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In the beginning of my marketing career, I remember being confused that I was tasked with writing ads or creating ad materials.

Since I fell into this industry accidentally (as one does), I didn’t study marketing in school. I wasn’t aware that advertising and marketing work together and aren’t mutually exclusive.

Now, as a marketing professional, you understand that. But that doesn’t mean that you’ve never been unsure about how these two industries interact.

In fact, marketing and advertising have a lot in common. They even have the same goal: increase awareness of your company and products, and then make a sale.

While they share the same goal and have a lot in common, there are differences between marketing and advertising that can help you organize your strategy and maximize your acquisition efforts.

Below, let’s explore the similarities and differences between marketing and advertising.

Overall, marketing and advertising share the same goal. But marketing has a bigger scope than advertising. Marketing creates the tone, personality, and voice of a brand or company as a way to attract its target audience. This can be done through paid, owned, or earned media channels.

Advertising, on the other hand, has a much more narrow goal, which is to get the word out about a specific product or service.

To visualize the differences, marketing is the umbrella term for brand positioning and awareness, while advertising is just one of the tactics that’s used to get that done.

With advertising, you can use social media, search engines, TV or print, podcasts, radio spots, billboards, and more. Depending on your audience, you’ll probably use a mixture of the best channels that will bring success.

As you can see, advertising is a step of marketing. Marketing prepares products for the marketplace, works on overall brand messaging and positioning, while advertising then gets the word out about specific products or services.

Most successful marketing strategies use advertising at different levels of a campaign, in various types of media.

While marketing can be paid, owned, or earned media, advertising is the component of marketing that focuses solely on the paid media aspect.

Marketing will convince potential customers that you’re the brand they want to use, that this product will help them, and advertising focuses on communicating a product exists and is the best way to achieve a goal.

You can think of marketing as the strategic decision making process that helps companies understand how a product or service will align with the target audience. This helps companies figure out how they want to sell the product and position it in the market. And then advertising makes a product or service known to the target audience through paid means.

These two concepts aren’t at odds with each other. In fact, advertising is almost always meant to benefit a marketing plan and communicate the marketing message.

Additionally, the way you calculate success for these two industries is different as well.

With advertising, you might focus on return on ad spend, and actual sales. Marketing success can be measured differently. Brand awareness and impressions are just some of the ways that companies measure success of a marketing campaign (in addition to return on investment).

Now, let’s get into the nitty gritty details about different types of advertising and marketing and how they’re similar or different.

Native Advertising vs. Content Marketing

Native advertising is a way to make paid ads appear more organically in a person’s day-to-day. Ads, in general, are interrupters. They interrupt your day and say “Hey, look at me.” However, people have ad blindness, and might not even notice an ad, especially in the digital space.

That’s why native advertising became popular. With native advertising, you can purchase ad space online and work in collaboration with a media network to make an ad not interrupt, but work in tandem with other organic materials.

For instance, this might look like a promotion or collaboration, which is definitely paid, but appears more native in someone’s feed. It could be a paid post on Instagram, or a paid blog article.

Content marketing, on the other hand, isn’t paid, and is usually the process of creating your own media materials and publishing them yourself. For instance, a company blog is content marketing. Your email newsletter is content marketing. But, a paid collaboration for a blog on someone else’s site is native advertising.

The main difference between these two is that one is paid and one is not. And that content marketing is usually used by your own company, while native advertising will take place on another site.

Now that we understand more about that niche, let’s dive into another area of marketing and advertising that might be confusing.

Mobile Marketing vs. Mobile Advertising

Mobile marketing is the process of creating marketing materials that are meant to be used in the mobile space. That could be an app. It could be location-based services, text marketing, or messenger marketing. It could be making sure your marketing assets are mobile responsive and are designed for the mobile experience.

On the other hand, mobile advertising, again, is the process of paying for ad space that will specifically show up in the mobile space. That could be an ad that comes up in an app or an ad that shows up when people are searching on their phone online.

The difference between these two concepts is similar to the overall difference between marketing and advertising.

Mobile marketing is the process of creating strategies that will reach audiences and increase brand awareness in the mobile space. Mobile advertising is a tactic to get that done.

This framework can be applied to any area of marketing and advertising, whether that’s content marketing, mobile marketing, or social media marketing.

Ultimately, you’ll need both marketing and advertising to have an effective strategy. If advertising is all you’re doing, then you’re missing out on a lot of other marketing tactics you can use to increase brand awareness, connect with your audience, and drive sales.

You know the saying, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Well, event promotion is similar. If you put on an event but don’t promote it, will it even happen? Without promotion, you probably won’t get any attendees because no one will know it’s happening.

While event promotion is simple in theory, actually planning a successful marketing strategy and promotion plan is not.

Of course, you’ve seen large-scale event promotions. But you’re probably thinking, “We don’t have that kind of budget” or “What are more creative ways to increase brand awareness and lead generation?”

Well, that’s what we’ll discover in this post. Let’s review some of our favorite ways to creatively promote your event without breaking the bank.

Free Event Promotion

1. Offer early bird registration.

A great way to promote your events is to offer early bird registration. This will incentivize your audience to sign up for your event early.

Additionally, this will give you a good idea of how to continue promoting your event — are people interested? What are their objections? Is your current marketing plan working?

With early bird registration, you’ll be able to gauge your audience’s interest and your marketing tactics. Plus, it incentivizes people to buy tickets as soon as possible for the discount.

2. Place a sign outside your business.

Of course, good old-fashioned banners are a great way to increase local awareness of an event.

You can post these outside your business or if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar business, then you can post banners throughout the local area where you’ll be holding the event.

3. Product a creative landing page.

The landing page for your event is the primary way to communicate information about your event. You should post all the details about the event — the day, time, location, topic, goals, etc.

Additionally, you can post an agenda so people know what the content will be like at the event. You can also use this page to post about speakers or influencers you have attending.

It’s also a good idea to include photos or videos from your last event and have an FAQ page that answers any repeating questions.

And of course, you’ll want to link to your social media pages and place a call to action on the page for people to purchase tickets.

4. Participate in content marketing.

Before your event, it’s a good idea to start posting about it throughout your content marketing channels.

