Webinars offer a fantastic platform to captivate your audience, strengthen your brand presence, and turn viewers into active participants. Hosting webinars is about more than just building an audience though. They’re also great at driving real business goals. To do that, you need compelling calls to action (CTAs).
Calls to action (CTAs) are strategically placed messages, buttons, or links that encourage your audience to take a specific action. They play a pivotal role in steering your audience towards desired outcomes, be it registering for an upcoming webinar, downloading valuable resources, or purchasing a product. They are the secret sauce for driving conversions.
In this article, we cover the art of using CTAs throughout your webinar funnel.
Why are CTAs Important?
Webinar CTAs play a pivotal role as they lay out a clear roadmap for attendees. They nudge attendees to take specific actions that align with their overarching goals. For instance, if you aim to generate leads, a well-crafted webinar CTA can prompt attendees to fill out a contact form or sign up for a demo.
Likewise, if building brand awareness is your focus, a CTA encouraging attendees to share the event on social media might be more appropriate. It's not just about directing actions though. CTAs also help with gauging the success of your webinar. By keeping track of clicks and conversions, you gain insights into audience engagement and the effectiveness of your messaging. This valuable data becomes the secret ingredient for refining future webinars and elevating their impact.
Here’s a summary of why CTAs are so important:
Conversion and Goal Achievement: CTAs prompt the audience to take action. Throughout the webinar funnel, you’ll use CTAs in different ways. This includes registration CTAs, email links, or CTAs sent after the webinar.
Clarity and Direction: CTAs give your audience clear and direct instructions on what to do next. A well-placed CTA gives the user exactly what they want at the right time in their journey.
Data Collection: What, where, how, and when a customer clicks on your CTA tells you a lot about them. You can use analytics tied to your webinar CTAs to sharpen your messaging, gauge interest, and understand what works and doesn’t.
What is a good CTA for a webinar?
The best webinar CTAs will be easy to understand and should be tied to the action you want the person to take. Use simple language, make the offer clear, and be explicit with the action. Write in the first person to grab the reader's attention, pushing them to respond.
For example: instead of using "Learn more" or "More information", use CTAs like "Register now" or "Watch replay" — these make it much more clear what the button does.
Types of Webinar CTAs
The format of your CTAs are just as critical as the message and timing. Different types of CTAs have distinct strengths and weaknesses.
That’s why it’s important to select the format that resonates most with your audience. Here's a breakdown of different webinar CTAs you might use across your marketing funnel.
Type of CTA
Description
Example
Button
A highly visible clickable element on your page, emails, or in your webinar. One of the most common types of CTAs.
"Secure Your Spot" button on the registration page.
Text
Hyperlinked text. It can be inline or separate from the text body. Could be used in emails, on landing pages, or in your webinar chat.
Throughout the webinar funnel, you can use different kinds of CTAs to get different responses. We’ve included some specific examples you can use below, but don’t be afraid to be creative!
Pre-webinar CTAs
Pre-webinar CTAs are calls-to-action that are used before the actual webinar event to encourage potential participants to register and take other actions. Pre-webinar CTAs not only encourage registration but also play a vital role in setting expectations and maximizing engagement before the event. You’ll use these when setting up a webinar.
Encouraging Registration
Start by making signing up easy and appealing. Use clear, inviting language like, “Claim your spot” or “Register now”. Place these CTAs on your website, in emails, and across social media. The goal is to create excitement and a sense of urgency about your webinar.
Setting Expectations
Once someone registers, set the stage for what they can expect. Send a confirmation email with a warm, welcoming message. Include details about the webinar’s content, the date and time, and maybe even a link to some additional resources that you think they’d like. An example of a good CTA in a post-registration email is a button that adds the event to their calendar.
Pre-Webinar Engagement
You might even consider encouraging registrants to submit questions for a Q&A or topics they’re interested in before the webinar. This makes them feel involved and gives you valuable insights into your audience’s interests. You could use CTAs like, “Tell us what you’d love to learn!” in your pre-webinar communications.
