MBA889 How to Grow Your Business With Webinars

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As you know, I am the co founder of Webinar Ninja, our webinar software. Whatever I teach you today can be used no matter what tool you use. But you have the benefit of my experience of running so many webinars and watching other hosts run so many webinars. Thousands upon thousands of hosts with our software. Now the reason why this is such an important episode, it's such an important lesson for you to absorb, is that building a business or building a product is easy. Putting it out there in the world is easy. That's the easy part. Now it has its own challenges, but the real challenge is being able to sustain your business, being able to grow your business to stay in business that's really what's hard. I can spend a few weeks and put together a 10 part video course, put a price tag on it and put it out for sale. But it doesn't mean people are just going to come and buy it. How are they going to find me? How am I going to get sales? How am I going to convert these people into buyers? That's where business happens. And in today's episode, I'm going to show you how you can do that with webinars. I haven't seen a tool that's able to do that better online and I want you to leverage it. Because I've seen so many of our users, our hosts, run webinars to keep their business going, to keep their business growing. Let me show you how. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So you have a product for sale or products. You've built your website, you even made a test sale to make sure everything works perfectly. And now you've opened for business, right? You've emailed all your friends and family, you've spread it all over social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. And a couple weeks later, maybe even a couple months later, you feel like, huh, this is not really getting any traction. You're starting to doubt your product, you're starting to doubt your business, or whether you even have what it takes to become an entrepreneur, to be a successful entrepreneur. I want to stop you right there. A lot of us start having doubts at this point. A lot of us start thinking, well, maybe nobody wants my product. Maybe this is not such a great idea. Maybe my sales page needs tweaking. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. This is absolute poison in your business. Why? Because you really can't answer these questions if you don't have enough traffic to your website, if you don't have enough of an audience, trust me, I've gone through this need to give yourself a fighting chance. The only way you can know for sure your business needs tweaking or changing or your product is not what it needs to be, is that you get enough people exposed to it. And often a lot of us at the start don't have enough people looking at your product, don't have enough contact with what you're offering. They just don't know you exist. So you need to get to that point. You need to get people in front of your product. That's number one. Number two, that's not how sales happens. There's a sales process, right? You can't just expect People to show up at your door and buy your products. Even if they show up at your door, they're going to be hesitant. They don't know who you are. They don't know if this product's for them. They don't even know how to use this product. They don't know the context of this product. How can I actually apply this to my life or business or whatever it is? There needs to be some sort of education. Some people call this marketing. I like to call it education because you want to educate the buyer so they know your product is right for them. Maybe it's not right for them, but if it is right for them, they should know that. And a lot of us don't have that step in our business. Now on the Internet, that's called content marketing, where you actually give people content information. Information about your market, about your niche, about what you are all about. So say, for example, my product is a golf course. A golfing course, right? A course on how to go from an absolute newbie into a pretty decent golf player. Let's say enough to impress your boss, right? If I just have a sales page that tells people what this course includes, what it's all about, that's just not enough for enough people to buy. They need to get a taste of it. So what I do is I content market. I might give a short three video course on how to improve their putting game or something like that in exchange for their email. And then I have their email address and now I can give them more content, build a relationship. Then eventually, when they want to buy the course, they trust me, they like me, they know my stuff is good because they've consumed some of my stuff before and therefore they buy my course. That's a form of content marketing. It's a way for people to really get that middle step where they can learn more about what you're all about. Learn more. If the product is good for them, build a relationship. And that first interaction with them is not buying, it's just giving their email and they can learn more. When that first leap is so huge, from, you know, finding your website to buying the course, that's a huge leap. We want to shorten that gap a little bit, Give them something small. All they need to do is give their email address. Doesn't cost them anything. They get a taste of what they can, you know, consume. If they buy the course, they get more, you know, taste as they're on my email list and eventually they buy. Now what does this have to do with webinars well, webinars are the best tool to content market and then convert them into a sale, all into one step. And I'm going to explain why and I'm going to give you my example with Webinar Ninja. When we actually get on our webinars, we teach people about webinars and we make an offer and we sell webinar Ninja on our webinars. Right. Kind of meta, but that's what we do, that's how we use it. We practice what we preach. So somebody stumbles upon our website, Webinar Ninja co takes a look at our demo videos, says, oh, that's pretty interesting. I'm looking to do webinars. That's a pretty good looking software. It looks pretty easy, but maybe I'm not ready to buy. So we offer a free course or we offer some free content so they're on our email list. Okay. Or we can offer them to be on a live webinar, a live workshop. Now for us, this is a huge win because they get to learn more about webinars in general, how to use webinars, how to improve webinars, how to teach better, how to present, how to sell all that stuff, how to get really just a template on how to run their webinars given their marketplace. Not only that, but when they're on their webinar, they get to see the software in action. They get to see what it looks like as an attendee, as what their attendees are going to see when they run their own webinars. And what is it going to cost them? Nothing. It's going to cost them their email address and