[social_warfare]
SHOW NOTES
I’ve been really excited lately. Why? Because live webinars are CRUSHING IT right now!
Any dedicated business owner or serious entrepreneur should be super excited about this fact too.
✔️More people are at home, looking for ways to innovate and improve their businesses.
✔️More people are opting-in to webinars
✔️More people are actually showing up to webinars
✔️Cost per lead is down
✔️Cost per webinar registration is down
And … SALES ARE UP!
You know what this tells me? Right now, we have a HUGE opportunity to connect, sell, give value, and build our audiences.
BUT there are key things that you have to remember in order to have success with webinars.
In this episode, I’m going to tell you the exact strategies we implement with our live webinars here at Hirsh Marketing along with:
- How to shift your messaging to be as relevant as possible to the current climate
- How to incentivize people to actually show up to your webinar
- How to support and inspire your audience as much as possible
Once you’ve listened, tell me what you think about this episode over on Instagram (@emilyhirsh). Your feedback helps me create future episodes of this podcast!
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Emily Hirsh:
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. How are you all doing? Thank you so much for tuning in today. Today is a day that I am super focused on content. It’s been a little bit difficult to find time for recording podcasts. It’s probably the hardest thing because it has to be like a perfect storm where my kids are quiet enough, William is asleep and my husband’s got the other two kids and they’re not screaming outside of my office. Those of you who have a podcast and are parents right now probably totally get what I’m saying. We’ve really adapted to this new normal of the kids here, but it’s definitely not easy and I’m super grateful for my business. I’ve only been able to work like 25-30 hours a week and can’t put in anymore and I’m not feeling like I’m drowning in work.
My team is absolutely crushing it. Our clients are crushing it and I’m just super excited. Today I’m talking about why live webinars are doing so well right now across the board. So, every Monday I’ve talked about this before, we have an ads team meeting where we all get together and we talk about what’s working, what’s not working. It’s a meeting where I sit there, most of the time on mute and it’s one of my favorite meetings because I learned so much from my team’s collaboration. So we talk about strategies that are working in their accounts, people bring up issues they’re seeing just to try to get collaboration from the whole team, and that’s probably one of my favorite things is team Hirsh, just we have so much behind the scenes data and intel from all of the ad spend we manage, all of the clients we manage, all the strategies we see and the situations we see and the things we test that it supports our whole entire client base and our own business.
So one of the things that came up in one of our recent meetings was how well live webinars are doing right now, especially during this time with COVID and, and people at home and people consuming more content. We’ve had a couple situations with clients where we took a webinar that was regularly evergreen, meaning it was constantly running. We’re running traffic to it. It was automated. It was not a live webinar, to their funnel. And we had them do it live, tweaking the content just a little bit to be relevant to the times. Right now in the current reality, every single time we’ve done this, it’s done really well.
We also did this for our own company. I’ve done several live webinars where I took my existing micro webinar that we were running traffic to. It was like a 27 minute training that we’ve been running traffic to since like November of last year. I audited it, updated it strategy-wise, but then also made it specific to COVID content. So basically everything I teach in there, I tied back and related to what’s happening right now and how to strategize your marketing and support my audience through the times right now. And then I basically kept, you know, kept everything the same. I didn’t change the offer. The offer is to book a call on there. It’s still the same. I’ve done that webinar live several times and it’s working so well.
So this is kind of a podcast to talk about and encourage you to do a live webinar right now and at least test it if you haven’t. And if you have, I’d be curious how it’s working for you, but I want to talk about why it’s working so well and some key things that you have to remember in order to have success with it. So first of all, our theory behind why it’s working so well right now is because more people are actually watching webinars. People are, it’s like the old days again, it’s like how it was four or five years ago in webinars started to become a big thing. People are watching them and high quality leads are watching them. On my last webinar we had a $20 million business owner apply to work with us as a client and another like $5 million. Like they were all very qualified leads that were sitting on my webinar watching and then going to apply for a call and we closed several clients from that one webinar.
The first one I did and it’s just continued on like that. And I was like, wow, people like high quality people are watching webinars and I used to say in the past like if you’ve listened to past podcasts, you might have heard me say this: high quality leads when you’re selling high ticket, don’t always watch webinars. And that’s been true. So this is where marketing shifting and changing happens so quickly, especially in a time like this where you know one way it’s this way one day, where you know people aren’t watching a lot of webinars, you have to accommodate that with the micro webinars. The goal behind that is it’s a short 20-ish minute video that you watch without an opted. I did a whole podcast on that strategy and the reason we went to that strategy was because high quality people were not opting in and watching webinars.
But now with COVID and with lockdown and with how everything is, people are watching webinars now and high quality leads meaning people who you’re going to try to sell high ticket for. I need very successful business owners and serious business owners on my webinar, especially to become our premier clients. Now. We have recently shifted things where we are also selling my course through our application, so we’re basically splitting people based on where they’re at in their business and still talking to them if they’re a candidate for Ignite, so I can bring in those other huge percentage of people who aren’t quite ready to hire us, but still in order for it to be a massive success for me, I would like seven figure business owners to be on my webinar and so in the past that has been hard. I’d gotten a lot of more like six figures and people that are more at the beginning stages and are looking for help and so that’s why we did the micro webinars, but now it’s changed and so people have more time on their hands.
