215. Optimize Your Webinar Marketing with Casey Zeman

Welcome to Marketing Speak, a series of interviews and monologues featuring thought leaders and industry practitioners in search engine optimization, e commerce, and online marketing. Here's your host, Stefan Spencer, SEO expert, author, speaker, consultant, and Internet entrepreneur. How many times have you logged out of a webinar early because it seemed like a waste of your time? Maybe the content just wasn't engaging, or maybe there were annoying technical issues. Or maybe you got tricked into thinking it was live when it was actually a replay. It's a common experience that highlights the fact that if you're running a webinar, you need to be on the top of your game throughout the entire webinar and you need the right tools for the job. One person who knows this better than anyone is Casey Zieman. Casey started out as a video marketer on YouTube and moved into webinars after he realized the massive financial potential. He never looked back, eventually building his own webinar software platform, which became Easy Webinar. Along the way, Casey ran hundreds of successful webinars himself, learning what worked and what didn't the hard way. Casey is also the founder of the Tribeminded Mastermind and has consulted with companies such as HarperCollins, Estee Lauder, and Dell. If you want to make the most of webinars in your marketing and you're looking for the latest and greatest tips, tools and tactics, this episode is for you. Casey and I will be discussing webinar automation, interactive tools, webinar sales funnels, and a bunch of ways to take your webinars to the next level. On with the show. Casey, it's so great to have you on the show.

Stephan, thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this.

Yeah. So let's first of all talk about webinars because that's kind of your thing. I mean, we could go into live streaming and other stuff, too. But I want to start with webinars. Like what inspired you to create a platform, easy webinar in your case, when there are other options out there, why not just piggyback on what other people are doing? Why create a whole other platform?

Well, you know what I mean. This platform, it was built a long time ago. We started off, actually, I don't know if you know this, as a WordPress plugin. It was called Easy Webinar Plugin at the time, and at the time it was one of the only automated webinar platforms out there. So we started in a very, very specific niche and lane, and from there we grew into a full SaaS platform that has Live webinar capabilities, automated webinar capabilities. People can create series, they can create automated classes and all sorts of cool stuff. So we actually did a spring off of our own platform into building out a bigger platform. And we did it because we just felt the need. We kept hearing the reasons why from people in the sense that they wanted something that was more intuitive. And I was always on the journey for something more intuitive where I could do a live webinar and then quickly turn that live webinar into an automated webinar where I didn't have to change the URLs, I wouldn't have to restructure anything. I could just toggle from live to automated and turn what was previously live into an evergreen funnel, basically. And that was nothing out there did that with the thing I was using at the time when I was out looking for stuff. It was gotowebinar. Gotowebinar. I could run a live webinar, but I couldn't turn it into an automated webinar. I had to take out the video, dump it into an automated webinar system, build out all the pages, all the emails, how to do all of that, which that was the impetus for even building easy webinar in this first place was to now have the capability of running a live webinar and then quickly toggling it over and turning it into an automated webinar with simply only two clicks of a button. I don't have to do anything else now. It's once I have a live webinar that works really well, I turn it into a funnel and it's always out there working, performing for me. That's what we built. We are a program that does live webinars. We have our own livestream, high definition, no latency streaming where you can share your own screen, up to four plus presenters on, you can push offers in real time, you can do chat, you can do all the fun stuff there, private chat, public chat. And then once that is over, you know, and all the emails are built into EZ webinar, right? The pre notification post notification. We have a replay page as well inside of easy webinar where it can be basically the duplicate of your live webinar or build out your own custom replay page and then we connect with all of your favorite CRM systems. So you basically pass the information from Easy webinar into Infusionsoft, ConvertKit, what have you and basically create segmented campaigns based on the actions performed in the webinar. We felt that there wasn't A holistic platform that allowed you to do this for live and. And then took that same data and moved it into automated. And so that's what we do. We are really intertwined, our live and our automated system. Most platforms that do have live, they're either just live, or there are other platforms that do automated, and there are platforms that have both, but not as intertwined and not as connected as our platform. And it was because I wanted to a holistic way to market and create better experiences for people. And I felt like webinars were those experiences. I just didn't find a platform that. That gave me everything I wanted. So it was very selfish.

