How to Execute a Great Webinar | Webinar Marketing for Small Businesses

On this week's Monday Marketing Meeting, we talked about something that's been instrumental to our growth in 2020, and that's webinars. So if you're thinking about conducting a webinar this year, you need to check out this episode. We talk about everything from identifying a great idea for a topic through to post-webinar follow-up, all the way through to why you should conduct a webinar for zero people. I hope you enjoy this. Thanks so much for checking it out. Okay, welcome to the Monday Marketing Meeting.

I'm Matt.

I'm Karen. Man, we just rehearsed that right before this. It's amazing, we nailed it first try. So today we are going to be talking about webinars and the value of webinars to growing your business, particularly in an environment where we have seen a monumental shift to remote engagement of employees, education, development for employees, everything related to business. We have seen people start to go virtual, both by necessity and demand. So I'm excited to be talking about this topic today. We've got a webinar in 2 days that, just to put it in for some, some perspective, we're expecting several hundred people to register for this webinar, whereas if you Rewind 2 years ago, I remember doing a webinar for zero people after having about a dozen people sign up, but I still did the webinar, and I'll share why with you in just a few moments. Karen, how are you doing today?

I'm great, excited to talk about this because I feel like it is such a topic that people want to get into, but they don't know if it's worth the value of it. They don't know how to even start, so it's definitely something that we have started more and doing a lot more of. I think we're gonna hit on some good little tips today.

Awesome. Yeah, I think we're just gonna walk through it from how do you find some great ideas for what to put a webinar on for, all the way through to how to properly follow up with people after a webinar is over and how to repurpose some of that content. Let's start there. Let's start with the ideation phase, Karen. I mean, what are some best practices for trying to come up with a great idea for a webinar that's going to provide value to the audience?

I say that there's probably two, and the number one being relevancy. So as soon as you hear a new topic come up or some kind of update or anything that's very relevant at the time, you want to get that webinar scheduled to be ahead of everyone else to do it. So especially during COVID-19, being ahead of everyone else. So you don't want to be the 25th person that they're giving webinars for, you want to be the first. So keeping up to date, you know, put a Google alert on for different, you know, if your industry, whatever you're focused on, put Google Alerts out, put anything that you can do so that you're the first one to know and then get that idea rolling, get that webinar scheduled, start promoting that day. Don't put off until next week, you know, by next week, 20 other people are doing it. So I would say number one is keeping out you know, things that are relevant to your industry, definitely as soon as you see them pop up, get the webinar rolling. Secondly is research. So it's just as easy to go into YouTube or just Google and be like, and start typing up questions and finding what's there that's relevant to your business. If you are finding topics that there isn't much content around it, you're, or you have a question, and you can't find the answer from what you're searching, that's when you create a webinar because other people are in the same boat. If you're doing a very general broad topic, there's going to be a lot of content out there that you're competing with. If you're doing a more specific topic or content that you're having trouble finding, then that's where you're going to get people because they probably have the same questions. Same thought. So those are the kind of the top 2 to make you stand out against everyone else. Make your webinar be more interesting to those that you're marketing to. So I would say that and also promote it. I mean, I, it's so easily said to just, you know, put it on social or send an email out, but keep up with it. You know, if you're scheduling your webinar for 7 days out, you should be constantly in front of all of your potential clients, your, you know, your partners, your local resources, get in front of them and stay on top of them because they might overlook it the first 2 times, but the 3rd time you might get them. And then that's a registered, that's a potential lead down the road for you. That could be a sales conversion. So just stay on top of your marketing once you get that idea rolling and see the return that you're getting. So if you're seeing that this one topic, has a lot more, you know, it's getting a lot more traction than maybe one that you did 2 months ago. Alright, well, I'm here, you know, here's the topic that people are looking for, maybe keep going off of that. So those would just be kind of the initial thoughts of, you know, when you're starting to put together a webinar, what to think about.

