Want to take your online business to the next level?
Then it's time to implement webinars into your digital marketing and this guide will show you exactly how to get started with webinars and you'll also get some tips for scaling your webinars as well.
What is Webinar Marketing and More Importantly - Is It For Me?
Webinars give you the ability to reach your audience from anywhere in the world as long as you have a descent internet connection.
Think of webinars as an online presentation or a seminar all held online.
There's ways of holding a live webinar or a pre-recorded webinar presenting it as a live, these are called Evergreen Webinars and are the way many of the top digital marketers are using to scale their business.
Most of these presentations share a screen or a powerpoint presentation occasionally you'll find people that are comfortable in turning on their webcams in addition but that's something that's completely optional.
In other words, if you're nervous or weirded out by showing your face then don't worry.
There's ways around it.
How to Setup Your First Webinar
The first order of business is your email list.
If you have an existing email list that you've built a relationship with, then this is the fastest way to turn a profit by simply inviting your existing list to a new webinar.
It's a great way to test your offers to see the interest and to see if you've got solid conversions.
If you don't have a list, then you can use your webinar to build your email list as today's webinar software providers have the ability to connect with 3rd party email services using the backend API.
That means you can put together a webinar that sells your products while building your email list at the same time.
The great part about that?
Webinar leads are worth more.
Think about it.
If you sign up to a webinar being promoted, what is the one definite thing you know for a fact?
You know there's going to be a pitch, so therefore if they're signing up knowing you're going to pitch them something - then that's a more valuable lead as opposed to a "Free Cheat Sheet" or other lead magnet.
Now, let's get to work with the setup...
Preparing Your Presentation
What type of webinar will you be conducting?
We have two basic types of Webinar presentations
- The Demo Presentation: This is where you'll share your screen where people watch you do something online.
This is extremely useful for those of you that have a software to sell or if you're teaching how to perform a certain action online.
- The Powerpoint Presentation: This is where you have a prepared presentation using Powerpoint or Keynote.
Most sales messages will fall into the Powerpoint format or may use a combination of the two.
How Long Should Your Webinar Be?
A common question is how long you should prepare for your webinar to be.
The fact is we've had success with webinars that are 45 minutes up to 2 1/2 hours.
A lot depends on what your goals are and what you're trying to accomplish in that timeframe.
Every webinar marketer will instruct you to do something different.
Years ago, I promoted a webinar as an affiliate and the webinar went on for 3 1/2 hours.
While that's a bit excessive from my viewpoint, the people that stayed until the end were the most qualified prospects I could have asked for. Think about it- if someone watches a presentation for over 3 hours, they're heavily invested.
Here's the outline that we shoot for anytime we're hosting a webinar.
6 Step Webinar Outline
- Intro: This is the opening and immediately you should tell the listener why they should listen to you.
What's your specialty?
And more importantly tell them who the webinar is for and who it's not for. - Bonding: This segment of the training is designed to form a bond with your listener to let them know you've been in their shoes.
You understand them.
And you've faced similar situations that you're going to solve on the webinar.
- Content: Now you get into the content of the webinar presentation.
What is it your teaching?
Why are they tuning in?
This is where you give them solid, actionable information and build up why your product is the perfect solution for solving their problem. - Call to Action (Close): This is where you roll out your product for the first time.
Explain what they'll be getting in terms of benefits.
Skip the tech speech and instead focus on why they're there.
For example, they're not there to see how fancy your new SEO software may be...
Instead they want to know how it's going to impact their rankings and put more money in their pocket while saving them time. - Stack the Bonuses: This portion is where you make this a special offer by stacking multiple bonuses.
The best way to handle the bonuses is find out what your prospects biggest objections are, then create solutions for those objections.
Those are your bonuses.
Once you stack the bonuses, you should have an offer that's irresistible. - Final Call to Action: This is where you restate the offer and the final call to action asking for the order.
If we're doing a live webinar, we'll follow this up with a q & a session to answer any lingering questions that we may have not thought of in our presentation.
Choosing The Appropriate Software for your business.
There are many platforms for you to choose from.
To begin with, you should decide on how you plan to setup your webinar marketing.
Is it going to be live?
Is it going to be pre-recorded?
The reason is that makes a difference in which software you go with.
If you'd like to see a breakdown be sure to check out our best webinar software and platforms guide.
For example, if you wanted to use a live software, then Webinarjam may be a good option as this is a highly recommended and very reputable software.
Or Everwebinar for doing evergreen webinars that are all pre-recorded yet presented just like a live webinar presentation.
Here's how it works.
Instead of conducting a live presentation, this allows you to make it look live.
The great thing is you can have it setup so it's working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Top Webinar Marketing Methods That Pay
So far, we've discussed the various aspects and options of your webinar.
Now, let's dive into the actual tactics that you're going to be using to make money.
There's really 3 methods for making money with webinars.
Sell other People's Stuff
This is known as affiliate marketing and the idea behind this strategy is you're acting like a commissioned sales person.
You find someone that has a product to sell, preferably mid to higher ticket where you can make a descent amount of commission.
We like to do webinars for products that are anywhere from $300 and up.
The higher the price point, the more money you're going to make.
Sell Your Own Information Product or Software
As you've probably seen, we use webinars to sell our affiliate marketing and SEO program called SOAR which is a big reason we're writing this guide - it's worked extremely well for us and can do the same for you. You can check it out the SOAR webinar here.
It's a great way to build trust, reach, and sell to hundreds of people without leaving the house.
The biggest point I want to address is that most people are not going to buy and that's ok and to be expected.
Do your best and provide killer value so there's the know, like, and trust factor so when you're rolling out something new, you've got established credibility.
Get Coaching Applicants
We'll go into a webinar funnel in the future but if you've been in the digital marketing world for any amount of time, you've seen the likes of Dan Henry, Frank Kern, and Russ Ruffino.
All of these are using a webinar funnel that takes the user to a webinar then to a coaching application that's then followed up by a sales team.
How to Make Money With Your Webinar Marketing Summary
Remember, regardless of how kick ass your salesmanship and presentation may be, most people are not going to buy.
It can be a trust factor, a timing factor, or maybe they just go sidetracked.
Most are not going to pull the trigger right away from your webinar presentation.
That's why it's critical to your webinar marketing that you create a followup sequence inside your email service provider so that you can monetize your leads.
Use emails and retargeting to bring them back to your replay and create follow up campaigns that include deadlines and scarcity of your product offer.
Lastly, we recommend getting your webinar dialed in with a "live" setting instead of going straight to an evergreen webinar.
The reason is because of how long it takes to get real numbers from an evergreen webinar.
If I'm doing a live webinar, I know right away how I did.
Then I can modify and transition quickly instead of waiting on my evergreen sequence to kick in.
Once it's all dialed in, then it's off to the races.
How Do You Get Traffic?
Well, most will tell you to go all in on paid traffic methods running ads to random targets testing everything under the sun.
While I don't discount the paid side of things, just be prepared to conduct lots of test, be willing to lose money on the front end because at the end of the day, you're buying data.
That data is going to help you make decisions moving forward.
In our instance, we do things a little differently in how we monetize this site.
For starters, we always begin with an approach that is SEO friendly in an effort to get as much organic reach as possible.
We can then stack paid ads in addition based on the topics people are interested.
If you want to learn the process we take or if you'd like some help getting it done for you, then simply hit me up via Messenger here.