You can post CTAs in your YouTube videos, discuss the event in your blog posts, talk about it in a podcast, or post on social media.

Whatever channels you use to post content marketing assets can be used as a way to promote your event.

5. Have event-specific branding.

Another great way to get the word out about your event is to have event-specific branding. Make your event a brand in and of itself. This is the way that HubSpot promotes the INBOUND event. INBOUND is a separate brand from HubSpot. It’s not just an event for our customers. It’s an event for any marketer, sales, or service professional who wants to learn more and educate themselves.

To do this, separate the event brand from your company brand. Have a different website, different colors, different messaging, etc. This will help attract people who don’t know about your company and are just coming across the event.

6. Use email marketing to reach your audience.

Of course, email marketing is a major way to reach your current audience. You should promote your event via email to different segmented audiences.

This will help let everyone who knows about your company know about the event. Plus, you can offer email subscriber discounts to incentivize current fans of your company to attend.

Social Media Event Promotion

7. Post pre-event behind-the-scenes posts.

Social media is another major way that you can promote your events.

One of my favorite event promotion strategies to follow as a consumer is to watch behind-the-scenes posts. I love a good BTS Instagram story or post showing how a company is preparing for an event.

Leading up to your event, post about it on social media. Post about the people you have coming to your event, or any cool decor items. This will get your followers excited about the event and could persuade them to buy a ticket.

8. Retargeting ads on social media.

We all know that social media is where people spend a lot of their time. If they’ve come across your company or other event promotion, social media retargeting ads are a great way to stay top of mind.

You want people to come across your brand continuously and to remind them about the event. Even if someone thinks an event is a good idea, they might not buy a ticket right away. Retargeting is a great way to get those customers at a later date.

9. Create an event hashtag.

While you’re promoting your event, a great way to talk to attendees or people who are thinking about registering is through an event hashtag. This will help you track mentions and stay in the conversation with people who want to attend your event.

This could also help get you trending and increase the number of people who are aware of and see your events.

During the event, again, this is a place for people to ask questions and for you to interact with attendees.

10. Work with keynote speakers, influencers, other brands, and sponsors.

Collaboration is one of the best ways to promote your event. Consider having event sponsors that will want to promote the event for you.

You can also have brand partnerships where you work with other companies who will tell their audience about your event.

Additionally, promote the heck out of your keynote speakers or any influencers that you’re working with. This is a great way to tap into their audiences to get the word out about your event even more.

It’s important to take advantage of other people’s following so people outside of your audience hear about your events.

11. Run a social media contest.

If you’ve run social media contests before and have had success, a social media contest or giveaway might be a good way to get the word out about your event.

You can host a contest where the winner will get tickets. Maybe they have to like your posts or comment and tag some friends. Either way, social media contests will help you garner awareness.

12. Create a social media filter.

A fun way to promote your event is to use a social media filter. You can create one especially for your event and showcase it on your social media.

If you get other people to use the filter, then you’ll be promoting your event to their audiences automatically.

13. Advertise on social media.

We can’t discuss event promotion without talking about social media ads. Again, people spend a lot of time on social media. Running ads with lookalike audiences on Facebook is a great way to advertise to a cold audience.

14. Post on Facebook and community groups.

Social media communities and groups are also fantastic places to promote an event. It could be a Facebook group or a subreddit.

Additionally, you’ll want to create an event page on social media so that you can share it in different groups or communities.

15. Host a social media challenge or takeover.

Social media challenges and takeovers are a fun way to engage your audience. With a social media challenge, your audience can directly engage with your company or brand. If you host a social media takeover with an influencer, again, you can reach their whole audience.

Social media posts, challenges, live streams, and takeovers are excellent ways to promote your events.

Now that you have a few ideas for how to promote your event, it’s time to start thinking about the timeline. When will you do these things? How close to the event should you promote? Let’s discuss below.

Event Promotion Timeline

3-4 months before your event

• Email marketing: Email previous attendees, give an early bird discount, etc.
• Post in social media groups
• Create a Facebook event
• Promote influencers/speakers/sponsors
• Launch website/landing page
• Create event-specific branding
• Post banners locally

6-8 weeks before your event

• Promote influencers/speakers/sponsors
• Set up search engine campaigns and any online ads
• Produce content marketing assets
• Run a social media contest
• End early bird promotions

3-5 weeks before your event

• Email marketing drip campaigns
• Retargeting ads on social media
• Have partnering brands/sponsors post about your event
• Create a social media filter

1-2 weeks before your event

• Create social media hashtag
• Post behind-the-scenes content on social media
• Use “last call” messaging

2-6 days before your event

• Send an email reminder to those who are interested
• Promote on social media
• More BTS content

Day of your event

• Run your hashtag
• Be active on social media
• Take photos/videos and post them online
• Engage with your attendees online

After the event

• Thank everyone for coming
• Look at the success of your event promotion
  • Were people talking about your event? Did content marketing help? Did social media traffic result in ticket sales?
• Send a survey — to employees and customers alike — ask how they liked the event, what they liked, what they think could be improved, etc.

Promoting an event is a lot like juggling. There are a lot of moving parts to manage. This list, although it’s not exhaustive, should help you get started brainstorming about the best ways to promote your event.

How can you make your blog more profitable? This is a question most of us are searching for an answer to. And while advertising and affiliate links will bring in some money, what if you could generate more?

If you have a loyal following and are producing great content, you might consider creating a membership site to offer your audience exclusive content and perks while also boosting your profits.

Membership sites can be customized in a myriad of ways, but here are some of the most common models you’ll come across.

1. Paywall

If you often read the news online, you’ve likely come across a paywall. A paywall blocks content until a reader is logged into their account and has a paid membership to access the content.

You can offer some of your most premium content behind a paywall to earn more money and create better engagement with your most loyal audience members. After all, they are paying to access exclusive perks, meaning they are likely to be invested in what you are offering.

2. Communities

Most of us love finding a group of people online with common interests or goals. If your audience is always engaging with your content, and with each other in the comments, consider creating a community membership model where users can create profiles and have a platform to interact with one another.

