#127: The Anatomy of a Multi-Million Dollar Webinar
Are webinars dead?
I'm here to say that they are very much alive.
In fact, I have my own on demand webinars that I use to generate leads for my consulting business as well as my Fractional Freedom consulting certification.
And I usually end up recommending webinars for many of my clients based on the variety of different goals that a webinar can achieve.
A webinar not only makes for a fantastic opt-in, but it is also one of the best ways for you to begin partnering with other business owners. And if you have listened to this podcast at all, you know my love for relationship marketing.
So how do you use a webinar? Well, that's the question that I'm going to be answering in today's podcast episode, so that you can generate a multi-million dollar asset in your business.
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Listen to the Show:
Laura 00:00
As part of my L.E.A.P methodology, many of my clients find themselves creating webinars, and webinars can have a negative or positive connotation based on your experience with them. And many people are wondering, but Laura aren't webinars dead? And I'm here to say that they are very much alive. In fact, I have my own on demand webinars that I use to generate leads for my consulting business as well as my functional freedom consulting certification. And I usually end up recommending webinars for many of my clients really just based on the variety of different goals that a webinar can achieve. A Webinar not only makes for a fantastic opt in, so for example, you may get a very low cost per lead into your webinar, that in itself is extremely valuable. But it is also one of the best ways for you to begin partnering with other business owners. And if you have listened to this podcast at all, you know my love for relationship marketing, also fast track trust, it's one of the best ways to get somebody into your world quickly and help them become part of your long term ecosystem. So how do you use a webinar? Well, that's the question that I'm going to be answering in today's podcast episode, so that you can generate a multimillion dollar asset in your business.
Laura 01:25
Welcome to the next level leap podcast. I'm your host, Laura Meyer top growth strategist to some of the country's fastest growing brands, and mentor to consultants. My signature L.E.A.P methodology has changed the way thousands of companies look at growth strategy, and this podcast shares, best practices, and inspirational interviews to help you make that next level leap in your business. Stick around and join me as I share the journey of how we as founders can multiply our income impact and influence by landing on the other side of our next big leap. Let's go.
Laura 02:04
My leap methodology that we use to both deploy consulting services to a variety of different organizations, both for profit and nonprofit, and the methodology in which I certify consultants, there is a stage in which you begin creating assets. So first, we limit the focus to a specific objective, then we establish a plan, then we create assets. Creating assets is a creative process. It's really enjoyable, not only for our entire team, but for the teams that we serve. For many of the clients, we may off board a project or an engagement and leave them with assets valued at multi million dollars. I'm not exaggerating here, it has been the way in which we have quadrupled enrollment for nonprofits within a very short period of time after struggling for years, to get people to register for their offering. It's also the way in which I've helped many of my clients double and triple revenue when they're already in the seven figure range. So many people might wonder who are already in the info product space are already in coaching or consulting our webinars dead. And I love webinars, I think they're very much still in vogue. But what I do think is that we need to be willing to customize them for the type of Avatar that we're serving. So this is going to contribute to the decisions that we make in terms of the length of the webinar, how we position the offer, the way in which we sell the offer, it all comes down to who are we talking to and what are their likely buying styles? And before we even get into the buying styles of the different types of avatars that you may serve, I want to share why I really love webinars and not just keynote presentations, or book authorships or eBooks. All of those are great. In fact, many of the clients that I work with are established entrepreneurs, they're well known in the industry, they have best-selling books, and they get paid a lot to go onstage and deliver a keynote. But webinars are very different. And one of the reasons why I like them so much is because they appeal to a variety of Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 2 -
