Avoid Waste Of Time Webinars: How To Make Webinars Serve Your Purpose With Juliet Clark

Get off the marketing roller coaster and get on the automated fast track to digitally market your brand everywhere. Now join podcast producer Tom Hazard and Ink columnist Tracy Hazard as they share easy content building formulas and smart cut secrets proven to fuel hundreds of blogs, podcasts and brands with bingeable original content. Join the conversation on how to get your message out to the world. Be original, be heard. Promote with power and purpose. Feed your brand.

Brand.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Marketing Monday mixer. The first one.

So welcome. And for those of you who haven't gone over and gotten your cranberry margarita recipe from the fabulous Chef Marie, go on over to our Facebook group. Oh, look at that. I know.

Isn't it pretty?

Liquor.

And it's spilling already.

No, she can't hold her liquor.

Dig, it was a little full.

It's five o' clock in California and she can't hold her liquor.

I know, Seriously, it's a little full already, but yeah. So yeah, Tom made it for me. So awesome.

Oh, that's awesome. So if you want to grab that recipe, go over to www.facebook.com groups marketingmondaymixer. And I just want to add that for those of you who think drinking isn't healthy, this is a really healthy recipe. Because as we all know, alcohol increases the size of your liver in mass quantities and cranberry juice shrinks it back down to size.

So we balanced ourselves out, so why not go for it? And then it has the fabulous sugars that Chef Marie makes, so she makes her own blend of them. And it's got an orange and lemon flavor and it's pink, so it's pretty. And she has another version where she puts rosemary in it, and so it's a little more holidayish. But I didn't make that version. I just made the lemon lime, the orange lime version, the lime lemon version. That's what I made. Or that's what Tom made me.

Really?

Yeah.

Have a few more of those and talk some more, Tracy.

Exactly.

Really?

Yeah, exactly. So anyway, yeah, so I'm so excited that Chef Marie is partnering up with us on doing this. So that's gonna be a lot of fun as we go forward. I already picked our munchie for next week. You may not know it, Juliet, but I already picked it. So maybe we'll reveal that at the end. So, people, because so now if you want join us on it, you're going to need to go in ahead of time while you gave out the URL to the group. If you're already in Facebook watching this, which you should be, because that's where we're streaming live, right? All you have to do is click the Join Group button or click the View Group button. I forget which one it is, but it's just like it's right up at the top of the main page for this Facebook page. And you can go right into the group. And right there I put a JPEG of the recipe and a link through to Chef Marie so you can see everything that she offers as well. Woo hoo.

Okay, so we were going to talk today about why webinars aren't working. Because I see so many people out there still doing them, they're still not working. I quit in 2017.

Well, I've been still doing them. And some. This is the thing, like I think we're hearing this again and again. So we named our topic Waste of Time Webinars because the last thing we want to do is do anything that is a waste of time. That is my big no, no. I don't want to do something that doesn't serve again and again and is useful. But the reality is when I get people on my webinar, when they show up and they go there, I convert. So the reality is that in some respects the webinars work right, but it's the how do you get them in? And a lot of things are broken in the process. And we're a little over webinared. I know that's not a real phrase, but I feel over webinared. How about you, Juliet?

I don't even go anymore. I don't have an hour and a half to sit there. And here's the deal too. Anybody who's ever studied webinar theory, how you put them together, you're going to learn some stuff, but you're not going to learn all the stuff. You have to go to the end and get the sales pitch. And I think that's where everybody's really exhausted. They're just like sales pitch to death, right?

So we kind of want to set up the way that we do these marketing mixers, that we're going to do it regularly, that we're going to dish about what's not working first. Then we're going to talk about some things that we've heard that are working or some hacks, some tools, some other new things that we're trying and experimenting with. So you can try them too. And then give us feedback about what's working for you. Because that's what we want to hear. We want everyone to sort of brainstorm together and collaborate to say, how can we really hack this system? Figure out how to make them work for all of our businesses, make them work in a new way. And the only way to innovate out of that is for us to collaborate together.

