The Forgotten Prospect Source For Attendee-Funded Webinars

There is only so far that your database will take you in driving registrations for your attendee-funded webinars. Yet, there is another great marketing source right in your back pocket. It is a source that has some familiarity with you and your teachings … associations.

Associations are always on the lookout for two things… more services for their members and non-dues revenue. Your attendee-funded webinars satisfy both of these objectives.

Think of the associations where you have spoken … maybe even for free. The members have had a taste of you. They are a great potential source for registrations for your attendee-funded webinars. Offer the association a commission for the registrations they generate.

Another way to approach the association opportunity is to consider those in which you are already a member. As one who has paid dues, you may find them willing to promote your webinar to the other members.

Using LinkedIn To Drive Registrations in Attendee-Funded Webinars (part 2)

Recommendations. A synonym for recommendations is references. One of the most powerful conversion tools for attendee-funded webinars is testimonials from those who have experienced you on the subject matter you are teaching. Yet, an endless listing of how great you are is not going to get the job done.

Put yourself in the prospect’s seat for a moment. If you were considering investing in a webinar training course, what would be the most critical due diligence step? You would want to hear from others how great the presenter is, but you want specifics. You are looking for what was taught, why it was beneficial, and the results that the attendee received from putting the teachings into practice.

An example of an effective recommendation…

I had the opportunity to participate in John’s webinar on building a database and found the session to be tremendously informative. John presented a number of strategies and techniques that I was able to quickly put into practice. And, I was able to triple the size of my database in four weeks. He made learning online fund and engaging…I look forward to taking more courses with him.
-Bill Wilson, Executive Director, ABC Foundation

What made this an effective recommendation? First, the recommendation was very specific about the course that was taken. It summarized the information that was learned. Most importantly, it provided the results that the attendee received from participating in the session. In essence, it has everything that you would be looking for when evaluating a speaker and their webinar on LinkedIn.

Leverage Groups. One of the great benefits of social media platforms is the groups function. LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups as a free member. Joining is very easy…click a request to join and await the group owner’s approval. Getting results out of the group requires some sophistication in the approach.

The first step is to join groups that have the right people for what you teach. If you are delivering a webinar for small business owners, join groups that have small business owners as members. Using the search groups function, located at the top right of the web page, enter keywords that will help you identify groups to join. Once you enter the keywords, you will be provided with a list of groups presented by size with the largest ones showing first. Fifty groups may seem like a lot, but you will be surprised how quickly you use your slots.

The first temptation is to join the largest groups from the keywords that you’ve entered. The flaw with that approach is that you will quickly get lost. With 25,000 members in a group, it will be impossible to create an impact. Ideally, join groups that have between 1,000 and 5,000 members. At that size, the group has enough mass to justify your time investment, but is not so large that you can’t make yourself visible.

Having selected the group, the first temptation is to create a discussion and tell the group that you have a webinar coming up that they should attend. Do that and the group will blast you! First, the discussion area in a group is considered to be sacred. You will get blasted for creating a discussion to promote anything you do. Typically, people make that mistake once…just once. It is much more readily accepted if you use the news function in the group to link to the webinar registration page. This doesn’t mean that the discussion section should be ignored. There is a tremendous opportunity to creatively use discussions to send prospective attendees your way.

The big picture reason to join a group is to position you as an expert with your target audience. How do you do that? First, participate in discussions related to your expertise. Share your pearls with the group on subjects that help to position your expertise. Since LinkedIn does not have a spell or grammar check function, compose your responses in Microsoft Word and proof them there. You can then copy and paste the response into LinkedIn.

Second, create discussions that position you as an expert. If you are in a sales management group and you are teaching a webinar on designing sales compensation programs, create a discussion that asks the group to share their sales compensation secrets. When group members respond to your discussion, you can do two things…invite them to join your network and invite them to your webinar.

The goal is to use discussions to get your target audience to be impressed and intrigued with your philosophy… Guess where they go when that happens? They click your name and visit your profile page to learn more about you. Now, you can see why your bio, photo, and recommendations are so important.