That's funny. When we first started, those are great tips. When we first started, we were a solution looking for a problem. And so we would create webinars based on the content that we wanted to share that was basically going to try to lead somebody right into our products and services, right? And it was a very obvious, poorly veiled sales pitch where it wasn't about providing value to the end user. And now I look at it from the opposite. I think about it, what would somebody pay me for? What does somebody pay me for? What questions are they asking us most frequently? How can we help others to get answers to those same questions? Once again, we talked about this a week or so ago where If you can answer the most pressing, most valuable questions that you're answering for your clients to the public, that's value that you're providing and creating. But also, you know, you're not giving away the entire farm just to give away that just one piece of content, those, those simple pieces of information that you're talking about every single day and preparing for, for your clients anyway. So what are people asking you? What would people pay you to get more information on? Definitely good ways to think about from that preparation standpoint, trying to come up with a topic. And then like you said, there are simple keyword and analysis tools that you can dig a little bit deeper and understand from, you know, simple as Google keyword search and things like that to identify what people are looking for and find some different topics. Once you get into that promoting phase, you know, you hit on something in there that I think is super, super important, and that's being specific to a target audience and content. So hiring your first employee is it might be a good webinar topic for us if we were targeting people that were just getting started. But hiring your first employee as a dental practice gets us even more hyper-specific to a certain niche audience that we might be focused on. And we'll wind up— that will actually help us in the promotion phase and allow us to promote to a much tighter audience instead of just blanking it, blanketing it out to the general public and hoping for the best. I think the more niche down you can get, the better when it comes to webinar content, because you can speak directly to the challenges and issues that they're having. And that comes through to your promotions. But you talked about something in there that's super important to us, and that's the promotion through partners. Talk a little bit about how people can partner with others and how you leverage that in creating success in a webinar.

So we have a large base of partners that we work back and forth with. This can be— so we're located in South Carolina, and we have different partners, you know, industries throughout South Carolina of different focuses that we want to be on, different clients that we focus with. So just reaching out. We sent, for our webinar this week, we sent about 10 emails in mid to late last week of, you know, we have this webinar last week, we would love for you to promote on your social channels, we would love to send to your subscriber base. It doesn't hurt to ask. Even if they reshare a post to their page, it still reaches a whole nother broad audience of theirs. So once you're in there, they may not, you know, be actively doing 100 things for you for it, but just one share gets in front of all their people. That one second it took them to do that, they probably would not have done it unless we asked them to. So just anyone, if you are a local coffee shop and you want to do a webinar about a fundraiser that you're doing and how your coffee shop does these fundraisers, Well, then promote it to the person next door because those people— you're putting out your business name, person next door, you know, we're located right here by so-and-so. Just using anyone that you think could help you. It doesn't hurt to ask. You know, we have a couple clients who actually reached out to us to ask if they could share it with their, with their client base, because they, I guess they're getting the same questions and they're like, this could be helpful for them. And then we just tailor it around, you know, we'll go after them as well. So it's just using your resources and never ever, you know, be timid to ask because worst comes to worst, like I said, you're not, you're, they're just not going to do it, but at least they're going to be more aware of it. And then they'll be, you know, more supportive. And most of the time, if you say, if you ever need anything from us, we'll be happy to promote as well. Then they know that the next time they do a webinar, the next time they have anything going on or an event that they want to sponsor, they know they can reach out to us because we've asked them already, you know. So it's just having that open line of communication, I think, is a big one with any partner, with any, you know, local business, with any client. You know, it's never a bad thing to ask a client to help out. They'll, you know, they rely on you for so many things. Ask them, you know, we need your help. You know, most of the time they know that you've gone out of your way to help them as much as you can, and they'll be willing to help.