Yeah, it was great that you were selfish because a lot of us benefited. So I'm. I'm a customer. And what I wanted to underline the value of converting your live webinar seamlessly to Evergreen is so important. And we burned a lot of hours going from recordings of gotowebinar to turning that into something that, like, we just eventually gave up on doing all that on our own. And that's when we found easy webinar and signed up. But I'm curious, what do you do to get things like the Q and A and the polling and so forth to port over to an Evergreen webinar to something that's automated without it being kind of disingenuous, like you're trying to fool them, like, this is a live Q and A, but it's not these people who ask questions and I gave answers to that was in a previous time. And the polling that's happening and me commenting on those polls, that was a previous time too. So how do you kind of reconcile that?

Okay, really simple. So we had the same thought. We didn't want to feel disingenuous. We didn't want to have people feel like they weren't at the highest level of integrity using our system. So, in fact, we don't give you the ability to reproduce your same chat commenting for an automated webinar. From the automated webinar experience, what you have is we have a question box. And you can have that question box pop in at any point where you maybe ask specific questions during the workshop. It can pop in. You can have it there the entire time or pop in based on when you want it there. We felt that we didn't want to give you the ability to dupe somebody. We don't actually have what a lot of people will call simulated chat, where it's like it's the same chat role from the live duplicated on the automated. What we oftentimes tell people when they're using our system is never tell people it's live when it's not. Now, the cool thing about our system is that we can stream these broadcasts out in real time with the experience of live. So in fact, they are live because at 8pm the stream starts. And if someone shows up at 8:05, it's not like it's starting from the beginning. It's going to be five minutes into the workshop because it's streamed live.

Yeah, so that is something that I've seen before with other platforms. And it's so sketchy, like, oh, this is a live webinar. And you come in at 8:05 and it just starts. I mean, that's so obvious that it's not real.

Exactly. So what we encourage people to do is like let people know that it's streamed in real time. For instance, I'll say use streamed workshop, call it a stream workshop, don't call it a live, you know, hey, come to our live webinar. It's a streamed workshop. So that's what we pretty much tell people to use that or workshop webinar, what have you. But we don't want you to lie about it. And therefore we don't have that ability. People like Amy Porterfield, Jay Shetty and many others who use our system, they will typically just call it a online presentation or online event, online workshop. And they oftentimes don't say it's live because I think the best thing to do is let. Let it do the trick of engaging without you having to oversell it. And so that's what we do. So we try to put people in the position of being at the highest level of integrity because of how the system streams out these events. And they are. People are using them very effectively and without having to have all the duping, without having to have the simulated chat and stuff like that.

Yeah. What about polling? How do you feel about polling as a tactic for webinars?

I think polling is strong, to be honest with you. We don't have a polling mechanism in our system. What we allow you to do is you can ask questions at any given point and people can send you the response. We are adding it. It's on the roadmap. It might be available in the next six to eight weeks because of the requests we've gotten. But I do think it's a good way to get insights from the people that are on your workshop, even if it's automated. You know, hey, we have A polling. It's just like anything using a polling on an automated webinar or asking questions. I mean, the same thing. It all stems from keeping engagement up even while you're not there. So having a question going out like, so tell me, where are you coming in from the world? Go ahead and post in this question box. You know, being engaged is still fine. It's really about how you set this up. So what we typically do. Here's what we do when we want to do this in a really effective way. I'll say in my webinar, welcome to this workshop. I'm so excited that you're here. This workshop should be about an hour. There's going to be a point where we're going to be. I'm going to be asking, answering some questions at the end of this workshop. I'll be letting you know some common questions we get. And if you have a question during the workshop, if it's not answered by the end, don't worry. Somebody will be reaching out with a customized response. So feel free to put a question in the. In the question box there. And whether you get a response during the workshop or after, someone will reach out because it actually is true. I or someone on my team always answers any questions coming in from the automated webinars. And people love it. I get so many conversions just simply by responding to someone in a customized personalized email.

That's great.

And so the whole idea is like, how can you leverage your time in the best way? So you're not putting on the presentation, but you can be manning the questions coming in right from your phone while you're grocery shopping or, well, doing maybe other stuff but you like. It's just a really powerful way to leverage your time. But engagement is still key. Even in an evergreen webinar. Asking questions, having questions pop up at given points, having maybe a worksheet that they can work on while the webinar or workshop is going on. Even if it's prerecorded, it doesn't matter. It's still a high level of engagement that you want to put attention into because you're nurturing, you're still nurturing. You're going through a process with them. So that's what I encourage for our webinars and polling would be in addition to that. Again, we don't have it as of yet, but we'll have it soon.