So this weekend, you got some super secret info. So before we jump into it, let's talk about how people have been putting these webinars together. They put together a big campaign. They get a PowerPoint together for a master class or a webinar. They hire a marketing company to put together a drip campaign to put together Facebook ads. And all of a sudden, we have all these people signed up for the webinar and nobody shows up. Tell us why.

You know, here's the thing. I just want to explain that, how we've been doing it for a while. So you have a sense of, like, what we've been experimenting with. So we've been using a marketing agency and company for over. Well, we're on our fourth one, really, but for over five months. And I just fired them. But, you know, so we've had the same one for five months, and they weren't able to do it. And so. So what we had was we had a great webinar. We know it converted. We know that it really works, because we know when people show up to the webinar, they listen, they buy from us, they do it. We also know that our webinar is really in service. Like, it's not a selling webinar. It's not your average webinar. We didn't follow the formula. We don't tell the sob story, and then we roll all the way through it and drip away little pieces of information. No, we just give it all to them because we're very confident in the services that we provide on the other side that are absolutely in keeping with doing what they want to do. So whether it's using our production services or using our hosting at Poditize, because that's obviously, we're podcast production and hosting. That's what we're selling and giving webinars about. We know it's really valuable. I give this same talk on stages all the time, and it converts. We know that that part works. We know our content strong. And I think you get a lot of people, Juliette, where maybe their content isn't as strong and maybe their free lead also isn't strong. So we don't even do a free lead. The webinar is the free lead. It's the free information. And maybe there's a little side sheet or A template or something that sometimes goes with it, but it's also given away right there at that time. We don't make anybody wait. We don't make them go through a whole email trail. We don't bother with all of that. So just kind of understanding that we short circuited the whole cycle of doing it because it felt so cumbersome and too much friction built in the process of getting to the information we wanted them to get to. So we tried everything from signing up for the webinar and having it appear at certain times of the week, having me be live, having it run on a cycle every hour with someone being live, answering, having it just run on demand. And still we would get people to go all the way through our process, come from our ads, sign up, go into it, never show up for the webinar, like never show up. And we had various versions where we required them to pay, where we didn't. Because everyone's like, well, maybe it's because it's free. Put a paid gate on. It didn't happen either. So none of that was working. And it was really driving me crazy that why would someone go in? It's one thing to bookmark something, save your video ad, do something like that, but it's another thing to go in and put your email address intending, you know, download the calendar, link to your calendar and intend to show up and then don't. And none of them show up. And we would sometimes get 100 registrants or more. And so what was the case with that? Like, why is that happening? And so I said back to the marketing group and my team, I think they're fake. And they said, no, that can't be. They're real email addresses. The email we have HubSpot, but if you had Mailchimp or anything like that, it would be blowing it back to you if it was fake. Because we sent out a reminder email. So we send out reminder emails, you can send out text messages and all of that. And none of that was bouncing back. I said, but I really think these aren't real people. So I had sort of set out that our team was going to call them and we hadn't done it yet, but they were going to call them and they were going to just start calling, emailing, figuring out if these people were real. Like search for them by their email address on the Internet and start to figure it out. Then I met this guy. This Saturday, I'm giving a speech in the Spectrum in Irvine. I was a part of the City Summit Group and this guy who I'd actually met before, Joseph Lazucan, he came to me though about being just this really cool innovator and other things like that. And I thought I might write an article about him. And he's there and he goes up and he starts talking about this new program that he developed that discovered that between 20 to 40% of any given ad campaigns and Facebook pages, posts and other things are trolled by bots. And so I was right, they are fake.

So back up there for a minute. A lot of people like there's a couple different ways to do bots on Facebook. We're not talking about the bot, the messenger bot, we're talking about the bots that troll. Because you and I had had this conversation about an ad I ran as well, that there's no way that all those people are real, right?

