It’s the first time ever I’m talking about webinars.
Having successfully implemented webinars in both of my businesses, I thought it was time to share some of my best tips and webinar magic with you.
When you’ve finished this post, you will have a bunch of new tools to create new and improved webinars that can help you generate a ton of leads.
Alright, let’s dive in.
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1. Earn people’s trust with webinars
Webinars are a great lead magnet or way to earn trust from your audience. Let me explain why.
Remember the AITA formula? If you missed the episode on how to build a sales funnel, make sure to check it out.
The AITA formula consists of four phases:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Trust
- Action
When you do webinars, people get to see you on video, hear you, see your body language, and so on. They immediately create a connection with you.
Therefore, hosting webinars is an extremely efficient way to move people through your sales funnel in one go.
They see you (awareness), they get to know you (interest), they trust you (trust), and they’re ready to take action and buy from you (action).
Are you convinced? Great. Let’s move on to the specifics of hosting webinars.
2. Hosting free vs. paid webinars
Like I said before, webinars are a great way to get people through the door and get them to trust you.
That’s also why I recommend that you host your webinars for free, give a ton of value, and towards the end, you can pitch something.
BUT don’t pitch your offer all the time. Keep it towards the end of the webinar and be very transparent about content and pricing. To this day, webinars are one of the top-performing lead magnets that I use.
If you decide to host a paid webinar, I advise you also offer the replay and don’t necessarily call it a webinar. Use another name like online masterclass or something similar to set the tone of what it is.
You can make this very obvious by also focusing on the way you brand it. For instance, use different names to clarify what it is and what it isn’t.
- Free things: free trainings.
- Downloads: trainings or tutorials.
- Webinars: live or available to watch at a certain point in time.
- Masterclass: paid live or available as a replay.
Now, generally, I always suggest you host webinars for free. However, if you want to host a paid training, make it expensive—unless you have a strategy.
A strategy could be to offer a cheap webinar to create the opportunity to pitch your audience something bigger and more costly. But don’t think that your cheap webinar is going to make you the king of the castle. This shouldn’t be your main money-making activity.
If you don’t have a strategy, don’t do this. I don’t want you to put all of your being and soul into a cheap webinar that you have to push really hard to sell.
Don’t underestimate the time it takes to create.
It’s easier to sell something more expensive to fewer people than something cheap to a lot of people.
To sum it up: I recommend you either host a free webinar or an expensive masterclass, unless your audience is huge. For most of us mere mortals, that is not the case!
I want you to profit from the things that you do, so by hosting a free webinar, you’ll potentially get a lot of leads through the door and convert them later on at a good conversion percentage.
Learn all about how to calculate your conversion percentage here.
3. Choose a hosting platform
When it comes to choosing your webinar hosting platform, no system is perfect.
There, I said it.
I use EasyWebinar because it’s an easy way to send and schedule automated emails before and after the webinar to participants.
It has many key features that I like, but it can let you down like any system.
Apart from EasyWebinar, you can also consider using:
- WebinarNinja
- GoToWebinar
- WebinarGeek
- Zoom
No software is perfect, but these are some of my favorites. To help you choose the best one, I suggest you write down a list of non-negotiables and then make sure you pick a system that provides those. For instance, for me, that means customizing the pre and post-webinar emails.
And lastly, no matter which hosting platform you choose, always make sure to have a backup. No system is foolproof. At the beginning of a webinar, let participants know that they can find you on your Instagram or Facebook Live if the system should fail.
4. Use slides and video
Another question that often arises when talking about webinars is whether to use slides or video.
As we want to build trust and rapport, we want participants to see us. On the other hand, slides provide a great visual way to support what you’re saying.
Therefore, I like to use both slides as well as video, and I recommend you do the same. But if you use slides, make sure they have a supporting role with visual cues. Don’t pack them with content and long sentences. This will only distract viewers and take away the attention from YOU and your voice.
Now, if you intend to use your webinar later on as an automated webinar, I recommend you stick to slides because it will make it easier to edit the recording if needed.
Maybe you're also interested in this: How to Start Your Own Podcast from Scratch
5. Find a good webinar length
Don’t make your webinar too long. The sweet spot is probably 45 minutes.
Most of my webinars run for longer (lol, oops!), but I should really try to scale it down a little. People’s attention span is low, and there’s not much to change about that.
Therefore, aim to keep your webinars somewhere between 45 and 90 minutes.
6. Get people to attend
To get people to attend your webinar, sell the webinar, don’t sell the sale you’re going to pitch at the end of your webinar.
Bonus tip! The same goes for intake conversations. One of the mistakes I often see people make is that they are so focused on what they are going to sell, instead of getting people on the sales call or intake conversation. In the end, you initially just need to sell the pitch.
And the same principle goes for getting people to attend your webinar.
In order to get people to attend and spend their scarce time and energy on consuming YOUR webinar, you need to focus on the benefits of the webinar. What are the 3 things participants will walk away with after the webinar? Make sure you communicate this clear as day.
On top of that, focus on the transformation. People want to hear about the results they will get from attending the webinar. Otherwise, why would they spend time watching it!
Next to that, you obviously need to promote it. Make a banger video and story, telling your audience how they can become X, Y, Z. And when you promote it, make sure to include CLEAR call to actions.
I use the Prettylinks plugin to make the URL very straightforward, and well, “pretty” so it’s easy for anyone to find.
7. Remind people to show up
It’s no surprise that the internet is noisy, so to push through, you need to remind people.
Use emails, your Instagram, countdowns… it’s really about being creative if you want people to attend your webinar. You need to make it pop!
It takes a ton of effort to get people to sign up, so make sure you keep them hot while they’re waiting and aim for a high attendance rate. The more people in your webinar, the more people you can sell to. If they don’t show up, they are useless leads to you.
So, keeping on REMINDING people the webinar is happening soon!
8. Sell, baby, sell
You know the benefits of hosting webinars, but don’t host webinars just for the sake of it.
Always make sure it’s a gateway to more. The fact that people want to listen to you means you got something nice going on. It means they’re interested in what you have to say.
While you shouldn’t pitch your offer the whole webinar, you still have to pitch.
If not, you’re doing people a disservice by not offering them what you have to provide them. You have a gift. You have an amazing product or an amazing service. You owe it to the world to offer people your unique gift.
So, don’t forget to sell. It would suck if you get people on your webinar, and you don’t use this incredible opportunity.
If you get 30 people to sign up, and out of those 30, 15 people attend, and ultimately 2 people convert to buying from you…? That’s amazing! Once you’ve found something that works, do it over and over and over again. If your sales engine converts, you can start working on the traffic and increase your conversion rate. Let’s aim for 60 attendants next time and make our conversion rate even better.
Before you know it, you’re signing on clients faster than you can say ‘hey Amy!’.
That's it. These are some of my best tips and webinar magic to help you create your first webinar or improve your existing webinars.
I can't wait to see you succeed!
Watch this episode on YouTube or listen via iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and search for episode 67 of The FastForwardAmy Show.
To help you further on your webinar journey, I have created an outline you can download and use, so you know exactly which slides to include or steps you need to take. With the Webinar Outline, you're going to
- Host killer webinars that make your clients happy.
- Walk away with a ton of sales from your webinar.
- Create raving fans and reviews from your webinar.
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