learning styles. So for example, some people really like audio learning style, if you're listening to this podcast that might be you. You like listening to information and then you absorb it and maybe think about it, you go back you might take notes even and that is your preferred learning style. Some people really need visual cues, they need visual representation of the words that are being communicated. And this is one of the reasons why I do really like including slides in any type of webinar. Because if people just listen and they look at your body language, but they are an audio or a visual learner, there may be pieces missing for them that they can't totally put together and it keeps them from buying. The next is kinetic, what is the energy like energetically, what energy is being exchanged. And when I say energy, it might sound woo woo. But I actually mean body language, tone of voice, how you're gesturing how you start and stop your statements. All of that is part of the kinetic aspect of learning that many people respond well to. It's part of why in a classroom setting is so effective in teaching people new things. That's why when we went to college, and we watched somebody up on a platform, providing visual cues and the communicating and we can sort of feel the energy in the room. It's the collective aspect of everybody's reaction and interaction. And that kinetic energy is very valuable. It's why a live webinar will convert at a much higher percentage than a prerecorded webinar. And it's also why I try to avoid prerecorded content as much as possible, simply because of that live kinetic aspect. Some people are very social, they're social learners. It's part of why people like group fitness classes, myself included. We like socializing. We're extroverts. We like being around other people when we're learning and a webinar provides that, and some people are solitary learners, they want to watch the recording, I find that this is usually the minority of people who register for a webinar. And it's one of the reasons why I like to emphasize attending live prior to a webinar and only sending out the recording as an afterthought, because the truth is, even if somebody's a solitary learner, they often have great intentions and never get to it. I mean, think about the amount of content that you have the graveyard of content that I often like to say that you have that you've been, quote, unquote, meaning to watch or learn from, for years. And that's why I really, really like people attending live, becoming part of a community and learning collectively.
Laura 07:14
When we get to this stage of asset development, in the LEAP methodology, there's decisions to be made. Many times for clients who are new to all everything that I'm sharing with you, they're new to collecting email addresses with gated content, or they're new to webinars, or they're new to email list building, a lot of the nonprofits that I work with would fall into this category, we've got some decisions to make about how we're going to bring people into our world and nurture them and build trust and make a connection and create relationships with our audience so that we can let them know as to whether or not they're a good fit for our offer or program. And one of the reasons why this is so powerful, is because webinars tend to expedite the trust building process, no matter whether or not you're trying to get somebody to enroll in a nonprofit that essentially cost them nothing, but their time and maybe the chance that they're taking on themselves, or you're selling a $10,000 program, truthfully, the process is the same. It's all about how quickly can we speak their language and let them know with a high level of specificity that we're here to solve their greatest problem, and given them the opportunity empower them with the information, so that they can determine whether or not this is the best next step for them. And the cool thing about webinars is that we can do this in about an hour or less, when something might take much longer if we don't have their attention in isolation, like a webinar offers. Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 3 -
Laura 08:53
So let's talk about what happens when entering the actual webinar. There is very much an art and a science to getting people to opt in, show up, attend, engage, enroll or purchase. That is a multi-step process that I go into a lot of detail with when I'm consulting with my clients one on one. And quite honestly, it is very much dictated by how familiar people are with this type of process. That makes a huge difference in my approach to what I would recommend. So for example, some people say, Oh, webinars are dead. Well, yes, if you're targeting an audience that is being advertised to join a webinar 10 times a week, that's a very particular audience. And we need to handle that in a much different way than somebody who is brand new to this type of methodology. And so thinking empathetically about who is this person and then developing an asset specifically for them is part of the work that we do at Joy brand creative with our one on one consulting clients.
