In this episode of The Bathroom Break, hosts Daniel Murray and Jay Schwedelson dive into marketing strategies to drive webinar and event registrations. They share insights on how to create excitement, urgency, and a more engaging virtual event experience.

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Best Moments:

(02:03) Using social media, especially LinkedIn, to drive event registrations

(03:00) Creating FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) for webinars and virtual events

(04:30) Leveraging numbers and social proof to increase registrations

(04:49) Weaving event promotions into different types of communications

(05:36) Exciting potential attendees with content teasers and speaker previews

(06:27) Using mystery and intrigue to attract registrations

(07:25) Incorporating fun, interactive elements into events

(09:20) Adding humanity and icebreakers to improve the event experience

(10:20) Differentiating your event by borrowing ideas from other industries

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Welcome to a new special series called the Bathroom break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom. Or both. But I don't recommend both. But that's your choice.

This collab is going to be super fun.

We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwedelson from the do this, not that podcast and subjectline.com each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out.

We are back from our bathroom time with it's actually Bathroom Break. I shouldn't ruin our brand. This is Jay Schwedelson from Do this, not that our brand.

And I'm here with the ultimate Bathroom Guy, Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials. That is a great title. Do you feel good about being called the ultimate bathroom Guy?

I mean, are we rebranding on the podcast the Bathroom Time? This is the bathroom break, everybody.

Yeah, it's.

It's not bathroom time right now. It's the bathroom break. So we're ready to ask you a question.

This could be so bad. Have you ever used a Porta Potty?

Oh my goodness. Too many times to count. I just hate the feeling of like, not like holding it. So I just need to go wherever I go.

I know a lot of people who just can only go at home, like, which is. I don't know how you do it, but.

Right. You explode.

I've been at Coachella Porter. So that. That's like 110 degrees and a Porta Potties.

Disgusting. That's a great visual. You just grave everybody. Hopefully nobody's like eating right now or anything. So. All right, moving on from that.

That hot topic, literally. Let's get into the topic of the day. People want to know, how do you get people to register for webinars? How do we get them to register for events?

What are the secret tricks to get people to be able to register that people aren't thinking of, that aren't doing? What do you got?

I. I think one of the underrated things is using attention of social to get people to register and especially LinkedIn.

And it's not what I mean by that is not specifically talking about your event, but like having an. An educational post and then adding in a ps. We're having this webinar or this event or this virtual event or xyz you want to attend. Here's the.

Here's the Link. I think that goes so long way because if you can get a post to get attention the feed, you're basically stealing attention from the algorithm.

And you will see your.

That's one of the ways we got 12,000 people to come to marketing land was we used took the attention of organic attention and added a PS on a lot of our posts to drive registrations.

Now I love that. And I also think that people think that with webinars, for example, you can't create FOMO because no one has a fear of missing out on a webinar.

They don't want to go to a webinar. But it couldn't be further from the truth because you can say things for example, like we only have 100 virtual seats for this webinar, right?

And you're like, well, but that's not true. But why is it not true? Maybe on your webinar platform, that's it, you only have 100 seats.

Now, your average webinar, maybe you only get 30 people to attend. And you could say the first people to the first hundred people to attend will be able to go.

You're not going to get 100 registrations, okay, so you're automatically going to win. But creating FOMO for your event matters.

The other thing that you could do is the first hundred people to register will get this special piece of content, right? Only those first 100 people to register will get the special piece of content or the first hundred people to register will get the on demand link.

If you're not in the first hundred, you don't get the on demand link. Creating FOMO is the number one thing that you can do to create that urgency, that demand to get people to register.

Don't think you can't create fomo, but for a webinar or virtual event, I.

I, I love it. I mean I've done the, the hoodie giveaway stuff. I also think you can use numbers to your advantage. Like you use 22,000 marketers.

Like I feel like you, that's automatic FOMO where you say 22,000 marketers are attending this. Like, why aren't you attending this event?

Totally.

It creates a lot of fomo.

Another thing, another thing I think people don't do is like naturally sending a bunch of emails, but naturally weaving them in different ways to bring people to your event. So what I mean by that is you could send it in a newsletter and wave it in. In one place you can send an individual email coming from someone else.

In another place you can weaving it in in different communications that already add value is a great way to get more people to come to your event because they're already liking your content you're reading. So like the number one job is to get someone open, but then another one is to keep people reading.

But if you add a little thing that's already getting value and then you say, hey, we're going to give more of this value on this event where we're doing it. I've seen a lot of success of weaving it into my newsletter or weaving it into different communications I put out.

To my audience 100%. And then another trick that we find is that get people excited about the content that they're going to have access to, right?

So let's say you have a speaker. The worst thing that you could do is send out an email and say, we have these three speakers. Please register or do a social post.

Here are the three speakers. It's going to be really great. Nobody cares. It's epic wallpaper.

Get your speaker to make a 30 second video and have them share a quick tip and say, did you know that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is a big hot trend and blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, you want to hear more stuff just like this? Attend this webinar that we're doing.

