10 Free Traffic Sources For Your Webinar

The following guest blog was written by Vlad Falin, founder of Costofincome.com

The changes that have happened in the past year to nearly every aspect of the business world have caused a notable shift in digitalization. As a result, one  SaaS in particular  moved into the spotlight: webinars.

While webinars have existed for quite some time, their popularity has skyrocketed in the past year. Nowadays, you hear the term “webinar” from nearly every corner. Recruiting webinars, product reveal webinars, educational webinars, vendor webinars, and the list goes on. 

There are many webinar uses, but one of them outshines the rest:  sales webinars. But we’re not surprised, the scale and efficiency that webinars offer for making sales are hard to beat. 

You know this, but the competition knows it too. In this day and age, the attention of your audience is everything.  It can be very difficult to persuade potential customers to pay attention to your webinar above the rest.. 

It is even more difficult when you do not have a following and need to build everything from scratch. 

In this post, we will go over several methods for getting free traffic to your webinar.

Let’s get to it! 

Choose The Right Platform

You may think that the platform you’re using will not influence the number of attendees. Well, it does and does not.  

For example, Easywebinar has a number of integrations that will make the lead generation and follow up much easier.

You need a platform that not only can integrate with 3rd party tools but also can record your webinars without any issues.

In addition to that, you can improve your presentation by choosing the right equipment or even going as far as using green screen software to take yourvisuals to the next level.

These recordings can serve as future freebies, or just as part of an automatic sales funnel. 

Use Pinterest 

Did you know that the vast majority of the audience on Pinterest are women aged 25-50, from the US, and have  a household income of $50k or more per year? 

If you are thinking that this is a perfect audience, it is, but it has quite special tastes. Pinterest is a visual search engine, and can work quickly in comparison to Google,where ranking can take between 6 and 12 months. On Pinterest, you can get traffic in about 3 months. 

But like all things, it is a bit more difficult than it sounds. The Pinterest audience can be very picky. Usually, they tend to favor topics like fashion, food, travel, DIY, blogging, budgeting, design, and photography. 

So if your webinar falls into one of those categories – Pinterest is a platform to explore extensively.

Research Long-Tail Keywords

Yes, you heard right, we suggest going to Google for some quick wins. But how? 

Let’s assume that you are planning a webinar on 3D modeling.You would go into one of the SEO tools (I use Ahrefs) and check for keywords that are related to that topic. You would would see something like this:

That search has low difficulty, and good volume, but let’s also put it into Google but with the “allintitle” modificator. This is what you get: 

If we divide 35 by 200, we will get 0.18 – that is a good indication that if you wrote a post for exactly this topic,  you could get ranked on the first page quickly. If the result was over 0.25, that would mean that the competition is too high or the volume too low. 

All you have to do now is gather a bunch of such keywords that are related to your webinar topic, and build content around those words. Soon you will see highly targeted organic traffic a number of which may be interested in your webinar. 

Don’t Discard Content Marketing

Does it take long to get ranked? It can, yes. Is it difficult? Sure. But is there any better source of action-prepared traffic than organic? 

Content marketing is a long-term strategy. It takes a lot of work today, so you can reap rewards in 6-12 months. What makes it so appealing is that the rewards are substantial. 

Consider this. People go on Facebook to catch up with friends, they go on LinkedIn to check on colleagues and industry news, they go on Instagram to watch travel pictures and Insta stories. 

The primary place where people go to get answers, services, and products is Google. That is why organic traffic is so valuable.  

If you are planning a webinar, it will take you quite some time to put everything together. While you are handling all the planning, put a couple of nice posts with a 2,000 search volume out there. Do basic keyword research, and aim for low difficulty ones and that will put you on the map. 

This will help you twofold:

• You will create a base to generate traffic in the future.
• In addition to that, you will have some valuable content where you can direct your webinar attendees. 

Try Quora

Quora is a website where people ask a wide variety of questions and the others answer them. But how might we use it to our advantage? 

Continuing on our example of a 3D Modeling Webinar, we would go on Quora and search for questions related to that.

You would answer the questions as best you can, and where possible – you would mention the webinar. 

While most of your answers will remain unnoticed with just a few clicks here and there, some of them may get many upvotes and comments providing you with more exposure, and therefore more free traffic. 

Experiment With Reddit

This is a tough one, but if done correctly, you will see an inflow of traffic as never before. However, if you fail, you will possibly be banned and probably have to read a lot of angry comments. 

There is a good saying about Reddit that explains the whole nature of the platform – “It is ok to be a Redditor with a website, but not ok to be a website with a Reddit account”.

Reddit has a long list of so-called subreddits, topical subpages where experts, fans, (and sometimes spammers and trolls) meet to discuss their thoughts on various issues.

