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SHOW NOTES
This is a question I never thought to answer, but it’s a common one: “When should I go evergreen with my funnel?”
Now, evergreen funnels are typically the ‘sexier’ option – but remember, nothing is for everyone! (In this episode, I’ll explain why.)
And let me give you a heads up: Making this choice is not about making a certain number of sales or funneling a certain number of people first. It’s not that easy.
There’s a much more holistic answer to this question, so tune into the episode to hear more about…
What it means to “go evergreen” to begin with
When + Why to go evergreen with your webinar funnel
What this means if you’re launching with a challenge or video series
PLUS, the hybrid strategy I’ve used with my launches
This question comes from one of my IGNITE students, but I want to share my answer with you, too, because this is an important decision for any digital course creator.
P.S. Once you’ve listened, head over to Instagram to share your thoughts (@emilyhirsh)! I love hearing from you in my DMs – tell me, was this answer helpful to you?
Key Points:
[2:47] Is it about the number of sales?
[4:28] The benefit of doing 5-10 live webinars first
[5:34] Wait… Why go evergreen anyway?
[6:49] What all this means if you’re running a challenge or video series
[9:46] BONUS – Here’s a strategy I’ve used successfully: The Hybrid Model
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Episode Transcripts:
Emily Hirsh: I’m Emily Hirsh, and this is the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Attention innovators, influencers, creators, and game-changing entrepreneurs: Your internet domination begins right here. We are the powerhouse marketers that you’ve been looking for. You’re already making waves in your industry, and we’re here to help amplify those waves of change by creating a connection that cuts through the noise. We take everything you’ve built inside your zone of genius and find its audience. With killer strategy and laser eye for impact, we launch multimillion dollar campaigns and skyrocket your reach online. And now we are doing the unheard of. We’re unveiling everything we’ve learned, taking you behind the scenes with the Hirsh Marketing team, and giving away the secrets to our clients’ success. Stay tuned for top converting strategy, ROI reports, and insider knowledge that you won’t find anywhere else. You’re changing the world, and we’re the team to help.
Hello there, my friends. Welcome back to the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. In today’s episode, I’m actually pulling a question. So what we did this week in my IGNITE course for my new IGNITE students is, we did an … what we called an orientation week. Everyday I did a bonus training for them, and then every afternoon I did a Q and A, like a rapid-fire Q and A. They were supposed to be like 15 minutes, but most ended up being like 30 [minutes], and so I got some really awesome questions that I want to actually carry over to the podcast for everybody else. One of them was, “When does it make sense to go evergreen?” I thought this was a really good question, because it’s actually one, this is why I love this, because it’s one that I would have never thought of to answer, but I think it’s probably a common question that you guys out there might have. We’re going to talk about it a little bit today. It’s probably going to be a shorter episode … and answering this, and helping you guys think about it.
I feel like evergreen is definitely the more sexy, attractive way to go with your marketing, because you don’t have to do live launches, and live launches are hard, and they’re exhausting, and it’s also putting a lot of your eggs in one basket with the live launch. Evergreen is a great goal, I wouldn’t say for everyone, because some people just don’t want or have that business model, but for a lot of people it’s a really good goal. I know a lot of people who would rather, actually, make a little bit less money and have a lower sales conversion if it means that they can go evergreen, and make it consistently, and then not have to go through the work and the energy drain and everything of a live launch.
I totally get that, because I just did one, and we will be doing more. I won’t be evergreen-ing IGNITE for awhile, but we might in the future at some point. I think it is a good idea. So, when does it make sense to go evergreen? This question was followed up by, “Is it after you get a certain amount of sales, or is it after you have …” whatever. I think it was mostly, she was asking, “Is it after you get X amount of sales, then can you go evergreen? Or, is it after you’ve gotten a thousand people in your funnel, then can you go evergreen?” The answer, cut and dry, is, you can go evergreen once you know everything is working. Once you know that you have a converting webinar, or [for] an evergreen webinar, I’m going to use the example … actually I’m going to talk about challenges, too. Really with a webinar, that’s the most common way to go evergreen.
