To launch a successful online course, you’ll need two things: promotion and engagement. However, it can be difficult to balance marketing your course while also keeping your audience interested and engaged. 

When considering how to promote your course while keeping folks engaged, a webinar is a great tool. With webinars, you can increase learner engagement, interaction, and collaboration within your community. Compared to in-person events, they’re more cost-effective and enable you to reach a larger audience.

Let’s dive into how you can run webinars effectively to promote your online courses. 

What should your webinar be about?

First, before scheduling your webinar, you should have a rich topic ready. Webinars can showcase your expertise and teaching style, so explore topics that tie back to your course. Provide valuable information that gives a sneak peek of your course or builds upon course material.

For example, if your course is about photography for beginners, then your webinar could cover a few of the basics before teasing specifics from your course, like camera lenses, angles, framing, editing, and so on. You could feature a known photographer (either a local artist or one in your network) to speak to your participants about getting started and tricks to make photography easier. 

In short, you should come across as an expert in your field, make participants feel like they learned something valuable, and entice them to want more (and naturally, sign up for your course!).

What format should you use?

A webinar, like any good presentation or course, should have a narrative flow that follows an introduction, body, conclusion formula. Here’s what we mean: 

• Introduction: Introduce the topic and host, the guest speakers, and give an overview/outline slide that previews what’s to come. If you’d like, you can add an icebreaker to get folks comfortable using chat or speaking up. 
• Body: This consists of everything else: the interviews, materials, Q&A sessions, clips, videos and other content that provides the bulk of the session. 
• Conclusion: Thank the attendees for coming, collect contact information, and pitch your online course, including the link to register and a promo code for attending. 

This format helps the webinar stay focused, give participants an idea of what to expect, and helps manage time.

How to run webinars for promotion and engagement  

Now that you’re familiar with what topics to cover and how to structure your webinar, let’s explore how you can successfully run a webinar as an online course creator. 

Plan and prepare 

First, plan out content you’re going to feature. You could map out your webinar by writing a script. Building a script takes longer, but if you want to showcase your subject area knowledge, a script can ensure you’re hitting all your talking points. 

You shouldn’t rely solely on the script, however. People want to be able to relate to you, and if it seems like you’re reading a script, it may come across poorly. Practice your delivery and do a dry run, ensuring you have time to add additional points as you’re speaking.

After planning and practice, make sure there’s enough time beforehand to sort out any technical issues. Test your equipment, run your software updates, and be ready to go live at least 15 minutes before the webinar starts. 

Take advantage of features

Webinars can accommodate lots of features of engaging online presentations. Using interactive features can increase your audience engagement and lead to a more successful webinar outcome: sign-ups for your course. 

Some interactive features of a webinar include: 

• Slides: A slideshow using Apple Keynote or Microsoft PowerPoint helps you focus your thoughts and present bullets that reinforce learning.
• Videos: You can stream video from YouTube, your personal computer, or elsewhere to create visual impact.
• Two-way communication: Your webinar platform should allow you to talk to your audience, not just at them. Make sure your platform allows participants to comment, ask questions, raise their hand, interact with a Q&A, and more. 
• Recording: Webinars offer the opportunity to record the entire session. This lets you capture visual and audio input for re-distribution and later use, perhaps in bonus products.
• Polls or surveys: Look for a webinar host tool that lets you create surveys or quizzes to check knowledge before and after the webinar.

Choose the right guest speaker 

The right guest speaker can make your webinar more engaging and memorable. As subject matter experts, they bring unique perspectives and insight. This person should be authentic and personable to connect with your audience. 

When interacting with your guest speaker, or moderating a list of questions, make sure to ask questions that set them up for meaningful answers. Try to ask both open-ended and closed questions. 

For example, in a webinar about beginner photography, you could ask your guest speaker questions like:  

• “Can you share with us what age you were when you got into photography?” This is a closed-ended query that breaks the ice and helps you move into deeper topics.
• “What tips do you suggest for novices?” This is a wider, probing question that might take longer to answer. It also gives participants a chance to pick up a few tips to improve their own photography skills.

Make sure you’re setting your speaker up for success by asking them questions that they’re prepared to answer. Providing the questions beforehand can avoid any dead air time and help ensure your speaker is well prepared to deliver a great experience. 

Promote your webinar 

Promoting your webinar is like promoting your online course. The more webinar participants you have, the more course enrollments you’re likely to receive.

You can promote your webinar using many of the same strategies you would use to spread the word about your online course, including: 

• Email campaigns
• Posting on social media 
• Advertise on relevant websites 
• Create a landing page 
• Guest post on a website with a link back to your webinar
• If you have a guest speaker, ask them to promote it within their network
• Provide a limited-time offer or incentive to encourage enrollment

The earlier you are able to start marketing your webinar, the better. You’ll have enough time to carry out campaigns and pivot as needed. 

Have a post-webinar strategy 

There’s a great opportunity after your webinar to send limited-time offers. Follow up with information and links to your online courses. Send out the webinar link with a thank-you and a survey to see what your attendees thought of it. You may receive actionable feedback to improve your future webinars. 

You can also repurpose the webinar recording for lead generation. Offer access to the webinar in exchange for contact information. Conversely, put it on your website and YouTube channel for further exposure. Break the website into bite-sized chunks that make for great TikTok posts or Instagram Stories. 

Run webinars for LearnDash courses

Webinars are a fantastic tool for online course promotion and engagement. With the right planning, guest speaker, and interactive environment, your webinar should show new learners just how engaging your courses can be. 

Did you know you can host live webinars inside a LearnDash course? By integrating a webinar platform into an open page of your course, you’re drawing users right to the content you want them to see. After hosting your webinar, learners can easily sign up for your cause. 

Don’t have one yet? Create an engaging course in just a few clicks with the LearnDash LMS plugin to solidify trust with learners, plus your reputation and brand within your industry. Try LearnDash for free to start creating winning courses today!