List building…we all know we have to do it but how much time do we really spend on it?

This year I decided to make it priority numero uno.

As much as I love social media it moves fast and not every update gets seen. When you email your subscribers, you are in their inbox, where the chances of being seen are much, much higher.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not dropping social media (not at all!), I’m just focusing my efforts more on my list.

Which brings me to webinars. I love speaking and presenting…I  just don’t love the costs associated with doing webinars (because I was never really doing them enough to justify the costs).

However, when I look at the activities in 2013 that brought the biggest boost to my list..it was hands-down webinars. While guest posting is important to develop credibility, in terms of building your list, nothing really compares to webinars when you consider you have a very targeted list of people who have signed up to receive information and possibly buy from you if you have something to sell.

Webinars allow you to share your expertise and further build the know/like/trust factor with your community.

Running Your Next Webinar as a Hangout On Air

There are several reasons that led me to try out and change to this new technology.

• Save BIG on webinar fees: Google Hangouts on Air are free! No need to pay high monthly fees, especially if you are not doing webinars very often.

• Unlimited Viewers. You don’t have a limit on how many people can view your Hangout On Air unlike webinar plans which generally have limits and require more $ for more viewers.

• Share your screen or share your smiling face. You can make it as casual or as formal as you like.

• Automatic Recording: Your event is automatically recorded to YouTube so no more dealing with forgetting to record! Your recording is ready for replay right after the event.

And by no means is this a “cheap” alternative, industry-leaders are using this very same method to engage with their community and prospects to make sales!

With Google’s Hangouts On Air, you can take advantage of webinar list-building perks without the associated costs.

Here is screenshot from my recent: “3 Reasons Why You Can’t Ignore Google+ in 2014” webinar that I ran using Google Hangouts On Air.

and the chat below:

Results

My goal was to bring new subscribers to my list so I marketed the webinar outside of my existing list and over the series of 3 webinars that I did between late February and mid-March, I was able to grow my list by 35%.  I was not creating new content each time, in fact, it was the same webinar that I would improve upon each time. In terms of time investment, these webinars were around 30 minutes. I plan on experimenting with the time during the next series but the point is..with Google Hangouts On Air you can do them as often as you choose! No need to worry about the recording, either. It gets streamed to YouTube and you can share the recording with your attendees after.

Is there a catch?

Google Hangouts on Air is not webinar software so there are a few steps that you have to do manually. For instance, I needed to setup a landing page, which I did easily using LeadPages:

I also needed to setup a mailing list in MailChimp to capture the leads and send the subsequent reminder emails to. I subscribed to Chat Roll and used this to engage with attendees during the webinar.

The first time I set it up took me the longest as I had to figure out all the moving parts, however, I made sure to document it because once I did the first one..I was hooked! I am definitely going to be continuing using this webinar-strategy in 2014.

Are you as excited about this as I am? If you want to add webinars to your marketing strategy (without the associated costs), get a copy of my WebOnAir guide which walks you through the exact steps.

Do you plan on adding webinars to your marketing strategy this year? Let me know in the comments!