Laura 10:13
So now I want to talk about why a webinar might not work. And I can attribute some of this observation to my good friend, Adrienne Richardson, who worked with 1000s of webinar clients when she was the CMO of a large scale coaching company. And she observed multiple reasons why webinars don't convert, of which I'm expanding upon in this podcast. So one of the reasons is that people don't trust themselves, then I'll say this very much depends on your avatar. This is very common amongst new entrepreneurs or people new to your solution. So for example, with one of the nonprofits that I work with, they teach financial literacy. Well, that's an area where somebody if they grew up without models of success in this area, or examples of what's possible, they may be completely lacking any level of self-trust around their ability to learn financial literacy skills, which, of course, is one of the reasons why people stay in poverty, multi generationally. So we want to break that cycle. But we start by breaking that cycle by teaching them how to trust themselves. And it's not necessarily that they don't trust you, or trust your offer, we'll get to that in a minute. But it's more that they have some work to do before they would trust themselves enough to spend time resources or money on a program that's offering a level of transformation that is so outside of their realm of possibility. So if this is your problem with your webinar, what you're going to need to accept as a longer sales cycle, it just really comes down to that. And we need to make the offer maybe a little bit more bite sized. So if you have a client, where they don't trust themselves, probably selling them a yearlong program out of the gate, that's a big ask. Because not only do they need to get over the idea of not trusting themselves, but then they have to trust themselves enough to stick with something that they've never done before that they don't know that they're capable of doing for a full year. So that's why I really like to chunk this down into bite sized solutions. And that they should, you know, and in a lot of ways, a lot of them might even feel like they should know how to do this on their own. Or they might think, oh, you know, I wish I could DIY this. So these are all ways in which we want to overcome this objection, prior to the webinar and during the actual presentation itself.
Laura 12:51
The second reason why people don't buy or don't enroll is they don't trust you. They might not trust you, they might not see you as credible, they might not have heard of your brand before. This is something that I've helped several different organizations with where they might have a great program or product, but they really need to work on their brand awareness. Most of my clients are very well established in their category. Many of them are what I would call category kings or queens. But for some people, they Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 4 -
might be really good at program fulfillment, but they have some opportunities in terms of brand development. So the way in which we want to fast track trust is first of all, just brand awareness. Brand awareness for many of you who are listening can feel like I've just recommended that you invest in then. And brand awareness just takes a long time. It's like in a lot of ways you're not wrong, right, like brand awareness is the experience that we have with our brands. And this takes time. And it takes multi-channel efforts in order to develop. Many people who are coming into the coaching or consulting space might have brand awareness and other categories, but they're still needing to develop their brand in the particular category that they're now serving. If they don't trust you, and if you don't fast, track that trust process, or establish credibility early on, as somebody who can help them, they're just going to see you as somebody with another pitch another solution, another sales event, and they're going to dismiss your offer. So it's really important that you not only help them develop trust with you, but trust with your solution. And this is why during the webinar, we want to share testimonials. We want to share examples. We want to share with them what it is that we are offering and the ways in which we've helped other people come to the same solution when they started out with a very similar problem. The other thing that can go wrong during a webinar is that you just haven't established value for the program. And I was working with a client recently a one on one consulting call client who is extremely well known in the business space and business education space, but again, is getting into personal development and coaching. And he was saying, Laura, I don't understand what you're saying in terms of increasing the value of this webinar, increasing the teaching points. Every time I talk to somebody who is an ideal client for our program, they totally get it. And what I said to him is, there's a difference between getting it and getting people to buy it. Yes, they're going to get it, they get what you're saying, they might listen to your TED talks, or read your book, and they get it. And that's awesome. But buying it and making an emotional and financial investment is a totally different story. And sometimes, the ways in which we fail to create value is that we end up under teaching, we end up talking about what it is that we are sharing in broad strokes in general statements, which again, I think if you are a book author, if you are a stage speaker, if you are a keynote speaker, this is something that comes very natural to you, because broad strokes and general observations and motivational talks are really important to be able to do well in that area of business. But without specificity, without those aha or lightbulb moments in your webinar, it really ends up just coming across as fluffy and broad, which erodes trust and undermine the value of your program.
