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Yes, webinars work – but not for everyone. The better question is – Will a webinar work for YOU?

In this episode, I’m answering the ever-prominent questions, “Do webinars still work?” and “How do I know whether a webinar will work for me?” I’m walking you through the 4 most important questions to ask BEFORE you jump into marketing your next offering.

We’ll cover…
The primary question people FORGET to ask before they start their webinar
The #1 thing your clients + customers consider before they sign up to attend anything
And how to determine whether a webinar will work for YOU (and what you might do instead)

Tune in for an action-packed episode, and then share your takeaways on IG stories. Tag @emilyhirsh for a shoutout!

Key Points:
[1:43] Not everyone considers this before they launch their webinar (but it will make or break you!)
[5:03] Okay, you know your ICA… but do you have an audience?
[6:50] The #1 thing your clients + customers consider before they sign up to attend anything
[8:52] Webinars work – but how do you know whether they’ll work for YOU?
[11:04] And if a webinar isn’t the right choice, what are your other options?

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Episode Transcripts:  

In today’s episode, I’m going to talk about: Do webinars still work? I think there are people out there saying that webinars don’t work anymore, that it’s old, and it’s not converting, and it’s old news, and basically discouraging the use of webinar. We have several, several, several clients running traffic to webinar, making webinars, making millions of dollars a year doing it. They definitely still work, but I do agree, things have changed. That’s what I’m going to talk about today. Is a webinar right for you? And how do you know if it will work, or it is working if you have one running right now? I think the very first thing that you have to do before you decide to do a webinar, in my opinion, is to really think about your audience. Back up. Who are you selling to? What are they like?

Basically, will they attend a webinar? Will they attend a webinar? Will they watch an hour-long webinar? Is this the right vehicle for your audience to go from a cold or a warm lead to a hot lead or a sale? I think not enough people think about that because they just take a templated webinar or they read a book or they have a course, and they’re like, “I have to do a webinar.” A webinar isn’t right for every single audience or every single offer. This is why I have just ripped apart cookie-cutter marketing in the past on here and in my speeches and whenever I talk to people, because I think that if somebody’s giving you a template, you right away should have a red flag because templates are fine, and there’s general rules that will work regardless, you know, general practice in digital marketing that is pretty across the board, but you need somebody who knows your audience that you’re marketing to and your offer, because those two things could change an entire funnel.

That’s where the question … Is the webinar right for you? Some examples of audiences that a webinar may not be right for are people who would never have any time to watch a webinar. In some cases, it’s been tough to get mom audiences to watch webinars, not impossible, but then also you could say, “I need to keep my webinar like 30 minutes or shorter, because this audience is not going to watch the whole thing.” So, audiences that just don’t have time to watch a webinar. Also audiences who are really, like, seven plus figure business owners are tough to get to watch a webinar. Now, I’m not saying that webinars don’t work for an audience of seven figure plus business owners. It’s just a lot harder to get them to sit through a webinar. I know I have a $2.5 million company, and I never watch webinars. I would watch a webinar if I’m trying to hack the webinar and see what they’re doing, if it’s cool. That’s the only time, but I wouldn’t sign up for a webinar to buy somebody’s product.

For people who are very high-level and don’t want to sign up for a webinar, watch a webinar, what we’re seeing a lot of success with is content straight on Facebook and then a clear call-to-action straight on Facebook to whatever your next step is. For a lot of people targeting high-level business owners, they try to get them on a sales call, because they’re trying to sell them a high-level product, so just straight ads to book a call could work on Facebook if the audience is already warmed up. A lot of times, million dollar plus business owners, they know what they want, and they will make decisions extremely fast if the trust is there. They don’t necessarily … and I’m not saying this is true for every single scenario, because templated, cookie-cutter marketing doesn’t exist. I’m just saying, generally, seven plus figure business owners don’t even need to sit through an hour-long webinar if they already have a trust and, more importantly, they’ve already seen some sort of result from you in terms of testimonials or case studies.

They will then usually be able to make a decision or be interested in buying or working with you. The first question on, “Do webinars still work? Should I do a webinar? Is my webinar working?” is: Do you know your audience? Have you really thought through, “Should my audience go to a webinar? Are they ready for a webinar? Will they watch a webinar? Will they sign up for a webinar?” The next thing that I believe is super key and really becoming more and more key as time goes on is: Do you have a following? Because it’s getting harder and harder. Now, it’s not impossible, but it’s getting harder and harder to just launch a webinar as a brand new page, brand new business with no background, no credibility, not being known in the industry, and see success. Our clients who see massive success with their webinars, a lot of them either have a following when they launch a webinar, and they’ve put time and effort into building this following.

