How to Use Webinars to Promote Your Online Courses: A Go-to-Guide

Webinars are the game-changing marketing channel you need to promote your online courses.

Webinars have become an essential tool and a great way to promote and sell online courses. Webinars provide valuable insights, showcase your expertise, and build a strong connection resulting in lead generation and building interest among your potential students.

As online education becomes the new normal, the global webinar market is $1.57 billion and expected to reach $4.44 billion by 2025. Other statistics reveal that 52% of marketers in the United States prefer live and on-demand webinars.

Sharing some of your best content live on a webinar can help you develop trust among your target audience. But first, you need to understand how to use webinars to promote your online courses if you want to win the game.

In this guide, we’ll be discussing the following steps:

1. Crafting Effective Call-to-Actions
2. Implementing Upselling and Cross-Selling Strategies
3. Providing Limited-Time Offers and Discounts
4. Building a Community Around Your Course
5. Collecting and Acting on Customer Feedback
6. Encouraging Audience Interaction and Q&A
7. Building a Landing Page for Registration
8. Collaborating with Influencers or Affiliates
9. Utilizing Multimedia Elements

How Can Webinar Help You Increase Sales and Enrollment Figures for Your Online Course?

Are you looking for ways to increase sales for your online course? If so, webinars may be the answer. Webinars are a powerful marketing and sales tool that can help you reach a larger audience, generate leads, and close sales.

• Webinars can be an effective way to:
• Increase visibility for your course
• Generate leads
• Close sales

Webinars are a great way to increase visibility for your course. By hosting a webinar, you can reach a larger audience than you would through other marketing channels. In addition, webinars are a great way to generate leads. Through a webinar, you can provide valuable information that will help potential students decide whether or not your course is right for them.

A wide range of webinar technology is available, and there is an extensive range of platforms to choose from. The recent lockdown has made it possible for people to use platforms like Zoom and Teams to host webinars.

Learning how to convert prospects using webinars can increase your enrolment figures significantly. According to stats, the average conversion rate of webinars is 55%.

The secret to generating enrollments for your webinar is to present the right pitch. Inform the potential learners about the fun parts of your course and how it will be valuable for them.

When 100 people get connected to the event with their webcams and microphones on, it will be tough to work in such a format. Everyone will be willing to do something, and even if you force mute everyone, the visual noise will remain. Thus, it is better when the moderator invites attendees to speak one by one, and only when it is essential. – Galina Yavorska

A webinar should contribute to the student’s understanding of the course content. Highlight what this course will teach and how it stands different than the others.

Determining whether to pursue a program requires much thought and consideration, particularly for those willing to enroll in online programs. When students attend a webinar, they get an opportunity to ask questions about the program. By the end of the webinar, they get answers to all their queries, helping them make the final decision. 

How To Sell Online Courses Using Webinars Platforms

Once you’ve finalized your online system, you must look for ways to sell online. You can promote an online system through webinars as part of the plan. But how?

Let’s dive into different ways and tactics you can use to sell online courses using webinar platforms.

1. Crafting Effective Call-to-Actions

Are you new to webinars or need help to get more sign-ups for your online course? It might be time to craft a compelling CTA. Boost your course registrations and engagement with CTAs that guide potential students to take the desired action.

Follow these tips to craft compelling CTAs:

• Be clear and concise
• Place CTAs strategically
• Use a sense of urgency
• Use action-oriented verbs
• Use contrasting colors

What is a good CTA for webinars? Here are some examples:

• Don’t miss out on our upcoming webinar! Sign-up now to avail an early bird discount.
• Limited seats are available! Register now for our webinar tomorrow and learn the latest industry trends.
• Join our exclusive digital marketing webinar that will take your marketing to the next level!

When you create an online course, ensure the use of keywords that can be used in CTAs for promoting online courses with webinars.

For example, the CTA is on the button that says ‘enroll for free with a starting date, compelling potential students to take the desired action and gain insight into a topic.

