MBA2501 Q&A Wednesday: How do I get more attendees to my webinar?

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Hey. Oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show, Practical business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. And today is Q and A Wednesday, where we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go, go ahead and email me over@omar00mba.net Today's question is from Eric and Eric asks how do I get more attendees to my webinar? I'm running live webinars to sell my services, but I ran my first live webinar, put a lot of effort into it and only had two attendees. How do I get more attendees to attend so I can make more sales? Eric, you're in luck. I have run over 500 webinars. I'm the founder of Webinar Ninja, which is a webinar software that we grew for the last 10 years and recently sold, got acquired by Proprofs. So I know a little bit about what works with webinars, especially sales webinars. Today I'll walk you through step by step, my personal strategy when it comes to getting more attendees to your webinar. With a paid marketing funnel, this is gonna be the fastest way for you to boost your audience and get attendees. The good news is, is that if you do this right, they the amount of money you spend on the ads is gonna be made and then some, of course, with a profit with the sales you make on the webinar. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Let's step back a little bit. At the end of the day, when you wanna get people on a webinar, this requires you to have an audience. The larger audience you have, the larger amount of people that you can reach out to, the better chance you're gonna have to get them to buy anything or attend your webinar for that matter. And in my opinion, in the opinion of many expert marketers, the best audience to have is not on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn or TikTok or anything else. It's actually your email list. Email is still king when it comes to leads, when it comes to your audience. Why? Because you can contact people with email and you can contact them at mass also with email. You own the asset. You can control how, how you contact them through your email marketing software. And the thing about email is that it's hard to ignore, meaning that if I post something on Instagram, there's a good likelihood that somebody that follows me is not going to see it. But if I email them, they're going to probably see it. People have to deal with their inbox. They have to review their emails, archive their emails, do something with it. They can't just ignore it or thumb through it like a feed on social media. So the name of the game when it comes to any business really, is to get more emails, to get more leads. Now, when you have these leads, when you have these emails, you can then invite them to a live webinar. Now, there's a lot more to it, which I'll explain today, but that's the gist of it. The more emails you have, the higher the likelihood of people attending your live webinar, because when you invite them via email, they're gonna register and attend that session. So how do you get these emails? Well, the fastest way to do this is through paid marketing. You can, of course, do this slowly grow your email list through content marketing, through SEO, through partnerships, all other kinds of things. But if you are running a webinar, let's say in a month's time, and you want to get as many attendees possible, then paid ads is the best way to do it, because you can do it quickly. And that's what we're going to focus on in today's episode, how to use paid ads to drive that traffic and attention to your brand to get email addresses. So then you can then later on invite them to your webinar. There's a few steps involved in between, so let's go through them. The first step in this funnel from paid Ad to webinar attendance. And then obviously becoming a customer is advertising something to get somebody's email. Now, many people make the mistake where they're running a webinar and they say, okay, I'm gonna run an ad to a webinar. So they're running ads to a webinar saying, hey, my webinar is next week. This is the date and time. It's gonna be amazing. This is actually, in my experience, not the best way to spend your ad dollars. The cost per acquisition is much higher. Why? Because if I see an ad that says there's a webinar next Tuesday at 8am, 5pm or whatever it might be, I'm giving them reasons not to sign up. I'm giving them reasons not to give their email because they might say, well, I can't make that time, or, I don't know if I'll be busy. I don't know if I can do this. I might need to do something at that time. And then they don't click on the ad, and they don't give their name and email address. So what you want to do here is you want to drive traffic to some other value other than the webinar that they can get access to immediately. Instant gratification, a lead magnet of some sort. This could be a checklist, this could be a template. This could be a video. This could be a guide, whatever it might be. But the point here is that they will get that thing, that value immediately when they give their name and email address. This is going to increase the likelihood of them converting, meaning, clicking on the ad, giving their information, and lowering your cost per acquisition. Because the more people that actually