Okay, and who would you say is a great kind of gold standard to look at and kind of reverse engineer what they're doing in terms of Their webinars, their funnels, the follow up sequences, all that. Is it Amy Porterfield? Is it somebody else?

Amy's really good. I love Amy. There's also. We have a slew of customers that are doing this, but there's a woman called Alana Cavalier, she has a yoga program and she does about seven figures a month on her automated webinar.

Wow.

I'm sorry, six figures a month.

Okay, but that's still good. Seven figures a month.

Overshot it, overshot it.

Okay.

People like here, Tanya, Eliza is another one. Tanya does like 200,000 or so plus a month. There's another person, Kim Constable, who is the sculpted vegan. She's doing really well. She did like 1.5 million in the last 15 months just through her easy webinar funnel. So we got a lot of good people. I mean, I'm only giving you women as examples for some odd reason. But yeah, I'd say Amy Porterfield is strong. But I'll type these in. So you have them? Yep.

And I'll add those to the show notes.

You could find them, find their workshops. Some of them have their workshops from their homepage. Some of them have their workshops, you know, just found in Google. Because our, our system is, you know, obviously it's search engine optimized and stuff.

Like that, so very good. So yeah, I'll include that in the show notes. The webinars that they're doing, they're all automated, correct? They're not doing live ones as well or are they doing mix of both?

Yeah, some do a mix of both. We have other people that are solely using our system to do like live webinars on like literally on a weekly basis. And they're doing quite well. They just have like a weekly live workshop. Same workshop. And they're generating really good revenue, five figure revenue just from running the same workshop. I really find that what you discover is that it's really about creating a structure around how you're using webinars as a marketing engine. Right. From if you're going to do live, probably you could just repeat the cycle, repeat it over and over. If you're going automated, then it's a question of just refining and tweaking the process and seeing how people are consuming and they're resonating and is your price point correct and all that good stuff. But that's the fun of it. But yeah, it's systemizing webinars basically. And if I had to give anybody any advice, I'd say start running live webinars first. And then when you're ready and you have a converting webinar, turn it into an automated webinar. Make sure you pull out some of the pieces though. I would say if you're going to run an automated webinar, still have Q and A. But think of 10 frequently asked questions, 10 should ask questions. And then have those in the back end for you. When you start to do a Q and a part of your webinar and you don't have to say like Jill is here and she says, or Sam is here and he says, you could just simply say, here are some common questions. We get Casey, what's the best way to do X, Y and Z? Right. You have that at the end. That way it's more generalized. And then you're obviously not like, yeah.

You'Re not trying to fool them. You're being authentic.

Exactly. So I would suggest that a Q and A is still very powerful in an automated webinar because it still handles the objections that someone will have. Problem sale.

Right, right, right. Because you want to preempt those objections before they even verbalize them or even think of them.

They might be thinking of them and. Or not. And you're right. And you are like, just knock them out.

Yeah. Now, is there a optimal time frame for these automated webinars? I've seen, for example, that they start on the top of the hour or they start 15 minute increments. Like you could catch the webinar. You can sign up for the webinar that's at 2:15 or the 2:30 or 2:45. Or there's maybe an option to just start watching it right away. Or it says watch the previous day's recording. What's the best approach here?