2. Implementing Upselling and Cross-Selling Strategies

Selling online courses is all about a solid marketing strategy. Webinars are the new home run for online course creators.

Using webinars to sell online courses, you can build relationships with potential students and gain trust. Cross-selling and upselling are the two most essential ways of engaging the audience and persuading them to take the desired action.

Upselling in webinars refers to offering the potential student a more advanced version or full access to an online course when they already intended to enroll. 

Cross-selling in webinars refers to providing complementary services such as additional materials or access to the library to potential students who have already decided to enroll in an online course. 

Here are some ways to use both strategies:

• Use a CTA in your webinar
• Experiment with each technique and compare the results
• Provide evidence or social proof about your online course reviews
• Present benefits of the upgrade

Remember, you must understand the whole picture and not base your strategies on assumptions. Know where you stand and how you can fulfill the needs of your potential students.

3. Providing Limited-Time Offers and Discounts

Do limited-time offers work? Yes, it works!

Limited-time offers and discounts are well-thought-out lead magnets that can boost enrolments for your online course. It’s a great opportunity, as potential students await these offers.

A limited-time offer increases course sales with webinars by creating a sense of urgency. However, creating the perfect offers for your webinars without annoying your prospects would be best.

Here are some valuable techniques to create a limited-time offer:

• Leverage your audience with a new experience
• Advertise your sales deadline
• Use holidays and seasons to drive urgency
• Use pop-ups to promote limited-time offers
• Keep your offers simple and brief

For example, the Hotel Management – Revenue Management for Beginners online course offers a limited-time offer that discounts students who enroll in the next 5 hours, as mentioned on the webpage.

Source: Udemyv

4. Building a Community Around Your Course

What makes your online course special? It is the unique insights that can only be found through your channel. You can build a community around your course and effectively promote online courses on social media.

So given the importance of community, you can follow these webinar promotion techniques for online courses:

• Set the tone for the community. Start with welcome and friendly communications, and actively engage your members with discussions.
• Create a safe learning environment where potential students feel comfortable speaking and asking questions related to the course.
• Offer incentives for participation, such as free resources or links to additional resources.
• Get feedback from your community and understand what topic interests them and what they find most helpful.
• Keep content fresh, and post relevant material tha that adds value to your online course.
• Build multiple interaction and engagement strategies to communicate with potential students and grow your community.

5. Collecting and Acting on Customer Feedback

Knowing what your potential students want and delivering it is the key to success. That’s why you need to understand webinar strategies for selling online courses. Ask for feedback from your webinar attendees and leverage it to improve their experience.

But how do you ask for real-time webinar feedback? It starts with a real-time feedback system that gathers and manages the input. 

Here are some steps you can follow to collect and act on customer feedback:

• Identify touchpoints
• Select the right questions to ask
• Choose the right feedback mechanism
• Organize feedback 
• Always close the loop through acknowledgment

6. Encouraging Audience Interaction and Q&A

So, you’ve started your webinar. But don’t know how to encourage audience interaction and Q&A.

With the right strategies for webinar audience engagement for online courses, you can keep them interested enough to listen to the whole webinar.

We’ve listed the seven best ways to engage the audience in an online webinar:

• Show hands!
• Polls
• Storytelling
• Inclusive questions
• Giveaways
• Live chat
• Social sharing

Pro-tip: Run a pre-webinar survey to understand what the audience expects from this event and what will work best to keep them engaged. Asking them questions will equip you with the right ways to engage and help them take action.

7. Building a Landing Page for Registration

A webinar landing page will boost online course registration and keep the target audience coming back for more information and details.

However, building a landing page for registration takes significant time and effort. Therefore you can contact an expert online course promotion agency for additional work.

Landing pages work best for webinar conversion strategies for online courses if you follow these steps:

Write a catchy headline that gets the visitor to stay on the landing page.

Write compelling body content that captures attention and retains it on the page.

Use high-quality images to make the landing page visually appealing and attractive.

Include click-worthy CTAs that encourage visitors to take the desired action.

