If you’ve spent any amount of time trying to grow your business online, then you’ve likely come across the idea of using webinars as a means to increase business sales.
Some people jump into webinars right away. Others, like myself, are a little hesitant to use them simply because it doesn’t seem like its our style. Although, truthfully, it’s likely because you don’t get marketing.
While I’ve avoided webinars for a couple of years so I could focus on the content marketing side of my company, I’ve decided to revisit them as a way to increase business sales. I’ve dedicated 2017 to starting to teach people about business again through coaching and digital courses, and webinars fit perfectly into the sales funnel.
Having just recently completed my first live webinar in quite some time, here are some lessons learned about how to use webinars to increase business sales.
Have a clear call to action for the webinar.
The first thing you’ll want to consider when creating webinars to increase business sales is to start with the end in mind. What is the point of this webinar? What do you ultimately want people to do as a result of attending?
In my case, I want people to book a consultation with me so I can see if they are a good fit for either private coaching with me or a good prospect for one of my digital courses. Eventually, I’ll move into making the sales automatic via an email funnel, but this is what I’m experimenting with first so I can get a better sense of what’s going on with my audience.
Learn specific online marketing principles.
The reason I got turned off from webinars a couple of years ago was because I didn’t really know how to properly conduct one.
At the time, certain marketing principles like addressing your audience’s mindset and pain points hadn’t quite landed for me yet. I also didn’t understand the art of giving just enough free information away, but not too much.
As a result, I would end up teaching entire business classes I could have easily made business revenue from for free.
Because I didn’t understand these principles yet, I wasn’t really making any money. People weren’t even signing up for the free stuff because I was giving away everything in the webinars. Eventually, I realized it was time to get help if I wanted to use webinars to increase business sales.
One of the books that really helped me understand marketing and sales during presentations was “Wealth Through Workshops” by Callan Rush. In it, she describes the specific strategies presenters can use to evoke emotion, move people to take action and increase business sales.
I also went ahead and sought the help of a coach. In fact, I wrote out an entire sales presentation with the help of a coach while at a business retreat in Puerto Rico. That initial outline became the webinar I’m now using with great success.
Because the coach was right there to help me, I was able to create an effective presentation that did exactly what I needed it to do. When I got back home, I started studying the webinars of some of my favorite online marketers to see what they were doing and found ways to incorporate those strategies into my own webinar.
Learn how to get leads without spending a ton of money.
If you want to improve your chances of increasing business sales via webinars, you’ll need butts in seats. I was able to fill up my webinar and reach maximum capacity thanks to social media and email.
At this point, I’ve created quite the online community. When you couple that with the marketing strategies I’ve learned, I can write some pretty good email and social media copy that converts.
You’ll want to experiment with different things to see what works best for you. In my case, I realized that Instagram had high conversions. That makes total sense because, as I’ve come to realize in the past year, that’s where my market likes to hang out.
I also started experimenting with Facebook Live videos and boosting them for $5. While it wasn’t as successful or as cheap as Instagram (Instagram was free), I was still able to make some conversions from it.
And finally, I sent emails to my list leading up to the actual webinar. I made it as easy as possible for them to sign up by using one-click registration links within the emails themselves. (Note: My webinar software provides a link for this. You’ll have to see what your service allows you to use.)
See if there are ways to automate.
While I do like teaching live classes, the reality is I don’t have time to do them live every month. So instead, I taught it live once and I’ll use the recording as a part of a sales funnel.
Here’s what I mean:
- Person opts in for a freebie based on my marketing. (Think Facebook ads, live video, blogs, social media posts, etc.)
- Person gets series of emails that leads up to them signing up for a free presentation (the webinar).
- Person watches recording of webinar that was recorded live.
- Person gets a second series of emails encouraging them to book a call with me.
- Person signs up for call, we have a consult and if they are a good prospect I’ll pitch them on a service or product.
This entire process can be automated with software in order to increase business sales on a bigger scale. Since I’ve dedicated 2017 to systems and scaling, my ultimate goal is to eventually get rid of the consult call and automate the sales.
Final Thoughts on Webinars
The ability to automate and scale on this level is actually one of the reasons I absolutely love the internet and what it allows you do with online business. However, it will only happen if you learn the proper marketing principles and then implement them in an effort to increase business sales.
