How To Run Your First Webinar In 6 Easy Steps

Given all the choices we have to market our business online using social media such as:

Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Pinterest
Blogging
Instagram
Livestreaming (Periscope, Meerkat, Facebook Live)

and many more… Why add webinars to the mix?

Don’t get me wrong- I love social media!

However, when it comes to growing my reach and building the know/like/trust factor nothing compares to webinars or a live training.

Webinars have so many benefits:

Share Expertise

Hosting a webinar is a way to get in front of your audience and educate them about what you do.

For example, if you are a health coach you could do a webinar on ’10 Ways to Detox in Spring’.

Similarly, if you are a website designer, you may decide to present on the ‘6 Website Tweaks to Get More Traffic’.

Or if you are a copywriter, you could talk about ‘The 3 Steps To Writing A Killer Sales Page That Converts’

Not sure what to talk about? What do you get asked often about?

Your webinar should focus on educating- people should walk away with something tangible and the focus should not just be on selling.

Remember, it’s not an infomercial!

Think about what you get asked often and start making a list.

Pro Tip: Look at your Google Analytics and see which posts are getting the most visits and use that as a starting point.

Click Here To Get The ‘Webinar Technology Made Simple’ Guide

Promote Your Brand

You get to promote and broaden your reach on your own terms and when you want. You don’t have to wait for a guest post to be accepted and you get to decide how often and when you want to do them.

For instance, if you are planning a new product or service launch, you may decide that you want to do a webinar every week leading up to the launch.

It’s up to you to decide how often you want to do them and the format. For example, I run my webinars using Google Hangouts with slides but I could easily make them informal and just go live with my webcam and connect with my audience that way.

Broaden Your Reach

When I promote my webinars, I announce it to my mailing list and I also reach out to new audiences whether that is through sharing on social media, joint venture partners or Facebook ads. I use Facebook ads as they allow me to reach new people, very targeted and similar to my ideal client avatar. You could create one webinar and reposition who you are targeting that webinar to and offer it regularly as part of your marketing strategy. And you can reuse the content you create for your webinar in many ways! For example, you can turn into a blog post, make it available on your YouTube channel, or even make it available as an opt-in.

Get To Know Your Audience

Another advantage of doing a webinar is getting to know your audience. Because people are opting in for a particular topic, it allows you to gauge the interest level of that topic. Not to mention, webinars are an excellent way to have two-way communication with your audience as they are showing up live and you can engage with them with polls and live Q&A.

Lead Generation

Webinars allow you to grow your list and potential leads in a very big way- not like a trickle which you may see through other forms like social media and blogging.

That’s why I’m excited about webinars because I know that by growing my list and building relationships with ideal client, I can learn how to better serve them. It is not just about growing my list and turning around and selling to them.

It’s an opportunity to get to know your community, get new people involved and because you are doing a webinar you have another reason to follow up. Additionally, it’s another opportunity to segment your list.

When I host a webinar, people get added to my webinar list as well as my main newsletter list. Then, if I have a specific offer related to that topic like my Webinar Startup Kit which walks you through setting up your first webinar, I can reach out to that specific list and follow up with that offer vs those who signed up for a different webinar.

To recap, through webinars you can broaden your reach, get to know your audience, have a reason to follow up, and can customize and segment your offers.

How do you get started?

1. Decide on a topic

Not sure what to talk about? You could start by:

Surveying/Polling your existing audience and asking them what they specifically need help with.
If you have a newsletter opt-in, you could ask people when they sign up to reply and share their biggest painpoint.
Look at what questions your ideal client avatar is asking in Facebook groups and other forums where your ideal client hangs out.

It’s also important to look at how these topics and ideas tie back to your offerings. In terms of what works best in webinar format, think in terms of solutions and focus on the why. Your product or service, if you are offering one, would offer the how and go into more detail.

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Ultimately, it should tie back to what you have to offer. But…remember, people aren’t just joining your webinar to be pitched. Even if they don’t buy from you, they should walk away with value.

