At Foundr, we currently run two live, weekly webinars—one on how to gain 500,000 followers on Instagram, and another on how to find a mentor. Between the two, we generate hundreds of thousands in revenue per month, and help thousands of entrepreneurs reach their goals and take their businesses to the next level.
Today, webinar marketing is one of the most powerful tools in any marketer’s arsenal. Webinars are so effective because:
They’re the closest thing to being in-person.
You can’t develop a higher degree of trust and rapport anywhere else.
You can cover almost every single one of the most important steps required for making a sale.
Audiences get fully involved, unlike reading an article or watching a replay.
It’s affordable and very scalable—you can literally present to thousands of potential customers at any time.
The very first webinar I ever did, I didn’t even have a product. All I had was a PayPal checkout link for $250 and I had no idea what I was doing. I had 10 people on the call and I was panicking and awkward when it came to the actual sell. But I pushed through it, made the offer, and someone gave me $250 on the spot, even without a product.
The best thing about webinars is that pretty much anyone can do it. Because they’re so personal and engaging, even the worst salesperson in the worst webinar can make a sale just by following a very simple framework.
In this post, I’m going to fully break down a tried-and-true framework that Foundr uses to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars per month using webinars. Here we go!
Types of webinars that sell
Before you go off and start blasting your emailing list and getting people to register for your webinar, let’s first figure out what type of webinar you want to do. There are three major types of webinars: the Masterclass, the Demo, and the Q&A.
The power of a webinar is the fact that you’re able to give value to your audience in the form of education and solving a problem they are experiencing.
While our webinar sales framework is applicable to every one of these webinar types and each webinar is equally powerful, each one has it’s own distinct pros and cons. Your job is to figure out which one works best for your product and your audience.
The best way to figure out what type of webinar sales framework works best for you is to look at what your potential customer’s problems, fears, and concerns are. You need to be acutely aware of their pain points and what’s holding them back. Your webinar should be addressing, at the very least, one of these concerns and in great detail.
Here are some of the main options:
The Masterclass
Masterclass webinars are probably the type you’re most familiar with. These webinars are the most common among internet marketers, because of their straightforward nature and flexibility in terms of what you’re able to teach.
You’d typically use a masterclass webinar if your goal is to empower your audience with a specific set of lessons or tactics that they need to know in order to achieve their goals. So if your audience’s main pain point is that they have an ultimate goal, but aren’t sure how to get there, a masterclass webinar would be perfect.
With our Instagram Domination webinar, for example, we know that a major pain point of our audience is that they want to grow their number of followers. That’s why our webinar is centered around five actionable tips that they can immediately apply after the webinar is over.
Here’s a screenshot from one of Mention’s masterclass webinars.
Mention often hosts masterclasses with guest speakers. In their masterclass with Neil Patel, they specifically addressed a concern their audience was having with growing a brand online.
The Demo
Venngage does excellent tutorials and webinars for potential and new customers.
A demo webinar is essentially a walkthrough or tutorial of your product and its features. The goal of this webinar is to teach your audience how to use your product to its fullest, and showcase how they can use it to achieve their goals.
If your audience’s main pain point is that they’re not sure how to work your product to begin with, you need to host a demo webinar. You’ll find many SaaS companies like Import.io or Moz will host a demo webinar precisely because their customers usually won’t instinctively understand how to use their services. The best way to host a demo webinar is to address the specific problems and difficulties people are having with your product. This really serves to overcome objections and remove any fear from the customer’s mind, as well as excite them about the potential of the product or how they could best benefit from using it.
The main benefit of a demo webinar is that you can guarantee everyone who attends your webinar is a warm lead, because you know they’re interested in learning more about your product. Your main task as the host is to showcase your product in a way that’s easily understandable to the average consumer so they can immediately use it.
The downside is that, because of the niche nature of the topic, it’s difficult to get people to register or attend in the first place. So the effort of hosting a webinar might not be worth the reward if you can’t drum up sufficient interest in your product. Consider this a great way to knock people off the fence as well as understand buyer concerns and objections.