that's it. So they sign up and they attend the webinar, or they may sign up for a different piece of content like a course, and then we'll invite them once they're on our email list. Now on the webinar, what we really like to focus on, and this is what I encourage you to do, is making sure every single person on the webinar gets a win. They need to leave that webinar saying, wow, that was great. I'm better off now than what I was before the webinar. And one way you can make sure they get a win is just to ask them, what would be a win for you during this webinar? What are you trying to get out of this webinar? And you can actually send this as an email. You have their email now before the webinar, you can say, hey, our webinar is next week. Or our webinar is in a couple days. I want to make sure that you have a great time, that you also learn a lot and you get a win. Tell me what a win would be. What are you looking to get out of this webinar? What are you trying to learn? What are your questions? And they can reply to that email and you have a bank of all this great information that you can deliver on on your webinar and ensure that these people are satisfied, Right? Not only that, by getting them engaged before the webinar, you increase the likelihood of them actually attending for the webinar they registered for. You know, registering is one thing. You want to make sure they attend. And what I like to do and what we do as a team at Webinar ninjas that we, we spend 90% of the webinar just delivering incredible value. Now, 10% of that time, we are going to give them a special offer. We're going to give them something that will entice them to buy our product. Webinar Ninja for you. This could be a bonus. It could be a discount, it could be a, you know, limited time offer, something like that. So the whole purpose of this webinar is to educate people, answer questions, to interact, to build a quick relationship, build trust, and convert them into customers. Now, I'm going to get into the sales portion of the webinar in a moment because I know you all know your stuff, you know your topic, you can teach a great workshop. But the sales part, you might feel a little bit iffy, But I want to really emphasize why webinars are so powerful at converting people into customers, building that trust, and building someone who's interested in your product into a customer. But before I get into that, I want to just emphasize or show you why webinars are so powerful at converting, you know, potential customers into customers. Have you ever been to a conference? Like, I go to a lot of conferences in our, in our market, I go to podcasting conferences. I go to fincon, which is a financial blogging conference. Great conference. I go to Heroic Public speaking, which is a great public speaking conference. And usually these conferences have some sort of Facebook group or some sort of online community that you could be a part of before the actual conference. And you can talk to people, you can get to know them, you can network. And it's great. You get to know the people that are going to be at the conference before you go to the conference. But then when you go to the conference and meet these people in person, and let's say it's at some sort of meetup where you're grabbing a bite or having a drink in the time span of an hour, you feel like you really know that person. When you're face to face and you're speaking to each other, there's something about speaking to somebody face to face and going back and forth instantly that builds that relationship very quickly. And in fact, that growth is probably more than months of being on a forum or being on a Facebook group. You know the person, you like the person, you trust them more in that one hour, just spending one hour with them. And webinars do the same when you're face to face with people. When people see you on camera, they hear your voice. When they see you animated, when they show you, you know, working on your slides and your teaching, and you go back on camera and you answer questions and you show your personality within that one hour workshop, they're really getting to know you. They're really starting to trust you. And that trust builds really quickly, a whole lot quicker than just via email or email marketing. This is why webinars are so powerful and you're able to convert people into buyers. The reason why it's so powerful and you can convert people to buyers so quickly is that a lot of people have questions, hey, is it compatible with this? Could it do this? Do you have a payment plan? Do you take Amex? And these questions are holding them back from buying. They really want to buy, but they just have this nagging question that if they can get over it, then they'll buy. And sometimes they don't send an email or don't email support. But on a webinar, it's so quick, they just type in the chat, hey, here is my question you're asking, do you have any questions? And you're able to free them up to buy? And they make that decision within themselves. There's no pressure. Which leads me to the sales portion of webinar. A lot of people are really nervous about this, but you don't need to be. You have to remember they're on the webinar to learn, but they also know that you're an entrepreneur and you're a business person. You have products for sale, and they're not stupid. They know that, you know they're going to maybe get an offer. So it's better for you to be upfront about it at the start. So we like to do at the start of our webinars is kind of give a menu of the day. This is what we're going to be Discussing in today's workshop and at the start said, hey, we will be having a special offer. And in fact, we're going to tell you what the offer is right now, so you're not worrying about it throughout the whole workshop. Here's the offer that's in store today. In today's workshop, we go through the offer. We're going to have all your questions answered about the offer later on. But we just want to let you know that this is a special offer for those who have attended today's webinar. And now let's jump into the workshop. You do not have to buy. This is only for people that feel like this is a great fit for them. And it's good for you to emphasize that because you don't want churn, you don't want people to buy, then return the product. This really messes up your business, messes up your reputation, because you're going to get. People say, oh, it wasn't for me. And they start complaining. You want only people that really are going to love the product, and you want those sales to stick, right? So just get in front of them and tell them there's going to be an offer, and here's the offer. And I'm going to go through all the details of the offer later on. But just know that we're going to be talking about it later. But let's jump into the workshop because I want to really focus on that, make sure everybody gets their win today. You all email me your wins, right? And if they didn't email your wins, you could tell