How to get 350 webinar signups with $0 spend

by Ryan James

founder of Rocket SaaS

Online meeting. Concept of video conferencing via laptop. People communicate with each other by video connection.

I ran a webinar that got 500 sign-ups. I will show you how I did it so you can copy my strategy.

This webinar resulted in £96,000 worth of business for Rocket SaaS.

I will stress that the £96,000 of new business from this webinar was not from a cold audience. The clients we closed off the back of it had already heard of us, and the webinar helped push them down to the bottom of our marketing funnel.

A single webinar is not often a magic wand campaign to drive immediate sales. But it does act as a fantastic asset for brand awareness, retargeting or helping push sales over the line.

You can watch my webinar here on YouTube

For my webinar, I used 6 different acquisition channels, 4 of which were free. The free ones resulted in 350 sign-ups.

I allowed for 3 weeks of promotion before the webinar date.

1. Newsletter

My weekly newsletter, SaaS Marketing Weekly, resulted in 115 sign-ups.

3 weeks before the webinar, I sent one newsletter that was 100% focused on the webinar itself. The two subsequent weekly newsletters had different leading content (my usual marketing tips) but featured banners to promote the webinar.

A weekly value-packed newsletter is critical for any B2B brand to build an audience. Once you have an audience, getting webinar signups is easy.

2. LinkedIn DMs

I hate 99.9% of automated LinkedIn DM bot messages, and I’m sure you do, too.

No, I don’t want to have a virtual coffee with you.

The 0.01% of LinkedIn DMs that I do like are the ones that offer me something that I would value for free, like a webinar invite for a problem that I currently have on my mind.

To run LinkedIn DMs, you need LinkedIn Sales Navigator and automation software like Meet Alfred. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find your target audience, then use the automation software to send automated connection requests and messages. Just lay off the spam, please!

LinkedIn DMs got me 101 sign-ups for my webinar.

linkedin dm

3. Cold email

Cold email is very similar to LinkedIn DMs. I don’t agree with spammy cold emails, but sending your prospects free value is okay in my book.

Cold email is much more complicated to set up than LinkedIn DMs, but once you have it running, you can reach at a much higher volume than LinkedIn. You can send thousands of emails per day. So even a 1% return can be decent.

I’d recommend using burner domains so your main one does not get blacklisted. Use Instantly to send the emails and Apollo to find the contacts.

Be sure to research how to do this properly without getting blacklisted or in any GDPR trouble.

4. LinkedIn organic

The Rocket SaaS company page’s organic LinkedIn posts resulted in 5 sign-ups. 49 sign-ups came from my personal LinkedIn.

Much like building an email newsletter audience, when you need webinar sign-ups, you’ll be grateful for building up a LinkedIn follower base. It took me around a year of regular posting and engaging with others to generate over 9,000 followers on my personal LinkedIn page.

webinar ad

5. Meta and LinkedIn Ads

Now, we get onto the paid acquisition channels. We spent £500 on LinkedIn Ads and £500 on Meta Ads. LinkedIn Ads only resulted in 17 sign-ups as the CPC was high. Meta resulted in 130. Quite the difference!

A word of warning: Meta ads will bring in plenty of unqualified leads and personal email addresses (but that does not mean they are not secretly your perfect client). In my experience, the low cost of Meta Ads is worth receiving a few poor-quality leads because you’ll also get a few good ones.

Generating consistent B2B SaaS leads requires a well-planned mix of audience building, brand awareness, and engaging lead magnets like webinars. While a single webinar won’t always deliver instant results, it can be a powerful tool to nurture leads and push prospects further down your marketing funnel.

At Rocket SaaS, we specialise in creating and managing these types of campaigns. Whether you need help with strategy, execution, or scaling your marketing efforts, our team can handle it for you. If you’re ready to elevate your marketing and drive measurable results, book a free strategy call with us today. Let’s talk about how we can help you grow.