The indie hackers guide to webinar marketing

Webinars can be a powerful tool in the Indie Hackers marketing toolset. In a series of posts, I hope to share my experience on:

• When to use Webinar marketing
• How to get started
• What does it take to get your first webinar up and running

My name is Nir and I am the founder of the webinar marketing platform Glow. I am a React and Python developer. I am also an introvert, so hosting webinars required a bit of a mental jump for me.

In my previous SaaS product, Sorted, webinars were a key part of our marketing strategy. They helped us to convert signups into paying customers. In this series of posts, I hope to share what I have learned in the process.

What are webinars good for?

Webinars are a great way to interact with your audience on a personal level.

People attend webinars because they are looking to learn about a specific topic. By teaching them about this topic, you give them a lot of educational value, and build trust.

Webinars tend to be most helpful in converting prospects or free users into paying customers.

As a bi-product, you will also create awesome content that you can use to attract more users.

When should I consider using webinars as an Indie Hacker?

Webinars are a high effort, high reward marketing activity, so it is important to use webinars at the right time.

If you have a followers list of a few hundred people or more, webinars can be very effective.

Your followers list can be made out of users who signed up with their email, subscribed to your newsletter or followed your page on LinkedIn or Twitter. It doesn’t really matter as long as you have a good way of reaching them online.

If you are looking to build your email list or followers list, I would suggest starting with other marketing strategies, for example writing content, being involved in a community or offering a free product that your audience finds valuable.

Why live webinars and not just video content?

You might be thinking: Live webinars are dead, everyone consumes content in video.

Videos are definitely more popular, but webinars are still used by the best companies, and for a good reason. Some people just prefer the extra hand holding. These are the people who will prefer a personal demo or an onboarding call.

I see 3 main advantages to live webinars over video content:

Live webinars have a deadline, and deadlines help people to commit. You can always postpone watching a video. This is why limited “free trials” work, and this is also why webinars work.

Live webinars allow for a Q&A session. In my opinion, this is the most important part of the webinar. People who attend the webinar will get expert advice for free. And if you answer their questions well, you will gain their trust.

Live webinars are a great “excuse” for multiple touchpoints, where you can share more about what you are doing, and provide additional value.

Can I run webinars with a small budget?

The good news is that you don’t need a large budget to create and run webinars. Even the most basic Zoom package allows you to host a meeting with to 100 attendees, which is more than enough to get started.

To promote your webinar you will need to collect webinar registrations with a registration form, an email tool to send webinar reminders, and a way to promote your webinar, either through your email list or social networks.

If you are running an online business, most likely you will have all of these tools already in place, so you won’t need to allocate any additional budget to getting started with webinars.

How can I get started with webinars?

Generally speaking, hosting a successful webinar requires going through the following 7 steps. In my next posts, I will deep dive into each of these steps:

1. Choosing your webinar topic, speaker and date
2. Choosing your webinar streaming platform
3. Promoting your webinar
4. Preparing the content for the webinar
5. Preparing the after-webinar followup
6. Hosting the actual webinar
7. Analyzing the results and iterating

Preparing for the webinar does require a significant amount of time and effort. The trust you will gain from successful webinars will be worth the effort. With time, it will get a lot easier. With the right tooling, you will automate most of the manual work.

Next in the series: Choosing your webinar topic, speaker and date

See you in the next post :)

P.S. I would love to get your feedback! Let me know if this was helpful and whether there are specific topics you would like me to cover.