Webinar Ad Copy - What Pulls?

Question

We are working on building some webinar material.  I think our material will be first rate when it is done.

Where we are struggling a bit is with figuring out what pulls the best for ad copy to get people to the webinar.  What pulls for you?  Specifically, we will use:

1.  Email blasts to our list...tens of thousands of people
2.  Tiny urls to landing pages circulated via social media

So what is needed is:

3.  Nice clean copy that is visually appealing for group 1 above.  The copy should also pass the spam filter and entice people to view the material and sign up

4.  Some catchy Twitter-like feed for group 2 above in many instances

Have you used these techniques before?  If so, what pulled?  Any words of wisdom are appreciated.

Aaron Mazzrillo · Answer

You might want to search around the internet and look for other marketing guys doing webinars. See what attracts you to their event, then use similar tactics and styles.

Martin Syrovatka · Answer

Also, if you can break up your list into specific targeted categories and create a separate campaign for each that would get you way better results.

Martin Syrovatka · Answer

I would recommend coming up with a few different headlines and content and testing them all on a small portion of your list to figure out what works best.

James Hiddle · Answer

State that it's 100% content and upsell free. That usually pulls in people who mistrust webinars because most are nothing but upsells.

Aaron Mazzrillo · Answer

It depends on the purpose of your webinar. Are you looking to sell something? Are you just out to offer free educational advice? 
There are lots of ways to attract eyes:

Make an irresistible offer.
Give away something for free.

Headlines (subject for email) are very important. We did a test recently and sent out a regular headline to our list. Very little response. 30 minutes later we sent out another email that had the headline "We were only joking..."
It had a 30% response.

Bryan Hancock · Answer

Yeah...that has been considered as well Martin.  Given that we are aggregating lists and they were not really presorted it would take months to do that.  We really need more of a one-size-fits-all campaign unfortunately.

Over time people can opt out and the list will evolve naturally.  Our hope is that social media distributions will become viral to an extent too.

Our webinars will be first-rate and will address questions that come up on BP frequently.  To appeal to our target audience we will need to really explore and tackle the hard questions.

The slide decks are done and our blasts will start soon...I guess we'll learn more as we go.  Any comments are certainly appreciated.

Bryan Hancock · Answer

We are planning to do that Martin.  I can actually place several ad variants in LinkedIn groups to see what pulls the best.  I was just hoping to get some commentary prior to doing that though.  In the email blast you only get one shot and the language needs to be spam filter friendly.

We have pretty big plans for rolling out a whole series and are interviewing potential expert commentators over the next few weeks.  The first shot is next week with Entrust and we are doing one the week after with UDirect.  Other companies are getting lined up too.

Rob Gillespie · Answer

Bryan, 
I am not a Guru at webinars, but I know a little about getting a response. I find it best to treat everyone as if they are your childhood friend. What I mean is, do not sound like you are pitching or sellin at all. Kind of joke around in the email, and be brief. Just my opinion. Good luck with the webinar! Send me an invite!   :mrgreen:

Bryan Hancock · Answer

Nice thought James...we'll have to slip that in our ad material.

BTW...I am lining up David Hanick to clear up this UBIT argument that happens on BP all of the time.  David is an expert in this field and will likely be an expert commentator on our third webinar.

Bryan Hancock · Answer

Yeah...we are looking at other webinars Aaron, but none of them really have the same theme and goal we have...at least not the ones I have seen.

I am really just looking for advice about what sort of copy pulls.  We won't be giving anything away or selling anything.  We do want to increase the brand awareness though and get dialog with people.

Webinar Ad Copy - What Pulls?

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