Another component of your strategy may be to create your own group…very easy to do as a free member on LinkedIn. However, it is much more challenging to get your target audience to join and return frequently. Remember, they only have 50 groups that they can join too… It is recommended that you implement the aforementioned strategy before considering creating a group so you can develop a following. Creating a group solely to drive attendance in your webinars is not the best use of your time.

Another tool to use is the news function of the group. The news section is populated by copying and pasting a URL to a newsworthy item. It is used for articles, but it is also used to promote events. When you paste a URL when creating a news entry, you have the ability to enter a title, brief description, and source of the news. After clicking submit, the entry appears in the news section of the group…and is available for comment.

Part of your social media strategy to drive webinar registrants should be publishing articles you’ve written on related subject matter in the news section of your LinkedIn groups. This is also the place to appropriately link to your upcoming webinar events. Considering what was shared earlier about the timeline people buy webinar seats, wait until the week of the webinar to create the news item. Another faux pas made in LinkedIn groups is adding an entry in the news group more than once. Enter the event once, but at the best time to convert registrants.

Using LinkedIn To Drive Registrations in Attendee-Funded Webinars (part 1)

It wasn’t long ago that promoting your events was limited to the reach of your email database. If you wanted to reach people outside of your list, it meant you had to invest significant dollars for your campaign. With the explosion of social media, you now have the ability to reach prospective registrants without spending a nickel to do it. Social media has become one of the most widespread marketing tools for individuals and major corporations.
 
Like any marketing campaign, a strategy is needed. Social media is a constantly evolving medium. Many think you can just enter a URL into LinkedIn, kick-back, and watch registrants come in droves. And, anyone who has tried that strategy has found it to be flawed. If you are going to use social media to promote your attendee-funded webinar, you need a game plan to reach your targeted audience.

The first step is to select a primary platform for your campaign. Two of the largest players are Facebook and LinkedIn. However, they are not competitors in the traditional sense of the word. These two social networking platforms have evolved into having two very different audiences. LinkedIn has become the leader in business networking while Facebook is much more recognized for social communication. For example, it is rare that someone shares family information on LinkedIn and Facebook members become angered by the promotion of business-related functions.

With attendee-funded webinars that are focused on business training, your best time investment is LinkedIn which offers a number of opportunities to reach potential registrants. The campaign that we share with you will not only help drive registrants, but it will help you build your brand in the marketplace. While the focus of this chapter is LinkedIn, the concepts are applicable with other social media platforms as well.

Your Bio.  As a LinkedIn member, you are provided with a profile page. The core of your LinkedIn profile is your bio. While the overall page is a credibility tool, the prospective registrant evaluation process focuses first on the bio of the presenter.

When someone comes across your webinar on LinkedIn, they are immediately going to visit your LinkedIn profile. They will be looking at your expertise on the subject matter that you are teaching with the question in mind of why they should learn from you. What makes you a leading expert on this subject?

One of the challenges with developing your bio is that you may have multiple areas of expertise. This makes weaving a coherent story together for your bio challenging. The key is to make sure your bio clearly positions your expertise for the business prospects you desire. It is very common that a bio becomes an information buffet with no clear message. Bottom-line, if your bio does not clearly position you as an expert, you will not be successful generating registrants through this medium.

Along with your bio, visitors will see your photo, if you have provided one. Give careful consideration for the photo that you use on your profile page. If you want people to take you seriously as an expert, make sure your photo comes across that way. Don’t use a personal webcam picture; spend the $50 to get a professional business photo taken, if you don’t already have one. Consider this, you want people to invest in your webinar, but if you haven’t made that small investment, what message do you think is conveyed?