The Q&A
Holding a live Q&A for 10 to 15 minutes at the end of every webinar, regardless of type, is standard practice for most marketers. After all, it gives you an opportunity to engage with your audience more, as well as address any other concerns or questions your viewers may have.
It’s often a key selling point for people attending the webinar, because they get live access to an expert or authority that they would not otherwise have.
This is also the most dangerous point of any webinar, because you’re giving up the control you’ve maintained so far. As any reporter can attest to, many things can go wrong live. Unlike the other types of webinars, you usually don’t have a set of slides or a set script you can fall back on. That’s why hosting a Q&A requires extremely careful moderation and attention.
So some marketers tend to shy away from Q&As, but you can even run an entire webinar as one big Q&A session, and there are some strong advantages. They can be very powerful for anyone looking to generate hype for an upcoming product and build a stronger rapport with their audience.
In the lead up for the launch of his book, The Freedom Journal, John Lee Dumas held a four-hour Q&A session with the public. By doing this he was able to give his viewers insight into what was going on behind-the-scenes.
A Q&A webinar is a fantastic way for you to be more transparent with potential customers and give people a sneak-peek of your product before it’s even launched.
A variation of this would be an AMA or an FAQ webinar that would suit many service professionals. Many dentists and plastic surgeons, for example, do well with these kinds of sessions. It allows them to scale and talk to hundreds of potential clients at once, who otherwise may be too embarrassed, shy, or busy to walk into their clinics and ask personal questions about the procedures.
Breaking Down Webinar Sales
John Janstch of Duct Tape Marketing outlines the seven touchpoints of the customer experience. These touchpoints are: know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer.
The great thing about making sales over webinars is that you’re able to hit all seven points if you do it right.
The introduction is one of the most crucial parts of a webinar. This is where people are one mouse-click away from Facebook, shutting you down or switching you off.
In your webinar’s intro, you’re able to establish the know and like touchpoints by introducing yourself. If you have a webcam, it might be a good idea to use it and show your audience that they’re talking to a real person.
Set a strong frame, let people know what to expect. Be confident and ready to have fun. Newsflash: if you’re awkward, it will be awkward. Your audience will respond directly to your energy, attitude, and authority. So be sure to practice a great intro that reels them in.
Next up is the core part of the webinar sales process and where you get your potential customers to trust you. In order to develop trust you must give your customers something valuable. The best way to do this over a webinar is to teach them something. Empower your audience with education, and actually help them solve a specific problem.
The great thing about webinars is the fact that the try touchpoint already comes built in. By attending your webinar, your audience is already getting a free trial and getting a taste of what you’re selling. A webinar should help your potential customer solve a single problem (serving as the trial), while unpacking a larger one (your offer).
When you get to the end of the webinar and make your offer, you’ve hit the buy touchpoint. How many people end up buying depends entirely on how well you’ve managed to build up know, like, and trust with your audience before you make the offer. And if you’ve chosen the right topic, they will be pre-qualified buyers.
Don’t be fooled, though, just because the webinar has ended doesn’t mean your sales funnel has. According to Kissmetrics, 71% of customers end their relationships with a company due to poor customer service. If you want to hit the repeat touchpoint you have to make sure your onboarding procedure is airtight.
The last touchpoint is refer, and this can happen anywhere within the webinar itself or in your follow-up sequence. In order to hit the refer touchpoint within the webinar, you can insert a call-to-action where you ask your audience to share on social media that they’ve attended your webinar. But in order for that to work, you must always make sure you’re giving away valuable information, first and foremost.
Webinar Toolbox
One of the best things about making sales over webinars is the fact that it’s so simple to do. That being said, you still need to make sure you have these essential tools.
Hardware-wise, you don’t actually need that much to run a successful webinar. All you need is a microphone, a stable internet connection, a slide deck, and maybe a webcam.
You don’t have to go all out when it comes to these tools. While it might help to have a lapel mic or an HD webcam, for the most part the basics are fine. When I’m doing webinars, it’s rare that I’ll use anything other than the standard Apple earbuds.
If you are going to spend any money on something, though, I’d recommend focusing most of your resources on a great-looking slide deck.
