Few things seem to shift as quickly as trends in technology and business. Whether the shift towards remote work, with 27% of the workforce now operating remotely, or the rapid adoption of bring-your-own-device policies, technology has shown how quickly it can influence the business environment. 

Alongside this trend have been the rapid shifts in webinar marketing and virtual event trends. Virtual events have grown tremendously since the COVID-19 pandemic, marked by restrictions that forced online business events across industries. This transition only supercharged the development of new trends within the event sector. 

Professionals' continued appreciation for the convenience of online events means that many events continue to be virtual. Therefore, businesses want to pay attention to the growing trends so that they can host successful events that drive business growth.

Let's explore these trends within the virtual event space and their role for businesses that want to stay on top of the changes.

What is a webinar marketing trend?

A webinar marketing trend is a shift in how businesses host their virtual events and what customers expect from businesses during these webinars. Staying on top of the latest trends can help businesses capitalize on webinar opportunities, including driving conversions, attracting leads, and retaining audience attention. New trends emerge when businesses uncover new ways to engage with their audience in a way that increases interest and fills the sales pipeline. 

Download Forrester Consulting and Hubilo's research about Using Engaging Webinars to Elevate the Sales Pipeline

The top webinar marketing trends in 2023 

Let's explore key marketing trends you want to consider as you work to promote your event and drive interest in your webinar. These trends can help you build your audience and bring the most interested parties to your webinar.

Multi-channel marketing

First, remember the importance of using multi-channel promotional strategies. You can create marketing campaigns that capitalize on all the platforms where your brand is active. Consider the following:

• Incorporating social media by making posts about the event, encouraging registrations among your followers, and answering questions about the webinar. For a larger event, you can even create a dedicated page or a hashtag.
• Bring in social media ads to increase engagement on your social channels. You can use these ads to target people based on your interested demographics.
• Influencer marketing can get news about your webinar out in front of likely interested audiences as they align with your target market.
• Email marketing can then promote the webinar to your existing email lists.

Email marketing

As you build your multi-channel marketing strategy, you want to pay particularly close attention to your email strategy. After all, 57% of event registrations come via email. Email marketing can play an important role in building your attendance lists. Email marketing lets you create webinar invitations segmented based on your email list information. You can tailor these invites according to the people most likely interested in your webinar. 

Work with a partner and/or sponsors.

Partners and sponsors can go a long way in promoting your webinar. If you partner with another business, you can promote your webinar to their audience and experience the benefits. Sponsors can similarly market your event to their audience to increase visibility.

Align your marketing plan with sales team activities.

Your sales team should play an active role in promoting your webinar. Have them consider their different leads and where they are in the webinar sales funnel. They can consider which leads will benefit most from a particular webinar and invite them personally to participate. Not only does this help them nurture their relationship with their lead, but it can also warm up the lead and get them closer to making a purchase. 

Paid promotions

As you build your marketing campaign for your webinar, include paid promotions as they align with your marketing strategy. Consider strategies like PPC ads on search engines, paid social media advertising, and influencer promotions to help you reach your audience from a few different angles. 

Create a content series around the webinar.

Your content calendar should also align closely with your webinar plans. Create content that helps to whet people's appetite surrounding the upcoming topic. Encourage people to get interested in your subject and wonder what they can learn during the webinar. You might offer clips from past webinars, ask your speakers to create intro videos, and encourage those visiting your brand website to register.

Repurpose content for use long after the webinar ends.

After the webinar concludes, you can utilize the content from the event to educate readers and generate leads. Splitting your webinar recording into clips allows you to post them individually, maximizing their reach. The full recording can also be repurposed as an on-demand webinar, allowing interested individuals to register and view it conveniently. The questions asked, and the topics covered during the webinar can also serve as valuable material for creating articles and blog posts. Get creative and see how to use the material to engage interested users. Hubilo revolutionizes content creation with its Snackable Content Hub, automating the process within minutes. Say goodbye to the manual creation of multiple assets as Hubilo's AI-generated Snackable Content Hub effortlessly generates video shorts and shareable webinar content. It builds a comprehensive library immediately after your webinar, providing a seamless experience. Experience the convenience and efficiency of the Snackable Content Hub today and effortlessly create impactful videos, emails, and social posts. Register for the waitlist now!

6 Webinar marketing trends to use in your webinar 

Not only can webinar trends help you market your webinar, but you can also look at the opportunities and ideas. Here are a few different webinar marketing trends you might consider to get started.

Trend 1: Increase interactivity

Webinars no longer consist of a presenter simply talking to an audience and reading from a series of slides. Instead, they have become real-time interactive experiences. Your webinar should therefore offer plenty of opportunities for your audience to interact directly with your presenters. Consider incorporating:

• Q&A portions in your events so that people can ask their questions
• Breakout sessions where audience members can discuss particular topics and maybe engage with a presenter in a smaller, more intimate setting
• Live chat tools where people can ask questions and submit feedback live
• Polls and surveys that allow people to give feedback live.