So what happens is if you've run ads for any significant amount of time, you start to see this pattern of you're going to do a retargeting campaign. That's what eventually works, right? So what happens is that you have your ad set so that when they click on the ad and go to your landing page, that's maybe the call to action. If they comment on it, if they like the ad, if they share the ad, all of those become retargeting processes, right? Some kind of retargeting campaign gets, or some process gets assessed against whatever they do. When they go to your landing page, there's another retargeting campaign because you have what they call a pixel on your website, on your landing page. And so the pixel is saying, I found this person that came from Facebook. Now I know who they are. Now I have them and I can follow them around the Internet and I can retarget new ads, whether it's on Google or on Facebook, but I can retarget new campaigns and new ads to them because they took some amount of action. So that's the kind of idea of what you want to do because it makes sense. Why wouldn't you want. So of all these people who served up your ad, the ones who actually go to the landing page, and even the ones who then click and put their email address in, they're more valuable. So you want to follow those people and find more people like them. So you're creating more of a look alike audience who will be willing to take these actions. That's what you're building and growing through that. That kind of real heavy remarketing campaign or retargeting campaign is done by pixelization. So this pixel process, so when you put Facebook's pixel on your landing page and everything, what happens is that the minute they come, the second that they hit your landing page, they get retargeted for an ad. That's the number one problem right there. So that's what Joseph told me today is he's saying that the problem is all bots hit the page and within five seconds are gone. And what they're really doing, and they could even be, in a way, your own bots, which is really scary. So you set Google Analytics on, and it's going to troll your page and it's going to hit it. You're doing this retargeting and all those things. You could be scanning your page yourself. And so it is a part of the process that you can also do that. So part of his program and part of what this new. This new thing that's going to come out on November 5th, is that it's a smarter pixel. It's set in a time delay that allows that bot traffic to go, and it allows the people who would actually read something on the page.

Wow.

But the scary part is, let's say you did go with what was happening. Is that. So you're retargeting the people who hit your page and you've got all these bots out there going and doing that. They're doing it on Facebook's behalf, they're doing it on your competitor's behalf, they're doing it on other marketing agencies. Other marketing agencies are out there gathering big data. So they're out there hitting everybody's ads, trying to understand how their funnels work and what's successful and what's not. So the more information they gather and the better that they are. So they want to run through your ads and do that. And if you've ever seen negative or like weird comments, right, not just negative comments, like, you know, you suck, but like, you know, weird comments that don't make sense, that are like, don't know if I like this. Like just weird kind of statements like that. It's just like, okay, then why are you commenting? You know, it's like wishy washy or weird English, right? And so we start to suspect those. And when you see a lot of those running, it means the bots are really running on yours. So their system also removes the negative, what they call negative comments or any comments like that. But these are also comments that are indicators of bots. So you're now mapping those and making sure when they hit Your site, they are also removed from the data set.

What now happens, though, is that when we've got them all in the mix and we have this bad data or these bad bots hitting our system and we create a lookalike audience, we get more of them. Oh, wow. Right. So by doing a retargeting campaign, we're actually retargeting worse audience than we started with.

Oh, and that explains why people back around. Yes. Okay.

The numbers start going up as we're tracking people who actually are not real action takers. They're not even real. So this is part of why this sort of webinar model, we think it's broken and we just abandon it because it's not attracting the right people to begin with, because the ad itself is not attracting the right people to begin with. And it has nothing to do with your ad model and. Or your webinar model. It's the program in between that's being run to retarget people. Because when you have cold traffic, which is ad traffic. Right. We all know this, that people don't click the first time. They just don't. It have to be completely relevant to something they were dying and looking for for them to actually be validly interested. So it's not until the fifth, sixth time that it hits them that they're like, oh, I've seen this everywhere. Maybe I should really check this out. And so that's why a retargeting campaign is so valuable. But if in the end you're not retargeting any of the real people, then there's no value in it.

It's not working. The other thing that I hear all the time, and there was actually a big stream in it inside of Kathryn Bell's group, was people are tired of the Facebook ads for webinars and free everything, and they're just exhausted from it all.