You can go evergreen with your webinar. Also for those of you who are listening, and you’re like, “What the heck is evergreen?” because I just realized it’s kind of an industry term. Evergreen means it’s always on. It’s always running. You’re always promoting ads to this, and people can sign up and buy your product or your offering at any time … versus an open-and-close cart model, where you open the cart and on the 20th you close it on the 27th, and you’re launching, you’re live launching. You can go evergreen once you know everything is converting. The mistake people make, and the biggest thing that you have to make sure it’s converting is, your actual webinar, because once you go evergreen, you can’t change that. It’s running … and so, there is no magic number.
For some people it converts after one or two [webinars]. For some people it takes them 25 [attempts]. Once your webinar is converting and you know you’re hitting your sales percentage goal for that webinar … for example, if you want one percent of all attendees to be buying, you’re hitting that goal, and you’re hitting that goal consistently. I think it’s pretty rare to do one webinar and then make it evergreen, because you don’t have a lot of data. The benefit of doing five, 10 webinars is, you have this data to say, “Look, I’ve improved these conversions, and I’ve seen this get better.” Or, “I know that I’ve gotten this amount of volume through, and then I’ve changed these things, and then I could actually, physically see the numbers change.” If you just do one, you’re like, “Well I think it’s converting,” but what if you could do it better?
What if you actually could get a better conversion? And you will never know, because you just did one webinar. I think you should do at least five [webinars]. Let me say that. But you should never go evergreen until it’s working, because most likely when you go evergreen, your conversion will go down a little bit. It just will, because the energy is different in a live launch versus an evergreen webinar, the urgency is different in a live launch versus an evergreen webinar – and that’s okay. It’s pretty rare that I’ve seen someone have the same exact results, live versus evergreen. But most of the time people are wanting to make the decision to go evergreen for that freedom and for the ability to have more consistency, because if you put all your eggs in [the basket of] twice a year live launch, there is also the risk of, “What if one of those live launches fails? What if something happens? What if a team member of mine messes something up and quits?” Or, I don’t even know. What if something happens, and then you were counting on this result that you can’t get?
So it is risky, live launching, but the actual sales conversion typically, with a live launch, is higher, just because you’re participating a lot more, you’re connecting with your audience. You have that live energy, and there’s usually more urgency, because the doors are closing, they’re not going to be able to buy. You can definitely create that urgency, and you should, in evergreen, but it’s just not the same level. You should go evergreen once your webinar is converting and your funnel is converting. That way, you also have contrast to compare like, “Oh man. We went evergreen, and this dropped way down,” or, “It barely dropped down,” or, “It didn’t drop down.”
You’ll have contrast to compare your live versus evergreen stats so that you can analyze that and look at the gaps and the holes and what do you need to fix. Now I do want to mention challenges and video series. Personally, I think those are really hard to evergreen. I have not seen many successful evergreen challenges, because a challenge requires somebody to be going through live with the person and participating and bringing that energy and a whole group of people doing it at the same time. You can’t do that evergreen, because you’re going to have people joining all different days. You’re not going to be live in a Facebook group and taking them through the content. I would really advise against trying to make a challenge evergreen, and I would change the strategy from a challenge to something else.
Honestly, same with video series. I think today … we did a video series PLF launch style for us. I don’t see that working evergreen as well at all, because you’re going to have a high drop-off. Also, one of the reasons it works so well is, you’re bringing people live through the video series as you’re releasing each video. It’s the complimentary things you’re doing, like in the pop-up Facebook group when you do the bonus Facebook lives that go with that video, or the Q and A, and you’re connecting with people about that. I think that is where the magic comes in, in a live launch, is that energy, that … you participating live and also an entire group of people kind of going through the same experience. The reality is, you just can’t replicate that evergreen. When you’re planning your long-term strategy, if your goal is to go evergreen, maybe you don’t do a bunch of challenges, because then you’re testing something that isn’t what you want long-term.