This could mean access to an exclusive app, a Facebook group, or a forum on your website.

3. Courses

If your audience can’t get enough of your content, they might also have an interest in learning about your topic of expertise from you directly. By creating membership courses, you can offer some of your knowledge for a fee.

You can offer courses for a one-time, upfront payment or an ongoing subscription for access to a library of courses that generates a steady stream of profit from your membership site.

4. Products

Outside of knowledge, what do you have the talent to create and sell on your website? Perhaps you can create WordPress plugins or blog templates, or maybe you can offer social media graphic templates or unique budgeting spreadsheets.

Whatever you’ve decided to create, you can earn money for your creativity and hard work. You can sell products individually to members, or offer them via a subscription model where users can access the product as long as they have an active, paid subscription.

5. All-in-One

The all-in-one model is exactly as it sounds. This means your membership site includes most, if not all, of the standard membership model options.

While this could mean multiple streams of income from people subscribing to various parts of your site, it can also become a lot of extra work for you.

Creating exclusive content and perks for varying memberships could be hard to do alone, meaning you might need to spend more money hiring others to help you. Also, it might be off-putting for a user to visit your site and see they have to sign up — and pay — to access nearly anything on your site.

Pros of Starting a Membership Site

Starting a membership site can create a secure, steady stream of revenue for your blog. If your audience already enjoys your content, it’s a logical next step to offer them more for a fee.

Once they’ve started investing money to access your content, you might also find them engaging more, too.

Cons of Starting a Membership Site

Because memberships are so customizable, there aren’t many negatives to starting one. But if you are already strapped for time creating your normal content and managing your site, you might find it hard to create exclusive content as well. This will also add another component to your site to maintain.

Once you’ve decided to turn your blog into a membership site, you can follow these simple steps to get started.

1. Choose your model.

Select the model that works best for your site from the list above. With an active and engaged audience, a community model might be the perfect fit. If users are always asking for your advice, you might consider creating products or courses with a subscription attached.

Or maybe your content is increasing page views so you want to create more in-depth content to offer behind a paywall. Weigh these options carefully to find the right fit for your brand.

2. Find a membership plugin.

If your blog is operating on WordPress, you can add a membership plugin to make your work easier. There are many options available, and you’ll want to find one that will work with the model you’ve chosen. Some of the top picks by bloggers include MemberPress, Restrict Content Pro, and Teachable.

Once your plugin is downloaded, you can configure it by visiting your WordPress dashboard menu, selecting your plugin, choose ‘Options,’ and adjust settings as needed.

3. Set up payments, levels, and rules.

In your WordPress dashboard, go to the menu and select your plugin. From there, you can find payment, levels, and rules settings. Under ‘Options’ > ‘Payments,’ set up the payment amounts and types (such as credit cards and PayPal) for each membership level.

To set levels, go to the plugin, select ‘Memberships’ then ‘Add New’ for each level. You can name each level as well as define prices and restrictions.

Finally, it’s time to set the rules. Go to the plugin in the WordPress menu, then select ‘Rules’ and ‘Add New.’ This is how you shield your exclusive content from non-paying members. Just be sure to mark your exclusive content as ‘paid’ in WordPress as you create it.

Save all of your settings as you go before moving on to the next step.

4. Create content for launch.

Your paid subscribers will likely expect immediate access to some exclusive content right after signing up. Be sure to prepare whatever written content, videos, audio books, templates, or other perks you’ll be offering before launching your membership site to avoid frustrated subscribers.

5. Add a membership page to your site.

This can also be easily handled via the plugin settings on your dashboard, but you’ll need to create a page where your website users can view pricing and membership models, sign up, and log in to access the content.

Once this page is ready, you’ll be ready to launch, and users can start signing up and accessing your content or products from your blog.

Boost Blog Revenue By Adding a Membership Site

A membership site can be tailored to fit your needs and generate more money for your blog. Once you’ve evaluated whether or not a membership site is right for your brand, you can review the different models to find which path is the best for your blog.

Plus, you’ll be able to exercise your creativity and offer the best content possible to your most loyal and engaged followers.

Do you remember the last time you signed up for a webinar? Were you on the edge of your seat waiting in anticipation for the event?

If you’re like me, it’s more likely that you signed up and attended the first ten minutes, and then started flipping through emails or answering Slacks. Or, worse — you signed up for the event and totally forgot about it.

Let’s be honest: most webinars aren’t great. They’re certainly not inducing Netflix cliff-hanger levels of anticipation and excitement.

But they’re also an effective form of lead generation, nurturing, and sales enablement. In fact, if you do webinars right, you can attract new prospects to your business, establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry, and increase business revenue.

This article will cover the biggest mistakes to avoid if you want to build a world-class webinar program.

Here, I’ve included some lessons based off my own experience launching and revamping the webinar program at CXL, as well as insights and quotes from other successful marketers.

Let’s dive into the top nine webinar mistakes — and what to do, instead.

1. Your webinar isn’t valuable.

People will forgive a bad slide deck design.

They’ll forgive a webinar hosted at an inconvenient day or time. They might not notice if you don’t introduce your speakers properly — and you can even get away with forgetting to send a link to the recording afterwards.

But if you’re not providing value, you can’t possibly succeed with your webinar.

There’s simply no point in hosting a webinar if it’s not delivering something useful, or entertaining.

What is value? That’s tough to answer universally. The best way to determine if your webinars are valuable is through qualitative feedback and quantitative proof.

On the quantitative side, are your webinars growing in attendance over time? If not, while there could be other reasons (such as lazy marketing), it’s often because interest and trust is waning in your content. Ideally, you want not only new attendees, but repeat attendees. That’s how good your content should be.

Qualitatively, if you’re not getting any emails thanking you for your amazing content, that’s cause for concern. At least one person should be raving about the content by the end of the presentation.

If you’re not hitting that level of sentiment and response, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and make sure you actually have something worth saying. You can collect feedback deliberately as well, using a survey like NPS or CSAT.

Examples of valueless content include:

• Pure sales pitches
• Basic, superficial information
• Misaligned content (i.e. the substance doesn’t match the title of the webinar)
• Boring, long-winded presentations
• No actionable takeaways for your attendees

What to Do Instead

A good rule of thumb for me is to ask, “Would people pay for this?” If the answer is no, then I don’t want to publish or promote it.

