#295 - Everyone's Running Live Workshops. Let's Talk About It.

You might have noticed there's a new cool kid in town, the paid live workshop. Now, these aren't technically new, they've been around for a very long time, but right now they are absolutely having a moment. Everyone is running one, everyone is talking about them, and a lot of people are quietly wondering whether they should be trying to do one too. Today I want to talk about why that is, whether it's the right strategy for you, and if you do decide to go ahead, a few things that will make your life a whole lot easier and your results a whole lot better at the same time. Ready? Let's dive in. Hey, hey there guys. I'm Kate McKibbin from hellofunnels.co and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. So first things first, let's talk about why live workshops are having a moment. Because in my experience, whenever a strategy starts trending in the online business space, it's usually because it's solving the problems of the time. And right now, there are a few very real problems that pretty much everyone is experiencing. The first one is trust, or more accurately, the lack of it. Nobody trusts anyone right now. Everyone is walking around assuming they're being lied to, that they're being taken for a ride, fed AI-generated slop that has nothing real behind it. The skepticism is at an all-time high. And honestly, after some of the stuff that's been going on in the industry, I do get it. The second problem is that the pendulum has swung too far. Look, I am a massive fan of automation, of evergreen, of building systems that run while you sleep. But I think a lot of us, yes, sometimes myself included, have probably leaned into that so hard that we've almost removed all the human from our businesses, and people are craving the opposite right now. They want to feel like they're actually talking to a real person. They want things done live. They want connection. Then add a rather unhealthy dose of AI into the mix, and suddenly everything feels even more produced, even more manufactured, even less human, and that craving just gets stronger. The third reason, and this is probably the one that's really driving it, if we're going to be honest, is that a lot of the marketing tactics that used to work really well to sell programs, particularly more premium programs, and by premium, I mean anything over that $1,000 to $2,000 mark, really depending on your niche, anything that feels like a real investment that people are probably going to get out the credit card for rather than just dipping into their bank account. Um, those are just not converting like they used to. They're getting more expensive to get people into in the first place. Then the people aren't showing up. People who do show up aren't buying at the same rate. And the buying decision timeline has stretched out enormously. It used to be around 90 days from first touchpoint to sale. Now it can be as long as 9 to 12 months. All of that adds up to people looking for something new, something that addresses the trust problem, the connection problem, and the conversion problem, all at once. And that is exactly what a paid live workshop does. So why do they work? Let me break it down because this format has a really interesting combination of things going for it. So first of all, you get some money up front. So if you decide to run ads to fill your live workshop, there's at least a chance you'll recoup some of that spend from ticket sales. I'll come back to this later because it's a bit more complicated than it sounds, but in theory, yes, you're not just spending in advance to fill a free event and hoping the sales come later. Second, the people who buy a ticket, who invest, they show up. This seems obvious, but it's actually a big deal. Attendance rates for free webinars and free events have dropped significantly. Getting 15 to 20% of people who registered to show up live is now considered good. With a paid event, People have parted with actual money. They're motivated to be there, or at a minimum to watch the replay. So your audience is engaged, they're invested, and they're way more present in a way that free event audiences just aren't anymore. Third, the people in the room are already buyers. They've already proven they will take out their credit card for something that they believe in. That matters enormously when you make your offer at the end. And fourth, you are building trust here in real time. You show up live, they see you as a real human being, you answer questions, you deliver great value, and that experience, that real connection, does something that a recorded video or sales page just cannot replicate, has never been able to replicate. And fifth, the paid workshop becomes a bridge. So getting someone from zero investment to a $5,000 program in one step is a very big ask. Ask. But getting someone from a $97 workshop to a premium program, that's a much more natural progression. They've had a taste, they've seen what you can do, you've built the trust, so the gap is much smaller. Now, I do want to mention something here because it's easy to make this sound like it's all about the sales, and it's actually not. The best paid workshops deliver genuinely valuable content. There is a real dance here between giving enough that people feel like they got more than what they paid for, but also not teaching so thoroughly that their problem feels completely solved and they don't need anything else. Finding that balance is an art and it definitely takes some time to refine. All right. Now we get to the honest part. Should you do a workshop? My answer is maybe. And here's what I mean by that. A paid workshop as a sales tool is an advanced strategy. I wanna be really clear about that. This is not something that you can throw together, slap a ticket price on, teach them stuff, and expect a room full of sales. This is nuanced. It takes skill. And honestly, it's something that we are still refining and perfecting ourselves. And I've been in this game for almost 20 years. Now, one thing I can tell you from experience I consistently underestimate how much I can cover in a given amount of time. So finding that balance between delivering enough value, not overwhelming people, and being also able to cater to the full range of people in attendance in the room, holding the thread of the whole thing, and then making an offer at the end in a way that feels elegant and exciting rather than pushy, that is genuinely hard. Like I said, it takes some practice. And here's the tricky thing about live workshops specifically. Unlike, say, an email sequence where you're sending the same emails over and over and you can tweak based on what's working, or a webinar