How to Use Webinars to Increase Course Sign-ups

You have created a course with amazing content on Senseily. You have already had a couple of intrigued students enroll in it, but you hope to grow your business and get more enrolments coming in. The good news is creating webinars is among the low-cost ways with a moderate time investment to get the word out there.

Webinars are widely used as a tool to give your potential audience a sneak peek of your course content, garner interest, promote your course and improve your branding.

Decide on the purpose and format of your webinars

As your purpose is to introduce the course to potential learners, the typical format for the course can be one of the following:

• Live, single expert presentation: You give a presentation on a topic in which you offer your expertise in the form of tips, advice, or guidance.
• Multi expert panel: You invite a couple of experts and/or influencers within the same area of your online course in order to discuss and share opinions on a certain topic.
• Demo class/workshop: You give a sample introductory class using an excerpt of the materials that you have already created for your course.

Regardless of the webinar format, it is advisable to allocate time for interactions with your audience as well as Q&A either throughout or at the end of the session. This can make your audience feel connected to you and relate to your course materials on a deeper level instead of passively listening.

You can also explore pain points that your audience face through their feedback, which in turn helps improve your webinars and your course content as a whole.

Prepare your webinar content

If you wish to take a slice out of your course content for the seminar, it is wise to choose an evergreen topic, which means a topic that always remains relevant and does not get old over time. It should be beginner-friendly and accessible to a broad range of audience.

Considering a successful webinar typically only lasts between 30-60 minutes, your webinar content should be easy to grasp, yet meaningful by providing your audience with a certain takeaway.

Your presentation slides should be crisp and clear with readable fonts and colors. In case you choose to collaborate with other speakers, make sure your content is consistent and synchronized with each other in terms of the structure and message in advance.

In your webinar, you should introduce yourself and the course content, deliver the webinar in the form of an introductory session to your course and/or training relevant to the topic, present the option to subscribe to your course, and finally, hold a Q&A session for attendees in case they have inquiries regarding the webinar or the course itself.

Choose a webinar software application

Several software applications that are suitable for launching webinars include the following:

• Zoom
• Youtube
• Skype
• ClickMeeting
• GotoWebinar

Choose a webinar software with an interface that is easy to use. In order to create high quality webinars, you should pay attention to features that allow you to interact with your audience and gain insight from their attendance. These helpful features include but are not limited to poll/survey, live chat, screen sharing, analytics, etc.

Choose a date and time for your demographics

Think about the time zone that your audience will be attending. The demographics of your attendees can also influence the time of the day that they can allocate a time slot in their schedule to attend the webinars.

For instance, if you target working professionals who hope to enhance their employable skills, after 6pm on a weekday might be good timing when they are off working hours. Or, if you target retired seniors looking for leisurely self-education, mid-morning at 11am can be a refreshing time for them to start their day with some new knowledge.

Invite people to your webinars

To attract the attention of an interested learner, you should create a short and sweet pop-up that introduces your webinar on your course homepage. On the pop-up or an ad, the necessary information of the webinar should be very clear: who will be speaking, what the content will be, when the webinar will be held, and how to register.

You can collect participants’ information, such as their names, email addresses, interests, and questions through a registration link. Using their contact information, you can send them regular updates on upcoming webinars, countdown emails, reminder emails, post-webinar surveys, and more. You can use an email automation tool to help ease your workload.

Not only through the homepage of your course, you can also choose to spread the word by running Google or Facebook ads, posting on online groups targeting members interested in the topic, posting on Linkedin and asking your network to share the message for you, etc.

Close your sales pitch

As the main purpose of your webinar is to sell your course, you need to introduce your course subscription and mention a call-to-action offer. It should be made clear that the webinar is a sneak-peek of the full version of the course in which subscribers can get these benefits, fulfill these certain goals, at this certain price.

After the call-to-action within the webinar, it is wise to follow up with a brief reminder email to reiterate on the main takeaways of the webinar, as well as to remind the webinar attendees to sign up for your course if they want to unlock the rest of the content. You can also offer an exclusive discount code for those attending the webinar in order to create a feeling of encouraging sign-ups as well.

If you need more ideas for promoting your courses, take a look at the “7 Different Ways to Effectively Promote Your Online Courses” article we wrote about this specific topic.