Granted, the webinar is going to be free. But the point is you want it to be good enough that people say to themselves, “How is this free? It’s amazing.”

If you’re not creating value, your webinars won’t deliver the results you’re looking for.

2. Your webinar is too sales-y.

Your webinar should not be one big sales pitch. If it is, you’re doing it wrong.

This is a poor way to interact with an audience, but it’s still remarkably prevalent.

According to Virginia Zacharaki, Marketing Communications Associate at Moosend: “One of the main keys of a webinar is to raise awareness for a brand, feature, or technique using valuable content.”

“The sales-y tone of your speaker can lead to the audience’s loss of interest, whereas focusing on finding actual solutions and giving insights makes you a trusted expert.”

“It is only logical that awareness enhances the consideration stage of decision-making and moves the prospect further along the buyer’s journey.”

In other words, people sign up for webinars to learn things — not to receive a hard sales pitch from a vendor.

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Granted, you can, and should, use webinars as an opportunity to increase sales. You just want to make sure you’re leading with unique value first.

What to Do Instead

When I began designing webinars to promote CXL Institute, I made sure the content was product-relevant, but not a product pitch. Since CXL Institute sold expert-led courses, this was a relatively easy transition  — we simply asked those same experts to lead our webinars.

We chose to construct the webinars to be completely tactical. There were no slides — only screen shares. I didn’t do a lengthy introduction of the speaker. Instead, they dove in and provided their valuable insights.

We only pitched their upcoming course at the end of the webinar by offering a 20% discount to attendees.

It’s okay to pitch a product, but you’ll want to do so in a way that blends educational content with a subtle product nudge.

A framework I like to use for this is “Product-Led Content.” 

You want to design your content (and webinars) to center around a problem that your product or service solves, and weave your product throughout genuinely instructional content. This way, your solution is an obvious consideration, but the audience still gets value even if they aren’t interested in your product.

3. You’re marketing your webinar to the wrong audience.

How you construct a webinar is important — and so is the audience to whom you promote it.

How you approach your audience targeting depends on your company and webinar goals. For instance, if you’re using your webinars for customer education, then you’ll want to target your webinars to, well … customers.

In many cases, though, webinars are used as a lead generation tool to attract new customers to your product or service. In this case, many of the same general marketing best practices (customer research, buyer personas, customer journey mapping, and segmentation) apply.

Andriy Zapisotskyi, Growth Manager at Mailtrap, puts it like this: “Pay attention to where you distribute your webinar and focus only on your target audience. Irrelevant audiences may harm your email list, and an email with the invitation to the webinar will end up in the spam folder instead. Warm-up and validate every signed-up lead to improve email deliverability.”

Beyond the simple hit to your attendance rate and open rate, if you market to the wrong audience, you’ll find it hard to generate sales and ROI from your program.

What to Do Instead

First, take a step back and ask yourself where you’ll be promoting your webinar and how you’ll get attendees. When I host webinars, my team and I promote them on our Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, on our co-hosts’ social media channels, and through our email lists. It’s a limited audience, but the point is to slowly build trust and repeat attendees over time.

Many companies do paid advertising to get webinar attendees. In this case, you need to ask yourself if you’re truly attracting the right attendees.

This can be deduced quantitatively. If you’re getting sign-ups but no attendees, something is misaligned. Similarly, if you’re getting attendance, but your attendees aren’t becoming leads, you need to change your approach.

4. You’re not making your webinar engaging and interactive.

If you’ve ever learned a second language, you know that immersion and interaction is more effective than passive consumption.

When you participate, you get to make mistakes or learn lessons in real-time. You get instant feedback, and you also use different parts of the brain when you trigger active participation.

Most webinars are one-sided. The attendees sign up and passively listen to the presentation (or, more likely, check their emails or scroll Instagram).

If you can disrupt that, you can drive greater engagement, learning, and retention. All of this helps to build trust, and yes, increase sales and ROI from your program.

What to Do Instead

The easiest way to trigger participation is to ask people to introduce themselves and where they’re from at the start of the webinar.

I also like to give homework before the webinar, and a summary quiz after it’s over. This ensures attendees will come prepared and excited to the webinar, and they’ll also retain knowledge when it’s over.

Chris Schelzi, Head of Growth at AppSumo, gives this sage advice: “Ask for what you want! Many people hosting webinars are demoralized by the lack of engagement — but so few people ask for it.”

“I recommend, at the beginning of the webinar, starting with a few simple engagement questions for the audience: ‘Where are you joining us from today?’ ‘What’s the #1 thing you’re looking to get out of this session?’ etc. These questions will prime the audience to use the chat.

“Additionally, make sure to do this throughout the presentation. Don’t be afraid of pausing while you wait for people to respond. A few seconds can feel like a few minutes, but people love to see and hear you interacting live with their questions.”

5. You’re ignoring the holistic marketing system.

A webinar doesn’t exist in isolation.

Instead, you want to look at a webinar as being one piece to the larger puzzle of your entire marketing strategy.

Where does your webinar fall in your customer journey? Is it top of the funnel — and if so, what steps will follow this webinar to push the prospect further down the funnel? Or is it bottom of the funnel, in which case, what touchpoints preceded this one?

Mapping this stuff out is uncommon but absolutely essential. Similar to how you ensure there are CTAs on your blog posts, it’s critical you use your webinar as an opportunity to move prospects further along the funnel.

What to Do Instead

This tip is less tactical, and more strategic. The number one thing I would do is map out your customer journey and define which webinars fit in at which stages of the journey.

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Adam Enfroy, blogger at AdamEnfroy.com, gives this advice: “Did you warm up your leads via consistent emails? Did you ask them to join a VIP list to prove they will take action? Are you matching the webinar offer to what your readers actually want?”

“While there are a lot of tips and tricks to running an effective webinar, don’t forget that everything you do leading up to the webinar is just as important.”

6. You’re pursuing too many goals with one webinar.

One single webinar cannot possibly serve every business or marketing need you have. Webinars can be used for onboarding, customer education, support, lead generation, and lead nurturing — but not all at once.