If you post something that is truly beneficial to that community and it is not blatantly self-promotional, you may see a great spike in traffic.

While it seems that getting so many visitors quickly on Reddit is a no-brainer – things can also go wrong. 

Redditors tend to have an excellent intuition when it comes to self-promotion, and if the negative sentiment of the crowd prevails, it can get a bit ugly. You might be banned from the subreddit and also receive a couple of comments that you might not enjoy.

So with Reddit, tread very carefully.

Leverage Social Media

Quite an obvious choice when it comes to free traffic for your webinar, but we want to draw your attention to a particular feature. For this post, we will focus on Facebook and Linkedin. 

While you might think that getting clicks from these two platforms will take quite some time, this is not always so.

You see, hashtags are a very important aspect of the post. So if you manage to get those right, you can get a substantial amount of impressions, even on a new page that just published a post.

Both platforms will suggest various hashtags for you to consider, but do not put 20 hashtags into one post. Rather, create several posts with various hashtag groups.

This will allow you to test various visuals and titles, while at the same time reach a wider audience variety. 

If you plan to double down on this strategy, you may want to consider a social media management tool. 

Do not get discouraged when your first post doesn’t bring the desired result. Create a content calendar, and keep slowly releasing new content and soon some of your posts will get traction with the audience. 

Create a Theme Page

There is one strategy that is worth mentioning separately when talking about social media, and that is Instagram Theme Pages.

If you have not  heard about them before, Theme Pages are centered around a particular topic rather than a person or a brand. The goal is to gather an audience that will follow your account, and then promote various links when the account is big enough.

It takes time before you manage to grow a following, but after all the work you will have a new free traffic source. 

To get your page started consider requesting “follow for follow” on your posts, or reposting images of other users (but always tag the original account). More often than not, that account will follow you back. 

When you feel confident in the audience that you’ve managed to accumulate, it is time to promote your webinar. Don’t overdo it, or you may see your followers leaving. Rather pitch them the webinar every other day or so, and closely follow the engagement rate. 

Two-Step Emailing Strategy

If we told you to send out an email blast it would not be anything new, would it? If you already have a strong email list, it goes without saying that you need to notify  your list and let your subscribers know that you are preparing a webinar. 

We will take a different approach here – giveaways.

Referral contests and giveaways are a great way to leverage your audience. Sure, this strategy would be very difficult to execute with no follower base at all, but it does not take too many people to get the ball rolling.

The idea is very simple, you ask the reader to refer a friend and leave their email to participate in a giveaway. An important factor here is the right referral program incentive to make sure that you get a bigger group involved. 

This also creates multiple opportunities for promotion, as you can share the status of the content several times – when you launch, when it is running and when you have the winner. 

As for what to do next?You can just start up the good old email marketing flow and get your subscribers converted to attendees! 

Partner Up! 

2 + 2  = 4, so let’s take advantage of it! 

Let’s assume that you have 1000 followers across your digital assets. Search for other players in your niche with similar reach. For example, you may have a blog with 1000 readers and they may have a Twitter with 1000 followers. 

The math, in this case, does not have to be exact. But you get the idea. The most important part is that your audiences are comparable. 

Compile a list of such people and reach out to them with the following offer varieties:

• They promote your webinar on their channel and you would promote their site or product on yours.
• If you have a weaker number of audience members, consider offering a special bonus for their audience, something that would make the influencer look good in their eyes and would cost them nothing. 

Always keep in mind that the potential partner will need to know what is in it for them. If your proposal has value, your conversion rate can increase notably. 

Heard of HARO?

Are you a specialist in your field? Maybe try giving HARO a shot.  HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out and it is essentially a platform that connects specialists and reporters who are looking for a quote. 

It is free, and after you register you will start receiving emails with topics that journalists are writing about and what they are looking for. You will also see the publication that they write for. 

You pick a question that fits your narrative and send a response. If chosen, you (and your link) will be featured in that online publication.

It is not as easy as it sounds, as getting picked can be extremely difficult and it may take many pitches before it works. But you will have a shot at being featured on sites as Inc, Business Insider, Forbes, etc. – and that is worth the hassle.

While getting some authority is great, this will also provide you with a one-off traffic inflow – if you get the right topic of course. 

Conclusion

The last but most important  tip is hidden here: stay consistent. With all the strategies from this and  other posts, you may be inclined to try some new tactics. You can always stop doing it if you feel that it is not working out.

 But don’t give up too soon. Give the strategies a bit of time to develop, see if the positive trend is there. When you will identify it – you can go all-in on that particular approach.

Stay at it! 

About the author Vlad Falin is a digital marketer and a founder of Costofincome.com, where he writes to tens of thousands of readers a blog about online business and digital marketing tools with several thousands of readers.