At Contrast, we built a platform to make hosting engaging webinars easy. In just a few minutes you can create custom webinar registration pages that are designed to convert. We also make sure that the registration process is straightforward and accessible for attendees. All the necessary information and links are available in one place, making it easier for your audience to join your webinar in just one click.
The platform also lets you send personalized webinar invitation emails and reminders, ensuring that your registered participants are well-informed and excited about the upcoming event. You can include CTAs in these like “Add to Calendar” or “Preview the Agenda”.
In-webinar CTAs
In-webinar CTAs are prompts strategically placed within the live webinar to guide your audience toward your desired goal.
Keep Your Audience Hooked
In-webinar CTAs can be used to keep audiences involved. Use simple, direct calls to action to encourage participation. For example, say, “Let us know what you think in the chat!” or “Click the poll button now!” This keeps everyone active and part of the conversation.
Your Main Goal
Your primary CTA should be about your main goal, like getting people to sign up for something. Make this clear and strong. Say something like, “To try what we’ve talked about for yourself, just click ‘Sign Up’ now!” During a webinar, you should use both spoken words and a visible link, button, or image for your CTA. This double approach grabs attention and gets people to act.
There’s an example below showing how we do this using our own webinar platform. Contrast comes with dynamic layouts that you customize for your brand to keep things interesting visually. At this moment our goal was to understand how people create video thumbnails, so we put the poll question up on the screen and prompted attendees to answer the question. You could do this with different types of CTAs as well. For example, if you were pushing your audience to sign up for your product, you could show a visual of your product, tell them why they should go sign up, and drop the link in the chat.
Webinar polls in Contrast
Post-webinar CTAs
After your webinar ends, it's crucial to keep talking with your audience. Use simple, clear CTAs in that post-webinar communication.
Repeat Your Main Message
Don’t forget to bring up your main goal again. For example, you could say something like, “Missed the chance to sign up? Here’s another opportunity!” Add links, buttons, or images in your post-webinar emails. This helps convert those who didn’t act during the webinar.
Share More Resources
Offer more value after the webinar. Send links to extra materials or related webinars. You could use CTAs like, “Dive deeper into [topic]” or any of these example CTAs. You could also use the CTA, “Share your feedback” in a follow-up email asking for attendees what they thought about the webinar. This makes your viewers feel heard and valued.
Contrast's new Repurpose AI feature helps with every step of the journey after a webinar ends. It quickly turns your webinar into fresh, shareable content like blog posts, social media updates, or any other type of content you need. It's easy to use and helps you keep your audience engaged with relevant post-webinar materials.
Repurpose webinars with AI in Contrast
You can also use Contrast’s built-in editor to repurpose and share short-form clips from your webinar. These can be used on social media, follow-up emails, or as embedded videos on your website. When sharing an edited clip your CTA might be something like “Watch this highlight from our webinar”.
Create webinar clips in Contrast
8 Tips to Use the Right CTAs
Even the best tools are pointless if you don’t know which CTAs to use at what time. Here’s how you know:
Understand Your Audience: You must understand who you’re selling to to craft the right CTA. That means knowing their profile, preferences, and pain points. You should determine all of this when planning your webinar. Interviews, sales calls, surveys, and analytics tools help you understand your buyers more.
Align CTAs with Webinar Goals: Your webinar CTAs should match your goals as a company. Do you want market exposure? Then your CTAs should link to educational resources. Want to make a sale? Direct them towards a sales page.
Keep CTAs Clear and Concise: In general, keep the text no more than 3-5 words. Make it action-oriented and specific. A spoken CTA during a webinar can be longer though. Just make sure you don’t turn away your audience by speaking for too long about the CTA and being overly promotional.
Use Compelling Language: Time to get creative! Compelling language creates urgency in the reader. “Get saving now” compels the user to click and explore. Another classic tactic is (truthfully) leveraging scarcity. If you only have 200 spots on your webinar, say “Register one of 200.”