that you could run every week and be filling with ads, and it's going to give you multiple chances to perfect, refine, tweak, and optimize. Every paid workshop is usually something different. It's usually a different topic, a different audience, maybe even a different price point. So the learnings from round 1 don't always translate neatly to round 2. That refinement process is slower and messier. Now, none of this means don't do it, but I just want you to go in with realistic expectations. You probably won't nail it the first time, and that's okay. That's how this works. Business is refinement. The goal is to try. Learn from it, and then get better. It is also, and I wanna be upfront about this, a significant amount of work. The number of moving pieces involved in pulling off a good paid workshop is larger than most people realize going in. You got the offer, the sales page, the emails, the reminder sequences, the actual content, the slides, the workshop, the post-event offer, the post-event emails. This is not a small lift. So go in knowing that. Now, before you can truly decide whether this is right for you, I want to give you some numbers to use as a reference point, because I think people go into these things, they choose strategies without actually running the math, and then they're disappointed with the results that are actually pretty normal or even good, but they just didn't know where that benchmark lay. So for a paid workshop, a good conversion rate into your backend offer is around 10%. If you absolutely nail it, you might see 20%. I've heard people say 5% is good. Particularly if you've got a more premium offer. Although personally, I disagree. I would not be happy with that. At 5%, the numbers rarely make the effort worth it. So make sure you're aiming for at least 10. Now here's the other numbers you need to understand. When you put a price on something, you'll typically get about one-tenth the registrations you would for a free equivalent. So if 100 people would sign up for your free webinar or free event, expect about 10 to sign up for your paid workshop. So let's run the math on both scenarios. Free webinar, 100 signups, around 15 to 20 people show up live, maybe another 10 catch the replay. So about 30 people see your offer at a 10% conversion rate from your free webinar, which is again considered good. That's 3 sales. Your paid workshop, you would get 10 signups. Most of them show up or watch the replay, which is great. So let's say 8 to 9 people see the offer at the end. At a 10 to 20% conversion rate, that's one, maybe if you're really lucky, two sales. Now put these next to each other and ask, does it make sense for your offer? So if your offer is under that feels like a big stretch price point, so under $1,000, under even $1,500, a paid workshop is probably not the right conversion tool. You don't need that level of prequalification and higher level of trust building to make a mid-ticket or lower sale. There are better, more efficient ways to get there. But if you're selling something premium, $3,000, $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, where the normal conversion tools just aren't getting people over the line anymore, paid workshops can make a lot of sense because that 1 to 2 sales from a small room might be very worth it at those price points. All right, one more thing I wanna address. Because it's something I hear a lot, especially from people with smaller audiences. People think, oh, I'll just fill it with ads. That's how I'll, you know, that's how I'll make my sales. That's how I'll get people into the workshop. And look, I understand the logic. You've run ads to free things before, free webinars, free challenges. It worked. You paid maybe $5 to $15 per registration, and you figure, well, with a paid ticket, I'll recoup some of that spend. Easy. So even if it's, you know, twice, 3 times the amount, I'll get it back. Great. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Running paid traffic to a paid event usually costs somewhere between 5 and 10 times more per registration than running it to a free event. So you're, because you're asking people to do something much harder. You're asking them to take out their credit card for someone they may not know very well yet. So the friction is enormous. and the timing makes it even harder. You have a window of maybe 10 to 14 days to fill this thing. So there's no real time to test your creative, find what's working, optimize your targeting, and then scale up. By the time your ads start performing, your event is about to run. So if you have a small audience and you're thinking the answer is ads, I gently push back on that. What I actually recommend to clients in that situation is this. Run a free event to build your audience and fill the room. Then on the thank you page, after they register, offer a paid VIP upgrade. Maybe it's a hot seat. Maybe it's a recording. Maybe it's a workbook. Maybe it's some extra templates, something that lets you recoup some costs without using the ticket price as that initial barrier to entry. This way you get the numbers in the room. You deliver the experience, you build the trust, and you've still created a buyer before they've even attended. If you already have a good-sized audience and you're selling something premium, then yes, paid workshops and paid challenges can be a brilliant audience activator, but know what you're working with before you go in and set your expectations accordingly. Okay. So to wrap up, are paid live workshops a good strategy? Yes, in the right context, for the right offer and with the right expectations. Are they easier than other strategies? Definitely not. Anyone telling you that is either very experienced at running them, has a massive team, or hasn't actually run them yet. Are they guaranteed to make you more sales? Also no. Nothing is guaranteed. What they are is a really powerful tool in the right hands, at the right stage of business, with the right premium offer waiting at the end. My advice is If you've got a premium offer, a warm audience, and the capacity to put in the work, it's absolutely worth trying. Go in knowing it's gonna take some refinement. Do the numbers before you commit, and don't assume ads will save you if your audience is small. No matter what you decide, one thing I know for sure, growing your business requires finding the strategy that actually fits where you are and then taking the time and being brave enough to master it. If you'd like help figuring out what that looks like for you and your specific business, come and find us. Just DM the word funnel me over on Instagram @HelloFunnels and let's chat. Alrighty guys, that's it for me. I'll see you all next week.