When you market conferences, it’s not necessarily the speakers that draw the most registrants. With webinars, in particular, topic is king.
You can have the best speaker in the world, but if you don’t have a topic that resonates with your audience, it’s unlikely they’ll register for your webinar. With physical conferences, it’s a little different because you have so many topics and speakers that, more than likely, you’ll have topics that some people like and some people don’t. But if you’ve got enough to provide a good balance of information, it will usually draw in a broad range of registrants.
I had a discussion recently about a webinar I was running, and I wanted to send an email about the keynote. My colleague liked the idea, but said we should focus on the speaker and her background (because she was so well known in the industry). I, on the other hand, thought we should focus on what she was going to talk about. We weren’t sure exactly what that was going to be, but still, I thought details on the topic rather than who she was would be more likely to draw more interest. Turns out there’s room for both sides of the equation.
There are indeed two camps in this debate. Marketing the keynote works well when you can tout a person’s celebrity status. But when it comes to webinars, what that speaker is going to be talking about is still the most useful information you can include in your marketing. And of course, the benefits—what attendees will be able to do with the information, how it’s going to help them do a better job, and how it’s going to make them more money—are critical to the success of any marketing you do.
MAY
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