This same principle applies to many areas of marketing. For instance, you can write a blog post that serves one or two purposes, but it shouldn’t seek to serve all audiences at once.

Juliana Nicholson, Principal Campaigns Manager at HubSpot, gives this advice: “It’s tempting to try to use one webinar for every part of your flywheel. Marketers want the biggest audience exposure possible, a tool for reps to use in their sales process, and a way to delight customers. This is hard to pull off.”

“Unless you are putting on a multifaceted event, I recommend marketers focus on one goal at a time, and let that drive their strategy from start-to-finish, rather than attempting to boil the ocean.”

What to Do Instead

Reverse engineer a webinar, starting with your goals. What’s your KPI — new leads, total customers attending, increased NPS of attendees, or something else? Narrow the scope.

Choose one of these goals and construct your webinar with that purpose in mind.

7. You’re not acknowledging the realities and limitations of the format.

Despite your best intentions, you have to realize that a webinar is a webinar.

It’s not a live workshop, and people’s attention will be scattered. You can do your best to keep people engaged through interactivity and high-value content, but you still have to acknowledge that most people will do the video equivalent of “skimming.”

Shane Hedge, co-founder and CEO of Air, calls this the importance of “script-to-screen alignment.” Essentially, it means highlighting the important stuff and making your presentation “skimmable.”

Here’s his advice: “A webinar is not an in-person meeting. It’s not a standalone video. The audience likely has multiple tabs open and may only pay attention during key moments where the content draws them in.”

What to Do Instead

Summarize your presentation before you begin and after you finish with key points. Draw people in periodically with engaging questions and interactive workshop moments. Include multimedia and screen-sharing instead of just sharing slide-after-slide.

And make sure to send an email recapping the main points and linking to further resources.

8. Your webinar is poor-quality, or you don’t have adequate equipment.

If you’re serious about webinars, you’ll want to boost the quality of the presentation. This comes in three forms:

• Video quality
• Audio quality
• Presentation quality

To start, presentation quality is the easiest to upgrade with little extra investment. Either work with a designer to spruce up your slides or use a platform like beautiful.ai to design them. Then, make sure your slides are publicly accessible to the webinar audience.

Video quality is the toughest to improve. For starters, make sure your webinar software is solid. I personally like Zoom, but there are other alternatives you can consider.

Here’s an article on how to run webinars with HubSpot to help you with the tactical specifics.

Finally, almost all quality complaints will inevitably be about the audio. If you’re going to invest in equipment, I recommend a good microphone (the Blue Yeti is popular). Any good USB microphone will be better than the default option on your laptop.

What to Do Instead

Don’t skimp on quality, especially when it comes to audio and the details of your presentation.

Poor video quality — at least to a point — can be forgiven (remember, many people are going to be checking email in-between slides).

Get a good microphone and invest in a designer for your presentations.

The latter also helps if you want to publish the slides afterwards on a platform like Slides by HubSpot.

9. You don’t follow-up with your attendees.

Finally, a common mistake companies make is put all this effort into a webinar — creating it, finding partners, writing copy, designing a landing page, promoting or advertising it, and delivering it — and then skimping on the follow-up.

First off, most people who sign up for a webinar won’t attend. That’s just the nature of the game.

But even those who do attend likely want to get a recording of the presentation. That’s the bare minimum, but many companies fail to deliver that.

What to Do Instead

The magic is in the follow-up. Very few people will be ready to buy your product or services immediately after one webinar.

It’s vital you schedule a nurturing sequence to execute immediately after the webinar is complete. The first email should be a recap with resources, notes, and a recording of the presentation. The second and third can be education or promotional, depending on the stage of the funnel at which you’re delivering the webinar.

No matter what, don’t make your webinar be the last touchpoint. You’ll get much higher ROI if you think carefully about the follow-up.

Webinars don’t have to be boring. In fact, they can be fun, valuable, and tremendously effective. Some marketing programs have been built on the backs of webinars.

While this article covered nine discrete tips to creating better webinars, at the heart of it all is good judgement and keeping in mind the value you’re providing. If you do that, the minutia won’t matter as much.

Determining your audience profile is a critical step in ensuring your campaign is successful.

An audience profile can help you personalize your campaign’s messaging to reach those most likely to convert, and limit the amount of spend you might’ve otherwise wasted on underperforming ads.

Here, we’ll explore the information you need to include in an audience profile, how to write an audience profile, and audience profile examples.

Plus, we’ll dive into a media audience profile and how that type of profile can help you increase the success of your paid ads campaigns.

But first — what is an audience profile, anyway?

What information should I include in an audience profile?

When creating an audience profile, you’ll need to include the following:

• Demographic information: This includes personal attributes like geography, age, education, occupation, and income.
• Psychographic information: This includes attributes related to personality traits, interests, attitudes or beliefs, and lifestyle.
• Goals, challenges, or pain points: For this section, determine your audience’s goals, challenges, or pain points as it relates to your product or service. How can your product or service meet your audience’s needs? What search queries does your audience use to find your product or service? For instance, if you’re selling an 8-week mindfulness program, then your fictional character likely has a big challenge with focusing and finding time to ground himself in the present moment.
• Values: What does your target audience value? This includes bigger-picture values and motivators, such as “nature”, “socializing”, “a sense of belonging”, or “autonomy at work”.
• Preferred channels: What channel(s) does your audience spend the most time? This could be social channels, such as YouTube or Instagram, or search engines like Google. The preferred channel depends on the type of campaign you’re running. If you’re running a paid advertising campaign, for instance, you’ll want to determine if your audience spends most time on Facebook, Google, or somewhere else.
• Preferred content type(s): Once your audience finds your content, what format would they prefer it in? E-books, blog posts, or case studies? Or podcast? Video? Determining the format will help you best serve your audience.
• Buying behavior: Is your audience impulsive, or do they need weeks — if not months — before making a purchase? Are they open to your product or service anytime during the year, or only during a certain season? If you sell beach chairs, for instance, your target audience is likely relatively impulsive during the summer months, when a beach chair is most necessary.