We obviously work with a lot of high-level influencers who have massive followings already. All of those influencers have massive success in their webinars. Every one of them does an amazing job in their webinar. Two, if you don’t have that, it’s not that it won’t work for you, but you have to put time and effort into building that and, ideally, driving warm traffic, somebody who already knows you and trusts you, to your webinar. Having a following or putting time, effort, and money into growing a following, growing trust, growing your brand awareness will help a lot with having a successful webinar and a webinar funnel. The next thing is having credibility. People are definitely more and more hesitant out there in the, especially, online digital marketing space.

You have to have some credibility for a webinar to work for you, meaning on the webinar and even in your branding, your brand awareness phase of your marketing, you are showing success, whether it’s success or happiness from your products, your students, your clients, whatever that looks like, but you have to be showcasing that because that’s the number one thing people want right now. They want to see that success. If they can see that, they will trust you so much more than if you can’t show that. You know, if you’re brand new, you have to go out there and get some credibility, prove that your offering works, prove that your product works. That’s why something that I actually talk about a lot is, at the end of the day, if you don’t have a good offering or a good product, and it’s just not value, not going to get people results, and you’ve not put a lot of time and effort into your actual offering, at the end of the day, marketing will only go so far.

I think people out there are like, “You can market anything, even if it’s a bad product.” That might be true for a small period of time, but every time I’ve seen somebody try to come in and market a product that’s not good, it’s not getting their students results, it’s not getting their clients results, they don’t put time and effort into the actual value of the product, and, honestly, as the CEO and the creator of your business, that should be one of your number one jobs. But not doing that, and not having a good offering, or not having a good product, will make it so you don’t have credibility, and it will make it really, really hard for you to be successful. It might work for a few months, but over the long-term, when people start sharing their results or their dissatisfaction, it will get around. This is really important to pay attention to, and I’m very passionate about talking about that.

The next thing is actually being good at the webinars yourself. We’ve run into this a few times, where a webinar wasn’t the best option for a client, because they weren’t necessarily the best personality to show up on webinars. That’s okay. Not everybody is meant to be on a webinar and show up on a webinar. Sometimes some people teach too much, or they have a really hard time pitching on a webinar and getting excited through the pitch versus getting nervous and having their voice go down and quieter when it gets time to pitch, or just showing up with general video-friendly enthusiasm on a webinar. That’s not everybody, and that’s okay. You could still sell things if you can’t show up on the webinar, but what’s painful to watch is when somebody who doesn’t belong on a webinar, and it’s just not their thing, and they are forcing themselves on a webinar, and they are miserable, and you can tell, and the energy on it is not good, that will never convert.

Everybody will have a hard time in the beginning. If it’s your first webinar, you have to go through, and you have to practice, and you have to get better at it and improve the pitch. I encourage you to go back and watch your own webinars even if it’s painful. I know I hate watching and listening to myself, but I would do that if I was doing a webinar. I’ll watch myself speak, because I’m trying to improve that. We will be our biggest critic, for sure. I encourage that, but also, sometimes, and you might even need somebody else to tell you this who can have tough love, but we’ve said this to clients, like, “After watching four or five of your webinars and seeing the performance and seeing the way you show up on the webinar and the drop off rate, where people are dropping off and why, we don’t think this is the best vehicle to deliver your funnel.”

That’s okay, but you have to be able to admit that because, otherwise, it sucks, and it’s really painful. Is a webinar your strongest way to deliver information and sell, or does it actually hurt you doing a webinar? Some people will fall in that category. You’re probably thinking, “If I shouldn’t do a webinar, and I’m not good at a webinar, what else should I do?” Well, some people are really good at writing, and some people can sell through email or they can nurture in a Facebook group or they can send people to a challenge. Go back to the question of knowing your audience. What’s the best way? Just think [through] this one question: What’s the best way for me to connect with my audience? What am I really good at doing? What do I enjoy doing? The enjoyment part is really important, because if you’re not enjoying it, the energy will be off there. People will feel it.

What do I enjoy doing? Then, what does my audience enjoy engaging in? Because that’s also what we need. Those are the things you have to think about if a webinar will work for you. My answer is yes, absolutely, webinars will work, but I think because they’ve been promoted out there so much and so many people have seen success with it that people think it will work for anyone, any business, or any product, or any audience, and that is not true. It will work for a lot, but sometimes your audience, or you, might have a better way that you deliver value and ultimately sell your product. If you ever want custom strategy, if you want to work with the Hirsh team, go to HelpMyStrategy.com to apply to work with us, and thanks so much for tuning in, guys.