Laura 16:39
The other reason why people might not buy during your webinar is there is no urgency. If there isn't a lot of communication around why now, whether it be more tactical, like the program is closing and X number of days, or whether it's more emotional, like how long are you going to stay with this problem? Or are you going to commit today to your future moving forward. And the first is a little bit more effective with people when they maybe just need to be pushed on in order to take action. But I would say is the second way to create urgency, the more psychological way to create urgency, the more of that we're calling people forward into their future and really asking them to make a commitment today around solving some of the biggest problems in their lives, that is much more compelling. And I would say that it's much more humane. Because when we try to get people to convert because of a deadline, yes, that's motivating. But it's not intrinsically motivating. When we get people to make a commitment about their future during the webinar, when we can really get them to say, Yes, you are right, you nailed it, not only do you understand my problem, but I trust that you have a solution. And today's the day that I am Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 5 -
going to reinvent myself moving forward. Today is the day that I'm going to make a commitment to myself to my family to multiple generations moving forward, because I want to break the cycle or I want to change the way in which I'm going about things. And that is a very internally motivating decision. The first program ending scarcity, countdown clocks, yes, we use them and they are effective. But they are ultimately not the reason why somebody is going to stay with your program and get a result. The reason why somebody's going to stay with your program and get a result is because they themselves have said, today is the day I'm going to break the cycle. Today is the day that I'm going to do things move differently moving forward. And I trust you as the guide to have the answer. And I'm going to make an investment, whether it's time whether it's emotional, whether it's financial, to create change for myself moving forward.
Laura 19:09
So the fifth and final reason why somebody might not buy for your webinar is that you have overwhelm them. So I talked previously about not establishing value enough value. And this is what happens when we under teach and we underwhelm without really meaning to it, we mean to create value. But when we're too broad or too fluffy, it erodes trust, and we've under taught. But on the flip side, and this is a tough balance that a lot of my clients struggle with is the overwhelm. I actually find this more common with subject matter experts, people who just feel like if I just explained it more, if I just taught them more. If I just told them more, they would get it if I just spent three hours with them, convincing them they would get it. But what happens is that we end up overwhelming we owe Over teach, we give them too many things to do too many books to read too many items to check off the checklist before they're ready to buy. And this is also one of the most common reasons why people don't buy from a webinar. There is another client of mine who loves to recommend books to read and loves to recommend podcasts listen to, there are a lifelong learner, like many of us who are entrepreneurs, and they just want to share everything that they've learned and all the different fantastic resources that they've acquired in order to get to where they are. But what happens is, is that when we do that in a webinar, or we take the time to tell them our life story, because we just want to let them know how much we want to help. We give them too many things to think about too many things to do too many books to read too many podcasts that listen to too many different options to consider. And we leave them and analysis paralysis, where they're very unlikely to invest in our offer.
Laura 21:08
So webinars done right, it will end up being a multimillion dollar asset in your business. If you're listening and you're in the nonprofit space, it will have that level of value when it comes to enrollment in your programs. If you're in the for profit space, this is the kind of thing that will live in your company. And yes, you may change it, or really just tweak it from time to time based on what's happening in the world current events, different types of factors that may be changing in your industry. But for the most part, this is going to be the kind of thing that you will teach again and again and again. And it will continue to build in terms of value in your organization. It will be the kind of thing that you will use to generate leads, convert leads, enroll new members, and educate your audience for years to come. It's one of the reasons why I love helping clients create webinars as part of the asset stage of the LEAP process and the ways in which our consultancy creates tremendous value for the clients that we serve for years to come. So if you've been struggling with your webinar, or know somebody who is please share this podcast with them, make sure that you replay it a few times start taking some notes. There's Transcribed by https://otter.ai - 6 -
gold in here that took me years to learn just working with some of the country's top influencers and brand. As a spin off on this topic and one of my upcoming podcast episodes I'm also going to be talking about the difference between a VSL which is a video sales letter and a webinar when to use them and some of the different observations that I've seen with our clients as well. So make sure to keep listening. If you haven't subscribed to this podcast, please do so and leave a review and I look forward to seeing you next time on The Next Level leap podcast.
Laura 23:01
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The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.