The Power Of Webinars
Imagine you’re giving the best sales presentation of your life, but you’re only pitching to a handful of prospects.
What if I told you, you could put a giant megaphone just outside the door so your presentation could be heard down the street or even across the city?
Now what if I told you, that on top of the megaphone you then could have a trained replica of yourself give that same amazing presentation week after week while you’re off in the sun sipping a cold drink?
Ok I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but you get the idea. At least I hope you do, because what I’m describing here is the power of the webinar! (Maybe not the drink part!)
To put it another way, there simply is no better tool available to amplify your sales message and provide value to your audience in a consistent and repeatable way than webinars. They really are that powerful.
But like every marketing tool, there are best practices that can help set you apart from the crowd. I want to share a few of them with you here now.
Remember, these are just a couple to get you started. There’s a bunch more that I talk about with Liam during our interview, but these will get you going.
Slide Into Your Sales Pitch
A mistake that I’ve seen some webinar-newbies make is that they start off by providing great content and then during the last portion of the webinar they switch over to a hard sell for their paid program.
This destroys all the goodwill you’ve been building with the audience and they can smell it coming a mile away. You want your transition into the sales pitch to come off seamlessly.
Think of the difference between a plane landing after a turbulent flight versus a smooth ride. I call this “seeding the sale.”
You seed the sale by subtly selling throughout the presentation. You’re alluding, gently, that you have a pitch coming for the audience. The whole time you’re making the case for why the upcoming pitch is in complete alignment with the content portion of the webinar.
By the time you’re ready to focus on the pitch, the audience is ready. They’ve been primed for your pitch and now they want to hear it.
Most webinars have a big drop off after the one hour mark, but if you’ve planned ahead and properly seeded the sale, a larger portion of the attendees will stick with you to get the payoff of hearing the offer.
Set A Clear Deliverable
There is no neatly packaged template for how you should structure your webinar but I like to set very clear expectations for my audience from the beginning so when I do make my offer it’s coming from a place of high integrity.
Here’s how I do it. Early in the webinar I make a promise to the audience. It’s different for every webinar but it’s closely tied to why the attendees showed up.
Perhaps it’s a social media conversions webinar. In this case I would promise them that by the time they leave the webinar today they’ll have a complete system revealed that delivers on how to convert sales from their social networks.
I tell them outright that they’ll walk away with step-by-step instructions, basically whatever they’ll need to move forward with confidence. (Of course this is what the content will be focused around.)
Now the next part is crucial, I let them know that there is a paid program available but I don’t want them to make that investment unless they feel like I’ve fulfilled on my initial promise regarding the free content.
The last step is that I ask them to respond in the chat if they think that’s a fair deal to solidify their emotional buy-in to my promise.
Use Case Studies To Generate Social Proof
I always try to drop in as many case studies and real world examples as possible. People don’t want to just hear your theories, they want to know that what you’re saying has actually generated results in the real world.
Anytime you can reference your past performance with a client make sure you mention it and include it in the presentation. So you’re not only seeding the sale but you’re also seeding social proof as well.
Ok, I probably could go on talking about webinars all day. If this stuff is resonating with you at all definitely dive into our interview and start thinking about how you can use webinars as part of your existing sales process.
Action Steps
- Get clear on what your audience will walk away with after the webinar.
- Make sure your offer is in alignment with the problem you’re solving.
- Write down your promise.
Result You Will Achieve
A promise to your audience that will keep them engaged for the entire webinar whilst subtly selling throughout the presentation.
This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.