trusting you.

When people think of you as an expert, they trust you because they see you as someone who’s a knowledgeable source of information. They believe the information you provide and rely on your advice.

The more people trust you, the more they’re likely to do business with you.

And that’s why webinars do better than other forms of content marketing, such as videos or e-books. You can directly interact with your audience during them. They can put across their questions and concerns, and you can address these on the spot. This helps build rapport and trust with the audience.

By showing your attendees your unique perspective, you can get them more interested in your brand as well.

Get Leads from Anywhere

Many businesses have been using in-person seminars as a tried and tested lead generation tool. These seminars are very restrictive because they’re location-dependent. You will probably only get attendees from in and around the location.

However, webinars give you a global reach.

This means you can use them to engage potential leads from the other side of the globe, too.

And this can help you amp up your lead generation efforts and get you potential clients from all over the world. This can enable you to expand your customer base without a lot of investment.

Even if you are targeting locals, attending a webinar is much more convenient than driving to a seminar. So, webinars can help you cast a wider net there too.

Boost Audience Engagement

Webinars provide an interactive platform for engaging with participants directly. Unlike static content, webinars include features like polls, Q&A sessions, and live chat.

Implementing these lead capture mechanisms will ensure audience engagement while gathering essential insights.

During a live webinar, you can interact with attendees in real time, answer their questions, and guide them through your product or service offerings.

This interactivity creates a dynamic experience, making your audience feel involved and valued. This leads to increased engagement with your brand and conversion.

9 Webinar Lead Generation Tips to Help You Generate Sales-Ready Leads

People expect webinars to be content-packed, professional, and polished. Only informative and effective webinars can help you generate leads that meet your business objectives.

So, where should you start?

To begin with, follow these 9 webinar lead generation tips to ensure your webinars generate the maximum leads for your business.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

Before you can give your audience what they want, you need to understand who they are.

How else would you go about customizing your webinar to suit their tastes?

Creating a “buyer persona” can help you target the right people. It gives you a clear picture of who you are marketing to.

The image below shows the various factors to keep in mind when creating a buyer persona.

Image via Pinterest

When you know who your ideal buyer is, you can develop effective, targeted content in your webinars that addresses their goals and challenges. And that’s exactly what can help you significantly improve your sales conversion rate.

Once you know the specific pain points of your audience, you can craft your webinars such that they address these points and resolve them. This can help you cement your reputation as a reliable source that solves their problems, and it could help with lead generation.

How do you know what their needs or pain points are?

You can use the following methods to design your buyer persona.

Surveys

You can organize surveys to identify what your potential customers want from your brand. These surveys can help you easily figure out their pain points. The wider the audience of these surveys, the better your buyer persona will be. This can also ensure that your insights for the webinar topics are better.

Social Media

Use social media to check out brands that sell products or services similar to those you plan to promote in your webinar. Go through their posts to see what kind of messaging their customers are most responsive to.

Pay attention to reviews and testimonials to understand what’s working for them and what’s not. In the webinar, you can tweak your products and messaging accordingly.

Interviews

Identify a few prospects and try to learn about their preferences and habits. You can conduct one-on-one interviews with these prospects to dive deeper into their needs and problems. While this would be a small sample group, it can offer deep insights you wouldn’t otherwise get from surveys.

Webinar Registration

The information you gather from the webinar registration form can be used to further refine your buyer persona.

Instead of just the name and email address, try gathering additional information, like the example below. It can help you better understand your audience demographics.

Image via Pinterest

2. Create an Outstanding Landing Page

Every webinar needs an outstanding landing page to connect with its target audience.

Build your landing page with the buyer persona in mind for maximum impact. For your audience to fill out your webinar registration form, targeting their pain points, needs, wants, and challenges is important.

What’s more?

While your landing page copy is important, it should also be simple and straightforward to enable a smooth browsing experience. When things are explained in simple words, your audience will understand them with ease and it can nudge them to register for your webinar.

You should also use attractive images to engage the page visitors further. It can make all the difference to your webinar lead generation rate.

Here are some other landing page optimization tips for a high-converting webinar registration page:

• Write a compelling headline to get your audience to open your landing page.
• A good meta-description is also necessary to improve your SEO results.
• Incorporate a short video to explain what the webinar is about. You can check out the example below.