It's going to be great. Give people a little snack, a little bite of the content.

Whether that's a stat that's in like the headline of an email or a short video from your speaker that gets people excited, they want to know what else they're going to get just like that. As opposed to just being like, register for our webinar. Who wants that?

I've been also toying with this idea, which I'm going to try next year of like not announcing some slots and saying like, this is like a secret slot that we're going to give a lot of value about. Not tell who the speaker is, not tell anything.

And you only can get those sessions live because I think you, as marketers we tend to give a lot too much up front and too much information up front. I think keeping people guessing gets people to come. So just teasing a little bit, maybe say this person's in this industry and blah, blah, blah.

But not. Or like you're doing a spam meeting contest. But you could be like, and there'll be this live session with this special blah, blah, blah.

Like, I think that's a great way to tease something that might happen that.

Gets people to go, I got the best idea. I got the best idea. You got to do this. Right. What if you did like the masked singer, Right. But you did it like Marcus style.

Like you had somebody dressed up and somebody's asking like Q A and they're answering and then you have to try to guess. Like the chat has to try to guess who is this person? And then they unmask themselves at the end. Like, oh, wow, it's, you know, Ari Murray. Who knew?

Wouldn't that be great?

That would be great. I try to do that with the ad professor. This. I want to dressed up as the ad professor and then kind of like, who is that professor?

But it didn't work out very well. But, but I think, yeah, I think also that's a great point you just made is adding things to your event that are not just marketing. I think that's.

You can have a marketing twist to it, but like you're doing this bam eating contest, you're doing a single sing along thing. I think adding things to your event that are fun, that break up the content are a way to keep your events moving and not boring.

You couldn't be more right. Because people, you have to allow people to get involved and actually feel like people. People want to like, get have fun.

They're, they're, they're cool. Like we have a, a playlist because our theme is 80s. We have an 80s playlist.

We put it out there liter and in the first day we've had 35 hours worth of 80 songs added to the Spotify playlist by everybody that's attending because they want to be a part of it. They want to do stuff. Give people the opportunity to participate. It could be a little game on a webinar, could even be in a meeting.

If you're running a meeting with 10 people, add a little fun, you know, icebreaker. You know, the icebreaker could be what's the first job you ever had when you were a teenager and what did you do?

It could be anything but add humanity to what you're doing and it changes the experience. And everything is an experience now.

You want also like those moments of feeling like they have a break from work.

Yeah.

I think a lot of virtual events I go to, I feel like I'm still at work going to them. I think you need to have this feeling of, oh, I'm taking a step away from work. I'm having fun with this session.

It's not only so adding those type of special things to your event will also like, that's a way to get more people. Registrations is just being different. I Think we don't think about that enough. We just think we did a, a virtual event or webinar.

This is our speaker. People are going to attend. No, you have to. You have to figure out ways like, is the content something really that someone wants?

Is it a speaker that nobody's ever. That people have heard of? Are you adding a flair like Jay's adding to his conference?

There's a lot of different ways that you can spin up to make it worse. People's time to come. I think that's a way to, like, separate yourself and it's. How could I be different?

And one of the best ways to do it is look what E Commerce are doing. Look what reality TV is doing.

Look, take things from the outside world and make them marketing, make them relevant to your industry, make them whatever, and people will enjoy it.

Speaking of enjoying, speaking of reality tv, right now a lot of new Real Housewives seasons have come out. Do you watch any of the Real Housewives editions? If so, which one?

So Ari makes me watch all of them, but I do enjoy them. So I can say, but she will. So she watches New York, Orange County, Beverly Hills are her. Or. Or three sometimes dabbles in New Jersey.

I know you were watching it New York this week. So how. How did you enjoy it? Like, do you like the old, like, Bethany Frankel Type 1, or do you want, like, the new one better?

I, I. Bethany Frankel. I, I don't know. That whole crew of Ramona and that whole gang. I'm very happy there in the rear view mirror.

I really like the new gang a lot. I'm on Team Brin and, and Jenna F. And Lyons, of course. I love all of them.

I tried to get into Salt Lake City, but I, I'm, I'm still involved with watching the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which is, which is a wild show. That is a wild show.

One, one fun fact is one of the husbands went to my high school and he was like a great. Played football with them, so no way. It's so funny. Yeah.

Was it good?

He's pretty good. Yeah, he's. And he. I, I was. Went and played with his brother too. It's just funny that his wife is.

Is on Mom Talk.

Yeah.

Amazing. Well, we've covered a lot of ground. I don't know what we've said, but we definitely have said it. Daniel, any parting words?

I hope you're not watching this in the bathroom or listening to this in the bathroom, but if you are, I respect you.

Mad respect. All right, later. Y' all. Daniel, Come on, man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. All right, while he's still in there. This is Jay.

Check out my podcast, do this, not that, for Marketers. Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.

Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the mark in Millennial this podcast, but also tune into the series. It's once a week, the bathroom Break.

We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it.

Just give us a a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.

Later.