Registration Conversion Tip for your Attendee-Funded Webinar

Guest Post: Jenny Hamby, Business Expert Webinars Marketing Strategist, SeminarMarketingPro.com

A great way to add value to your event – making it easier to convince registrants that your webinar is worth the investment of time and money – is to offer a free bonus. As an expert, the best type of bonus you can offer is something that relates to your webinar topic. Examples include reports you’ve written, audio programs you’ve recorded, or software programs you’ve developed.

If you offer coaching or consulting services, consider offering 30-days of email or phone coaching, a one-time 30-minute free consultation, or a free audit or critique. Not only with your free gift add further proof of your expertise, it may also open the door to a continued relationship.

A Powerful SEO Technique to Drive Webinar Attendance

Guest post:  Ed Taylor, Business Expert Webinars SEO Strategist

In this post, I’ll share techniques to select a term that people are actually searching on. This way you can not only get top rankings, but you can get top rankings on terms that people are actually searching on.

I use a tool called WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com).

Once you are in Wordtracker use the “Keyword Researcher” tool. Simply add the root word or words that are appropriate for your topic. For example if you speak on negotiation related topics you could go to WordTracker and enter “negotiation” as your seed word.

You would get back a list like this:

This list shows you the exact terms that people are searching on the include the word negotiation.  The numbers on the right indicate the number of searches. So the term at the top gets 309 and the term in 3rd place gets 70. I don’t concern myself with the details of the numbers I simple focus on the relationship. In this case #1 “sales negotiation skills” gets about 4.5 times the number of searches as #3 “negation skills” and “negotiation skills” get about twice what “negotiation techniques” gets.

Armed with this information you can title your webinar something that includes a term that people are actually searching on.

We can see that a lot of people search on the term “sales negotiation training”. You could name your webinar “Sales Negotiation Training for Sales Professionals”.

The way Business Expert Webinars has configured their database the webinar title is used in the “Title Tag” of the webpage so this will automatically get you started on the right path with your SEO.

One more thing, you would also do well to add the term in the title a few more times in the descriptive content about your webinar.

This is a very brief overview and there are many elements that effect top rankings, most notably the competitiveness of the term. It is often best to select a term that is less competitive so you can actually obtain the top rankings.

For more tips and tricks you can use to increase the quantity and quality of your web traffic and maximize your website conversions visit www.EdTaylor.com

What Happens When Webinars and Training Come Together?

If you were to ask one hundred people if they thought webinars were free or paid sessions, the lion share would respond that they expect webinars to be free. After all, the primary use of webinars has been as marketing events or infomercials. And, no one pays to hear an infomercial.

If you were to ask those same one hundred people if they felt business training is delivered for free, ninety-nine percent (there’s always one hold out) would respond that they expect to pay for training. It is rare that you find free training. Our society expects to pay for education.

What happens when you put these together…webinars as training sessions? The polled group becomes confused as these two entities have not often been thought of in combination. Once upon a time, chocolate and peanut butter were not thought of as being good together, but we all love Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups®. There was a time not long ago where baseball purists could never imagine inter-league play (the two leagues play against each other during the regular season), but it happened and became an accepted part of baseball.

When you look at webinars and training, they converge under the umbrella of eLearning. eLearning is a hot topic today because training dollars have been squeezed due to the tough economy. Truth be told, training dollars are tight under any economic conditions. As soon as the topic of budgeting is brought up, the training dollars are the quickest to get slashed.

What does this tell you as a speaker or consultant? People are accustomed to paying for training, but you have to help them see that your webinar is a training course. When you write the copy for the webinar description, you need to balance your writing style between fluffy copywriting and dry business writing…and it’s a delicate balance. If you are fluffy, the event will look like an infomercial and no one buys. If you are dry, the event won’t have enough sizzle to sell.

Further compounding this issue is when speakers deliver free and for-fee webinars as part of their business. Their clientele becomes confused and, often times, resentful when the for-fee ones are promoted to them. As a deliverer of webinars, you need to consider where eLearning fits into your business model. If you want to deliver free webinars as a database builder or to drive client loyalty, don’t confuse your clients by occasionally offering paid ones. If you elect to install eLearning into your business, stay the course. Make eLearning a methodology for delivering your training programs…and those are never free!