It’s important to note — an audience profile is different than a target market, or buyer persona.

A target market includes every single prospective buyer for your product or service. For instance, perhaps you sell software that can be used for different use cases in different industries. In this case, a target market includes the prospects in each industry who could benefit from your product — all with different needs, goals, challenges, and beliefs.

An audience profile, on the other hand, is one fictitious person who you’re targeting with an upcoming campaign.

An audience profile also isn’t a buyer persona. A buyer persona is the final person who will ultimately purchase your product or service, but in many cases, you’ll want to market to anyone who can influence the final buyer. For instance, your audience profile might be a social media manager, even though the buyer persona is a company’s CMO, since she’ll have final sign-off.

Next, let’s dive into how you can write an audience profile.

How to Write an Audience Profile

1. Determine the goal(s) of your upcoming campaign.

Before writing your audience profile, you want to know who you’re targeting with your marketing campaign.

For instance, are you creating high-intent advertisements to target buyers with your products or services? Or, alternatively, are you hoping to increase attendees at an upcoming marketing event?

You’ll make a different audience profile depending on your goals. If you’re hoping to increase sales for your product via a social media advertising campaign, then your audience profile will look similar to your buyer persona.

If, instead, you’re hoping to increase views to your YouTube channel, then your audience profile will look like a fictional character based off your YouTube analytics to determine who enjoys watching your content.

2. Dive deep into analytics.

Once you’ve determined your campaign goal, use data and analytics to create a prototype of your persona.

Start with Google Analytics to explore demographic information related to your website visitors. Take note of age, gender, location, and types of device — additionally, figure out from which channels your audience arrives. Is it typically organic search, a social channel, email, or paid advertising?

You can also use CRM data to further explore what customers convert at the highest rate. For instance, you might use your CRM to determine which industries convert the most, or which pages have the highest conversion rate, to refine your audience profile depending on existing customers’ behavior.

Finally, use channel-specific metrics to fill in the missing pieces. If you’re planning on running a Google ads campaign, you might dive into past high-performing ads and who clicked on those ads.

Alternatively, if you’re running a Facebook campaign, you can use Facebook’s lookalike audience feature to reach people who are similar to your best existing customers.

3. Use qualitative metrics to determine your audience’s biggest challenges.

To fill out the challenges/goals/pain points section of your audience profile, it’s a good idea to take a look at customer reviews or focus group intel to determine the biggest challenges your prospects and customers face.

You can also use keyword research to find high-intent keywords related to your products or services, which might help you determine your audience’s biggest challenges, as well.

For instance, let’s say you’re creating a new advertising campaign related to a social media listening and scheduling tool.

You might first leverage Ahrefs or another keyword explorer tool to determine questions people ask related to a given search query. In this example, I searched “social media tools” to find similar questions related to the search keyword:

I also searched “social media tools” on Google and looked at the People Also Ask feature to dive deeper into questions, pain points, and challenges related to social media tools:

Combined with your qualitative, customer-focused research, you’ll be able to uncover the biggest challenges of your audience, and how you should tailor your campaign to target those pain points.  

4. Collect psychographic data using Google Trends or influencers in the industry.

If you work for a B2C company, consider consuming content from top influencers in a given industry to determine psychographic data for your audience profile.

For instance, if you’re selling fitness gear, take a look at the social profiles and blog posts of top fitness influencers. What do they care about? What do they value? What activities do they do in a given day? These characteristics can help you round-out your audience profile.

If you’re working for a B2B company, you might read industry case studies, reports, or join webinars to determine the interests, values, and behaviors of your target persona within a given industry.

An example of this might be reading “2020 Trends in Sales Management” if you’re hoping to target sales managers at your target companies.

Ready to get started creating your own audience profiles? Let’s take a look at two examples you can use for inspiration before you create your own.

Audience Profile Examples

1. B2B Audience Profile Example: Marketing Maria

2. B2C Audience Profile Example: Athletic Andy

Media Audience Profile

Media planning and buying can’t happen without an audience profile.

For instance, media buying — buying campaign or advertising space on various channels, or sharing targeted campaigns and ads — can’t happen without media planning.

And media planning, at its core, is “determining how, when, where, and why your business shares media content with your audience. The process includes deciding what media will be shared on what channels to boost reach, engagements, conversions, ROI, and more.”

Ultimately, then, both media planning and media buying need pre-defined audiences to be successful. If you haven’t taken the time to create an audience profile before purchasing ad space, you risk wasting money and resources on audiences who ultimately won’t convert anyway.

An audience profile can affect where you place your advertisements. Once you’ve created an audience profile, for instance, you might find your audience persona spends most of her time on LinkedIn. LinkedIn advertising solutions, then, can help you best reach your target audience.

An audience profile also influences the design of your ad. You’ll want to design ad copy around your audience’s interests, pain points, and preferences — something you can only do once you’ve created an audience profile.

For instance, The Economist might’ve created an audience profile and determined their audience likes education and knowledge, but doesn’t like getting bogged down with too much negativity, particularly from news outlets. As a result, a simple tagline, “Brighter days ahead”, helps attract and convert the right audience through their ads.

Ultimately, your audience profile is a vital foundation for ensuring you’re effectively attracting and converting those best-suited for your brand.

However, an audience profile can vary depending on each individual campaign — so feel free to keep this post bookmarked for the next time you need to alter your audience profile for a new advertising or marketing campaign.

When I only worked from home occasionally, I would spend all day shifting around in my uncomfortable dining chair. Once work from home (WFH) became an everyday thing, I knew my current setup wouldn’t cut it, so I bought a great office chair.

I didn’t pay the extra money for assembly – a decision I’m convinced furniture companies want you to regret – and three installation attempts later, I have my chair.

Yeah, the backrest is a tiny bit crooked, but it still works as intended, giving me the extra support and comfort I need to do my job. That’s what I imagine corporate sponsorships feel like, minus the crooked part.

When your business needs additional support and resources for events and projects, corporate sponsors can make a huge difference. But it’s not as easy as just reaching out to companies you want to collaborate with.

Find out how a corporate sponsorship works, how to secure one for your next event, and how to write a sponsorship proposal.

