Webinars are an amazing opportunity for you to provide massive value to your audience all while introducing a product or service that you have to offer.
How to leverage webinars in your business
In fact, when we launched Podcasters’ Paradise in October 2013, we spent over 1 year doing live WEEKLY Webinars for those interested in podcasting.
This not only allowed us to share some really valuable, free content around podcasting, but it also gave us the opportunity to introduce those on the webinar to the Paradise community.
During the year that we were doing live weekly webinars for Podcasters’ Paradise, which we refer to as The Podcast Workshop, we found that over 80% of our lifetime membership sales were a direct result of those live webinars.
Conversion to dollars?
Over $2 million dollars in sales as a direct result of our Live Podcast Workshops.
But how do you actually create and present webinars?
Great question, and it’s exactly why we love sharing this free webinar course resource from our friends over at Webinar Ninja!
How do you use them in your business? Let’s take a look…
Ways you can use webinars in your business
1. Free, valuable content
Not every webinar you host has to be you selling.
In fact, holding free webinars where you share valuable content you know your target audience wants and needs is a great way to build trust, likeability, credibility and an email list.
What are some of the topics you cover on your blog, or on your podcast?
What are some of the most common struggles your audience faces that they’ve revealed to you?
Any of these topics or struggles is the potential topic for a webinar presentation you can host with the goal of building trust, likeability and credibility, or as a way to grow your email list.
2. Free, valuable content + sales
This is the model we use for The Podcast Workshop. Anyone who wants to come learn about how to create, grow and monetize their podcast is welcome to join – for free – and they’ll gain a ton of knowledge – no purchase necessary.
The added bonus here is that we do have a community to offer people at the end of the webinar that is a logical “up-sell” to the content and value we’ve just provided.
Now that we’ve given people advice and the top ways to create, grow, and monetize their podcast, we’re going to invite them to join our community, Podcasters’ Paradise.
Podcasters’ Paradise will offer them:
- Video tutorials on every topic they need,
- A full resources page with email templates and sample documents,
- A private Facebook group where they can connect with over 2,000 like-minded podcasters (plus myself & John every single day),
- Monthly live Q&A sessions with us!
Webinars work so well for this because unlike a static sales page that offers no intimate connection and few ways to build trust or gain credibility, you can actually turn the camera on and look your audience in the eyes.
You can talk directly to them so they can hear your voice and your passion behind what you’ve created.
This also gives you the opportunity to build scarcity around your offer.
For example, a discount for those who buy on the live webinar, or added bonuses for those who join live.
3. As a bonus
You could also use a Webinar as a bonus you’re offering up to action takers. Whether it be for people who have joined your community, or a bonus for signing up for your email list, you can offer a live training on a topic you know your audience wants to learn more about as an actual piece of bonus content.
We’ve done this with great success on Webinars where we’re offering Podcasters’ Paradise or WebinarOnFire: we throw in a bonus Q&A session, or a bonus training via live webinar just for those who take action and join our communities.
This is also valuable when you’re doing joint ventures. So if you’re teaming up with someone else to present a webinar, offering a bonus webinar session to those who purchase or take action on your offer definitely helps sweeten the deal.
4. To build community
Webinars are a powerful tool to create an intimate connection with your audience, and they’re an incredible way to start building your community.
Even holding a webinar to “meet & greet” your community is a great way to open the door and invite them in. It’s also a great way to bring people together in one place – just like an event.
So if you’re doing any type of group coaching, Q&A sessions, or other type of hangout, a webinar is a great platform to help you do that.
What else is involved with webinars?
It’s important that you have a good email sequence in place when you’re hosting webinars, which should include personalized touch points with those who opt in for your webinar from start to finish.
Once someone opts in to your webinar, you’ll want to send them a confirmation email with details on the webinar: the date, time and where they’ll need to go in order to actually attend, along with the details of what will be covered.
Your confirmation email might look like this:
Then, depending on how far in advance someone has signed up, it’s a good idea to have a mini-training, or at least a worksheet download they can grab to bring with them to the webinar. This might happen a day or two after they opt in, and at least one or two days before the actual webinar.
We typically recommend advertising your webinar anywhere from 5 – 7 days in advance, but it shouldn’t be more than that, otherwise people tend to forget or lose the excitement to attend they had when they first signed up.
Then, you’ll also want to have at least 3 reminder emails set up to go out to them: 1 the morning before the webinar, 1 the morning of the webinar, and 1 that goes out 15 minutes prior to start.
Here’s what our reminder sequence looks like in Infusionsoft:
These reminders are integral, and should be optimize to make it as easy as possible for people to attend live.
The post sequence is also important, especially if this is a webinar where you’ve offered something: a membership or other product or service.
Your post sequence should consist of at least 3 emails:
- 1 that goes out after the webinar with a replay link and a repeat of the offer you made on the webinar,
- 1 that goes out the next morning with the replay link reminder and a repeat of the offer you made, and
- 1 that goes out either the next afternoon or the next evening with a “last chance” call to action to join the community.
The tricky thing with a post-sequence is that you’re going to want to be communicating with different groups of registrants based on the actions they took (or didn’t take) during the webinar.
Here’s what our entire Webinar sequence setup looks like in Infusionsoft, including our initial confirmation, our follow up emails, our post-sequence and our final offer:
There are some webinar software platforms, like Webinar Ninja, that will help you understand who attended, who didn’t attend at all, and who attended but left early. (Fire Nation bonus! Enter promo EOFIRE and save $100!)
These are important distinctions to make in your post sequence since you’ll of course be sending these 3 different groups of people different messages.
Because we’re not able to make this distinction using Google+ Hangouts On Air, we simply segment our post sequence by sending those who didn’t buy 1 message, and those who did buy another.
There you have it! Now you have everything you need to start using webinars in your business in all different kinds of ways, including this incredible free webinar course :)
Our last stop on The Fire Path? A big fat bonus that brings together some crucial tips and strategies to help you stay focused, work efficiently, and be most productive in your business on an ongoing basis.