This is a great question. Make sure you definitely. I want to share this out. It really depends on where someone is entering into the webinar with what they've already experienced with you. So as an example, if you have someone going through an opt in, or maybe they consume six videos or seven videos, maybe they consumed a challenge video, or maybe there are people that are watching you consistently on Instagram, or maybe there's someone who's consistently watching your podcast, moving people that are warm traffic into an automated webinar compared to people that are cold traffic where they've never had touch points with you moving them into a webinar, there are going to be two different strategies and two different optimizations for the scheduling. So as an example for warm traffic, you could send warm traffic into a webinar where they can consume it right away because they already feel connected and engaged with you. So as an example, like setting that right on time or just in time webinar where they come to the page, you know, my clock says 2:27pm I could have a webinar starting at 2:30. And that's, that's what we call our right on time scheduling where you can have a webinar starting every 15 minutes or 30 minutes or hours. So if it's 2:02, you can have a webinar starting at 2:15. If it's 2:20, you can have a webinar Starting at 2:30. Does that make sense? So yeah, 15 minute increments, 30 minute increments or top of the hour increments, right? So in that regard, if you have warm traffic, sending people into a write on time webinar actually does make sense because you don't have to warm them up as much. Now on the flip side of that cold traffic, if you're sending them in to a right on time webinar where they're registering instantly and coming into a workshop, you may not get them sticking around staying for the whole duration of the webinar and you might not get them to commit to purchasing because they don't know you yet. So they, they have to still get to know you a bit more. So what we've seen is that you have to either have a kick butt webinar, right, that can get some conversions and then a really strong follow up sequence that has scarcity, that has, you know, that definitely talks about, you know, a couple pain points, how you can alleviate the pain and then also testimonials or case studies following up to completion of the offer. If that's strong, then you can make up for the fact that the cold traffic is instantly watching the webinar and not nurturing on the front end. So if you're nurturing on the back end, then you can do that on the front end. But another way to do it if you have cold traffic is you can nurture on the front end. So instead of letting someone watch the webinar right away when they hit the registration page, maybe create a couple days where you block the days. And so it's like they hit the registration page on Monday, they can't watch a webinar until Wednesday, right? So they register on Monday, they have two days before the webinar starts. Now you nurture them over the next two days before the webinar starts. Now here's what happens. You'll maybe get fewer people showing up to the webinar. But of the people that do show up, they are more apt to buy and chances are they'll stick around more towards the end because you spent a couple days nurturing them, reiterating why they need to show up to the workshop. Really getting them indoctrinated into who you are.

Yeah.

And then have a strong follow up after that. Again though, it really is going to depend on where the traffic is coming from. So if it's warm traffic, sending them right into a webinar, starting right away or yes, watching a replay is going to serve you just as much and still having a pretty decent follow up. And so what we've seen for our clients is we've seen for cold traffic or maybe maybe one touch point, you know, where maybe someone read an article and then they got invited to a workshop. What we typically see is like a day of a block. So you come, you watch an article in somewhere. Right. So there's an ad that talks about watching an article. So they see the ad, they oh, I can learn how to do this. They go to it. It's a whole blog post written about X, Y and Z. At the end of it they can register for a workshop or they go back into Facebook and then they're retargeted the workshop if they click on it. A workshop can start either right on time, so. So in the next 15 minute increments or tomorrow a few times during the day. So you give multiple times during the day, the next day, as well as a time to watch that same day. And we've seen this work pretty well. And for those who choose to watch it into the future, you have a 24 hour period of time to nurture them. So you can have a welcome email go out right away. You can have an email that goes out three hours before, one hour before, 15 minutes before the webinar. All nurturing and getting people excited to come to the workshop. So we've seen that work quite well. And do like at the end do a two or three day replay. So the replay expires, let's say after two or three days on the backend.

So they, by making it somewhat scarce that kind of pushes them to take some action rather than oh well, I can watch that replay whenever I want forever.

Yeah, I would suggest definitely having a limited time that they can watch the replay or and even get the offer. Many times people do them at the same time. So it's congruent where the replay and the offer will expire on the same day. Some people don't. Some people let the replay expire first. And then sometimes the offer is maybe available still for another 24 hours.

So what do you do with easy webinar? I'm assuming that you're buying some cold traffic like Facebook ads or paid search or something and then you drive them to a landing page or to somewhere that they can do the demo, watch a webinar, whatever. Can you walk us through your process that you do for your leads?

So I have a couple different ways we do this. We do this straight away, cold traffic into our automated webinar that has people book on a calendar to have a conversation with someone about our coaching program or enter into easy webinars. So we have a basically it's a high ticket funnel straight from Instagram and Facebook. And basically the whole idea is that it gets people on a workshop. The workshop is 20 to 40 minutes long, ours is 40 minutes long. From the workshop they can book a time off a booking page and that will get them into my calendar and then from my calendar they will fill out an application to work with us and then they'll get on a call with somebody. We have a high ticket funnel like that. We have another funnel that sends people to my easy webinar Evergreen webinar as well. We have a couple ways to do it. Right now we have a PDF funnel that leads to a nurture sequence that invites people to our six strategy webinar. So it's kind of granular six strategy webinar. If they don't come into that one, we move them into our webinar mini course. They don't come into that one. We send them into our automated webinar that teaches how to sell your courses and programs 24, 7 leveraging one simple webinar. And so we take them through a few different funnels from a PDF entry point. So we do, you know, we drink our own Kool Aid.

That's great. What is the typical show up rate for live versus automated? And I know there's a very big difference between cold traffic and warm traffic in terms of the show up rate. So maybe you could differentiate that as well for us.