Choose the best landing page builder that is easy to use and doesn’t requires technical expertise.

For example, the image below shows a landing page for an email training online program with the details and a catchy CTA that says ‘Master Emails Now,’ compelling potential students to enroll.

Source: Wiebe Marketing

8. Collaborating with Influencers or Affiliates

With the ease of accessibility, collaborating with influencers and affiliates for webinars to promote online courses can help you generate positive outcomes.

Influencers and affiliates engage that audience, resulting in webinar lead generation for online courses. To be more specific, key benefits include:

• Build brand awareness
• Reach a targeted audience
• Unique and effective promotions
• Budget-friendly market exposure

It is one of the best ways to take your online course promotion to the next level using a webinar that includes collaborators and affiliates.

9. Utilizing Multimedia Elements

Selling online courses using webinar platforms can be overwhelming when defining the format. You can include different methods that enhance the cognitive efficiency of your webinar for potential students.

Five primary media forms that can be incorporated into your online course webinar include text, static images, animations, audio, and videos. Multimedia makes the webinar more interesting and maintains engagement.

How To Create The Webinar Funnel For Selling Online Courses

A primary webinar funnel works in the following order:

You get traffic from a source (social media or email marketing). Once the people have signed up, they can attend the virtual event. You lead them toward a registration page where they confirm their enrollment in your course.

One loophole in this funnel is that the prospects may drop out at several points. For instance, they may not attend the event or finish watching the webinar.

However, following the funnel strategy helps you to qualify your leads. Students who are genuinely interested in your teachings will reach the final stage of the webinar funnel.

If you want to learn, check out our separate guide on how to create a sales funnel for an online course.

Here are the steps you should take to create a webinar funnel:

Step 1: Plan a Webinar Promotion Strategy

A webinar promotion strategy outlines how you intend to market your online course to gain attendance and attract potential students. This comprehensive plan gets you to win in the digital space.

Follow these seven steps to develop a webinar promotion strategy:

1. Know your audience
2. Set SMART goals
3. Plan the webinar content
4. Develop a landing page
5. Implement webinar tactics
6. Optimize post-webinar promotion
7. Continuously improve your strategy

When it comes to promoting your webinar and reaching your target audience, careful planning and creativity are key. By working with our online education marketing agency, they can develop a strategic promotion plan that aligns with your goals and budgetary constraints.

Step 2: Promote the Webinar

The first step of creating the funnel is to drive traffic to the webinar registration page. If you fail to attract traffic, you won’t get a high attendance. So, put all your efforts into driving quality traffic on the webinar registration page. 

One way to ensure that your webinar is well-articulated and effective is to start with a clear and comprehensive course outline. Your course outline should serve as a roadmap for your webinar content, highlighting key topics and learning objectives that you want to cover during your presentation.

It would help if you hosted a free webinar, as this will increase the traffic to your landing page. There may be a few prospects interested in a paid promotional webinar. 

There are a few ways to drive traffic. Some of which are:

Social Media

You can create social media posts with links to the webinar registration pages or opt for paid promotions on these portals. Given the massive reach of these platforms, you can drive massive traffic to your webinar registration page and eventually increase course enrollment with a webinar. Creating engaging social media content isn’t easy.

Email Marketing

This method comes in handy if you have a list of email subscribers. This method is quite effective as the subscribers are the people already interested in your brand. They will be more likely to check out your webinar landing page. Make sure you craft a compelling email about the upcoming webinar and use a catchy subject line over it. We have a dedicated guide on how to use email marketing to promote online courses. We highly suggest checking that out.

Leverage your Website

If you succeed in getting good traffic on your website, you can use it to get more traffic on your webinar registration page. Those visitors who are interested in the webinar will click on the CTAs and register for the webinar. It would be best if you also considered adding visuals with a compelling landing page copy. Take inspiration from high-converting landing pages to create copy that resonates with your audience. 

Step 3: Thank People for Signing Up

One essential step marketers often skip is thanking people for signing up. Keep in mind that people took the time out to register – thanking them can create a personal bond. You’ll need this bond to further nurture prospects into converting customers. 