2. Pick Your Technology

This is where a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck because let’s face it- there is a lot of choice when it comes to choosing a webinar platform. There are a lot of different solutions you can use:

Go To Webinar

Meeting Burner

Easy Webinar

Crowd Cast

Personally, I’m a fan of the Google Hangouts based solutions as they are relatively straightforward to use and budget-friendly. Don’t get too caught up with the technology- pick one and practice!

You most likely already have a mailing list provider, so the easiest is to create a new list for people to opt-in to. You would then create a landing page which you would drive traffic to and share in different groups, communities. Depending on the solution you go with, you may also need to create an email reminder sequence.

Don’t let tech overwhelm stop you..it’s totally possible to master the technology, it just takes a little bit of practice.
Click Here To Get The ‘Webinar Technology Made Simple’ Guide

3. Create Your Presentation

I’m all about keeping it simple. If this is your first webinar, don’t pressure yourself to run a 90 minute webinar. Start small and work from there.

Typically, I structure my content as follows:

Kick off about 5-10 minutes before and welcome attendees and ask them to introduce themselves in the chat (2-4 min)
Welcome/Agenda (2-4 minutes). Mention any freebie bonuses you will be giving away at the end
Introduce yourself: share your background, expertise, how you got where you are 4-6 min
Core Content: This is the meat of the webinar- share your how-to, what problem you are solving/your system, case studies (20-25 min)
Pitch: At around the 45 min mark, start talking about your product, how it solves the problem/painpoints, saves time. Share screen shots, walk through the purchase process (10-12 min)
Q&A have questions ready (10-12 min)

Note: you can go with less time or longer and scale the timing accordingly

4. Promote Your Webinar

Now that you have your amazing content- how do you get the word out about it?

Other People’s Audiences

I use the “Other People’s Audiences’” approach. I build my webinar audience by getting in front of other people’s audiences. I primarily use Facebook ads to promote my webinar to other pages that my ideal client avatar would like.

While this does involve spending money, I look at this as my marketing budget and consider it a valuable investment as I can get in front of new audiences.

Social Media

You don’t only have to rely on Facebook ads.

I also share in Facebook groups and look at where people are talking about my particular topic and asking questions.

It does take time and effort but it is worth it because you get to have new people exposed to your ideas and who may resonate with what you have to offer.

Mailing List and Joint Ventures

It’s also important to promote your webinar to your existing mailing list. Similarly, you can reach out to joint venture partners and see if your webinar material is a fit for their audience.

5. Practice, Practice, Practice

The women entrepreneurs I work with are ready for growth in their online business but the fear of making a mistake or messing up holds them back from making bigger moves online.

My response: it’s okay!

Everyone and I mean everyone makes mistakes.

You can practice and prepare and sometimes technology doesn’t cooperate.

When I first started running webinars, I would practice over and over and made sure I had everything right and now I am comfortable doing them. The key is practice!

Another fear- what if no one shows up live?

That’s okay because you have a recording. But you should look into why this happened: did you give enough lead time? was it the right day/time (for example, if your audience is the UK you probably shouldn’t run your webinar at 9pm PST).

6. Show-Time: Deliver awesome webinar & the follow-up

Or how to sell without feeling sleazy!

The key to profiting from your webinar is offering something of value to your audience. This may sound obvious but too many entrepreneurs focus on just educating but gloss over the actual sales part.

Through my webinars alone I have grossed several thousands of dollars in products, membership and sales of services.

I focus my webinar content on why entrepreneurs should do webinars but what I actually sell is the HOW (how to set up the technology, how to setup the landing page, the follow up sequence and so on) but this is not the primary focus of my webinar.

Throughout your webinar it’s important to mention and tie in your offering to your content and end your webinar with your pitch and a detailed breakdown of your product or service.

Pro-tip: Make sure to have questions ready for the Q&A period. Too often I see entrepreneurs ending abruptly after they pitch. Having q’s ready helps break the ice.

And don’t forget the follow up, just like you scheduled emails to go out to remind your list about the webinar, you also need to create a follow up email sequence.

And there you have it! Ready to run your first webinar?

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