take action on your ad, the better, meaning you're going to get more leads per dollar you spend on the ad. Trust me, I've been doing this for a very long time. You want to do this instead of driving traffic straight to the webinar. There is a place and time for that, you know, running an ad for the webinar itself. But if you don't have an unlimited budget, it's not the best way to start. So you're going to run an ad to some sort of value, some sort of opt in, some sort of guide or checklist. Many people like to run Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google Ads, even to reach their target audience. I actually prefer a specific type of ad on Facebook, and these ads are called lead ads. Facebook lead ads are ads that you run where Facebook will capture the name and email address right on Facebook. Why do I like this ad because they never leave Facebook. And as you know, there's a lot of operating systems and browsers that are blocking cookies, blocking tracking, especially Apple devices, which is like 50% of the world or something. So it's very hard to track if you actually got the lead from the ad. Long story short, when they stay on Facebook, as they put their name and email address, you can see the conversion because Facebook can track it. And therefore you can optimize your ads and get more bang for your buck and know how to change the ad, how to optimize the ad in your favor. And this is super simple. Facebook lead ads will just collect the name and email address. You'll then have an automation to send them the opt in, send them whatever value you're giving them. And now you have their email and they're on your email list with an automation, very simple. Okay, so now they're on your email list. What do you do next? That's step two and that's nurturing the lead with valuable content. Listen, you want to nurture and warm up your leads as much as possible before you actually invite them to your webinar. Listen, your webinar is one step away from making an offer. If you're going to use an analogy, like a relationship, when they attend the webinar, it's like you're engaged, okay? And then you get married when they buy your product or service. So before you pop the question and get engaged, you want to make sure that you build the relationship first so they trust you and they know that you're credible. So this is where you nurture the lead. So they're on your email list. And yes, of course you're gonna give them your weekly newsletter or whatever it might be, but you want to give them a, a great automation sequence. This is a sequence of emails over the next couple of weeks giving them more and more high value content. These could be blog posts, these could be videos, it could be free resources, more templates, more checklists, maybe a mini course. The key is to provide useful and relevant information that provides a way for you to position yourself as the expert in your field. And this way it keeps your audience interested in what you have to offer. They're looking forward to the next email. They're opening up your emails because the last email was so good. So those first, I would say three to five emails you send in your automation to that new lead are critical. You wanna make sure those emails are high value and the best emails they've ever seen. Once you've nurtured the lead, I would say for at least two weeks. Then you send your invitation to your webinar. This works really well when you do webinars regularly, and I'll tell you why in a bit. But I recommend you should do a sales webinar to sell your products and services at least once a month, if not once every two weeks. I know people that run webinars more than two or three times a week, but they have huge lists and they have a lot of people that can attend webinars. So at the start, once a month is your baseline. So every month you're going to send an invitation to your email list that you've nurtured and invite them to your next live webinar. So see, this is all like a flywheel. It's like a system. The ads are getting you leads, the leads are being nurtured. Those nurtured leads get invited to the webinar. So let's say you do a webinar once a month and you wait 30 days from the moment you start running ads. In those 30 days, you might have collected, you know, a hundred, 200, 300 leads, depending on how much you're spending on ads. And then you're inviting them to the webinar. When I was doing this, I was always aiming for a 1010 conversion. What does that mean? I want 10% of my email list to be responsive enough to attend my webinars. If they've never been on a webinar before, when I invite them. And then I want another 10% of those people that attend the webinar not just register, but attend the webinar. Let's say, for example, I had 100 people on the webinar. Then I want at least 10%, 10 of them to be customers. That was my baseline, 10, 10. Now, when you invite them to your regular webinar, this is not just once and done. Not one email. You want to send an email or emails leading up to the webinar. So I liked five emails leading up to the webinar. So one email would be maybe a week out. The next email would be like three days ago. Another email would be the day before. Another email would be the day of. Another email would be maybe a few hours before. Now you might be saying, isn't that a lot of emails? Well, that leads me to the next step.

