Episode 7- Invites and managing Filling the seats P1 (also known as marketing/promotion!)
In E6 we discussed frequency and cadence
Today’s episode- number 7- We’re going to back track a bit. With all that going on and being decided, now we need to think about taking our list of followers and getting them to the webinar! In my “Zooming to Webinar Success Prep form” of over 50 steps, how you’ll communicate with or in this case TO your audience that you’re having a webinar is next.
First question is how far ahead to communicate. The obvious approach here is to communicate and invite through the channels you’re already attracting them by. There is a sweet spot somewhere less than 3 weeks, more than 7 days that you want to hit. It will depend on your audience, but longer than 3 weeks loses immediacy and less than 7 days doesn’t give people enough time to plan. Many feel that 14 daysISH is pretty decent to start. So what are the options? · Email (Direct and in Sig file) · –Share button! · MailChimp-Constant Contact-others · (With MailChimp being the 900#…) · Blog · Any “Property”(social, etc) you own! · Popups on webpage (Timer?) · Paid ads on social media · Friends & Family · Influencers you can afford · Fellow presenters/keynotes · Make sure reg page is optimized · Chamber of Commerce, etc. · SMS texts
And I know companies that have jump-started a campaign through a purchase of CellPhone numbers and used SMS, integrated video, etc.
Would love to hear your questions and comments!
Next episode: Part 2 of reaching/promoting.
This series is for smaller organizations and soloprenuers that may not be tech savvy, don’t know all the steps, or don’t WANT to know all the steps. Over the series, I’m going to lead you through the significant decisions and capabilities you’ll need to “Zoom to Webinar Success!” As always, if you need help now, don’t hesitate to reach out at The Webinar Guy.com Thank you for listening!
In E4 we discussed defining the purpose, goals or objectives. Hopefully you have now defined WHY you’re having your webinar, or better- WHAT you want to accomplish.
Today’s episode- number 5- we’re going to strategize a bit. Think about the learning by firehose memes you’ve seen. We all GET the metaphor. So defining what you wanted to accomplish should inform how to go about your inaugural webinar. In other words, we don’t want to firehose your audience! We want to break it down.
Lets assume several things for the sake of this episode. Assumption 1) You have hundreds (or more) followers on various social media platforms- And/or hundreds of legit email contacts (And for “legit”, we’ll discuss that on a later episode).
Assumption 2) they like your content that you’ve been dribbling out piecemeal. This isn’t a slam on that approach, it’s how we build audience and will be used to make a point in a moment.
Assumption 3) You’ve decided to sell a coaching package. How THAT is delivered will be another episode! So to reiterate, you’ve got an audience that to some degree is ASKING for a webinar, and your end goal is to sell coaching. Your goal might be different, say sell a course, a book, a PAID webinar or other goal, but this should help move us forward. The obvious point here is to use THIS first webinar to whet their appetite, not sate it. As PT Barnum might have said, “Always leave them wanting more!” This is where piecemeal comes back in. We don’t want to dump, we want to tease a bit and feed. Use this webinar to set the stage and bring your audience all to the same place. What do I mean? Remember that some of your early audience joined you at the preface of your “story”, some joined on chapter 6, and some joined last week and have been binge reading. Start with the basics: 1) where did you from (history relatable to the story)? 2) what got you into the situation you solve? 3) what was your breaking point that helped you decide to fix it? 4) how did you test your hypothesis? 5) who else found the solution valuable (do you have testimonials you can use?)
These first five help all your audience to know you better. Now think… 1) do you have a free ??? to give away that starts helping without someone having to buy your coaching package? 2) Remember our assumption that our goal is selling coaching; have you priced your coaching according to your value and the benefit to the buyer?
There’s likely there more to decide, but even that is a lot of information to assemble and put into an initial package! From my experience as a professional presenter, corporate trainer and webinar moderator, I can tell you to plan your webinars, especially this first one, to come in under 30 minutes. If you can do all the above in a really short time period (Less than 15 minutes?) you need more proof of concept and MEAT for your audience. It will seem hurried, rushed or like, “where’s the value”? More than 30 minutes and you’d better be an AMAZING presenter. I notice that my clients often start to lose audience (remember we’re talking virtual!!) after 20 minutes and REALLY drops at 30 minutes. (There’s MANY reasons for this including, “my lunch is over)! Therefore I try to encourage (especially initial) webinars between the 20 and 30 minute mark is good. Remember we have to open the webinar with talking and close it with an offer and that takes time too and needs to be considered in the above- as well as time for a short Q&A. Several issues control this; 1) How interesting you are. 2) How valuable your content is. 3) How interesting the content is a. revealing? stunning? etc. 4) Date/time of day held
The goal here is to get people to the webinar, establish you and your credentials to “prove” your value/worth, then offer the next step. This is when we create a limited offer like taking the next/first 10 people into your coaching program. AND offer the free downloadable PDF that people can start with on their own. There are MANY strategies and tactics, so this is only one. Hopefully you know see how we’re moving people along. Free webinar, There MUST be value, not just sales. Another offer for a free thing (PDF) Offer to enroll in the coaching program (First 10 save $15%?) Would love to hear your questions and comments!
This series is for smaller organizations and soloprenuers that may not be tech savvy, don’t know all the steps, or don’t WANT to know all the steps. Over the series, I’m going to lead you through the significant decisions and capabilities you’ll need to “Zoom to Webinar Success!” As always, if you need help now, don’t hesitate to reach out at VoicePro@grantsvoice.com Thank you for listening!