While it is entirely possible to do a presentation with something basic you’ve whipped up in Powerpoint or Keynote and get sales, you’ll find that you achieve a much higher conversion rate with a more professional looking slide deck.
I’d recommend checking out a service like ThemeForest and just grabbing a high-quality template off the shelf.
Webinar platforms
This is where things can get tricky, since there is a whole range of services and platforms out there that you can use to host your webinar. Here are the tools that we use at Foundr and that I’ve used myself, along with some bonus tools that you might want to consider incorporating into your webinar marketing:
GoToWebinar
GoToWebinar is the old guard program, by Citrix. It’s rock solid, it works, and everyone knows it. For your bootstrapping entrepreneur, however, it can get very pricey, very quickly. You can always sign up for the one-month free trial and if you are profitable, happy days! Sign up and keep moving. While people have mixed feelings about GoToWebinar, it is the leader because it is fairly simple to operate and works well in terms of delivery. As the market leader, it also has been around for a long time and integrates fairly well with most other programs.
Google Hangout/Youtube Streaming/Youtube Live
Bootstrappers’ paradise. Welcome to the world of free. If you know how to embed basic code and have a free G+ account, you are up and running. However, it can be less solid, with weird streaming issues, delays, and you’ll need a plugin for the chat.
Zoom
Zoom is a beautiful and powerful new piece of video conferencing software that’s shaping up to be a GoToWebinar killer. Simple to use, flexible, and fast. Unfortunately, as a newer kid on the block, currently it doesn’t appear to integrate as readily as GoToWebinar. Still, I would be happy to be proven wrong on this or for updates to remedy that.
Webinar Jam
Webinar Jam is perfect for internet marketers—it’s the middle ground between GoToWebinar and free Hangouts. It actually hijacks Youtube streaming and adds in cool things like email autoresponders, and some amazing tech that allows you to provide buy now buttons, limit your sales by time or price scarcity, and more. Terrific middle ground. However, I have struggled with the screenshare function and the chat is a bit laggy. All in all though, a great tool.
Bonus: oLark
While it is entirely possible to do a webinar by yourself, it does make a world of difference to have someone there to provide support. For the Foundr webinars, we’ll always have someone on the webinar with us helping to answer questions and deal with support issues so the presenter can focus on presenting.
oLark is a very easy-to-use customer support plugin that we have running on our sales pages. As soon as we begin the offer, our support member will be there to help smooth over issues anyone might be having.
Bonus: Leadpages
In order to get more people to register for your webinar, you need to have a professional and great looking registration page. Your landing page has to be clear and be able to effectively explain the who, what, when, where, and why behind your webinar.
We use Leadpages to create all our webinar landing pages here at Foundr. Something we like to do with our landing pages is add in a countdown timer. Not only does it give our audience a sense of urgency to register, but it also gives them a better understanding of when the next webinar starts.
Getting people to register
The first phase of generating webinar sales is to get people to register. After all, you can’t make sales if you have no one to sell to.
The most straightforward way to get someone to register for your webinar is to do an email blast. If you have an email list, you already have a crowd of people who you know are interested in who you are and what you’re doing. Turning those warms leads into sales over a webinar shouldn’t be too difficult.
However, unless you’re consistently coming up with a new product every week or month, you can’t be emailing the same people the same thing over and over again. So you need to develop other ways to get people to register for your webinar.
The next best way to get people to register is to promote it through your social media channels. For example, at Foundr we’ll often do posts for our webinars on Instagram. We’ll even change our bio link for a couple of hours in order to make the signup process easier for people.
Other ways you can make sure you attract the right audience to your webinar is by making sure you place your registration page or link in related pieces of content. This can be done through simple content upgrades, like when we add in links to our Instagram webinar in our articles about Instagram.
Or when we incorporate the registration page with the thank you pages of our other lead magnets. By doing so, you know that you’re promoting your webinar to people who are definitely interested in the topic.
Bonus: Improving attendance
Getting people to register is great and all, but unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean that people will actually attend your webinar. Here’s a few tactics and tips to make sure your registrants actually show up.
