How To Leverage Past Attendees to Promote Your Webinar

Do you have a new webinar coming up and want to attract more attendees? One of the best resources to tap into to boost attendance is past event attendees. Your previous webinar audiences can be some of your leading brand advocates when marketing webinars, especially when you put on an amazing event. That rich potential can strengthen the success of your webinar marketing strategy.

The main reason they’re such effective advocates is that they offer social proof by recommending your webinars to friends and colleagues. This makes their associates much more likely to listen to their input and book your webinars if they’ve heard these events are insightful and worth the time attending.

Several webinar management tactics can successfully encourage past attendees to promote your next webinar. Thankfully, most of these are straightforward and don’t require a large, up-front investment. Here are just a few tactics top event marketers have found success with.

Early Bird Registration

One of the simplest ways to encourage people to sign up for your next virtual event is to offer an early bird discount or, if it’s a free event, early bird access to a limited number of registrants. A great tactic when marketing webinars is to ask past attendees to share the offer with people in their network who might be interested in attending. This capitalizes on word-of-mouth marketing about your event and can drive additional ticket sales or registrations.

Another option is to offer a two-for-one ticket deal. When a past attendee receives an offer like this, you provide an incentive for them to give the second ticket to someone in their network who most likely hasn’t attended your events previously. 

Exclusive Swag 

“Free” is a sure-fire way to grab people’s attention. When you give out exclusive swag to event attendees like t-shirts, coffee cups, and pens, they become walking billboards for your brand and are more likely to leave a memorable impression. It’s also a creative way for marketing webinars. All you need to do is ship out your exclusive swag before or after your event to your attendees. Numerous platforms have sprung up to automate the whole process of designing and shipping customized swag.

One strategy is to send swag as a reward to attendees who leave reviews or buy early bird tickets. This way, you’ll know who are fans of your brand, and they’ll be more likely to share and use the gifts you send.

Input on Future Events

Another great way to tap into your past attendees is to ask them for input on future events. Not only will this help you improve your events and overall webinar management strategy, but it also lets past attendees know that their feedback is valued. This will make them more likely to share your webinars and attend future events.

The best way to gather input is to survey previous audience members for valuable feedback. For example, past attendees may say they would’ve liked more real-world examples in your presentation or more graphics. You can then incorporate this feedback when marketing webinars or planning your next event. 

Create a Brand Advocacy Program 

A brand advocacy program is another great webinar marketing strategy. 

While some event promoters hire brand ambassadors, other marketers have had great success with setting up brand advocacy programs using past event attendees. While they might not have the same reach as a celebrity with hundreds of thousands of followers, they’ll promote your event in a more authentic way that’ll resonate more strongly with their friends and colleagues. 

Setting up a brand advocacy program is relatively straightforward. There are numerous software programs available to establish one and manage every aspect of it — from signing up members to sending out discount codes, swag, exclusive access to content, and other incentives. You can even offer members the ability to earn a portion of each ticket they sell by providing them with a custom link to share.

Establish an Event Community

Creating an exclusive community for event attendees to network and discuss your webinar is an effective way to have them spread the word about your future events. When people join your community, they’ll feel a sense of belonging and receive valuable networking opportunities and access to knowledge, which will make them more likely to share the wealth with others. 

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Setting up a community can be as simple as creating a LinkedIn group or one on the numerous community-building platforms available. You can then invite all past attendees to join the group. Once formed, make sure you interact with community members and post exclusive content regularly to ensure it remains interesting for members.

Ask for Reviews and Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials from past event attendees are a cost-effective way to get the message out about your webinars’ valuable and actionable advice and tips for attendees. 

The easiest way to ask for reviews is to send out a follow-up email to your audience. When requesting a review of your webinar, there are a few actions you can take to ensure you get ones that are valuable for your engagement marketing strategy, including:

• Send requests promptly. If your webinar was held on a Monday, send people a request to leave a review on Tuesday or Wednesday while the event is still fresh in their minds.

• Set a deadline. To make sure you receive reviews promptly, include a deadline of a few days so attendees remember to complete it. You can even send a follow-up email to remind them.

• Offer incentives. You can offer previous attendees an incentive like a discount on future event tickets. However, make sure the incentive isn’t the main reason they leave a review, as you want their words to be genuine.

• Respond to all reviews. When a past attendee leaves a review, you respond to it — especially the negative ones. This shows you’re appreciative of them taking the time to state their opinions and have taken their feedback into consideration.

Once you’ve received reviews and testimonials, share the best ones through your social media channels, event website, and email newsletter, as they’re a great tool for marketing webinars.. You can also ask reviewers to share them through their social media accounts to increase exposure for your webinars.

Share Past Webinar Content

Sharing compelling webinar content like video clips of your previous events is a great way to showcase them and entice people to attend your future ones. You can put together a highlights video or share specific segments of your past webinar and then send them to event attendees to share with their networks. This content is also great to share on your social media channels to expand your reach when marketing webinars

If you prefer not to share your content with the public though, you can share it through a private channel and send invites to past attendees only. This draws them into your community and creates a feeling of exclusivity by receiving special access to your content. With this glimpse at your content, they’ll be more likely to promote your webinar events to their friends and colleagues.

Final Thoughts

Implementing past webinar attendees into your event marketing plan is a simple way to boost sales and attendance without incurring significant up-front costs. By using webinar management tactics like early bird tickets, exclusive swag, requesting input on future events, creating a brand advocacy program, asking for reviews, and sharing exclusive content, you can unlock major value for both yourself and your audience.

Thankfully, there are many tools you can use to simplify attendee and webinar management, including Demio, which was designed by experienced event marketers. With their webinar software platform, you can manage every aspect of your webinar planning, production, and marketing. If you’re looking for help marketing webinars by tapping into the reach  of past attendees, Demio is worth checking out.

Regardless of which tactics you employ to boost your webinar marketing, make sure you start by testing your strategies with a small group of past attendees to learn what works and what doesn’t. Once you find the best-performing tactics, double-down on them to find your best event advocates.

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