Yeah, I mean typically we see 30, 40% show up rate on webinars across the board, whether they're live or automated. I think that if you add an element of SMS you can typically get another 5% bump on that. And if you have enough video content and possibly even some nurturing that can increase show up. So we always see a higher show up rate for right on time webinars just because people register and then they can show up right away. But we also see a faster follow up rate. So I think that you may get 50% show up on a right on time webinar, but again, you don't have as much of a commitment.

Right. So the stick rate or whatever metric you want to call it, them watching it all the way through the end doesn't happen as much if it's right on time webinar.

Right. So your webinar has to be awesome. There's room for error, there's room for, you know, there's margins of error that you can have on a webinar that comes off of where you have time to do authority seating or comes off of warm traffic. Right. Where maybe you've already done some nurturing. But when you're sending someone directly to cold traffic, it's going to be a little different. So you have to have either a killer webinar or move people from the webinar into a conversation on the phone. One on one conversation like this, like what we're doing and then doing it that way because that'll break the ice quickly.

Yeah. So you get them on the phone. Maybe an application funnel is the next step. And then you're qualifying them, you're getting, you get the right audience and you're not going to waste time with tire kickers. So how many calls will you have booked into your like there's a way to, with the high ticket offers to book time on your calendar using what like schedule once or acuity or what.

We use schedule once. Just embed it into a page. People sign up and then it goes pushes into a type form application and then that takes them into the calendar. So first they book on schedule once, then they go to the application. We just say to them they have to fill out the application in order to qualify for the call.

Yeah. So the call will be canceled if they don't do the application. How many calls will you have booked up in your week that are these schedule once scheduled high ticket calls?

Depends on how much traffic we're sending in. The high ticket is not necessarily our top priority. It's mostly getting people as easy webinar clients because we create those internal conversations too with easy webinar customers who want an effective way to do it. And in fact we move more of those people in to becoming clients. But I'd say we get about five to ten bookings a week with minimal spend on traffic.

What do those calls look like? Are they like 15 minutes? Are they an hour? Are you doing a demo?

They're about 30 minute calls and it's not a demo. It's actually most of those are like we get a sales rep on and he does the conversations with them and finds out more about what their needs are, the gap that they're experiencing, where the, where the pain point lies. But the whole point of these webinars that I have going out, this one webinar I have going out is that it already defines the pain and problem and someone will sign up because they resonate with that pain and problem. Right. So we're not having to do any selling in that regard. If people are going to get on the phone, they already understand the problem. And my guys just basically get on and just listen to understand how bad the problem is. Because that's the whole idea of a webinar is that it qualifies these people coming through already. It indoctrinates them through a process. When they come in from an Instagram ad, they hit the registration page, they go to a thank you page, the thank you page has a video. The emails go out specifically talking about X, Y and Z. They show up to the webinar, it talks about how they might not be selling their programs effectively. Or maybe you want to create. How do you leverage webinars to create a high ticket coaching program? How to leverage webinars to create a mid ticket coaching program. Right. Or mid ticket program in the first place. How to create an evergreen selling system is basically what we help them understand so that by the time they get on the phone they get that and they oftentimes we ask them what their problem is and they say that my problem is I can't get, I'm launching and money comes in on some months and then money is not there the next month. I'm always having to create program after product after program. I'm always doing one on one calls and my time is getting bogged down. You know, all these things are what we hear. They want more time, freedom, they want more, they want a system. And so we help them create systems and so we get those conversations.

Yeah, great. And let's define what is considered high ticket, medium ticket, like what's typical for price point for a webinar based offer. I've heard conventional wisdom, you know, don't go over 997. That's kind of the ceiling for direct sales via webinar without having a sales conversation. Like what sort of numbers should we be talking about here?

I think if you're going to sell a product on a webinar without getting someone directly on the phone. 495, 497 to $1,000 is a real good sweet spot. Maybe a little less 397, something like that. 297 depending on what the value is of the program, what they get out of it. I've done it all the way up to 2000 in effective way.

When you say 2000, you mean like 1997 or 1999 sort of thing or payment options, right?