Image via Neil Patel

• Simple but effective copy that highlights the benefits of your webinar. Don’t forget to add a call-to-action.
• Place the webinar form at the right spot.
• Include client testimonials and social media comments as social proof.
• Create urgency. Use a countdown timer, a note on limited spaces, or whatever works for you. By creating urgency, you encourage your visitors to take action right away.
• Ensure that you include a brief bio of the speakers to add credibility.
• Use SEO best practices to ensure your webinar registration page reaches the maximum number of people.

Pro Tip: If your goal is webinar lead generation, you may want to offer the webinar for free. Don’t forget to mention that it is “free” so more people sign up.

3. Offer On-Demand Webinars

People are pressed for time. They want to consume content as and when it is convenient for them.

Allowing attendees to watch your webinar content on-demand after the event has passed may encourage more people to sign up for the event. The best webinar software lets you easily record your live webinars and turn them into on-demand ones.

Here is an example of an on-demand webinar.

Image via Wistia

They can easily view the recording at a later date and experience the same feeling as watching the webinar in real time.

Pro Tip: There is another benefit to offering on-demand webinars. You can continue promoting the webinar even after the live date, which translates to continued webinar lead generation.

4. Consider Joint Venture Webinars

You should consider partnering up with another company to offer joint venture webinars. Just by bringing in a co-host, you can significantly improve your webinar’s reach (and lead generation, of course!).

You’ll be able to promote your webinar to your own audience, and the other company's audience. The more people you can reach, the more effective your webinar lead generation will be.

Here is an example.

Image via Pinterest

Another advantage is that the other company will promote the webinar with equal enthusiasm, which can further enhance your reach and lead generation.

Pro Tip: Research potential partners well. Your webinar lead generation strategy will only be effective if you partner with someone who offers high-quality content suitable for your audience.

5. Promote Your Webinar

If your goal is webinar lead generation, promoting your webinar is a crucial step you can’t afford to miss. Promoting your webinar right will boost its reach, and that’s exactly what you need to drive its lead generation.

Here are a few tips for promoting your webinar to ensure effective webinar lead generation.

Leverage Email Marketing

Start by creating an email marketing campaign to promote your webinar to your existing subscribers. They know and trust you, which is why they are more likely to register for the event.

Once you have covered your existing audience, you can expand the reach of your email marketing campaign with cold emails.

When you send an email to your audience, ensure that the content of the email focuses on the webinar only. The CTA you use should also direct your audience to the webinar registration page, as in the example below.

Image via Really Good Emails

Pro Tip: Use email marketing tools to start a drip email campaign to drive better lead generation.

Use Social Media

You can use avenues like Facebook Events to post social media updates about your webinar. Similarly, you could create posts about your webinar and share them on various social platforms.

LinkedIn Events is another good choice to promote your upcoming webinar.

The key is to use multiple channels for a wider reach.

What’s more?

Make sure you use high-quality images and appropriate hashtags to capture audience attention.

You should also respond to comments on social media and engage with your audience. This will encourage them to share your webinar details with their friends and colleagues.

Pro Tip: Hashtags can help you expand the reach of your organic content on social media. Use hashtag generator tools to find the best hashtags for your posts.

Use Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is an amazing way to target new audiences. Pick advertising platforms that allow audience segmentation so that you can improve your targeting.

Segmentation helps create groups of buyers with common needs. This allows you to get your message in front of the right people. It also improves your ad’s effectiveness, leading to better utilization of your budget.

Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads are some of the paid advertising options you can explore.

6. Build Excitement

Have you attended every webinar that you have signed up for?

Perhaps not.

You may have had something urgent come up. Maybe you just lost interest in the webinar or simply forgot about it.

That’s why it’s very important to generate excitement around your webinar. One tip for webinar lead generation is to send timely reminders to your attendees so they don’t forget about the webinar. You can accomplish this through drip email campaigns.

Ensure that you send out a series of reminder emails to your webinar attendees. Your webinar attendees should start getting emails reminding them of the webinar at least a week before.

Here’s an example from Zoom.

Image via Really Good Emails

The more attendees you get, the more potential customers you have, and the more webinar lead generation and sale opportunities.