them, hey, in the chat, tell me, what would a win be today for you? How can I make sure that you are satisfied with today's workshop? And people put, you know, I'm looking forward to be less nervous on webinars in our case, or maybe in your case or in the golfing case, that golfing course, like, hey, I really have a big problem when it comes to driving the ball. It's completely left. How can you help me with that? And then you jump into your workshop, start teaching your workshop. You can take questions as you go. You can take questions at the end, you could break it up and do question sessions. And then towards the end, you can again show them the offer in detail. I would highly encourage you give a demo of whatever product it is, whether it's a software, whether it's a course, whether it's a book, whether it's a physical product like jewelry or T shirts, hey, you have a camera. Show it off. It's called qvc, right in America we have a shopping channel, one of the first shopping channels called qvc. And now you have your own QVC called webinars. So show off your physical products, show the details, make sure you have plenty of time for questions. I like to hang on my webinars and make sure all the questions are answered, even if we go over time. And if people need to leave, they can leave. But at least if you don't have your question answered yet, I will make sure I answer it. So as you can see, this is an incredible sales tool. I can't tell you how many of our users have emailed me or tweeted at me and said webinars have changed my business. They've helped me grow my business, they've helped me make money. And let's be honest, guys, you need to make money. You need to have money coming in because you have money coming out, you have expenses. So you got to keep sales going. And webinars allow you to do that. Now the key is to be consistent. Does it feel like it's getting really hard to figure out the best way to save for retirement? Fidelity can help you find clarity so you can save the best way for you. With a free personalized plan, goal tracking and timely insights, you'll be set to take on retirement your way. Get started@fidelity.com future expenses charged by your investments and other costs and fees associated with trading or transacting in your account. Apply Fidelity Brokerage Services Member NYSE SIPC Introducing Fidelity Trader Plus. With customizable tools and charts you can access across all your devices, try our most powerful trading platform yet@fidelity.com TraderPlus investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member NYSE SIPC alright, so in order for your webinars to be a sales machine to help you grow your business, you gotta be consistent. So the best way to do this is to put your webinars on a schedule. Take a look at the best times for your audience. So for us we have a pretty spread out audience. We have people in the States, we have people in Europe, people in Australia. So we run two webinars. So we run a webinar twice a week with different times to cater for those different time zones. Now you don't have to do twice a week. We have the best of the best doing webinars for us. Tim Page, he's our webinar sensei, he runs our webinars. I jump in from time to time. But if you're doing your webinars yourself, you could do it once a week. If you do it once a week, you're gonna be crushing it, because most people don't do it once a week. They do it maybe once a month or even less. But put yourself on a schedule, even if it's just once a week, you're gonna see a huge uptick in sales. Now, when I first got started with webinars, I didn't see, like, humongous amounts of sales, but I saw sales. I had one or two sales at least. Every time I did a webinar, that's one or two sales I didn't have before the webinar. And then those two sales became six sales. And then those six sales became 10 sales. Then it came 15, then 20. You get the point. But when you add it up once a week, four times a month, 80 to 100 sales I wasn't getting. And, you know, we have a big ticket item that we were selling on those webinars. But even if it's not a big ticket item, it's a great way for you to build that trust and bring people in and also for you to master your craft of communication and being able to present your product in a good light and make sure people understand what your product is. You got to get in front of your product and make sure people know what it is so other people don't tell them what it is. You got to define the narrative, so you got to be consistent. Get a schedule going. Make it public. Make a landing page where you send people to your registration page on those days. Hey, hey. We run webinars on these days. Here's where you register. If you want to register for one of our upcoming webinars to see how we all do it. And if you're interested in webinar Ninja Shameless plug, just go to webinar Ninja Co workshop. Again, that's webinar Ninja Co Workshop. You'll see there how to sign up for our next webinar. But get on a schedule so you make sure you deliver every week. It's the best way to make sure you have consistent sale. That wraps up today's lesson on how to grow your business with webinars. Full of hope. I have really passed on why this is so powerful and why I'm so passionate about webinars and why I've built a software around it. Because I really feel it's one of the best tools, if not the best tool to sell your products, and you need sales to keep your business going. All right, guys. That's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. A lot of people get nervous about webinars. They get nervous about, how do I sound? What do I look like? Am I explaining things properly? Am I selling properly? Don't worry about it. Just explain your workshop or teach your workshop as if you were teaching to a friend or to a family member. Give a demo of your product like you were showing it to somebody who is just curious about what your product's all about, somebody that you trust and love. Just get your first webinar out the door. That's the hardest part about doing webinars, is doing that first webinar. Once you do that first one and realize, wow, that was painless, that wasn't that bad, and I made some money, that's great. It gets easier and easier, and it gets a whole lot more fun because you get to interact with people. It's like having a party online. You answer questions, you get to know your customers, you get to know who is interested in what you sell. So just get out there, do your first one, and you'll get better and better and get more comfortable and enjoy yourself. This is your business. Try to enjoy it. All right, I'll check you guys in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care. When the flu is keeping you up at night, don't try to tough it out. Knock out your flu symptoms with nyquil Intense Flu. You got this. It provides powerful relief of your flu symptoms so you can sleep well through the night. Nyquil Intense Flu. 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