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We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store. But then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk?

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to geico.

Step four is to track registrations and attendance. You have to track who's registered for your webinar and who's attended. You have to have some sort of system depending on what webinar tool you're using or what kind of automations you have built. But you gotta track who has registered for your webinar and who has attended. Why? Number one, remember I talked about, you know, sending about five emails before the webinar when you're actually inviting them on the webinar? Well, I only send those emails to people that have not registered yet. So. So once they've registered, my email marketing system knows and they get excluded from those emails. So they only get emails or invitations if they haven't registered yet. So just to reiterate, I am not sending emails out to people who have already registered for the upcoming webinar. This data is important not only because of the emails, but also to know again, are you getting 10% of your leads or your email list to register to your webinar? You have some numbers to track. You have some way to know if you're getting better and better. Each webinar, each invitation. Now you might be asking, why do I have to track who attended the webinar? Well, that's step five. A lot of people skip this step and that is to reinvite non attendees. If somebody has not attended my webinar. Not registered. I'm talking about attended so somebody could register and then forget to attend. So if they did not attend a webinar of mine, they're on the top of my list of who I need to make sure I continue to invite to in future webinars. So my next webinar, when I do it in the next month or next two weeks. The point here is, is that they get an invite as well because they haven't seen what I have to offer on the webinar yet. Now here's a good one here. Pay attention to this one. Let's say they attended. Do I not invite them anymore? No, I still invite them, but not as much. So say, for example, if they register but not attend, I send them a sequence before the next webinar telling them, hey, we noticed you registered but did not attend our webinar. You missed out on xyz. Don't miss out this time around. This is when it is. Okay, now what if they did attend? We send them an email saying, hey, we noticed you did attend our last webinar or a webinar but you did not become a customer. So if they're tagged as somebody who attended a webinar but not a customer yet they get this email. I've noticed that you attended a webinar but did not become a customer. Why don't you join our next webinar and ask any questions you might have about our products or services so that you could see if we're the right fit for you. This is a killer strategy and we were able to get so many customers just off this idea because we noticed that a lot of people would attend 2, 3, 4, 5 webinars and then buy our product. So something's going to take more than one live webinar for them to be convinced. So we still invite people that have attended before in a previous webinar if they have not become a customer. These follow up sequences are super, super important. And this is what I like to tell anybody who's starting out in email marketing or in business in general. The whole point of a leads list, of an email list, the whole point of this list is to turn them all into customers. If they're not buyers, if they're not becoming customers, then that defeats the purpose of the list. Okay, now I understand. Of course they're all not going to become customers. That is a dream scenario. But I'm acting as if I want to make them all customers because if they're not customers, then they're just sitting on my email list racking up my email marketing bill for no reason. And in fact, we do a lot of pruning of our list. So if somebody is on our list and hasn't bought after like three or four years, we'll send them an email and say, hey, we noticed that you've never become a customer. Are you still interested in getting our emails? And if they don't reply, we delete their email because we want to focus our efforts on people that will become customers. So let's recap the best way to fill your live webinars. And by the way, everything I've talked about today will also apply to automated webinars. But live webinars are very popular for sales because they convert much higher. But here's a recap. Create and run paid ads. Nurture the lead with valuable content on your list. Send your webinar invitations, track your registrations and attendees and then follow up with non attendees and and non customers that have attended. Now this is just half the battle. You've got them on your live webinar. They're there. Your job now is to close. Your job is to give great value, is to show them what your product and service can do, how it can help them solve their problems. If you do that, it's going to be a no brainer for the right customer. The customer be like, hey, where you've been all my life? This is perfect. This is exactly what I need. Here are a few bonus tips for success with ads. You have to test. It's all about differentiation. It's all about ab testing. Experiment with different copy different images, different target targeting options. You gotta find what works best for your audience. Next, optimize the landing page. Now if you're sending them to a landing page, this is important. But in this case with Facebook lead ads, you want to optimize that lead ad area. Next, engage your audience during the actual live webinar. Make sure you interact with your attendees through questions, through polls, through chats. Keep them engaged. The more engaged they are, the more likely they are to buy your products and service. Or at the very least come to another webinar where they'll buy then. And lastly, it's all about value. You got to make sure whatever you do on that webinar is highly valuable to the attendee. They feel like, man, this was not a waste of an hour. There's the best spent hour this month. If you do that, that's the best sales exercise you can ever do. All right, that wraps up today's Q and A Wednesday. Eric, I hope these strategies help you get more attendees for your webinar. Remember, the key steps to driving immediate opt ins with paid ads like I mentioned, are running the ads, nurturing the leads, sending them your invitation, tracking your registrations and attendance, and reinviting non attendees and attendees that did not buy yet. If you're listening right now and you have a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar100.mba.net. i'll make sure to answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. And don't forget to subscribe if you have not subscribed yet on Apple Podcasts, Spotify any podcast app by hitting subscribe you support the show and you get more amazing business lessons right on your device. Thanks for listening to the 100 LMBA show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Webinars are incredibly valuable because you get a lot more than just sales. You learn a ton about your customers. You understand the language they use when they describe their pains and their problems. You understand the issues they have. What stops them from buying. You build your brand. You build a brand awareness. People get to know who you are and what you stand for, why you built the business. There's so many side benefits to that live webinar other than making sales. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store. But then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk?

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico. You could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to geico.