My Case Study…
For the last few weeks I’ve been quite busy working on a brand new project. We created an innovative product that we were launching to our list.
By “innovative” I mean – something that our list has not been exposed to before.
The obvious threat of it was that they might not be interested in the topic. After all they signed up to our list for a very different reason. So we were trying something knowing that it might not work.
Last week we started promoting it. And… the worst has indeed happened. The sublist (it’s the number of people who signs up for the launch) was about half of what we normally do. We tried different pages and different emails, but we didn’t manage to boost the results.
So we accepted the results and moved to the next step: webinar. All the people who signed up were now meant to join the 1,5-hour online training in which we would teach them this new concept, guide them through a technique and then, of course, sell.
Now THIS is the reason why I decided to cover webinars on my blog. Because despite the poor results at the beginning of the launch, our webinar brought tons of money. It saved our launch. If executed right, webinars can be extremely powerful. And this is what you’re going to learn today: how to plan, create and execute a webinar so you can easily make tens of thousands of dollars.
What is exactly a webinar?
Webinar is a fancy word used in online marketing industry. It’s like a seminar just happening on the Web (hence the name :). And just like in any other seminar, you have a speaker (or more than one) and listeners. They last about 1-1.5 hours. It’s a lot of time to cover the content, share some techniques for free and introduce your offer. Webinars are indeed usually used for selling, although some are just pure content.
I would not suggest you use the word “webinar” in your marketing. It’s not clear to people what it is. Keep it for your internal use, but when communicating to your audience use instead: online class, live training and so on.
How to pick the right software for your webinar?
Don’t worry, it’s really not so tough as you might think. There are ready softwares to help you host your first webinar.
The easiest way to hold your webinar is to use Google Hangout. And if you attended some of my webinars in the past, that’s how I did it. The best part of it, is that you don’t really need to worry about anything, Google is taking care of everything. The only thing that remains on your end to take care of is:
- Make sure you have a good Internet connection
- That you can be easily heard (so sit in a quit place), and
- That you and your background look good (as you will be seen on the camera)
You can also try a more professional software: GoToWebinar. They specialize at hosting webinar and despite not being perfect (but then again, who is? :P), they give you a great platform to host webinars.
You can then host your webinar via these two platforms, or you can use one of the pre-made templates, for example from LeadPages. This is also where you might wanna check for all the pages to promote your webinar. LeadPages offers tens of various templates perfectly suited for any launch or promo. All you need to do is edit the copy and add your images and your pages are ready. It’s very easy to use, and if you’ve been following us here, then you have landed on a LeadPages template page more than once :) Even online marketing gurus like Frank Kern of Jeff Walker use LeadPages and I strongly suggest you check it out.
Ok, so you know what webinar is and you know how to create one from the technological point of you. But…
How to promote your webinar?
I’m glad you asked :) This is what I’ve been doing for the last 3 years, working with both companies and my personal coaching clients, and I think that’s the most exciting part.
The easiest, most simple and most common way is to directly promote your webinar. All you’re doing is promote the direct link to your webinar, and you can do it in many ways:
- Email your subscriber
- Write a blog post about the webinar with the link to it
- Post on Facebook (both your personal or your Fanpage)
- Promote it via other social media like Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn or Pinterest
- You can also hit relevant subreddits on Reddit, or Quora
- You can use PPC and promote your adds (this is a paid option, so you’re looking at investing some money here)
You can also take it one step further and design the whole marketing promo around it.
Here there is no one template. There shouldn’t be. Every market is different, every product is different. So best is to craft your strategy to what you do. Study others and test it for yourself. But remember, you can always change and adjust things to what will work best for your target.
Below are the 2 most common models when using webinars as part of your promo:
In this model, webinar is promoted via LP. It is for free and so it acts and a lead magnet to collect emails. The webinar gives a lot of good content and it the end introduces the offer.
In this model, you start by making an offer to join the webinar. So the webinar is not for free. To attend, a person needs to pay, but it’s usually a low price, like $7 or $9.
The advantages of this model is that it created higher commitment so those who signed up are more likely to show up for the webinar – and that’s your main goal at this state of your launch. It also pre-qualifies webinar attendees and so they will be more likely to buy from you.
However, the downside of this model is that your sublist for the webinar will be smaller.
It’s important to remember that every business and every market are different. It is good to study others and try their strategies for your product, but remember that the best results will be achieved if you adjust the model to your needs.
If you’re interested into taking webinar to the next level and design a whole promo or launch strategy around it to boost your sales and easily see extra tens of thousands of dollars, you can work with me. Simply insert your email below to get started. I will follow with you on your idea and we can work together to create a promo that not only will be easy to execute – you’ll be able to replicate it yourself as often as you want.
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