The right time and day
Something you have to be conscious of when picking a time and date of your webinar is where your audience is located. Usually the best times to host a webinar are in the early morning, early afternoon, or in the evening. You want to make your webinar as easily accessible as possible, and chances are most people aren’t willing to give up work to attend your masterclass.
While Foundr is a global brand we’re actually headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. That means if we want to host a webinar at a time that’s convenient for the majority of our audience, we have to wake up at 6am to make sure the webinar is ready to run by 7am.
Another tip to keep in mind is that you should always avoid holding a webinar on the weekend. Mondays and Fridays aren’t great either because they’re usually the busiest days of someone’s schedule. Remember, you want to make your webinars as easy to attend as possible.
Reminders
As soon as someone signs up to your webinar, you need to be sending them reminders. Most people are inherently quite forgetful and, depending on when they registered for your webinar, might forget completely that it even exists when the time comes.
A very easy way to work around this issue is to make sure that they receive reminders from the moment they register to just before the webinar starts. Sending two last-minute reminder emails, one the day before and another an hour before, does wonders for bumping up your attendance rate.
But make sure you don’t send out too many emails, otherwise you might just end up annoying people.
Inputting into calendar
A very easy way to make sure people attend your webinar is to send a calendar invite in your confirmation or thank you email.
Again, people are forgetful. But asking them to save the time and date in their personal calendar makes them far less likely to forget about your webinar. It even encourages them to plan around it and to treat your webinar like it’s a priority.
Breaking down the slides
While there are a variety of structures you can employ in a webinar sales process, the simplest, and by far the most effective framework is this:
Infographic
Intro and framing
In the introduction, you need to be very, very clear. The first thing you need to do is resell the webinar and show people what they’re going to get. Set people’s expectations very clearly.
As part of the introduction in Foundr webinars, we give people a promise and run through what they’re going to get and what they can expect in the webinar. It’s very important that you mention the offer at the very beginning so that it’s not awkward when you get to the pitch. You must set that expectation upfront, otherwise people feel scammed or like it was a sneak attack sales pitch.
The Story
After you’re done with the introduction, you need to be able to establish your credibility and authority with your audience. After all, no one wants to listen to someone they don’t respect.
The best way to go about this is to tell a personal story. Not only does this establish your authority, but it also gives you a chance to be authentic and develop know, like, and trust with your audience.
What you’re doing is essentially using yourself as a case study and showing to the audience that you’ve achieved what they want to achieve, and that you can help them get to that next level.
Valuable information
This part makes up the bulk of your webinar, and how many sales you make over a webinar depends almost entirely on how valuable the information you give away is. You need to be able to empower your audience by giving them the strategies, tactics, and resources they need to achieve their goal.
But that doesn’t mean you should be giving away valuable information only for the sake of giving it away.
Each lesson or tip you give should always be tied to the offer and the benefit. To add value, you have to be able to solve a problem, and ideally in doing so you unpack a larger problem that your offer will solve.
Part of this process is to help your audience realize that no matter how in-depth or valuable the information you give away is, you can’t go through everything you need to regarding this topic in one hour. That’s where your offer comes in.
The offer
The most important parts of any webinar are the introduction and the offer, and if you’re gonna focus on any one thing, you need to focus on having an incredible offer. It has to be a red-hot-no-brainer. Stack the bonuses and the urgency as much as possible.
Venngage does a fantastic job with stacking their webinar offer with as much as value as possible to make it a no-brainer
Your confidence has to exceed their doubt.
If you are not comfortable selling, if you are shying away from the offer, you will be awkward and you will kill your sales. It might feel uncomfortable at first, but remember that if people are hanging out with you for that long then they’re clearly interested in your expertise and what you can offer them.
When you do make the offer, make sure to add in elements of scarcity and urgency. You can do this easily by giving your offer a time limit, or by giving yourself a limit to how many products you want to sell. Doing simple things like this will increase your conversion rate.
Q&A
For the final 10 or 15 minutes of your webinar, you should have a Q&A session.