In E3 we discussed managing your contacts. We assumed you have some type following and as a result of that episode #3, you’ve now created some type of structure to manage contacts. This is one of the most critical early steps!
Today’s episode- number 4 we’re going to discuss purpose, goals or objectives. As simple as this may sound, in consulting on webinars and business both, it stuns me how often people don’t consider the real purpose of what they are doing! There’s an old story that then President Kennedy, remember this was moon-shot-planning days!— asked a janitor what he did at the White House. Supposedly the man answered, “I’m helping put a man on the moon!” True or not, it really demonstrates someone who understands their purpose. So, I ask you; What is the purpose of your webinar? What’s the goal, the objective? When I’ve coached professional speakers on their speeches and presentations and stage craft, I always asked, “At the end of this speech, what do you want your audience to– feel? What do you want them to DO? Change? Enact? and more.
So I ask you- WHY are you doing this? I consulted with a client yesterday who is about this phase of webinar planning. I asked her the same question. She had the base answer. “I want to XX”. After using the “ask why five times” exercise, we discovered there were SEVERAL purposes (porpi?). Give away free information Build audience for future paid webinars Build audience for a planned paid course Attract clients for private consulting
FOUR perfect goals that go together! But when we first started talking, she was no where near that. So todays homework for you: Write down ALL the goals/objectives…Reasons you’re having this webinar and now see if they fit together, or is there something there better left for the future?
One example of this from another consultation. The client wanted to do a 90 free webinar for single moms. Great. But how many single moms, that work, do you know that can sit through ONE 90 minute webinar? Exactly. Once considered, we started working on breaking that down to initial free “Teaser” information and one later paid event. When I know what you’re trying to accomplish overall, I can really help you more towards the longer term goals.
This series is for smaller organizations and soloprenuers that may not be tech savvy, don’t know all the steps, or don’t WANT to know all the steps. Over the series, I’m going to lead you through the significant decisions and capabilities you’ll need to “Zoom to Webinar Success!” As always, if you need help now, don’t hesitate to reach out at VoicePro@grantsvoice.com Thank you for
E2 was the start of the “meat” as it were. I talked about having a website, managing it, social media- a way to establish a “following”?
Today’s episode- #3 will assume you have some type following. This is almost always from one or two places: Over a period of time you’ve established a solid email newsletter list: 2) You have established a following on various social media platforms. In essence, you have followers or fans and they are WANTING more content.
The question then for today is, “How will I manage the audience?- or How to manage contacts?” There are MANY ways to manage a list of contacts. From typing them into the simplest of text editors, into excel, to managing them in your email program of choice to on-line CRM’s that can be pricey! What’s a CRM Customer Relationship Manager? The previous list could be argued as such, but sophistication is what you are buying as you spend more. What we need here is a way for you take whatever list you have now and amend it by those that will sign up in the future. The challenge here is now we start combining webinar teasers, with a funnel or squeeze page and the new sign ups. But when they sign up, will you know what offer they responded to? Of course! How about a year from now? Maybe not. How often has “Brad” signed up for various classes? Was Sheila interested in your book when published? Will the CRM send the webinar invite? Can it follow up with an “after response? There are many services that will do this, but what is the best one for you?
This series is for smaller organizations and soloprenuers that may not be tech savvy, don’t know all the steps, or don’t WANT to know all the steps. Over the series, I’m going to lead you through the significant decisions and capabilities you’ll need to “Zoom to Webinar Success!” Thank you for listening!
Welcome back! You want to reach your audience on a deeper level, teach, cajole and maybe even sell.
But where do you start? After a meeting this week with a new client I realized that I can’t assume anything- so will start with some of the most basic of basics. In order to have a webinar, it may sound obvious, but you really need an audience! So the question becomes, how to build an audience. This series isn’t about that. There are many, many videos on tweeting and toking and building that audience -on youtube and various other channels. So when you’ve built that audience, please stop back!
This series will assume several things; –You already have one or more social media or other channels (such as an email list) that you can market to.
–You already have an established website that is up to date and you can be found in search.
Now that we’ve leveled the starting point, what’s next? There are probably 10 things we need to do all at once, but since we can only do a few at a time, we’re going to start from the excel sheet I’ve built with more than 50 things we’re going to be covering.
In my mind, number one is how you will manage your audience. Most likely that is going to be some type of Customer Relationship Management tool, or CRM. Having one that integrates with your website is a great way to go, although there are ones that can work in conjunction with your site to gather names and sign ups, manage funnels, send out invites, meeting links and more. Some services to consider are ClickFunnel, Kajabi, GroveFunel, Kartra and more. Next episode we’ll cover how these are used and the strategy behind them.
So to reiterate, You’ve already built a following, you have social media channels, an email list and functioning website. And if you’re missing any of that, or don’t want to wait for the next episode and need help, please reach out.
Webinars are a way of life for many of us. Like many things in life, some are amazing, some, not so much.
For most of my adult life I’ve been in training & development and emcee’d or presented hundreds of seminars.
A recent experience with a client that had never done a #webinar/#virtualmeeting, put the entire development in my hands. From planning, to script writing, to- well every single element. It made me realize that there are others that may not be well prepared to host a meeting like this, so here we go.
I’ll be looking to cover every element of a great webinar from the first idea to the “day of”. I’d love comments and questions you might have!