How to Select a Webinar Provider (part 2 – The Attendee Experience)

In my last post, I focused on webinar management as a set of decision criteria when selecting a webinar provider. This post focuses on the other major part which is the attendee experience.

Attendee Experience

Technology requirements. Some webinar technology platforms require the user to download software to participate in the webinar. This could be troublesome. Companies have grown tired of users downloading software on their work PC, calling their help desk for assistance, and driving  help desk costs through the roof. To address this issue, most companies have locked down the desktop for their users and don’t allow them to download software onto their PC. Thus, if you are using a platform that requires a software installation to participate, you may have some issues with those who cannot install the plug-in. Guess who takes the hit if they can’t get into your webinar. 

There are webinar providers who do not require the participants to download or install software. Some require the presenter to install the application, but the users do not. They just need to access the Internet.

When analyzing this decision point, the key is to find out the impact of the technology provider’s approach on you and the participants. If you elect to use a company that does not require you or the participants to download software, you may find that you cannot use “build slides” in PowerPoint or that you cannot share your desktop with the participants to show them a website.

Another consideration for you with respect to technology is compatibility. Does it work for both a PC and Mac. You may have attendees trying to participate using their Mac, but don’t have the same experience as those on a PC. Als0, what version of PowerPoint does the technology support?

Don’t take their word for this… Request a license to try the platform with some colleagues to perform your due diligence. If you elect to use a provider that requires a software download, ask for references for other presenters that have used the platform and inquire about their experiences with this aspect.

Polling. Polling is a function in webinar technology that allows you to ask the group multiple choice or yes/no questions, have them respond to it online, and share the statistical results with the group. This is a great technique to make your webinar interactive. However, not all webinar technology providers offer this service. Those that do usually include it in their service package. You should not pay additionally for it. If you aren’t going to employ this technology, don’t add it to your consideration scope when selecting a provider.

Handouts. Often times when presenting a webinar, you will want to disseminate electronic materials to the participants. These may be worksheets, white papers, or even a copy of your PowerPoint presentation. Some webinar providers have the ability to disseminate the materials for you automatically. Again, this is a consideration if you plan to offer handouts and don’t have an easy way to distribute them yourself.

Customer service. Without fail, you will always have at least one person that has a technology issue in the webinar. Often times, the issue is on their end, but they expect your help. A very important consideration is the handling of your customer service. Yes, this is your event and it is your customer service. When attendees have an issue, how does the provider handle it? How many customer service people do they have? How do the attendees access the customer service team?

You will also want to inquire about the level of technical knowledge of the customer service department as the questions that come to them will be broad-based. They will get everything from how do I click on a link to issues from installing ActiveX.

Surveys. When the webinar concludes, it is important that you have a means to solicit attendee feedback through a survey. Be sure to review the questions asked on the  provider’s standard survey so that you are are gathering meaningful information. Ideally, you want to be able to create your own questions for the survey, but the provider may charge you for this service.

How to Select A Webinar Provider (part 1 – Webinar Management)

Having decided to enter the for-fee webinar space, now you need to select a partner to assist with the operations and technology. There are plenty of providers out there. The first step to selecting one is determining what services you need.

Webinar Management

Registration. To facilitate attendees joining your webinar, you need a means to register them. Most of the webinar providers offer a means to handle this for you. However, not all of them offer a means to process payment. The registration should include their system sending reminders to the participants to attend the event. As part of your due diligence, you should go through the registration process to analyze the user experience. Remember, this is your show!

Payment processing. Since the attendee pays for admission to the webinar, you need a means to process the credit card payment. If you don’t have your own shopping cart, you may want to consider opening an account with a group like PayPal to process payment. However, you will need a process to communicate payment to initiate the registration.

Another option is to select a webinar provider who offers both registration and credit card processing. This adds cost to what you pay for their services, but is easily offset by the lack of administrative work that falls on you to handle this. This decision point takes many of the webinar providers out of the game as they provide the registration and technology, but not credit card processing.

