The typical sales person generates a lead, qualifies that lead, makes an appointment, MAYBE gets a sale, does the follow up and then repeats the entire process again. It's time intensive, but a great way to sell high-priced products. It's also a good way to get high conversions because nothing beats being able to speak directly to the prospect.
An online marketer, however, generates a lead, warms up the lead, sends the lead to a sales page, and generally gets a 1-2% conversion on a product of $100 - $1,000. It's a real time saver, but it's also a really low conversion rate.
But think about this – if you take the best of both worlds – online lead generation and speaking directly to your prospect, you can make excellent money in a short amount of time.
Obviously we're talking about holding webinars, and if you also record that webinar, post it online and drive traffic to it, you can make even more sales, automatically.
So, are you doing webinars yet? If not, why not? The biggest obstacle to doing webinars is the belief that you can't talk for 30 to 90 minutes about your topic, or that you'll be too nervous. But that's what rehearsal is for. Think about this – you only have to perfect your webinar talk once for it to make money for you time and time again. And once you're good at it, you can get all kinds of joint ventures with list owners who will actually supply your audience for you in exchange for an affiliate commission.
This means not only are you making immediate income – you're also building your list at the same time and with no extra effort.
So how do you get people to show up to your webinar? As webninar consultant Andrew Roberts says, 'McDonalds doesn't make the best hamburgers, yet they know how to market and sell the most. Likewise, you don't have to have the greatest presentation or topic, but you do need to know how to market it well.'
The number one thing that constitutes a successful webinar is the topic. In order to get big numbers on a webinar, you either have to choose a topic people are searching for or select a tight niche market to focus on.
Your title is king. Compare these examples:
"How to grow your consulting business
vs
"A five step blueprint to add seven to ten new high paying clients to your consulting business in the next 60 days without cold calling."
To get started you'll need a sign up page so people can join your webinar and simultaneously join your list. Here you can see Andrew's sign up page:
And you can even join his recorded webinar to get more webinar tips.
Start by mailing your own list. If you don't have one, find people in your niche who aren't direct competitors and strike up a JV with them. Once people sign up, you'll want to send them updates until the actual webinar to keep them excited and looking forward to your webinar event.
Andrew recommends using the following formula for your webinar:
1. Give a strong introduction that gets people excited about what they're going to learn in your webinar. 2. Use a "stick" strategy to keep listeners on your webinar until the end. For example, you might offer an incentive for them to stay and then provide the download link for that incentive at the end of the webinar. 3. Use story to build a connection. This is probably going to be your own story of how you had this problem, what you went through until you found the solution, and what your life is like now that you have the solution. 4. Content. Less is more – stick to 2 to 3 powerful concepts rather than a whole laundry list of ideas. 5. Transition into the close. This is where you make the shift from teaching to selling your product or service.
Action steps to get started:
Decide you're going to use webinars and choose a service such as gotowebinar.com
Set a date for your first webinar. A deadline will get you moving.
Create your backend offer
Create your presentation
Market your webinar, either to your list or with a JV partner
Run the webinar, being sure to record it. If it goes well, post the recording online and drive traffic to it. If you can improve it, keep doing live webinars until you get the hang of it, and then post that webinar online.
Two examples of money generated via webinar from businesses that have never used the webinar model before:
Ben was finally persuaded to run a webinar. His model was a bit different, charging people $85 to attend his webinar. Coincidentally 85 people paid. The course offered at the end of the webinar brought in another $9,000, and the 6 clients who signed up for coaching brought in another $6,000 a month in recurring revenue. Total return for the 1 hour webinar - $34,180.
United Vets Group used direct mail and fax to contact 500 vets. Of those, 65 people registered and 45 showed up for the webinar. 15 sales were made at $397 per month. With a lifetime value of a client being 3 years, United Vets Group earned $214,380 from that single webinar.
Obviously these are terrific examples of what can be achieved, but you can always start out much smaller. Imagine if you hold a webinar to promote a $47 product, and 100 buy. Split the money with the affiliate(s) and you've still made a nice chuck of money for a small amount of effort. Once you have your first small success under your belt, start doing more webinars and promoting bigger products.
Bottom Line: If you're not doing webinars yet, what are you waiting for?