Trend 2: Smaller, more intimate experiences

While large events will likely always remain relevant, event planners and businesses have also been turning to smaller events to fill specific roles in their sales cycle. With smaller events, people can do more to nurture relationships with their leads and speak to prospects directly about what they want to see before they make a purchase. This style helps you capitalize on the potential for face-to-face interactions. Webinars now offer a wealth of engagement tools. Smaller events put these tools into practice and help presenters increase audience participation.

Trend 3: Combining serialized content and webinars

People have become more inclined to consume content in smaller chunks over a longer period. With webinars, you can tap into this trend by offering webinar series that might be shorter but cover a particular topic in depth. With a repetitive schedule that breaks the topic up in a predictable pattern, the audience knows what to expect and when they want to dedicate more time to the topic at hand. 

Trend 4: Increase in-niche webinars

What businesses used to accomplish with multi-date, large, in-person events they now work towards with smaller, hyper-targeted groups. You can segment your audience in various ways, such as hosting different webinars for people in various industries. Using a segmented audience like this makes it easier for your presenters and audience members to discuss more niche questions for an overall more tailored experience. 

Trend 5: Incorporating sales into the webinar experience

Sales teams can also play an important role in creating a quality webinar experience. Sales teams can help in ways such as:

• Presenting particular segments during the presentation,
• Run product demonstration webinars,
• Participate in Q&A sessions,
• Running breakout rooms that focus on different sales-specific topics.

Bringing sales team members into the webinar development process can help businesses capitalize on opportunities to use webinars to nurture their sales funnels and turn these leads into customers.

Trend 6: Increased use for internal training

Businesses have also begun to tap into the potential of webinars for training remote employees. With an increasing number of businesses offering remote job opportunities, which allow them to hire the best skillset rather than just the people local to the industry, training these employees needs to shift towards an online environment. 

Remote training has become increasingly appealing to both employers and employees. Ninety percent of employers say that it is beneficial to change towards mobile-based training. Nearly 90% of employees say they want training when and where they need it and want it done on their schedule.

Conducting, recording, and delivering webinars on demand can fulfill these requirements and actively engage employers and employees. Quality training helps keep employees more engaged with the business and prepares them to grow with the company.

Get the latest research from Forrester Consulting and Hubilo on the Top 5 Challenges Marketers Face with Webinars

How to forecast webinar marketing trends

As you look over the list of webinar trends, you may wonder how you can stay on top of these continual shifts. As a business professional, you want to learn how to forecast webinar marketing trends so that you can continue to keep your webinar strategy at the forefront. Here are some ideas to remain tapped into the latest trends and developments.

• Identify past trends. Look at how the industry has shifted in the past, and the direction that everything seems to move.
• Analyze data for potential patterns. As you host webinars, carefully track your webinar analytics to see if any trends emerge in the type of presentations customers appreciate and how people engage during your event.
• Look at past and present consumer behavior. Look also at how consumers behave about your business and your industry. See what issues matter to them, what challenges and pain points they want to address, and where they seek information.
• Analyze engagement across different seasons. Do not forget that consumer behavior often shifts during the seasons as their priorities and interests also change. Look at your data to see how these seasons might influence your attendee participation and what they might want to know or see at different points in the year. 
• Look at topics that were popular in the past. See what webinar topics might naturally branch off these enticing subjects that interest your audience. You can monitor your webinar metrics to understand better what your customers and leads appreciate.

Take the time to investigate these different areas regularly. You will find it easier to stay on top of the shifts within webinar marketing trends and your industry and how you can select webinar formats and topics that will interest your target audience.

Capitalize on webinar marketing trends with Hubilo

The rapid technological shifts and the role of webinars in the sales funnel mean that business professionals need to work hard to stay on top of the changes in the industry. Emerging capabilities and consumer interests mean that opportunities abound for engaging customers and nurturing growing sales funnels with virtual events. As the webinar landscape evolves, staying ahead of marketing trends is crucial for success. With Hubilo, you can seize the opportunity to leverage these trends and maximize your webinar marketing efforts. Hubilo empowers you to tap into the latest webinar marketing strategies and techniques. From interactive sessions to personalized experiences, Hubilo offers a comprehensive webinar platform to help you captivate your audience and drive engagement.

With Hubilo, you can harness the power of live and on-demand webinars, create immersive virtual experiences, and leverage data-driven insights to optimize your marketing campaigns. Stay ahead of the curve by capitalizing on webinar marketing trends and elevate your brand's presence in the digital space. Don't miss out on the potential to connect with your audience innovatively. Request a demo of Hubilo today to discover how it can revolutionize your webinar marketing efforts. Elevate your events, drive meaningful engagement, and achieve your marketing goals with Hubilo as your trusted partner.