Webinars are powerful marketing tools. They help businesses build authority, attract qualified leads and drive sales. According to a survey conducted by ClickMeeting webinar platform among B2B decision makers:
- 76% B2B buyers based their purchasing decisions on attending webinars
- 41% of them prefer interactive and video content
- 35% of them prefer on-demand audio/video content
This means that the more webinar attendants you can get, the more your chances are to get more sales. But how do you manage to boost attendance way over your average rates? With the help of Facebook™ ads, of course.
Facebook™ Ads and Webinar: Best Friends Forever
“Facebook™ ads again?” Yes! And for a good reason. The purpose of any ad is to reach the largest possible qualified audience. Where can you be sure that you will find your prospects? On a business forum? Maybe—if you are a B2B business. On various news and entertainment websites? Chances are they run an ad-blocker and your banner ads won’t show.
Facebook™, on the other hand, is the online forum with over 1.3 billion active monthly users. These users spend time every day browsing their news feeds and they will see ads and boosted posts among other types of content. The Facebook™ ads algorithm has not yet been fully counteracted by ad blocking software.
Thus, Facebook™ ads are the best way to promote your webinars—especially because you are not asking people for their money, but only for a bit of their time.
A Winning Strategy for Webinar Promotion with Facebook™ Lead Ads
Facebook™ Lead Ads were created to help businesses get more subscribers with minimum friction. Simply put, instead of being taken to a landing page (so, away from the social media platforms), users who click on Lead Ads see their name and email address auto-filled by Facebook™ in a sign-up form. All they have to do is click for confirmation.
Now, this sounds really simple, but there is a bit of work to be done if you want to get good results—that is, lots of webinar attendants.
- The Graphics
The design of any ad is a critical element leading to its success or failure. In Facebook™, as you probably know already, it’s all about the visuals, and with very little accompanying text. You should think of an image or video sequence that is likely to make people stop scrolling and click on your ad.
- The Audience
Now, a good reason to use Facebook™ ads frequently is the fact that you can build various custom audiences and lookalike audiences, save them for future use and segment them according to various ad purposes.
For webinar sign-ups, the most important selection criteria are those related to interests, past purchases from you and the website sections they previously visited. For example, if someone watched or read lots of tutorials on your website, they are definitely going to be interested in attending a webinar.
- The CTA
Make it short, snappy and make it sound compelling. “Save your seat” sounds good because it makes people feel special—they have a reserved seat, so they must be important. Using the scarcity principle is also good, as in “Last 100 seats—save yours!” The human instinct is to take advantage of something that is about to become unavailable.
Do not Forget about Messenger Ads
A new form of Facebook™ ads are those displayed as direct chat messages in the Messenger app. Direct chat ads have an even higher conversion rate than regular Facebook™ ads, because they have a very high opening rate. People nearly always open Messenger notifications right away and read them. They do not perceive these communications as advertising, but as conversations.
Right now, you can opt between:
- Destination Ads—the user is directed to a message thread instead of a landing page and you can send them the invitation to join your webinar;
- Sponsored Message—your ad is sent directly to the user’s Messenger inbox, like any message sent by a friend in their list; and
- Home Section Ads—these will appear in the Home area of Messenger, where the users see the list of the conversations.
In order to create a Messenger ad, you will go to your Facebook™ ads account, go to the section “Create Ad” and select the “Messages” option.
Remember, every webinar is an opportunity to close sales, so make sure you get as many potential customers as possible to attend your webinars.