That's fantastic. I think we tap into so many different partnerships, and I'll talk about why that's valuable to us in a moment. But, you know, you talk about associations, uh, business partners that are sort of in your circle of trust, and people that offer complementary services to what you do. Everybody sort of has— I think about, I did BNI, uh, when we first got started, and I remember the, the real, the real estate estate agents, and there was like an agent, a mortgage broker, a roofing guy, a plumber. Like, I mean, they just ran in this circle of where they were constantly referring each other business. We all have a similar-ish circle. Like, for us, we work with a lot of different CPAs, healthcare brokers, things like that. Everybody kind of has that circle. So think about how you guys can help self-promote each other. Um, your employees, obviously a great option there as well. How do they get that information in front of their network? Hundreds and hundreds of views every time you add somebody, uh, to that circle. But Don't forget to keep a list, right? So one of the things that— we're 6 years in now, and when you look at that spreadsheet we have of media outlets, you know, the folks, the business partners, the trusted people that we can share information with, and vice versa, we will do the same for them. That's what makes it so important. But that's something that you can't really— you can lose in a fraction of a moment, but it takes 6 years or sometimes a lot less to gain. But that's that trust. Right. So one of the things we're going to talk about on the content side is don't create just a poorly veiled sales pitch. And just all of this is, once again, you're a solution looking for a problem. You need to be providing real value to the marketplace. Once again, answering difficult questions, providing how-tos. I think about one of the— I mean, you were there in person for our onboarding session that we did, and we've opened that up to the general public, and we'll have that webinar again soon. Check our website. But there's about a 50-page handbook that comes with this employee onboarding seminar that is so valuable, that took us hours and hours and hours and hours, and then our decades of experience on top of it to put together, that somebody just sits down for an hour and is able to walk away with something that's going to increase their employee engagement, increase their retention, have a valuable impact on their business. And it's something that we're willing to do for them to provide value to them as a partner and as an attendee of one of of our sessions. So super important. I've said super important like 6 times so far. So maybe we'll get a ticker. Can— if we get somebody to— if we edit, if we get an editor at some point, if we ever go big time, we'll get somebody to keep like a little checkbox up in the corner.

But you're right, giving, you know, if you have resources available, that's always another thing to look after, you know, when you're creating a webinar. What can I give to them afterwards. What can, you know, what I can record the video and I can provide it to them. And then I can give them something that will help them with what we covered on the webinar. If you don't have it, you have, you hopefully will have a couple of days where you can maybe create something. So always giving that leverage of we're also going to be giving away this, or we're going to have this at the end of it, will also help registrants sign up because they know at the end of it, if they just signed up, they're going to get the email with the recorded video and the resources. But for you, they may not have listened in, but you still are adding them to your subscriber base. You still now have contact with them, you know, with all your future emails, with all your social posts, if they start following you on page. And then they get, they think in their head, they got the recorded video and resources out of just putting their email and their name in a box to fill out to sign up. So there, right there is automatic leads for companies just by putting out, you know, that there's resources available. So I think that that's super important.

All right, put it in the corner, check that box. No, you hit on something that really just kind of goes into the next part, and that's the actual execution of the webinar, and that's the planning, making sure that you have some super valuable resources that come along with the webinar, which is important because if I know that I'm going to get a workbook that comes alongside of what I do, something that I can actually print out, have right here with me and use and get the value out of that, I would say overdeliver. Give, give, give, give, give. When it comes to these things, you can't give too much when it comes to conducting a webinar because you don't know how many times, how many times it's going to be seen after the fact. And I That's something we'll talk about in a moment. So let's talk about on the execution side, I'll get into it a little bit. I know when it comes to actually delivering the content, that's something I do a good bit for our team. But I think one of the things I always think about when I'm creating— so first of all, you have to practice, you have to put in the time, you have to put in the energy to making the event itself a success for when people actually show up. But one of the ways that we go about doing that is just making sure that from the start, who's been on one of these recordings or live on a webinar where the first 15 minutes are the introductions, and the boring housekeeping and all that. You've either attended one or watched the recording afterwards. It's terrible. So provide some value and engage your audience right in those first couple minutes so people know that they should hang out and tease some of those things you're going to do at the end. Right. So what is, what is the reason to hang on till the end of this? Because we're going to talk about that. And I told you at the beginning of this, one of the reasons we're going to tell you to hang on to the end here But so then get into your intro and then you can get into your bio and, you know, some of the ways people can contact you afterwards and then get into the meat. But recycle that process throughout. Give people an aha moment, some science, some data, some information to back that up, and then some tangible things they can do walking away from it. People want how-to information. They don't just want to sit there and listen to you ramble on for an hour, which brings up a good point. They should never be longer than 45 to 50 minutes, allowing for a little bit of Q&A at the end and really providing some padded value in there. Because one of the things that's the worst thing about sitting on a long webinar where it's 75 slides and they just keep rambling on and on and on. It's that old saying, if I'd have known it better, I would have been able to do it faster. If I'd have had more time, I'd have written a shorter letter. All those different old ways of saying that. But so making sure that you're providing value and right from the jump and you're really engaging the audience, some of the most critical part, practicing your stuff, knowing it down pat, but not sounding like a robot. It's the worst listening into one where somebody is just reading off of a card the whole time where they're going and they're just reading their notes. I mean, it shows you don't really know the content anyway because you just have to read it all. So a couple of things. What other tips you have on the execution side?