Or, maybe you do a challenge and a webinar, but then when you go evergreen, you’re just doing a webinar. Or, you do a video series and a webinar, and then when you go evergreen … like, if we bring IGNITE evergreen, it will be a webinar funnel, it will not be a video series. I’m not going to replicate my live launch with a video series funnel and then just make that my funnel, because it’s not going to work. It needs a live component with it. Just be careful of trying to take exactly what you’re doing, if some of the components require the live energy, and some of them do. I think challenges and video series are two that, especially challenges, require everybody to be going through it at the same time together, and having you participate, especially if you’re an influencer. In short, it makes sense to go evergreen when everything is converting, and don’t ever turn a webinar evergreen when it’s not converting. You’re just shooting yourself in the foot doing that.
It’s not a magic number. It’s not 100 people go through this funnel, or 25 people buy it. It’s when you’re hitting your target numbers, and your webinar is converting, your funnel is converting, and you’re getting traffic to convert. Now, I will add one thing. One strategy that I was recommending to people in my group was the weekly live webinar. This is something I’ve done in the past, this is something a lot of our clients have done, where you want this evergreen model where you’re constantly getting leads in sales, but you need to practice your webinar. Instead of turning off and on ads, like twice a month where you do two monthly webinars and then you’re turning off and on ads … the problem with that is, it’s going to be hard to scale. It’s going to be hard to optimize, because as soon as you start to scale and optimize, you’re turning the ads off because the webinar is happening.
What [we’ve] done is, we have a weekly live webinar, and you just keep the ads on, so you don’t put the date in the ads, and you keep the ads on. Then before each week’s webinar, you or your team would change the date and the integration and the time and everything on the page for the next week. Basically, your ads are always running, but you’re going in and changing the date and the time and whatever else on the backend, before the webinar happens. Then you’re doing a weekly live webinar. You’re practicing your webinar. You’re practicing your conversion. You’re comparing each week’s conversions and show up rate and all of that, so that you can fix any holes – but you’re also still running ads the entire time. It’s like a hybrid evergreen/live … it’s like [the] evergreen model, where you’re going to be getting consistent sales, but your ads don’t turn off so that you can actually scale and optimize them without having to start and stop, and start and stop, which is hurtful to, sometimes, your strategy.
That’s an option for people, that I’ve seen a lot of people do in practice with their webinars. Hopefully that does answer, if that was a question of yours, “When do I go evergreen?” If that weekly live webinar is something that would work well for you, it’s a good thing to do, to be practicing your webinar, practicing all your stats. Make sure you track all your numbers week over week. Every client we’ve had to do this, and myself when we did this in the past … a long time ago [when] I did this with an old, old course, we would track each week, all the stats in a spreadsheet, so I could compare week over week the webinar stats. Thanks so much for listening today guys. If you would like to work with Team Hirsh, I did announce on the last episode that we’ve actually had to [make] a wait ist to work with us right now, [it’s] 30 days.
There’s a 30-day wait list right now, to be able to work with us. If you’re planning ahead, in the coming months, I don’t foresee at least some sort of a waiting period, of two to four weeks, going away in the next quarter. So I would plan ahead, and get on our roster, and just start talking to our team, if it’s something you’re thinking about, if you think you’re the right fit. And you can go to HelpMyStrategy.com to book [a free call] with our team, and apply and see if you’re the right fit, and then we can chat more. Thanks so much, guys. I’ll catch you next time.
Thanks for listening to the Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast. Go behind the scenes of multimillion dollar ad campaigns and strategies, dive deep into The Hirsh Process, and listen to our most popular episodes over at HirshMarketingUnderground.com. If you loved this episode of the podcast, do me a favor and head over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review, so we can reach more people and change more lives with this content. That’s all for now, and I’ll catch you next time.