Remember the following when you send reminder emails:

• Ensure that the date, time, and link to attend the webinar are available in the email.
• Include a link in the email that adds your webinar to the attendee’s calendar app.
• Highlight the benefits of your webinar in the email.
• Add your brand story to help new leads familiarize themselves with your brand.
• You may also include a survey to learn more about your audience’s problems. It could help you gather some very helpful webinar data.

Here is an example of a reminder email.

Image via Neil Patel

7. Use Features That Increase Engagement in Your Webinar

It’s a lot easier to connect with people in real life than virtually.

When hosting webinars, how do you interact and engage with your audience in a way that feels more “real” and “natural?”

We recommend including the following features in your webinars for lead generation.

Q&A

Keeping your webinars interactive makes it easier to generate interest around them.

One way of going about this is by allowing your attendees to submit their questions directly to the presenters. You may also allow others to upvote questions they would like to be answered on priority.

This will allow your presenters to answer the most pressing questions first.

Want to add a personal touch?

You can have multiple Q&A rounds during the webinar to answer as many questions asked by people as possible.

Public Chat

In a live event, you can strike a conversation with your audience instantly. But this can be a bit challenging in virtual events, such as webinars.

However, you can always use a chat box.

Encourage your attendees to ask questions, or put down their thoughts and opinions in the chat box.

Have a moderator monitor the public chats. If there is no activity, the moderator may post a question to start a discussion. It’s a great way to spur engagement in the webinar.

8. Offer Valuable Incentives

People love free gifts, so giving away incentives like discounts, ebooks, or exclusive content can motivate leads to register.

Ensure these incentives are relevant to your target audience and tied to your webinar's theme.

For example, a free guide on advanced email strategies would be a perfect incentive if you're offering a webinar on email marketing.

This will add value and make the webinar more enticing. The right incentives will not only afford you a successful webinar but can also improve webinar lead generation efforts.

Pro Tip: Make your incentive exclusive to webinar attendees to create a sense of urgency and exclusivity.

9. Follow Up After the Webinar

Your work doesn’t end when the webinar is over. Following up with attendees is crucial to nurturing those leads into sales and engaging in your future webinars.

Send a thank-you email and provide a webinar recording for those who missed it. To move the lead further down the sales funnel, you can also include a call to action, like a special offer or a free consultation.

A well-timed follow-up email can create a lasting impression and turn casual attendees into loyal customers.

Pro Tip: Segment your follow-up emails based on attendee behavior—those who engaged more in the webinar might be ready for a demo, while others might need further nurturing.

FAQ

Q1. How do you generate leads for webinars?

A. Here are 9 tips for webinar lead generation:

• Identify your target audience
• Create a powerful landing page for the webinar
• Prepare webinar content that speaks to potential buyers
• Consider joint venture webinars for wider reach
• Promote your webinar
• Build excitement through timely reminders
• Use interactive features to increase engagement
• Provide valuable incentives for webinar lead generation
• Follow up after the webinar

Q2. What do you do with leads from a webinar?

A. You should do the following with your webinar leads:

• Use lead scoring to prioritize your leads
• Ensure your sales team targets hot leads directly
• Personalize a post-webinar email campaign for lead nurturing
• Start a retargeting campaign for attendees
• Follow through on webinar marketing

Q3. Is a webinar a lead magnet?

A. Yes, webinars are lead magnets as you’re providing them as a resource in exchange for contact information. In fact, they are one of the best ways to generate qualified leads and fill your sales funnel.

Q4. How do you nurture leads after a webinar?

A. After the webinar, look at your webinar stats and send an email survey to gather feedback from your attendees. Study the feedback to understand what clicks with them and start communicating with them further to nurture them.

Q5. How do I attract more people to my webinar?

A. You can attract more people to your webinar with these tips:

• Pick a relevant topic
• Promote your webinar
• Offer high-quality content
• Simplify the registration process
• Connect with industry experts

Conclusion

Webinars can be great tools for lead generation, but only if you have a carefully crafted strategy. From creating the right landing page to sending out emails, there are many things you need to take care of.

The key is to understand your audience well and craft your webinar strategy and its supportive messaging such that they’re attracted to it. This can help you get targeted leads who can become conversions too.

Do you have more questions regarding lead generation success through webinars? If you do, please leave them in the comments section.