Recording capability. While your live, for-fee webinar provides an outstanding revenue opportunity for you, it also yields another one. The recorded event becomes a saleable product for you … a nice, passive revenue stream. Not all webinar providers can record the audio and slides together. Some that do, charge an additional fee for it, while others do not. Some providers only offer the audio recording which is not as saleable as the one with the slides. In today’s marketplace, you should be able to find a provider that includes a Flash recording of the webinar included in your price.

Training for speakers. Every webinar technology has its nuances. Whether you have done webinars before or this is your first venture, another consideration is the training for the speaker on the use of the technology. During your session is the wrong time to find out that you don’t know how to use the functionality. Some providers have recorded tutorials while others conduct live one-on-one sessions for the presenter. Based on your webinar and technology comfort, select a provider who positions you for success in the webinar. If you need more hand-holding, pick the provider who offers the one-on-one training.

Telephonic needs. One of the big drivers that affects pricing is how you handle the audio portion of the webinar. Using an 800 number is the most expensive way to go. It’s much more economical for you to offer the webinar using a toll call. There was a time when long distance charges were an important consideration, but not so much the case anymore. If your attendee prospect is dialing in from work, they aren’t affected by long distance charges. If they are dialing in from home, most people have fixed long distance packages so it’s also inconsequential. Consider this, if you offer toll free calls when your attendees don’t see value in it, you are losing as much as $10.00 per head from your bottom line for a one hour webinar.

Even more economical is to offer the audio through the speakers on attendee’s computer. If you go this route, you need to offer a telephonic solution as well since not everyone has speakers on their PC. Two considerations when using PC speakers for the audio are that the sound quality is affected by their Internet connection speed and, if you plan to have two-way interaction in the webinar, it is not possible for these attendees. For attendees in other countries, Skype is a great option as long as you inform the attendee that their bandwidth will affect the audio.

Event staffing. On the day of the webinar, most speakers want to concentrate the delivery of their training, not deal with event management issues. Having a hosted event means that you have a staff person in your webinar who introduces you, manages the time, and manages the audience questions.

If you have an assistant who can do this for you, it makes economic sense to go that route. If not, you may want to consider selecting a provider who has an operator that can handle those functions for you.

Pricing strategy. Based on the services you need from the webinar provider, you can negotiate pricing structures in multiple ways. There are some providers that offer a monthly subscription rate for a certain number of webinar seats. Some of the larger players offer this service as a means to upsell you to larger packages.

There are others that charge a fee per participant. Some providers have a minimum charge for each webinar. Some also charge a webinar seat for the presenter as well. This is a worthwhile option if you structure the relationship with the provider with no minimum charge as it takes the financial risk off of you.

Hope this was helpful… Next time, we’ll get into the due diligence for the user experience.

Webinar Consulting Services

It is with great excitement that I share with you the launch of my Webinar Consulting Practice. I’ve assembled the true thoughtleaders in the webinar space to help you monetize your expertise, perfect your craft, and deliver a stellar event. Each member of our team is delivering a 60-minute, one-on-one consultation that is focused on developing a successful for-fee webinar program.

My practice area, BusinessExpertWebinars.com,  focuses on the global strategy in developing a for-fee webinar training program.

Jenny Hamby, SeminarMarketingPro.com, provides marketing strategies to successfully promote your webinar program.

Dan Janal, PRLeads.com, provides insight on how to get PR for your webinars.

Ed Taylor, EdTaylor.com, shares how to leverage the search engines for your webinars (SEO).

Sue Stoen, TheClarityQuotient.com, ensures your presentation is webinar friendly.

Ken Molay, TheWebinarBlog.com, teaches you effective speaking techniques for a webinar environment.

You can learn more about this practice at BusinessExpertWebinars.com/consulting.

