How to Run a Successful Webinar to Grow your Membership Site

Looking for a way to raise awareness and grow your membership site? A webinar may be just the ticket. Although running a webinar may seem daunting, if executed correctly, the rewards are well worth the effort.

In this article we’ll look at those rewards. We will discuss how to run a successful webinar and, most importantly, how to encourage interested webinar viewers to subscribe to your site.

Why Should You Run a Webinar?

Running webinars can be an extremely effective way to grow your membership site. It’s a great way to gain exposure. By promoting and running a webinar, you’ll grow your mailing list, increase followers on social media, and help drive traffic to your site. A webinar helps distinguish you from your competitors and gives you authority in your field.

Once you have an audience, conducting a webinar can be an effective way to sell your membership site. You can display your pages, sell the importance of your content, and explain how your webinar attendees will benefit from signing up. It’s your chance to convince potential subscribers your site is just what they need. What’s more, once you’ve broadcast your webinar, it can be repurposed and made available as part of your membership site. It’s a great way to add content.

You can also offer your webinars as premium content for your site. Regular, recurring webinars will make your members feel like they’re getting their money’s worth and add an exciting dimension to your business—and that’ll keep people interested in your site and encourage them to continue to subscribe.

Running a Successful Webinar

Careful and thorough preparation is key here. First thing you’ll need to do to run a successful webinar is to establish the aims of the webinar, who you’re targeting, and what you want them to learn. Then you can tailor your event accordingly.

Choose an Interesting and Relevant Topic

One of the most important aspects to get right is your topic. Make sure you choose something that’s interesting and adds value—something that resonates with your target audience, solves a problem they have, or helps them out. Something people can’t resist.

Struggling for inspiration? Think about some of the questions or areas you’re often asked about, or a topic that often pops up in forums. Or, if you want to be sneaky, check out which of your competitors’ webinars were particularly well attended.

Team Up with Other Experts

If the thought of running a webinar on your own is too daunting after all, consider teaming up with other leaders in your field. Recruit speakers, try interviewing someone as part of the webinar, or cohost it with other experts in your industry.

Not only will it take the pressure off, it will help attract a larger crowd of viewers as each speaker will bring their own following. Since these viewers have already shown an interest in your niche market, they’re your target audience.

Promote the Event

Bottom line is, if you don’t promote it well, people won’t attend. The promotion of your webinar is arguably more important than the webinar itself. Start advertising a month in advance by sending emails, advertising on social media, writing about it in your newsletters, and displaying a campaign for it on your site. If you have a reasonable budget, use Facebook or Google ads.

Build excitement around your event: Write a blog post that gets people fired up about your topic, and pique interest by creating a short video about the webinar. You can even run a competition on social media to encourage people to share your webinar details. The more people find who out about your webinar, and the more they engage with the idea of it, the better.

Create a Landing Page for the Webinar

If possible, you want people to sign up before the event. This lets you judge the size of your audience and be prepared. Create a landing page on your site to encourage people to sign up or show interest.

Although not everyone who signs up will show up, the fact that they have taken time to register makes them a legitimate lead. Stay in contact with these people, promote future webinars, and keep your membership site at the forefront of their minds.

Planning the Presentation

A webinar should last about thirty to forty minutes. Any longer and people start to lose interest. Keep your chat relatively fast-paced and use a fun, conversational tone.

Back up what you say with facts and examples and make sure the presentation is well organized so people can easily follow along. Where possible, use a few winning visuals— clear and concise slides, relevant pictures, and fun animations—to impress your audience.

Well before the live event, be sure to practice your presentation numerous times and test sound quality to make sure your viewers can hear you clearly.

Question and Answer Session

At the end of the webinar you’ll need to run a Q-and-A session. If you’re particularly nervous about this aspect of the webinar, ask people to send their questions in advance. You can then fill the session with questions you’ve already prepared the answers to.

The most important thing to remember is to relax and enjoy the presentation. This will come across during the webinar and will help to make it a real success.

How to Turn Webinar Attendees into Membership Site Subscribers

Now you know how to run a successful webinar. So, how do you get your webinar attendees to subscribe to your site?

Offer Discounts

Consider offering a membership discount to people who sign up before the end of the webinar. If they’re watching your webinar, they’re already interested in your niche. A membership site discount coupon may be just the push they need to join.

Accompanying Content

With each webinar you conduct, be sure to create content available only to site members. This could be worksheets, templates, case studies—anything that adds value and is relevant to the webinar. Irresistible content is a great way to encourage people to join up during or after the event.

Follow Up

Although people may not sign up on the day of the event, it doesn’t mean they aren’t considering it. Make sure you follow up with them. Email them to keep your site in their thoughts and to remind them of what they’re missing out on.  

Final Thoughts

Now that you’ve got a good idea of how you can recruit subscribers for your membership site with a successful webinar, you’ll need to pick a webinar tool. WordPress offers a selection of premium webinar plugins and services that’ll help you run things smoothly. Be sure to research your options so you can choose a solution that suits your needs.  

Are you ready to use webinars to promote your membership site? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.