They are. That's absolutely the case. Yeah. They're really exhausted from these sort of ads that are running and the way that they're running it. And I have heard some good people who are doing some different things, like they're really breaking the model. And that's what I'd like to see is that they're really breaking the model where they are saying, hey, this is a webinar that has zero sales in it. I promise you, it's got nothing in it. It is just a total service email or a total service webinar. That's all you're going to get here is you're going to get the actual information that's. I have 12 things you did wrong when you set up your podcast that are killing your growth now. It's the 12 ways to prevent pod fading. That's another term we use to describe it. And it's completely 12 things that you could fix yourself. You don't need me to fix them. But I think that my providing the value makes you more interested in finding out more about my company.

More about my coaching, more about our services that support that. And not that we don't sell, but we mention that we do this for our clients. That's mentioned in there, but it's never a sales. The only thing that you can do at the end is if you want an eval of your program, of your podcast, of your website, there's a free opportunity to get that. And there's a scheduling link. That's it. That's the extent of it. And you can drop off before that ever. Before that last slide ever posts. So that's how we do it on that one. And, you know, frankly, I haven't switched the ads yet because I haven't had time, but the ads aren't working, and ours are still saying all of those things.

Wow. So another way, another tip to getting this done is getting together content, like we're doing right here, where one of you drinks. No, I'm just kidding. Where.

You provide good information. Because here's the deal. I can't get 80% of my people to produce content. And content is where people find out that you are an expert, how good you are, and that they trust you. Putting together something like we're doing right now, and actually having a formula where you teach, Teach so many, and then turn around and. And sell something small. That, too is a model that's beginning to work. Using text instead of email, too, for the reminders. Because more and more people are not opening their email. I don't open anything anymore. I'm email burned out, especially. And this is where the webinar is another place they're really failing the JV partnerships.

There are some that are. I'd love to talk about one that is working when we will do that in an upcoming one. But you're right, a lot of them are working. Why? Because their audiences are so burned out. Right. They're so tired of seeing the same thing again and again. Or the same model again and again. Which is a new topic.

Yeah, the same email over and over. My best friend, Tracy has.

Even though we are.

Well, we are. But still, I mean, yeah, okay. My best friend. Yeah, I won't throw a name out of somebody else. That would be so rude. And I'm not even drinking. Oh my God.

That whole model over and over where they basically say the same thing. You know, my buddy. And everybody knows now that you're making commission off that, you know, that you don't really, you're not really vouching for the reputation to that person. You're in it for the money. That piece is failing as well. People want emails with results. Tell me the results you got from this before you pump it for me and you personally. I think people really want a lot of that because there are a lot of unhappy people out there who haven't gotten results.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think that that's really. We're all recognizing the model. Email's just down. It open rate is just down. Now we have a small email list. Like we really cultivate our email list. And so we might have, you know, under 5,000 people on our email list, but they open. Yeah, right. We don't have a million people. We don't have a hundred thousand people. We have a small email list, but they open it. They open it regularly. They know we're not going to spam them. We don't send 12 a week.

We always do actually, a second level opt in. So we just did a big podcast event where I offered them this webinar and some other things as a part of my free gifts. And I said, look, you're going to get eight emails and I'm going to do something unusual because I want to make sure you get them all quickly. I'm going to give them all to you one a day for eight days. And normally I'd make you wait eight weeks to get them. Like it'd be really dripping it out, one a week. But in this case I'm going to send them to you in eight days. And then if you decide that you got value from that, click the link and join the feed your brand newsletter, which is only once a week. And so you'll only hear from me once a week after that. But if you want to opt out, that's the moment topped out when you get that eighth email. And so I just offered that up from the stage. We'll see. We haven't gotten through all eight. I think it ends like midweek this week or Thursday or something. We'll see what happens on our opt out rate. But I wanted to see what was going on because I don't want them in there if they're not going to consume the Content, Right, that's very true.

I actually just back in May, I dumped my list.

Yes, you did.

I deleted everybody who hadn't opened in the last 30 days. And I did that because we have a book coming out and in order to make a bestseller list, we want a clean list. We need to know where the people on our list are purchasing and we want to know that they're opening for when we launch. So my list has gone way down, but I have a very good friend who puts out a book about every three months, a romance novelist. And that's what she does. She gives away something free and she cleans up her list every 30 days. If you haven't opened. See ya see.