I think you hit on the main points, but also, for instance, we were chatting last week and for our webinar this week I did a little research on the back end and was looking at other videos that, you know, I just searched on YouTube. I searched on YouTube and there was a video on YouTube that had 200 comments on it of people asking questions that weren't covered in that video. So this is, you know, you go through, you listen, but pay attention to the comments, pay attention to the questions these people are asking. On other webinars, on other videos, because that's not— they're still looking for these answers. And if you cover those questions, then they don't have to look anymore. So they, you know, taking firsthand what others are looking for on very similar topics is exactly what you need to put in. So always have an FAQ section towards the end, you know, that extra 15 minutes. Yes, it's great to have people ask you questions, But it's also very hard on a webinar to cover all those questions that people are asking you in real time. So always say, "We'll get back to you with all the questions that you've asked." But have a bunch of questions that you're seeing around the web or around, you know, that people are asking you on a daily basis that they need the answers to, because that's what people are looking for. So I would say just do a little research, but just don't pay attention to the content. Pay attention to the comments. Um, another one is what you actually do great with is getting— and I think a lot of people think about this but they don't know where to go— is don't do it by yourself every time. Get someone else to join in. You know, if you have a topic and you have someone in mind that you think could be great to talk with you about, that having the interaction between two people and not just one person talking Hence why we do these, these Monday calls is because it's just going back and forth. There's a lot more value if you have someone else that you're talking with and that you're going over a topic with. So ask someone that may be, that may be an expert in that field or maybe someone who you're going after on the webinar who's going to ask those questions, who's going to be that, that perception of who, you know, who you're talking to. Because then they're going to ask everything that your viewers are thinking and they're going to be the ones that can get the insight of your target audience. So always ask around, you know, have in mind who can I ask to do this? Well, if you ask one person and they're not able to do it, ask someone else, you know, tell them that they can have a couple slides if they're more comfortable talking for a minute and that's it. Well, they're still on there. Maybe ask a couple people and they'll all talk for a minute. Or if you have someone who's very comfortable with the subject, Maybe they take half and you take half. So switching it up, getting different point of views in, it definitely makes the conversation a lot more interesting than just having one person talk about the same topic and it's just their point of view and it's just their thoughts. So it brings a little bit of, you know, that diversity to the topic. So those would be my two other things as you're putting together the webinar to think about for content-wise.

Yeah, now once again, you're not only creating value for the audience, for yourself, you're creating value for a trusted partner who you're bringing in that can share something that they're a subject matter expert in. I think that our, our webinar coming up this week is a fantastic example. Nick is helping to talk to us about PPP loan forgiveness application, and that's a hot topic that our clients are asking us about right now. That is not necessarily our place of expertise. Expertise, but we want to provide them with valuable information because it's the right thing to do. And so we found somebody who is a subject matter expert on it to come in and help us out. So it's going to help him to get his name out. It's going to help us to provide value to our clients and prospects and folks out there. And then obviously it's going to be a great marketing asset in the, in the meantime as well. So let's talk about that. So let's talk about after the event. So now it's happened. What do I do after the event to make sure I continue to value to those that signed up.