While financial support is usually synonymous with sponsorship, that’s not the only way a company can contribute to your event. Here are three main types of sponsors:

• A media sponsor will help your event or project gain the publicity needed to attract attendees. The sponsor may invest in ads in the local newspaper, TV commercials, or other marketing efforts to help you gain exposure.
• An in-kind sponsor will offer things other than money. Looking for a venue? They may provide that. Need food vendors or prizes? That’s another way they can contribute. They could even help you secure a keynote speaker. This type of sponsor provides the resources you need to accomplish your event goals.
• A digital sponsor will assist in the execution of tech-related activities for your event. This can be providing the hosting platform or an app.

So, what’s in it for the sponsors? For one, associating with a company that has a positive brand image can be an effective way for a brand to improve its market perception. It’s also an opportunity to gain more exposure and reach audiences they may not yet have access to.

On the sponsored side, attaching your company to an established brand can also boost your credibility and help you reach more consumers in your market.

Examples of Corporate Sponsorships

1. Essence’s “Dear Black Men” event

Image Source

In June 2020, Essence held a virtual summit designed to celebrate the Black community and Black men in particular. The “Dear Black Men” event was sponsored by Bevel, a consumer goods brand whose target audience reflects the event attendees.

The second sponsor was Advancing Black Pathways, JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s fellowship program that centers its work around empowering members of the black community.

Given the topic and the target audience, these sponsors were a great match for this event.

2. A Free Bird, Org

Image Source

Storage Mart is a nationwide storage company that’s core values include supporting philanthropic initiatives. A Free Bird is a nonprofit organization helping children battling cancer find joy in the arts.

One thing to note is that A Free Bird has a webpage dedicated to sponsors. In addition to reaching out to sponsors, your company can also proactively set up a page to attract and direct companies interested in supporting you.

3. Victoria Film Commission

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Victoria Film Commission (@visfilmcommission)

Both companies have more in common than just the name “Victoria,” and that’s locality.

The Victoria Film Commission is a nonprofit with a mission to promote Southern Vancouver Island as a film destination.

In a statement, Chateau Victoria Hotel & Suites revealed that supporting local businesses is a part of their mission, given that it is owned and operated by a local.

How To Get Corporate Sponsorship for an Event

1. Plan internally.

Before you reach out to sponsors, there’s a lot of prep work to complete. Start by gathering all the information you’ll need to attract sponsors.

The first is the vision for the event or project: What is the purpose, and what do you want audiences to gain from it?

Say you’re the newest affordable office supply company in the market. You may want to host an event to solidify your brand as a go-to store for office items.

Next, what are the goals of your event? How will you measure success? This is an important factor to consider, as it will inform which sponsor you choose. You’ll want to work with a sponsor with event goals in sync with your own.

What comes after is figuring out your attendees. How many attendees do you expect, and who are they? This is arguably the most important factor for your sponsors, because they’ll want to know if your audience aligns with the persona(s) they’re targeting.

As a furniture company, you may expect professionals between 20 to 30 years of age who have recently entered the workforce and are looking for affordable supplies to stock in their office. A brand that also targets young professionals would be a great sponsor.

If you’re a nonprofit fighting world hunger, for instance, you’ll want to find a company with a mission that includes philanthropic efforts like these.

Another big selling point are your event assets. How are you attracting consumers to your event or project? This could be a well-known speaker, interactive activities, or innovative presentations.

And lastly, based on these factors, what resources are you missing? This will help you determine the type of sponsorship your brand needs so you can draft your proposal using the right language.

2. Build a nurturing workflow.

Getting a sponsor can be a long process that requires a lot of relationship management.

You can’t just send an email to your sponsor and consider it done. It may take a few (or more) conversations to secure an agreement. While that may seem tedious, both parties need to ensure it’s the right fit.

Before you even reach out to your sponsors, build a workflow to streamline the communication process. Here’s an example of the automation you could set up in your CRM:

• Reach out to X sponsor and include a link to schedule a call with Y team member. If scheduled, the team member will receive an email with the details of the sponsor and preliminary screening questions.
• Send follow-up email in three days if contact has not responded to initial reach out.
• After the initial call, send event details over to the sponsor.
• Follow-up with X sponsor to ask thoughts on event details if no response after three days.

These are processes you can automate in your CRM platform to facilitate communication between you and potential sponsors.

3. Decide what brands to reach out to.

Now that you’re ready for outreach, decide who is the best fit for your brand.

Don’t know where to start? Look at brands that have already sponsored other businesses in your industry. This creates an easier point of entry. You can also look at your competitors. What type of brands are they collaborating with?

Once you have an idea of who to contact, do some research. Look at the company’s mission and values to see if they align with your own. What about its audience? Is there an intersection between your target audience and theirs? That’s a selling point you’d want to highlight in your sponsorship proposal.

Track the company’s current brand perception – you can leverage this information to convince them why partnering with you would be positive for their image.

You’ll also need to evaluate their local presence. If your sponsor has no presence in your region, they may not be the best fit, as you’ll want your sponsor to bring more exposure to your event.

In addition, be sure to check that the companies you’re considering have sponsorship guidelines. Some brands have strict eligibility rules, and you wouldn’t want to waste your time reaching out if you don’t meet their requirements.

4. Find out what your sponsors are looking for.

Learn everything you can about the company to see if it will be a good fit for your event. This means reaching out to the company and asking questions like:

• Who is your target audience?
• What are your marketing goals?
• What do you look for in a company you sponsor?
• How do you measure the success of a relationship with your sponsor?

These questions will help you get to the heart of what your potential sponsors are looking for and write a proposal that speaks directly to that.

5. Prepare your sponsorship proposal.

Your sponsorship proposal can make or break your chance of getting a sponsor. So, you want to take your time tailoring it to each sponsor you’re reaching out to. Every proposal should have:

• An overview of your brand
• Event details
• A breakdown of what you need from the sponsor
• Incentives
• A personal touch

Let’s dive into each of these points here.

6. Start your sponsor search.

It’s time to reach out – where do you go?

The easiest place to start is online. Websites like SponsorMyEvent are designed specifically to bring brands and sponsors together. You can start there during your initial search to narrow down potential companies.