Yeah.

Consistently making very credible bestseller list. Every book that's released now, because she has a squeaky clean list of people who buy.

Yeah. So for us, we're a little longer before we clean up a list. And the real reason is because I do have a lot of people who find us. Our subscribers to our podcast are on our newsletter list, appreciate what we have to say, but they're not ready yet. They're not ready to start. They're still dabbling, they're still considering, they're still thinking. But as long as they're subscribed and they occasionally open, so we have kind of a sort of a six month review, then I'm okay with that. And as long as our open rate isn't declining heavily, then I don't really go and scrub like that.

So I guess for tips we're really recommending like hardcore education. No, selling like a lot of content. A lot of content.

A lot of content. Shorter webinars. I think that's also another thing. Like if you can do 30, 45 minute, that's better. Under an hour is better. I also see what's tracking and what's working are short little tidbits. So doing one, that's 15 to 20 minutes and then offering more. So if you want the next in the series and the next in the series, they're still all free, but it requires them to click through. And so now you've got more action being taken. And so now you know it's a more serious person. So, you know, we also get a lot of people who watch webinars who are competitors. I mean, I don't know. You know, you have to realize that, right? So yeah, so a lot of people go through sign up on your list and go through that. I did that with this guy who runs a podcast event that I don't think is very credible. But I went through it. I mean, I'm a podcast host, so I just picked one of my hosting email addresses that doesn't have my name on it. And, you know, if he's not smart enough to immediately bump me out or ever check it, which he probably no one really is, because no one really watches that. Right? No one watches who joins their list on a daily basis. So it's probably not going to happen to you. I went through 30 days of his emails and thought, this is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. And I clicked through and watched some of the webinars and thought, these are the grossest things I've ever seen. They're so manipulative. But they're working. How is it still working?

I think, though, that that's the difference is that some of these things that are working, these webinars that are still working for people, are working by manipulating a very susceptible audience who are not as web savvy, who are not as content driven, who don't have that sort of really great digital presence already. And those, frankly, aren't my customers. And in some ways they're not yours either, Juliet. So I think that's also something for you to keep in mind. If the webinar model is working for you because your audience is this sort of newbie audience who is new to Facebook or new to what's going on in the entrepreneurial world or the marketing world, then that's working for you. That's great. But. But maybe step up your game and start doing things in a little more honorable way than just following the models of what it is, because it's going to stop working for you, too.

Yeah, it is. And I find that it doesn't work for those people who are promising the cash machine. The cash machine is a myth. You can find it out there. I don't know, find yourself the Loch Ness monster. It's probably in a locket hanging around its neck. It just doesn't. I get calls from those people every day and I'm so disturbed. No, digital marketing is not easy. It's not a slam dunk.

And so, you know, that's still the issue is you really have to think about, is this what I want my business to be associated with? Is this how I want to operate my brand? Is this a relationship I want to start out with, with someone? And I'm not in it for volume. I'm in it for quality. Right.

Same with me, too. I'd rather have some really quality people who are there to learn and move to the next level.

So how is that cocktail?

It is delicious. You know what? I'm not used to having a margarita that's sweet. And it has such a sweet edge because it's got pineapple and cranberry in it. And so two of my favorite juices, and I'm not a big juice person. And then having sugar instead of salt, though, it just makes the whole thing, like, a fun little. I could definitely see this for a holiday party. And I gotta try the rosemary one for my next holiday party, so I'm really enjoying it. I'm gonna definitely finish it afterwards.

Good.

I'm taking only about five sips here because I want to still be able to talk to all of you.

Okay, well, I'm glad you're doing that, because neither of us has a problem talking. I'm looking forward to next week.

Is.

Wait a minute. Did you say you were going to do an appetizer next week? We're not going to do a cocktail.

Yeah, we're going to do a munchie. I thought we'd trade off mixers and munchies.

Okay.

Doesn't that sound like fun?