Strategic Placement of CTAs: Like real estate, it’s all about location. Place CTAs in prominent places where they’re guaranteed to be seen.
A/B Testing for Optimization:A/B testing is a way to test your CTAs to see what works best. Learn which CTA variations perform best by testing different language, design, and format combinations. With this information, you can improve click-through rates and conversions.
Personalise CTAs for Customer Segments: Personalized CTAs convert more leads than non-personalized ones. You can tailor your CTAs to suit different audiences. Personalize your CTAs for specific customer segments to maximize engagement. For example, a tech company that solves employee onboarding might use a webinar CTA like “Start improving your onboarding”.Pro tip: Using pronouns is an easy way to personalize your CTA. For example, “Customize your onboarding” is better than “Customize onboarding.”
Consistent Branding in CTAs: Ensure your CTAs match your brand identity. If a company has a more conversational brand voice, you’d probably want to use a CTA like “Chat with us” instead of “Contact our team”.
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Contrast customer Numeral uses a simple but effective “Register now” call to action on their webinar registration page. When you scroll down the page on registration pages that were built using Contrast, the CTA button also “floats” down with your mouse so that it is always visible. This helps users know the primary next action to take, no matter where they are on the page.
Pre-webinar CTA in promotional images
Webinar promotional image from Foxley
Foxley is a platform that provides business training to graphic designers and illustrators. This CTA is on an image that they used to promote the webinar and attract an audience. “Claim your spot” increases the urgency to register. The yellow color and use of a button in the image also helps it to stand out and let users know that the image is clickable.
In-webinar CTA using a poll
Polls in a webinar hosted using Contrast
Here’s an example of what an in-webinar CTA that uses a poll could look like using Contrast’s webinar platform. The poll is featured in the chat on the right and hosts can choose to display the results on the screen. You could also use this same technique to point viewers to a specific URL or put text or images on the screen telling them what action to take.
Post-webinar CTA on an on-demand webinar landing page
Userled’s on-demand webinar page built using Contrast
This is an example of a post-webinar CTA from Userled. Because they use Contrast, their webinar registration page automatically turns into an on-demand landing page for the webinar replay after the event (you can disable that if needed). This makes it easy for the Userled team to promote and share the webinar recording and for attendees to find it, since it’s on the same link as the event itself.
Post-webinar CTA in an email
Post webinar email
This post-webinar email from Superpath has a few CTAs. An inline CTA instructs you to book an intro call. The primary CTA offers additional value with a link to the presentation deck. It also grabs attention by using strategic whitespace, bolding, and emojis. The email’s CTAs don’t use any special graphics or HTML elements that might break. This makes it compatible across multiple email platforms.
FAQ
What is the ideal length for a CTA?
The ideal CTA is shorter than five words. But this isn’t an absolute rule. Experiment with different lengths. Your ultimate goal is letting the user know what step to take next in a way that gets them to do it.
How do you balance multiple CTAs in a webinar?
You can use different types of CTAs to get different responses. For instance, a download link in the chat gets a different response than an on-screen poll. But be careful not to overwhelm your audience with too many CTAs. It may put them off. In general, a good rule of thumb is that you should only ever have one CTA on any one piece of content. So in a webinar invitation email, there should only be one CTA that pushes them to register. For more info, this article dives deeper into the question of multiple CTAs.
What metrics should I use to measure CTA effectiveness?
It depends on what your CTA is, but ultimately, you’re measuring how many people took your desired action. Whether it's link clicks, demo requests, or actual sales, the key is tracking how many people took the intended action. Here’s an in-depth guide to webinar KPIs you might want to check out.
Great Webinars Deserve Great CTAs
Webinar CTAs are guiding lights in your customer’s journey. They drive engagement and conversions. But every customer is at a different stage of their journey. Older webinar tools usually don’t give you the full suite of CTA formats to experiment with. Those that do typically aren’t a free webinar platform. With Contrast, you can create beautiful and engaging webinars with CTAs that convert. Ready to level up your webinars?
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