Yeah, but I'd say anything above that, you're going to start to want to have a sales conversation. But you know, the thing is, the cool thing is like we've even seen for people that have a thousand or $2,000 program, like having both options actually does work too. So offering the here you can buy right now or get on the phone with someone. Nowadays there's so much content out there that sales funnels aren't what they used to be. Right. And sales funnels, like people are getting a little more hip on them and it requires a bit more of an experience now. And I think that with that experience comes connectivity. And that's where I think webinars differentiate themselves in the marketplace. With how you do that, you can create those conversations and that experience, even if it's automated, you can still bridge that experience. And yeah, I'd say for a mid ticket you're talking anywhere from 2 to 5,000, 5,000 to 10,000 is high ticket.

All right.

Yeah, ours is a high ticket program that we have. And then we have of course easy webinar, different programs inside easy webinar as well.

So what's the high ticket program called?

My program is called Tribe Minded. It's a six week fast track program that teaches you how to basically create an evergreen webinar funnel to promote a high ticket coaching program. We show you also how to build out an evergreen coaching program as well.

Okay. And are you getting most of the leads for that high ticket offer from existing customers or is that more kind of half and half.

We mostly get it from the existing customers that are already using easy webinar because oftentimes they have it, they want to do something but they need a very strong direction. We, you know, we have training on how to use easy webinar in our system. But sometimes hands on support where you know, you work with a coach is going to get you there faster. So it's probably more so people that are internal with easy webinar and then sometimes it's even People that do demo calls, that are having conversations that we get to understand where they're at, the gaps that they're experiencing, and sometimes we close them, bring them into easy webinar and also monthly coaching program at the same time. So right from the demos and demos, a lot of times organic, we get organic traffic coming from the demos. So that's probably a traffic point we want to leverage a bit more.

So leveraging organic for getting more demos.

Signups, getting more demo signups because the demo signups have been proven to convert on a really good level. We haven't pushed any auto traffic, NDP traffic to the demos yet. We might do that in the future. But right now we're working on SEO to do a lot with, trying to get more organic search coming to us and then setting up those demos because we definitely see strong ROI on those demos.

Yeah. And what do those demos look like in terms of length of the call? How are you screen sharing with them? Are you giving them recording? How are you following up? Tell us a bit about how that all works because there are plenty of people who are listening, I bet, who want to demonstrate something to help move that sales process along.

Yeah, basically when we do the demos, they're basically anywhere we try to listen to what they want and what they're looking for. And we have conversations and we give suggestions as to what they can do. And then we show them the software and show them how they can achieve it with easy webinar. But we also start to really understand the fundamental need that they have because the people that do our demos are people that understand how to create a Socratic dialogue with people to know what they need. It's not necessarily about. Here, let me show you this cool feature where that does this. It's about how is that feature going to get me to my goal? Right. What we're doing is we're being very goal oriented on our conversations with people. What is your goal? What are you looking to achieve? Okay, so you're wanting to do Evergreen webinars. Why are you looking to do Evergreen? Well, I guess I'm. I've been having an issue with, you know, selling my course and then, you know, I'm doing it. It's one off. I'm not really getting it really dialed in. Okay, well, let's quickly show you how some of the Evergreen stuff works and how we suggest doing it. By the way, if you want, if you're going to do live as well, you can come into this level. Our guys are really good at trying to show the best level of Easy Webinar, which is Pro. Our Pro Annual is our best deal, and it gives you access to all of our features live, the feature of being able to push live into Facebook and YouTube at the same time. When you're doing your live webinar with Easy Webinar, we have that syndication tool, it's called easycast. And then, of course, we incentivize them to Co Pro Annual to get my Elite Webinar Mastery course, which sells for $2,000 on its own. So we give a lot of value on the call and try to give them a discount and deal on the call as well. And we just listen to what their needs are. So that's what we're doing on our strategy calls. They're demo calls, but they turn out to be also strategy calls as well.

Right. Right. Now you've generously offered to give our listeners here a discount on Easy Webinar Pro Annual that comes with the Elite Webinar Mastery. Can you tell us what that special deal is?

Yeah. So if you pick up Easy Webinar Pro at the yearly, the price is 1080, you go to the sales page. It's also 1080. But what we don't offer is my program, Elite Webinar Mastery, the full program, which sells on its own for $2,000. What we offer from the sales page is just the foundation part of that course, which is like one fourth of it. And that value is probably only $300. But what we have for you now is you come through and just let me know that you come from Stefan. Then I can have Elite Webinar Mastery, the full program opened up, and you also get access to all of Pro. So it's pretty cool. You get all of the cool stuff.