Yeah, mixers and munchies. So you got to get that recipe, and do you want to unveil it for us?

So Chef Murray has a wonderful mini meatball, and I'm Italian, so I'm thinking I got to try this meatball. So I'm going to make it over the weekend, have some pre made and ready. And unfortunately, I'm seeing you later this week, but I will be by the time I make it. I can't hand you a set, so bummer. But on that. But the recipe, I'll make sure you have it ahead of time. So the way that we're doing this is like, I think on Fridays we should reveal the recipe, because then it gives you the chance over the weekend to get the ingredients.

Very, very nice. And we'll have to have Chef Marie on sometime. She has the cutest little accent. You can't help but, like, fall in love with her. It's adorable.

And she has a podcast, and you should check out. It's M. Chef.com is her website, and so you can check out her recipes. And she's got these wonderful mixers. Like I told you. There are sugars and different sweet things and salty things and things that you would use for your cocktails. But she also has rubs and other things, herbs and spices that you can use for your cooking. And so they're amazing. She had given me A set when I met with her and they are so, so good. I didn't know this, but there are a lot of fillers and junk in the herbs and spices mixes that we get out there in the marketplace and she worked really hard to stop that. And so they're a lot healthier and better for you. So, anyway, so I'm thinking mini meatballs next week. Sounds really awesome.

Okay.

And then we were going to talk about. And that's our topic reveal for next week. We were going to talk about how you can stop being a one try wonder. So stop trying these things one time and giving up.

Okay, so we're doing this twice.

Exactly. So we're going to keep going because we're not going to be a one hit wonder or one try wonder. Right. We're not going to say, oh, these mixers aren't working just after one time. So we're going to go for it again and so should you. So that's what we're going to talk about next week. Talk about some of the things. So we'd love for you to send in, put in the comments, drop in the group, drop on the page and let us know some things that you tried once and gave up on.

Yes, that would be great.

That'd be really awesome.

Gave up on. Yeah, or even twice. Because we all get that shiny object syndrome going on. Who remembers Periscope?

Does anybody know what it still exists? I just found that out. Yes, it's not dead. I don't know anybody who's still on it. But I just found that out from somebody because I said the same thing. I was like, isn't Periscope dead? And I thought Twitter bought it and killed it. No, it still lives.

So I have to tell you, I tried Periscope once and I thought, oh, my God, that was awful. And then remember how it used to just pop on? About two days later, these people popped on and they tried to do a show, like together. And it was hilarious because one of them talked with their hands. They knocked the camera off. You could hear them in the background cussing, trying to get the camera. They're all scrounging. And I was like, man, I'm a pro. Maybe I should try that again. So when you just try that once and stop, remember there's always somebody out.

There that's worse than you. That's right.

Absolutely.

If I listened to some of my first podcasts, I would have never kept podcasts.

Oh, God, yes.

Yes.

My very. Yeah, awful. So we're going to wrap it up here, guys. We wanted to keep this a half hour. Tracy, where can we find you and your podcast?

Well, of course you can link to me on Facebook and message me through that if you choose, because you're already there. But if you'd like to find me elsewhere, you can go to potatoes.com and you can find all information on us there as well. And find out about podcasting. Find out about those webinars.

Yes, and you can find me. I have a podcast called PromoteProfit. Everything youg Want to Know About Building a Platform. And you can find me on Facebook too. And fill in below what that thing you tried. You tried once because we can't wait to hear. Maybe we'll even bring you on and let you tell a story.

That's right. Would love it. So that's the thing. If you want to come on live and you want to talk with us, you got to join the Zoom. So there will always be the Zoom link. But you can of course just consume through the Facebook and text and message us right through there.

Very cool. Thanks.

So Happy Monday, everybody. Go get your mixers, finish your drinks, and have a great night.

You've been listening to the Feed you'd Brand podcast. We'd love to hear your comments on today's show as well as suggestions for future topics and guests. Visit us online@feedyourbrand.co or on social edyourbrand. Thanks for exploring content marketing and podcast influence with us.