If you’re going the traditional offline path, use LinkedIn to identify the right employee to call or email. You don’t want to waste any time reaching out to employees who aren’t in a position to discuss the sponsorship.

Corporate Sponsorship Proposal

By including the following elements in your proposal, you will make sure your proposal stands out and get one step closer to securing your sponsors.

1. Brand Overview

When reviewing your proposal, the first thing your sponsor will likely ask is, “Who’s this brand?” This is your opportunity to make a great first impression and WOW your sponsor.

Tell a story about your brand, your mission, your values. You can dive into how your company got started or focus on your company’s recent path. Either way, you want to aim for emotional appeal.

You can get into the nitty-gritty later. This is where you capture their attention and make them want to sponsor you.

2. Event Details

This section is where the meat of your proposal starts.

Describe your event or project. What is the goal, and what does success look like?

Then, cover your attendees. Who is the target audience for this event? Your sponsor will want to know if your event will allow them to reach their key demographic. If not, focus on how your event will help them accomplish the marketing goals they outlined during your initial conversation.

3. Required Resources

When it comes to asking for what you need, don’t beat around the bush.

Describe exactly what resources your team will need from the sponsor and how they will be used.

Let’s say your team has determined that you need a $10,000 contribution for your upcoming event. You’d include that along with a breakdown of the cost allocation, as follows:

• Location rental: $2,000
• Keynote speakers fees: $5,000
• Decor: $1,000
• Food vendors: $2,000

If your team needs a non-financial investment, outline what you’ll need and why it’s important for the execution of the event.

4. Incentives

One question potential sponsors may have when reviewing your proposal is, “What’s in it for us?” This is your turn to highlight how they can benefit from working with you.

During your initial research and preliminary contact with the company, you should have learned what the company is looking for. This could be a better brand image or exposure to a target segment. Use your proposal to highlight how this event will help them accomplish their goals.

Many brands can also be incentivized by being included in the event in the follow ways:

• Adding their logo to all event marketing collateral
• Giving them a designated booth at the event
• Offering a presentation slot

5. A Personal Touch

Finally, your proposal won’t be complete without adding a personal element to your presentation that ties right back to the sponsor.

There’s nothing worse than a generic pitch. Make sure to include elements in your proposal that connect you to the sponsor. Whether that’s their market entry story, their values, or their latest initiatives. Include anything that can help close the gap and convince your sponsor you’re meant to work together.

Securing a corporate sponsor requires a lot of planning and strategy. But if done right, not only will you gain a partner for your next event, but you’ll foster a relationship with a brand that can continue to support you in the future.

A webinar is a video presentation, seminar, lecture, or workshop delivered over the internet.

Although once declared dead and outdated, webinars are very much still relevant. Many businesses are now rethinking the benefits of a virtual event, especially during the time of social distancing. In fact, ON24, a virtual platform, hosted 19,292 webinars in April of 2020 alone, which amounts to roughly 640 webinars per day.

Given their popularity, you may be interested in getting on board. In this post, we’ll give the most heavy-hitting statistics about webinars that make a case for using them in your marketing strategy.

Webinar Stats To Know

General Webinar Stats

• 67% of marketers in 2020 were increasing their investment in webinars. (LinkedIn)
• The global webinar market is estimated to reach 800 million by 2023, up 253 million from 2015. (MarketWatch)
• Marketers say that webinars are cost-effective as they help lower the cost-per-lead. (ON24)
• 95% of survey respondents said webinars play a key part in their marketing efforts, and 38% consider webinars critical to their digital communications. (ON24)
• 53% of marketers say webinars are the top-of-the-funnel format that generates the most high-quality leads. (Demand Gen Report)
• Professionals say that video-based learning is their preferred learning format, and 85% prefer the video to be webinars. 94% of respondents also report viewing webinar content monthly. (BrightTALK)
• Viewers in 2020 watched three times more webinar content than they did in 2019. (ON24)
• 91% of webinar marketers in 2020 say they’ve been successful, which is a 10% increase from 2019. (Wyzowl)

Webinar Conversion Stats

• 76% of marketers say that webinars help them reach more leads, 75% say it extends brand reach, 69% say it helps scale marketing efforts, and 49% say that it helps them reach targeted accounts. (ON24)
• A survey from April of 2020 found that webinars had a 61% registration to attendee conversion rate, up from 55% in 2019. (ON24)
• Webinars hosted on a company domain generate 3x more audience participation. 91% of professionals who watch webinars say their next step is to visit a website for more info. If they’re already on your site, you’re increasing the probability of conversion. (BrightTALK)
• Communication webinars have the highest conversion rate (67.05%). (ON24)
• Email is the top promotional channel for webinars. Up to 57% of registrations come from that channel, and the conversion rate is 27% higher. (GoToWebinar, BrightTALK)

Webinar Content Stats

• 81% of marketers use Q&A as an engagement tool during webinars, 69% provide resources for download. (ON24)
• When asked what they’d most like to see in their webinars, consumers reported that they would most like (22%) to see a host or presenter that takes questions from the audience. (HubSpot)
• Survey respondents rate webinar video integrations as a 7.8 in importance on a scale of 10. (ON24)
• 60-minute webinars attract more attendees than 30-minute webinars, and the average attendee viewing time is 57 minutes. (WorkCast, GoToWebinar)
• Thursdays are the best days to host a webinar. (MegaMeeting)
• Marketers prefer webinars that are live and on-demand. (Statista)
• Consumers reported being most likely (27%) to sign up for a webinar that teaches them something about a hobby or passion, and 18% would attend a webinar that taught them something about their career or industry. (HubSpot)
• Consumers report that the most engaging webinar format is a presentation that teaches them how to do something specific. (HubSpot)

Webinars Are Here To Stay

As these statistics demonstrate, webinars are not dead; they are here to stay. Case in point, 53% of marketers say that they plan to include webinars in their 2021 video strategy, up 11% from the previous year.

If you’re interested in learning more about using the channel in your marketing, read this guide to understand how to create compelling webinars and learn from experienced marketing HubSpotters on their best practices for taking webinars from good to great.