Okay, thank you so much. So they just mentioned either Stefan or Marketing Speak, and you'll hook them up. So thank you for that. Now, one point before we move on to other topics around the Socratic dialogue. So you're trying to get at the why behind the why. Right? So can you just for those who are unfamiliar with Socratic dialogue, they might have heard of Socrates, but that's about it. What is the point behind the Socratic dialogue on this demo call?

Socratic dialogue, this is exactly what my salesperson talks about. So I am by no means a sales expert. So that's what they refer to. But the Socratic dialogue is just unpacking and listening to what their pain is. Right. As an example, that dialogue is letting you. It's listening more than talking. It's Hearing what you have to say and say, that's okay, I hear you. You know, if there's anything, if there's any part of that that you will change, what would that be? And just having you unpack and tell me basically, the gap, like how valuable knowing the answers to the problems you have are. So if I gave you the answer, would you be able to. If you could do that, what would you want to do with it? Well, I'd have more free time. I could travel, ultimately. I would be able to spend time with my kids, more my family, and I would be able to write that book that I wanted to write. And then you say something. Well, what if you didn't do anything five years from now? What would your life look like if you weren't able to accomplish anything? How bad is it? So it's really just about painting, I think, the picture and really seeing how badly they need to solve the problem that they have.

Right. So stretching that gap, not just showing them the gap between where they are currently and the pain associated with that and their desired end state, where they. Their outcome, where they want to be, but really accentuating the gap between those two places. So they basically poking at the pain.

Yeah, you highlight the pain, but you aggravate. They say aggravating the pain, but I think it's more of highlighting how bad it can get. I always say it's like raising the stakes. You need people that if they're at a point in their lives where they need something, if they need to happen, this happened. The price point of whatever you're selling. If you're selling a $10,000 program, the $10,000 program has to be less of a commitment than if they didn't do anything. Right. Like, the loss has to be greater than, you know, whatever your cost is of your program. So. And that's really what it is. I mean, it's. Again, I am not a salesperson. I'm not the one that does these conversations with people. My guy is amazing at it because he listens and he hears what they. What they need. And then that's really what sales is all about. It's not pushy. It's listening more than anything. Yep.

What would you say makes for a killer webinar? Like, do you see something that's just keeping people throughout the whole webinar? And it's super engaging. It gets the desired action, gets high, close rate. What's the secret sauce to that?

I think it's building an expectation, anticipation right out of the gate of what they're going to achieve on the, on the webinar how they're going to consume the content. Letting them know by the end of this workshop you'll be able to do X, Y and Z. This is why you're going to want to stick around because I'm also going to be giving you this by the end or you'll be able to achieve this by the end. If you know I'm going to give you my 100% attention, will you give me yours? You want to create these sticky factors in the beginning. You know, sometimes a workbook or an exercise for them to perform on a workshop is powerful. If you have like four points, you're going to have them fill out each point. Having them have some sort of realization or aha moment on the workshop will keep them engaged. If it's you lecturing them, that's not going to be beneficial for them. That's not anything that they can walk away from. It has to be that you are creating some sort of change in them.

Right. So transformation, not information.

Exactly, it's transformation. And no matter what price point it is you're doing transformation, you do want to lead with value, but you also want to help them have these aha moments. And so I always find that having engagement points are a good way to do that. Whether it's delivering them an exercise or bringing yourself on camera, any of these things. Like for me, I don't think it's a one webinar fits all. I think it's a, there's different types of webinars and also different ways people pass knowledge from one person to the next. And so there's, you know, there's no cookie cutter way of doing a webinar. There's a framework that will help you to do a kick butt webinar. But whether you just stay on your slides or whether you just on the video, like that's not, there's not a one size fits all type of concept there.

Right. But you probably, I'm assuming you should be willing to experiment and try different things, run tests, have hypotheses and see what works. Like maybe you pop in on video for two minutes and then you go back off to the slides and that worked like gangbusters. Or maybe you do it at the end and that works better. You don't know unless you try.

Exactly. You're exactly right. It's something to test and something to test within your comfort zone. But also stepping a little outside your comfort zone is a really good rule of thumb. And allowing yourself here's the biggest thing to fail and get back on. A lot of people don't do webinars because they failed one time at it, or it didn't produce sales or they felt authentic, inauthentic how they did it, or they're scared to death of getting on the camera. You know, there are ways around all of these things. It's going to be facing some fears, it's going to be working within your boundaries, but also challenging your boundaries as well and allowing yourself to not get stopped if something goes wrong. A tech issue or someone comes running behind you, streaking. You know, it's like these are things that it's just, that's life and it's just getting back on and doing it again and again and again.