I also believe that people are looking for unique and innovative solutions and so that’s one of the things that’s a key. Your webinar and your webinar content has to be positioned in the way that it is unique and innovative and relevant to the current reality and the current times right now. And not just be like another webinar because people want solutions to these new problems. And so, you know, for me, for example, our webinar is about marketing in these times, how to get your Facebook ads to work right now. How, you know, if they’re not working, how to leverage these cheap Facebook ad costs. And so people are looking for that solution crisis, and, and all that’s happening has created new problems, which means we have to create new solutions that didn’t exist before. That’s where the opportunity lies. So your content needs to be relevant to this time for it to work, like not just your offer and how you position that, but your actual content.
So if you have a webinar and you have like a signature webinar, perfect webinar, and you’ve run traffic to it in the past or running in the past, my suggestion would be take that webinar and up-level it so that it’s relevant to the times, however you need to do that for your business. Another one of our clients, she’s a life coach and so, and she does like healing events, but she did a webinar and that, that was specifically for this time specifically around helping people through this time and supporting them and coaching them through this time. It did so well. It was like 60 cent leads, 300% return on her ad spend. Amazing. Because we were very specific with the messaging to be relevant now. So that’s a huge thing.
More people are watching the webinars. My theory is they’re sitting at home, but also more than that, they’re not just sitting at home bored because I know that I’m not just sitting at home bored. I have three kids and am trying to run a business. Like I’m not just sitting around bored, but I have watched a few webinars because I’m looking for new solutions and new ideas because it’s like it’s a whole new world right now. And so that’s actually the more important piece is don’t just be like, “Oh people are sitting at home so they’ll come to my webinar,” but make your content so that it’s so good it provides new solutions, new ideas to the current reality and the current way, the current problems people are having so that they, because they have to go create new solutions they’ll be very interested in coming to your live webinar.
Also sales are up. So this is pretty cool like we’ve seen, because webinars are working so well, it’s kind of like this domino effect that is helping sales because we’re seeing up to half the amount of cost per lead that we were paying before. So for ours we were paying $3-$4 cost per lead when I normally paid $8. So what that means is for less money, I’m able to get more people on my webinar. But if I spend the same amount I normally would, I’m able to get like double the amount of people on my webinar, which usually just results in more sales because more people are going to be watching the end, you know the pitch on the webinar. Also the show up rate is up, people are so interested in coming and they have time to do this. They’ve created time like a lot of people’s reality and regular schedule is all jumbled, and so they can make time to actually show up to a webinar live.
You obviously can do things to incentivize people. We give something away on my webinar. We recommend clients do that. You know you have it all set up in the backend with reminder emails and Many Chat. Just trying to get that live show up rate as high as we can. But we’re seeing like 30% live show up rate, which is really good. In the last year I’ve seen show up rate drop to like 20% and below when it used to be like 30% it’s really cool cause we’re back to where we were four years ago when all of this stuff was working so well and then it got so saturated it stopped. My belief is that right now is going to push out the real business owners and the real entrepreneurs and the businesses with real solutions and who are dedicated. They’re going to come out on top and everybody else is going to fall off and so it’s creating all this opportunity for us legitimate business owners. That’s my theory.
So because cost per lead and cost per webinar registration is down, that means you’re getting more people signed up for your webinar, which means you’re getting more people on your webinar and show up rate is up so you’re getting more people on your webinar in that case too. That means more people are listening to you pitch at the end of your webinar, which should result in more sales if you do it right. Now, the key here with the sales piece is that you have to again, tie it to the current climate. You have to make sure that your offer relates to what people are going through right now because if you work so hard to adjust the content in your webinars to get people on, you’ve got the messaging in the ads adjusted, you got the webinar content adjusted and you get people on the webinar and then you get to your pitch and you just like do it the exact same, you don’t make any correlation or connection to how it’s going to support them today and right now then you’re going to lose them because they’re going to be like, “Hmm, I could wait a few months for this.” Like it’s too uncertain of a time.
So there’s two ways that you could either do both or one of these things to do this. One is of course, adjust the messaging and how you actually position the offer. How is it going to support them right now during this time? You need to be able to answer that question and why do they need to take action and either buy or, like for me, it’s apply to work with us right now during this time. So for us, we have limited spots as clients. Ad spends not going to be cheap forever. We’ve opened up specific strategy sessions to talk to us about your business in today’s time right now and we don’t normally offer these strategy sessions. Those are all things I’m saying on the webinar to tie my normal offer into the current times.