You can create a custom thank you page to not only thank the people who registered for your webinar but also use this opportunity to inform them about what this webinar holds for them. Keep the thanking page simple. Let people register and share with their friends.

Step 4: Send Reminders

The chaotic world we live in today has made most of us forgetful. People who signed up for your webinar may also forget the date or time of the webinar.

That is why it is essential to set reminders about the upcoming webinar. 

You can use various communication channels to do this. For example, emails, Facebook notifications, or text messages. Sending the reminder through 2 or more channels will keep the information updated in the minds of those who registered. 

Step 5: Host the Webinar for Your Online Course

Hosting the webinar for your online course requires careful and comprehensive planning.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to hosting webinars for online courses:

1. Pre-webinar preparation: Set a date and time, choose a reliable webinar platform, and create an outline for the webinar.
2. Promote and invite participants: Announce the webinars to your target audience, and use compelling promotional copies, ads, and landing pages.
3. Set up the webinars: Customize your webinars with branding elements, understand platform features, and upload multimedia.
4. Deliver the content: Start the webinar, deliver clear and organized content in your webinar, and engage participants with information and facts.
5. Q&A and interaction: Allocate time for a Q&A session and be prepared for concise responses to ensure valuable exchange.
6. Closing: Summarize the key takeaways, don’t forget to post on social media, and share the participants’ experiences to increase future leads.

Step 6: Set up the Webinar Replay

Some prospects may not be able to attend the webinar even though they want to. If that happens, you should send them a link to the webinar replay where they can watch and understand all that your course offers.

You can also design an advanced webinar replay, including 2 – 3 reminder emails. This raises their chance of watching the webinar and all that they offer.

Step 7: Request Feedback

Acknowledge all people who attended the webinar and share valuable resources with them. You should also include a feedback form in the later conversations. This is to let them know how you value their opinions.

During this communication, you should also remind them about your CTA and how your course can help them enhance their skills.

The steps we just looked at cover how an ideal funnel works. If you succeed at creating a proper funnel, you will see your enrollment figures skyrocket. Even though the process is complex and time-consuming, the outcomes outweigh all the cons.

Also, read about the metrics to measure success of webinar

Benefits of Using Webinars for Online Course Promotions

Webinars are an excellent way to promote your online courses. Here are five reasons why:

1. You can build up your email list 

A webinar generates quality leads. So you don’t have to go around asking people for their email IDs. The webinar gives you a chance to compile an email list for your future interaction with prospects.

2. It expands your reach

The massive reach of a webinar is the best thing about it. All your leads are live and present. It is an excellent opportunity to interact with and educate them about your course.

3. It gets easier to collect feedback

Even though the general audience is there to attend a webinar, sometimes it may grab the attention of an expert. If you get their feedback, you have an opportunity to find shortcomings in your course and improve them.

4. You get quality leads

Webinars are real-time commitment opportunities. People don’t just attend a webinar for fun. Hence, all the effort you put into planning a webinar doesn’t drain at the end.

In fact, you can find quality student leads who are highly likely to enroll in the course.

5. It is a cost-effective marketing strategy

Apart from emails, webinars are another pocket-friendly marketing tool. You don’t have to rent a massive venue. You need to prepare a presentation, design a landing page, and conduct an online program on the webinar day.

These perks prove that webinars are one of the most effective lead-generation channels in the eLearning space. It is essential to learn how you can design a webinar that rolls in quality student leads and increased enrollments.

Final Words

With the online education industry booming further, using webinars to sell your online courses will help you stand out among others. It gives you more power to connect with your potential students and convert them into sales. Webinars are undoubtedly the best lead-generation tool.

Make sure your webinar content resonates with your audience. And to achieve that, you must align with your course content and target audience needs. To conclude, webinars are the new game-changer for online course creators.

ThinkOrion as an online promotion agency helps courses creators increase their student’s enrollments and website traffic