How Numbers Can Ruin Your Registration Conversion

Many of the articles I’ve written have numbers in the title like “Ten Ways to Hire More Effectively.” And, many of the free webinars take the same approach and use numbers in the title or in the description of the event. The thinking is that numbers create tangible value which may or may not be true. It works in an article or with a free webinar because the expectation of value is limited. It’s free!

However, when you use numbers in a title in a for-fee webinar, you can unknowingly turn off your registrant prospects. For example, if I told you that I was going to deliver a for-fee webinar titled “Ten Ways to Hire More Effectively,” how much depth would you expect? In a sixty minute webinar, how deep could I possibly go into the subject matter? If all I discussed in the webinar was these ten, I would spend six minutes on each technique. It sure doesn’t feel like you are going to be empowered from this event. It’s more like an information buffet. You’ll get a little of this…a little of that. While you will pay for a food buffet, you will probably not pay for an information one. Your registrant prospects are looking for education and training which means they expect narrow topics and deep knowledge transfer and actionable skills.

Another area where numbers are used haphazardly is in the bullet points of the webinar description. Often times, I read these descriptions and am reminded of Rodney Dangerfield in the Caddyshack scene where he’s in the pro shop. “I’ll take two of these, a half dozen of those, three of these. And, oh that hat…” Using numbers in your bullet points is very dangerous. If you sound like Rodney, you will be taken just as seriously. In one hour, there is only so much ground you can cover. Rather than try to overwhelm them with quantity, blow them away with quality. Tell them what you are going to tell them with an air of mystery and you’ll fill the proverbial room.

The Unique Buying Process in For-Fee Webinars

The seminar industry has specific metrics that allow them to predict attendance. The lion-share of attendees register a month before the event. Seminar promoters can even predict the total number of attendees a month or two in advance based on the buying pattern. Free webinars generate registrations from the first email blast…and why not? It’s free! However, only 25 – 35% will show up to the free webinar since they did not make a commitment to attend.

The for-fee webinar registrant conversion process is different than both seminars and free webinars. Most registrations take place inside 48 hours of your webinar. You read correctly… Why does this occur? With a seminar, the decision is made to register and the registrant immediately goes into Outlook and marks themselves “out-of-office” for that day. It’s etched in stone.

With for-fee webinars, the decision process is almost the complete opposite. The prospect reads your description and thinks, “Wow! This looks really interesting…and if I don’t have a meeting or a conference call at this time, I’m definitely going to attend.” Well, when do they know that their schedule is free? It’s usually the day before or day of your webinar. This is a very important point to remember when you design your marketing campaign. Marketing a for-fee webinar a month in advance is wasted motion.

To generate registrants for your for-fee webinars, you will need multiple communications to your database with a progressive sense of urgency to get them to register for your event.

There’s No Such Thing As A Bio

You read correctly. There is no such thing as a bio. You probably think I’m nuts as you have yours sitting right next to you. The issue isn’t the word “bio.” It’s the word “a” which infers that you have only one bio that is used for all situations.

Many confuse a bio as a statement of credentials, but it is a marketing tool. It’s not just any marketing tool. It is a key component of your registrant conversion strategy for your webinar.

Whether you are a consultant, speaker, or trainer, you need multiple bios for different purposes. The bio that you need for webinar conversion conveys your specific expertise on the subject matter you are presenting in a compelling fashion. Prospective buyers will analyze your bio as part of their due diligence in determining sign-up or not. As a registrant conversion tool, the bio will make or break your event.

When you write your bio for your webinar description, share it with colleagues and ask for their honest opinion to the following question…”If you were interested in training on this topic, would my bio lead you to take the training from me?” Any response other than a resounding “Yes!” should tell you that you have work to do.

The Two Types of Registrant Prospects…and what it takes to convert them

When you are planning to add for-fee webinars into your product mix, you need to be mindful of your two registrant prospects…those who know you and those who don’t.

Those who know you (a.k.a. those in your database) come to the table looking to learn something new from you. Since they are in your database, they have had some experience with you…which is how they got on your list.