Maybe it’s the way you positioned a problem. Like if you sell business coaching, then you can talk about how right now if you don’t have a business coach, if you don’t have support in your business and you’re kind of flailing and alone, you’re going to lose money and you can’t afford to do that. And so you want to really push that. Like why does this person need to take action right now? Who’s on your webinar? Why do they need to buy or sign up or apply or whatever your call to action is, why do they need to do it right now? And how does it relate to their current state? And spend some time thinking about where your audience is and if you were just in a casual conversation with them, how would you answer those questions? How would you answer that to them so that they knew what they needed to do and why they needed to do it now and until that’s clear, your pitch won’t be as good as it can be on the webinar.
So the first way that you could adjust this is just how you’re positioning it. For me, my offer is still the exact same, so what they get sold on a sales call of our services or our Ignite course, it’s the same because it’s going to solve all their problems. It’s going to do everything we promise. I don’t need to change my offer itself in my situation. I just have to change the positioning of the offer just a little bit to stay relevant and so that’s what I’ve done.
In some cases, you might have to tweak your offer just a little bit to support your audience during this time. An example of that could be if you had a course, if you add an online course, maybe you add an additional training session or an additional module or an additional resource in there that’s going to help your audience through this time. If you’re a business coach, maybe you’re talking about how to apply for the financial aid that’s out there, or maybe you’re just saying, I’m going to do a bonus weekly call with you during this economic crisis during this recession, whatever. I’m trying to be careful about using the word crisis and recession because I don’t think we are in a crisis or in a recession yet as of recording this. Like, I think it’s too early to say that I don’t like using it, so I’m backpedaling on that. But maybe you’re just providing that extra support and community that they need. Maybe you’re doing a specific audit for them.
So if you’re selling a course or a product, maybe you have to tweak what you’re selling to still be relevant. That might be the case for you. And I did do a podcast about the danger of distraction. Because I don’t want you to think, “Oh, I have to go make a brand new offer or I have to go like throw everything away and like sell something new to a new audience”. There’s a lot of opportunity right now. So you don’t want to do that. But you might have to add extra support or resources to your offer to be even more enticing to people right now. So those are two things that you can think about. You should do at least one of them, at least the messaging. You might also have to adjust your offer. And in some cases you don’t.
In my case, I don’t because I can still help people with my existing offer today and it doesn’t need anything else besides what we already offer because we’ve already adapted it to supporting people through this time by having our team be aware of it and creating strategies that work during this timeframe and just staying on top of it so we don’t have to change what we’re selling.
So in summary, my suggestion is that you test out a live webinar. You take maybe an existing webinar that you have or you create a new one and you solve a problem in the webinar that your audience is having and that’s how you attract them and it’s relevant to the times right now. And if you stay really relevant to the times right now and the things your audience are asking and the questions they have and the things they need and the desires they have and the problems they have, if you stay relevant to that you will get really amazing cost per registration signups, really great show up rate, and then you have to deliver on the content, like go deep on it in the webinar and actually deliver value. Actually make people believe that right now they can accomplish whatever it is you’re going to help them accomplish. In my webinar at the least, I want people to walk away at the end of it and feel like, “I got to go get some Facebook ads up because this is going to help me grow my business” and I want them to be fired up.
On my webinar. I sit there and I tell people like, you have two choices right now. You can sit and wait and wait for this to pass by and go back to normal, or you can rise up to the occasion as a CEO and a leader right now and figure out how to generate sales and leads in your business. The choice is yours. And I want at the end of my webinar, regardless if they apply and they decide to, you know, move forward and work with us, I want them to feel very inspired to go and market their business, to step up as a CEO to generate leads, to generate sales, whether that’s with Hirsch marketing or not. And so your webinar needs to have that goal to inspire and motivate and empower your audience in whatever way that you do that with your brand. Whether it’s business coaching, health coaching, education support, e-commerce, even like whatever it is that is your job to do that in the webinar and then, customize how you position your offer so that it is also relevant. Either the messaging and or changing up the offer, the way it’s delivered so that it stays relevant. Because obviously if you’re like in person events is a part of your offer. Like you’ll have to shift that, you know, and you’ll have to still make it relevant. But maybe also adding additional support is how you’re going to support your audience through this.
So webinars are crushing it right now. That’s the message from team Hirsch from our strategy update. I’m super excited to see this cause they’re just, webinars are such an amazing, amazing opportunity to sell and connect and give value and build your audience. I’m just excited to see this kind of like come back. It’s almost a time where you can rewrite how you do the webinar. Like we’re trying some new things on it and testing different things each week and it’s fun. Like we’re, we’re kind of setting the new foundation and I truly believe that the companies who are doing that right now and who are staying ahead of it and are deciding like, I’m going to step up, I’m going to rise up, I am going to take action right now are the ones who are going to be thriving by the end of this.
So it’s your choice guys. If you want support with creating one of these webinars strategies, implementing it, executing it, everything to do with it, strategy, implementation, execution of the ads and the strategy you can go to help my strategy.com and see if you qualify to work with team Hirsh. Thanks so much for tuning in today guys and I’ll see you on the next episode.