The main reason is that some people might need an extra bit of reassurance or convincing before they commit to buy. By holding a Q&A you’re able to directly address any questions and objections they may have.
It gives you time to further develop that aspect of know, like, and trust and it also allows you to identify potential hot leads that you can follow up with after the webinar.
Keeping up engagement
Webinars typically run for an hour, and in that hour you have try to keep people interested and engaged from the moment your webinar starts to when you make your offer. Considering the fact that the average human attention span is eight seconds, it can be a struggle.
No matter how interesting or valuable the information you’re giving away is, and no matter how magnetic and exciting you are a presenter, if all you’re doing is talking, people will get bored. The last thing you want to happen in your webinar is for people to get bored.
A great way to make sure your audience stays engaged throughout the whole webinar is to offer an attendance gift that keeps them interacting. For our 0-500k Instagram Followers in 2 Months webinar, we give a gift to everyone who takes notes throughout the webinar. In order to claim the gift, they have to post a picture of their notes onto Twitter and tag us in the photo.
A good rule of thumb to follow is to have an “attention spike” every 10 minutes. This means that every 10 minutes, you’ll do something that actively engages your audience and requires them to interact.
Something I like to do is hold a poll or ask a question directly to my audience and have them answer back, either on public or private chat, depending on what webinar platform you’re using. It can be something as simple as asking them if they’re enjoying the webinar so far, or if they’ve found the previous lesson or tip useful.
By constantly interacting with attendees, I’m encouraging them to stay engaged as much as possible. Sometimes you might get a particularly quiet crowd, but that doesn’t mean you can’t interact with them. In these situations, I tend to interact and ask questions to a specific person instead of the whole crowd.
Another great rule of thumb to have is to never be reading off the slides. What makes a TED talk so interesting is the fact that you have to pay attention to the speaker in order to absorb all the information they’re giving. You should treat your webinar the same—don’t give away all your information in the text.
If you wanted to do that, you could have just written an article or an email that your audience could have easily skimmed over. Take advantage of a webinar’s potential to engage all five senses at once and get people to listen and take actions throughout the webinar.
Onboarding and Following up
After your webinar is finished, it’s time to follow up and start onboarding.
Just because the webinar has ended and you’ve made some sales doesn’t mean that your webinar marketing process is over. What happens after the webinar is equally as important as the webinar itself.
One of the most undervalued steps is onboarding people who just purchased. If you don’t close that gap and deliver on all your promises, they’re going to be unhappy. A one-way ticket to customer dissatisfaction and a bad reputation is being unable to deliver on the promises you’ve made during your pitch.
Ideally, you’ll have an automated onboarding sequence to save you both time and effort. But how intensive your onboarding sequence is ultimately depends on you. It can be something as easy as sending out a few emails welcoming someone to the group, to offering to arrange a personal one-on-one call and going into further detail with them.
However, that doesn’t mean that you should neglect the other attendees of your webinar. Following up with these attendees is a great way for you to further increase your sales.
If someone has spent an hour listening and developing a rapport with you, they’re interested in what you have to offer. Just because they didn’t buy in that instant doesn’t mean that they aren’t interested in purchasing.
There’s a variety of reasons as to why someone might not be able to pay at that moment. By following up with them, you’re able to pinpoint what the reason is and how you can help. It can be something as simple as needing time to consult with another decision-maker, or just needing a little bit of extra reassurance.
Because everyone that attended your webinar is now a warm lead, all you need to do in your follow-up sequence is to turn up the heat. Send out a replay of the webinar so they can watch it again, or even send out a specific guide or ebook showcasing the benefits. Whatever it is you do, it’s vital that you don’t neglect the final phase.
Conclusion
We’ve had great success with webinars here at Foundr, both in terms of sales, but really with making connections among our audience and helping them get to the next level with their businesses.
Even though we primarily offer resources through our magazine, podcast, and blog, we’ve found webinars to be outstanding tools for taking things one step further, and we’re strong believers that anyone with important knowledge to share can have similar success by following these steps.
Do you have any questions on hosting a great webinar that we didn’t cover here? Let us know in the comments and we’re happy to help!
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