With this group, you can get away with mediocre copy and generate some registrants. They don’t read it as closely as they buy because they like your approach. This is not an endorsement for poor copy, but rather a fact that some people will buy if they’ve had a positive first experience with you. They simply want new content from you.

Those who don’t know you are much more challenging to convert in for-fee webinars. They will heavily scrutinize your webinar description…and everything counts. Typos, grammatical errors, and poor formatting will send these prospects running…away from you.

This group also needs to be sold on your expertise. Despite how much you know, you always have hundreds, if not thousands, of competitors. This group asks themselves the fundamental question…”Why should I learn this subject matter from this expert?”

A relevant bio and testimonials are critical in your quest to convert this prospect type. By relevant, I mean that your bio and testimonials should reinforce your expertise to the prospective registrant. The more specific the testimonials to what you are teaching, the more successful you will be in the conversion process.

My Content Is Applicable To Everyone…Except the Registrants

Imagine you are a sales expert and plan to deliver a for-fee webinar on prospecting. You feel that the target audience is anyone that is in sales since what you teach is applicable to any sales person. This seems very logical…except to your prospective registrants.

Here is what they say to themselves…

“I’m in business to business sales, this is a general prospecting webinar and not applicable to me. I won’t sign up.”

“I’m in consumer sales, this is a general prospecting webinar and not applicable to me. I won’t sign up.”

“I sell services, this is a general prospecting webinar and not applicable to me. I won’t sign up.”

“I sell products, this is a general prospecting webinar and not applicable to me. I won’t sign up.”

And on and on… This is one of the biggest speaker/audience disconnects. You feel your content is applicable for all, but the buyer is looking for specificity. If they don’t think your for-fee webinar is an exact match to their needs, they won’t sign up.

The good news for you is that you can create multiple for-fee webinars to accommodate for the different audiences with very little content development. And, you will find your conversion rate for each one is stronger as a result of the targeted approach.

Audience Segmentation As A Registrant Conversion Strategy

When you are offering for-fee webinar training programs, the buying decision is under scrutiny. Let’s say your expertise is in working with small businesses and you plan to deliver a webinar where you teach small business owners how to restore profitability. It is certainly a relevant topic today and will have interest.

The initial thought is a webinar for small business owners on profitability. However, small business is a huge category covering hundreds of business segments. Thus, the reader of this broad description will immediately think that some portion of the content of the webinar is not for their use and may not sign-up. Any time a reader can derive that the content is not applicable, you have a high risk of failing to convert them.

A more effective approach is to consider audience segmentation. What if you had a webinar for small business owners in manufacturing…and another for the service industry, etc. The more focused your positioning strategy for the target buying audience, the more effective you will be in converting attendees in the for-fee webinar.

Even if what you teach is identical in these webinars, your conversion rate will be higher when you are more focused by audience segment. Hopefully, for your sake, the content is very similar in the webinars. As a speaker, it allows you to offer multiple revenue generating webinars with little content design work. A winning proposition!

A thought to keep in mind… The marketing net for webinar buyers is finite. Thinking that you will have more attendees by being broad doesn’t expand the net…it only expands the holes and you end up with fewer attendees. The key is to be laser focused on your positioning so your target buyer says, “Wow! This is designed exactly for me!”

“Webinars Must Be Free!” What A Bunch of $#%&

There has been a lot of buzz lately about the market for “for-fee” webinars. Many say they need to be offered for free or dirt cheap. If you accept that premise, then I’m also guessing that you have no bottled water in your house and watch the 5 basic channels on television. After all, you can get water and television free of charge. Many years ago, George Carlin said it best, “If you nail together two things that have never been nailed together before, someone (insert expletive) will buy it.”

This discussion isn’t limited to webinars. It is the age-old question of marketing and sales. Why would you buy something that you can get for free?  You wouldn’t! People will pay when they perceive value. So often, people have experienced a bait and switch in webinars where they’ve been told that they will learn something and hear nothing, but an infomercial. Trust has certainly been compromised by this phenomenon…and trust is one of the key factors that affects the sale of webinar seats.