Yep. Can you think of an example where there's just a really great follow up sequence? Something that I'll give you an example. I learned that ConvertKit sends a Bonjoro video to every new customer that signs up. So even if they sign up for the trial period, they get a personalized Bonjoro video from their account manager saying hey, and the person's name. I, I'm so and so, you know, I'm the customer success consultant at ConvertKit. I want to welcome you and I'm very excited to have you on board. I'm here at your disposal. Ask me anything. Da da da da da. And that might be a 30 or 50 second video. Pretty cool, right?

Yeah.

Do you have any examples of that kind of outside the box thinking in terms of moving people post webinar through to the advocacy stage to high customer.

Lifetime value, you have to get creative and get more personalized. I think that's awesome that Merkit does that. We don't have anything detailed like that right now with our demos or our free trials, but definitely for our clients that are using evergreen webinars, I would definitely look at Amy's, I would definitely look at Tanya Eliza's because they have really, really strong follow up series that are probably like seven to 10 emails that are just crushing. They're just doing really well with conversions. So it's about personalization but it's also about empathy and also about connectivity. And if you are a personal brand, I think it's about connecting your story to people. So you want to make sure that you're talking about how their story is related to yours or your, your story is related to theirs and having story and also offer story, offer story. Here's the webinar or story. Here's somebody who also went through the same struggles and here's their outcome. Yeah, I'd say follow Tanya Eliza. She's got a really good follow up sequence.

Awesome. Yeah. As they say, facts tell, stories sell.

Exactly.

Yeah. How about the SMS component? You said that can increase show up rates by an additional 5%. Particularly useful, I would say, if you're trying to get them to show up a day or more in advance, like they booked it and life gets in the way. Or maybe they just signed up just purely to get access to the replay without any intention of showing up for the live workshop or webinar. What sort of technology solution or approach would you recommend involving sms?

You can do SMS with easy webinar and do it through. And for sms, I think all you really need to do is they let them know right after they register that, hey, you know, thank you for registering. I'll send you a SMS notice right before your event starts and then you send them a notification at the time of the workshop, like five minutes before. And I think that, you know, say, hey, go back into your email. That's where it's located. That and maybe even including something like manychat as well. You can always do like a Facebook messenger bot that goes out that pushes that less people know about the webinar starting as well. So there's different ways to notify and remind people of, hey, the workshop's gonna start, I think, you know, with so much content, so much stuff, people's emails, you know, it's good to have other ways to connect with them and sure. They show up.

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so we're out of time. I wanted again for you to reiterate that offer and where they should go for that offer and where they can connect with you.

Yeah. So if you just want to basically you go to our book a demo call. So easywebinar.com consult booking form. I think Stefan, you can.

I'll add it to the show notes. Yep.

Okay, cool. And you sign up for a demo. Just let us know that you come from Stefan or you come from the podcast and then we'll, you know, we'll, we'll make sure that you get that deal. Just remind us to say, hey, I came from here.

Yep, you came from Marketing Speak or you came from Stefan. All right, perfect. And to follow you and all your brilliance. Where, where's the best place?

Instagram is where I'm, I'm hanging out nowadays. So Acyzeman on Instagram is the best place to, to go. And you can follow my stories. You can send me a direct message there. Tell me you came in and watched this podcast and I'd be I'd be happy to connect with you and talk to you and send you some ideas.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Casey. And thank you listeners. We'll catch you on the next episode of Marketing Speak. This is your host Stefan Spencer signing off. If you love this episode on Webinar Marketing then you definitely want to check out episode 122 with John Shoemaker and episode 6 with John Shugart. Two awesome webinar marketing experts and of course Facebook. For this episode number 215 do check out the show Notes checklist and all the URLs mentioned with Casey Zieman on marketingspeak.com 215. Thanks for listening to the Marketing Speak podcast. Your host has been Stefan Spencer, three time author and leading expert on SEO and online marketing whose client list boasts such brands as Zappos, Sony and Chanel. Want to learn more about SEO, social media, or just generally how to build an online empire? Visit marketingspeak.com for an archive of past episodes along with transcripts and show notes. In addition, a wealth of resources that include video based training, screencasts, webinars, white papers, articles and blog posts can be found on his SEO coaching site, scienceofseo. Com. To reach Stefan, visit his personal website at stefanspencer. Com or email him directly at stefan@stefanspencer.com. until next time.