So the number one thing I think that most people don't think about is while you're having the webinar, make sure all of your employees are listening in. Have them write down their top 3 most interesting facts of it, or what they learned, or the, you know, the topics that they think were most important. Have them write it down and send it to you afterwards. Then when you go to send you know, your recorded video out, you know, you could do it to your entire subscriber base as well as the list of recipients. So you never just want to do this to your list of recipients. You always want to target your clients. You always want to target, you know, send it to your potential clients, your partners, anyone, because this could be valuable to them. So never just send to the list, always send to your base as well. But what they come back and give you in their top 3 aspects, whatever over, you know, 3 of them say the same 2 things. Well, that was what they thought was most interesting. That's what your audience is going to think is most interesting. So make sure you bullet point these different aspects that you talked about and sum it up really quickly. You know, here's the video, here's a couple of topics that we talked about. We specifically went into, you know, point 1, point 2, point 3, and then Here's a resource. And then that recorded video, I should have also recorded videos, a big one, make sure you record it because don't forget to hit the record button. You have to hit record, because then that's evergreen content for you. So after the webinar is over, the webinar is not over, keep using that content, you know, you can easily use a video editor and pull a 30-second clip out that answers specific question. One of, you know, if you get a question from someone 2 weeks after, you have the answer right there. You can send it to them. You can post on your social because that's obviously something that people are looking for. So use the webinar to, you know, put it on your website, create a blog post around it, make sure your SEO is going after it, make sure your keywords are in there because people can now search and get your entire webinar. They get, they learn your brand, they hear your voice, they, you know, if you put the right details in there about your company, they now have full access to, they're going to look you up on the website, they're going to go. So continuously updating these videos on your website, making sure that the SEO is fully in there, you know, your target keywords. And the easiest way to do that, also how you create the webinar is start searching for what these people are looking for. And then type, you know, make sure you're going after that in your content, in your blog posts, or on your web page. So then your search results drive up. So this will— this one webinar that you created will continuously keep working for you over time. Don't just make it a one and done thing. You put your time and effort to create it. You put, you know, you created a slide deck for it, you did your initial research, you prepared, you did a test run. Will make it worth it. You know, keep on going after, send a reminder email 2 weeks later. You know, we were still getting questions about this. Reminder, it's all on here. Take a look at this webinar. Point out different timeframes, you know, especially from 5 minutes and 36 seconds to 7 minutes is especially important for your company. So if you just tell them certain points that they may resonate better with, then they know to skip right to that and they don't have to listen to everything. If You know, cause most people might be like, I don't want to listen to 45 minutes or I don't have time right now. And then they forget about it. Well, if you point out the times that most relevant to them and the questions they're asking or what's relevant to their business, they're going to pop right in there. And once they hear the content that's in there, they'll continuously start, you know, they'll listen. So those would be my tips afterwards is just don't just make it a one-time ordeal. Keep it going, keep it, keep using it in every marketing aspect that you have. And then use that content over and over again.

Well, you hit on something going all the way back to the beginning of this conversation. Why would I do a webinar for zero people? And if you're just getting going and you don't have a big audience and you're just, you know, building that, those partnerships, you're going to do some where even a dozen, 20 people might sign up. And 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 might actually show up to the event. Don't cancel it. Suck it up. I know it's embarrassing when they look on the, who's here and they see it's only 2 of them there. Well, guess who doesn't see that? The people watching the recording for the next 5 years. The people who see the blog posts that you created from it. The people that see the social posts that you created from it. The people that see the guide that you created later. Repurpose your content, people. That is like the number one thing that people aren't doing right now. When a client is calling you asking questions, they are creating content for you. And then you can turn that into all those different things. You can use the internally, externally, blogs, videos, social posts, all the above. So don't forget it. It's all valuable. It's all great. And we appreciate you hanging out with us today for a little while on the Monday Marketing Meeting. Always one of my highlights of the of the week. Karen, any parting thoughts for our people?

No, I would just say try to do a webinar within the next month. Give it a try. Reach out to us if you have any questions. We'll be happy to help you put one together. You know, if you are stuck on the topic or you don't know where to start researching, we'll help. We can definitely, you know, that's kind of become our wheelhouse in a way. We've done a lot of webinars over the last couple months, specifically through COVID-19, and we've seen overwhelming success with it. We are getting new clients just with our content. Content from our webinars, so we can help you make an impact with it. So just make sure that you are creating the content and then using it, continuously use it. So we hope that this inspires you just to do a webinar and see if it works, because we know over time it will.

Well, thanks so much, Karen. And like we've said, I think every other episode, it's not ABC, y'all. It's not always be closing. It's ABV, always be valuable. We appreciate you. Have an awesome day.

Bye.