The key is to position your for-fee webinars as eLearning training programs. Don’t expect people to pay to hear your research findings, whimsical musings of mistakes companies have made, or a pitch for your book. However, people are conditioned to pay for training. It is not expected that training is delivered free. When you deliver for-fee webinars, you are merely using webinar technology to deliver your trainings. Keep that in mind and you will always be onboard with the for-fee model.

To resolve the trust concern, you can offer a money back guarantee for any attendee who is not satisfied with the event.

The Webinar Title That Will Destroy Your Conversion Rate

“Hey, I wrote a book. I’m going to create a for-fee webinar with the same title…” While that may seem like a logical approach, the reality is that you have crossed the line between “for-fee” and free. People will not pay to hear an infomercial where you are trying to drive book sales. If your book is 200 pages and the webinar is 60 minutes, how deep can you possibly go into the subject matter? Not very…and your prospective registrants know that.

Don’t confuse the issue. If you want to conduct a webinar to promote book sales, offer it for free and use it as a database building exercise. If you want to move to the “for-fee” space, and your book is ten chapters long, you have an opportunity to create 10 different webinars. You can create a webinar based on each chapter and use the event to do a deep dive on the content. Now your webinar is a training event…and people will pay for training.

The Webinar Buyer Versus The Attendee

Regardless of all of the marketing that you do, at the end of the day, the webinar description will make or break the registrant conversion of your for-fee webinar. Don’t be fooled by the free webinars that start the description with “in this webinar, you will learn.” Free webinar hosts have no problem getting registrants…getting people to show up is another story.

The webinar description should be focused on communicating with the target buyer of the webinar, not the attendee. For example, if you teach sales, don’t expect sales people to pay to learn your stuff. It’s not going to happen. Instead, focus on the sales managers and business owners who need to get their sales people trained so they sell more.

Remember this, employees rarely invest in improving themselves. It’s unfortunate, but true. They see it as the company’s responsibility to train them and help them improve their job proficiency. If you focus your webinar description strategy on your target buyer, you are best positioned for success.

The 3 Considerations When Developing A Title For Your “For-Fee” Webinar

When creating your “for-fee” webinar, the title plays a key role in the visibility phase of the process. There are three considerations…

1. If the target buyer for the webinar read the title, would they know that this event is designed for them?

If you use cutesy expressions that are not easily recognized by the buyer, they won’t realize you are trying to communicate with them. If you use your own jargon, they will also be lost. We see this a lot with speakers where they have a branding that they’ve created that they want to use in the title. However, when converting attendees from the general public (a.k.a. those who do not know you) the strategy fails since they aren’t familiar with your branding.

2. Would the target buyer be compelled to read the description?

This is the delicate balance of being catchy, yet educational. If you are too fluffy, you can turn off the prospect. If you are too dry, they will not be compelled to read the description.

3. Is the title SEO-friendly?

Think about the problem you are solving in the webinar. When people search for information on this issue, what terms do they use? Not sure, use the Keyword Tool in Google. It will help you to identify the words your prospects are using to research this issue. You will want to use the most relevant term in your title. This strategy will help bring more visibility to the event as the search engines will associate your training with these keywords.

“I have so much content, but what is saleable in a for-fee webinar?”

As the CEO of Business Expert Webinars, I hear this question a lot. My suggestion is to consider the requests you have had for your services in the last 90 days. What inspired these people to call you? What problem did they have? What is the ramification of not resolving that problem as soon as possible?

As you perform this analysis, hopefully a trend exposes itself. This should allow you to design a training webinar on that content…and you know that there is an audience for it since you are getting inquiries related to this subject.

The key word is relevance which is a blend between importance and urgency (a page out of Stephen Covey). Importance doesn’t sell by itself. You need urgency tied to it to generate attendees in your for-fee webinars.