Do you use Webinars successfully as a core customer aquisition strategy?

Sean Goldsmith Interviewing The Worlds Top Franchise Experts

November 21st, 2014

Hi everyone,

I have been looking at shifting my sales strategy to one based on funneling clients onto Webinars. I want to do this so that I can demonstrate the value I can add to their business before asking for the sale. Have you been able to successfully use Webinars as your central sales funnel and if so, do you have any tips/resources you can recommend?

Deborah MSW Business & Entrepreneurs Solutions. I help people increase their income and happiness. Authentic Foundation & Framework.

December 2nd, 2014

Webinars are a key component of many sales funnels. In my experience creating a flow of clients for my programs, and coaching solo-preneurs who often are selling themselves and their services - going right to the sale is often counterproductive.

Studies show that many sales are not closed until after 7 "touches" yet most people who sell stop at 2 , maybe 3. By incorporating webinars into your structure you accomplish multiple things beyond the ability of prospects to hear your voice, learn from you and potentially interact in a group setting during the webinar. You also set up a flow of "touches" beginning with the initial engagement, sign up for the webinar, follow up email login info, email reminder, webinar, webinar follow up and then of course if you do it right, the ability to use email marketing to continue interacting until the sale is made.

These days Google Hangouts on Air are becoming the go-to webinar resource. Hangouts can be incorporated into many different platforms and thus can appear to be hosted on your own website or leadpages, etc... They are automatically recorded and can then be re-purposed, even pulling out the audio file to use in your podcasts.

Please let me know Sean if I can help you clarify this further.

Warmly,
~Deborah

Corey Blaser Sailor. Mormon. Entrepreneur.

November 21st, 2014

Webinars and product demos work if you get the funnel correct and consistent. You should take a look at both DemoChimp and InsideSales.

July 23rd, 2015

There are several dynamics at work with webinars. First, it is incredibly important to fulfill the promise of the webinar topic and do it well. When someone registers for a webinar they're making a commitment of an hour of their time to consume that content. That commitment is much more telling of their level of interest than a search query. Next, you can immerse your attendees in a branded experience for an hour or longer; influence them with subject matter experts, qualify them with polling questions and provide them with a first class education on the topic. If you execute this well you'll be able to convert a significant percentage into sales opportunities. I've executed webinars where a VP of IT from a Fortune class company called us right after the event, flew to visit us the next week and we had a six-figure deal done within 45 days. Not every event converts this well but with the right mix of content and by educating the audience you put the law of reciprocation into action and attendees are much more willing to enter into a dialogue post event. I also execute funnel facilitation webinars that address barriers to getting deals done and help accelerate prospect flow through the sales funnel.

In terms of platforms, I've used a bunch. I like Webex but don't like their proprietary recording format. GoToWebinar is okay but not as flexible as I'd like. Adobe Connect is okay but I've had technical issues with their pods. One thing that I've recently found that I like is webinar jam which is a software wrapper on top of Google+ Hangouts. It is a lot less expensive than Webex and GoToWebinar and it works pretty well - the polling question options aren't always configurable to my exact needs but other than that it works well. Here is a link to their webiste www.webinarjam.com.

Laura M.D. Owner at Laura F. Dabney, MD, PC

July 23rd, 2015

For webinar newbies, Stealth Webinar is very good. Easy to use and, included in the reasonable fee, workers who do all the uploading, formatting and presenting of your webinar.

Mike Rozlog Advisor at TechColumbus

July 24th, 2015

For inexpensive we use https://www.join.me/ basically $20 dollars per month and up to 50 attendees. Not bad tech and our customers and potential customers don't seem to mind it.

Anonymous

July 27th, 2015

You have some great advice here from Corey and Deborah, they have some good points.

We used webinars at my old company to great success. After a lot of learning we realized:

- make them short, and advertise them as short. No one wants to listen for an hour.

- most leads come from after the webinar when you follow up, send recordings and post on slideshare

- expect 50% of attendees to show up

- make sure it sounds slick and professional - rehearse!

- only put people with good clear voices, and an uplifting / enthusiastic tone on the webinar

- don't make it a pitch, make it a story

You can find my old ones below, and feel free to ping me if you have any questions I can help you with:

http://www.chango.com/resources/shows/the-programmatic-marketing-opportunity/

July 27th, 2015

If your content strategy is on target and delivers value than you can easily get 70%+ of the registrants to attend and hold the audience for an hour+. I've had webinars that were originally planned for an hour run almost two because of the robust Q&A and engaged audience. While it is important to have speakers that communicate well, I have found function over form wins every single time - it is all about educating. If you can deliver the education in an entertaining way - all the better.

Anonymous

July 28th, 2015

Sean, webinars can reduce the sales cycle significantly and build a relationship with the audience. It's important to decide on how you will conduct the webinar. You can do small format (one to one) or large format (large audience) but essentially the same material can shared in both. The real difference is the potential value of the opportunity. You will need to know your audience, material and topic. Don't wing it! Practice as much as you can beforehand and stay on topic. You loose all value of a face-to-face meeting in a webinar. Your body language and other nuances that are easily picked in a face-to-face meeting will be missed by your audience. Remember build rapport and be a human, not a script reading prop where just the mouth moves. Lastly buy good equipment! The $5 headset would not be a good choice.

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