Consultant Marketing A Tasty Webinar Slice

Have you noticed how often you are seeing offers to attend a webinar show up in your e-mail? Is the apparent increase because of sheltering in place? Has the world suddenly become more receptive to online offers? Why do they all seem the same?

There is a formula.

It seems like every webinar offered lately uses it. Here’s the way it works:

1. There’s a reward if you stick around until the end.

2. Why you should listen to this person

3. The problem your product solves for me

4. Some social proof like statistics that tell me you are an expert

5. A roadmap to the things you’ll learn if you hang in there

6. Stuff that lured you in the first place…but not all of it.

7. The program you can buy plus bonuses (with a call to action)

8. Wrap up the content you promised

9. Surprise bonuses for a limited time (with a call to action)

10. Q&A with emphasis on the main objection (with a call to action)

11. Link to the reward promised

12. How you’ll be transformed when you buy (with a call to action)

13. Follow up afterwards if you didn’t buy during

That baker’s dozen was developed after studying this phenomenon and submitting to more product, service and program offerings than I care to count. That includes a couple webinars that were touted to “teach me the secret of a successful webinar.”

The secret.

A member in a mastermind put it this way, “Give them a whole lot of what and damn little how.”

But before you can do that you have to do some solid marketing work. Specifically:

• Identify the ideal audience for what you want to sell. That means you know their key problem including the emotional pain it causes them and you understand how your offer solves their problem

• Develop Content that converts. Find a way to help them see things in a different way. Give them “Aha” moments that naturally lead to deciding to take action now.

• Create a “no-brainer” offer that is clearly valuable for the basic product but irresistible when the dollar amounts of bonuses are stacked up beside it and the clock is ticking.

Don’t stop when the webinar ends.

Number 13 up there was not a last-minute add-on. It was grounded in the statistical information presented by organizations teaching this systematic approach. The facts:

If 100 people attend a webinar the max that buy is about 30%. If you follow up with all those that didn’t buy immediately you can get as many as 70% to purchase. People that registered did so because your offer looked interesting. They will appreciate the fact that you are still interested in them even though they didn’t order.

Why is it so prevalent?

It has simply become the go to shiny marketing object in the era of the Coronavirus. It was becoming more common before we started sheltering in place. Now it is more ubiquitous than ever. It has replaced selling onstage even though it follows a similar script. It is hard to know which is the adaption in some cases.

Webinars are the most direct of sales tools available on-line. Nothing else allows an entrepreneur to take her or his complete belief in a product or service out of the box and tell the world about it. No other approach can generate the income from a “tribe” as quickly. This online marketing template is focused on instant rewards.

The ROI is unsurpassed.

Do the math. I’ll make it easy. Let’s say 125 people register. 100 show up (20% drop-out is the usual). Out of those 100 attendees about 30% or 30 people buy. Afterwards you maintain contact with the 70% of people that didn’t buy while you were “on the air.” About 50 of them buy (I rounded).

If your offer was priced at $100 you generated sales of $3000 while you were “on the air.” Roughly ten days later (Follow-up sales go off a cliff after 10 days) you can rack up another 50 sales of $5000. That’s $8000 for one webinar. What could you generate with your product or service in a one-hour webinar?

But it is only the beginning.

Now that someone has voluntarily joined your tribe they are significantly more prone to look into other offers you might make. Even if the initial purchase did not get used (this happens at a rate north of 65%) they still associate your name with products and services that can be trusted and frequently will buy additional products from you particularly those priced higher than their initial purchase.

Would a new template work as well?

I don’t know.

But I’m going to find out.

I figure there are a lot of consultants out there that don’t have time to register and attend a webinar on someone else’s schedule that lasts anywhere from an hour to half a day. I’m going to investigate these variables:

• Webinar length

• Time of delivery by time zone

• Alternate templates (the current one can be done in as little as 3 minutes!)

• Live versus recorded versus recorded with live kicker

• Charging versus free for the webinar.

Why test?

I’m up to here with the old template. It has robbed me of countless hours when I could have been doing something profitable both short and long term. It has generated damn few really usable bits of information. True, I’ve found a couple resources that have provided products that work and continuing content that is useful. But overall I’m looking for folks that are not going to waste my time. I may be wrong, but I believe there are a lot of consultants out there that feel the same way. I’ll find out.

And so it goes.

His consulting practice, founded in 1990, is known for on and off-line Trust-based Consultant Marketing advice that builds businesses, brands and lives of joy.

Consulting: www.JerryFletcher.com
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com