How To Create Magnetic Webinars

How To Create Magnetic Webinars 10 Ways to Generate More Leads, Increase Sales, and Captivate Your Target Audience With Webinars by Lewis Howes

Introduction 4 1. Create A Compelling Registration Page 8 2. Promote It Everywhere 17 3. Remind Those Who Have Registered 19 4. Start On Time 22 5. Know Your Audience 24 6. Be Passionate! 26 7. Keep Things Interesting 27 8. Content, Content, Content 30 9. Call To Action 32 10. Finish Strong and Follow Up 34 Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 3

It was March of 2009 when I had the privilege of being on my first webinar. I had just released my first book, LinkedWorking: Generating Success On The Worlds Largest Network (with co-author Frank Again on the power of using LinkedIn for your business), and I was starting to figure out my place in the world in my professional career. My first webinar really set me off to start doing more and more webinars. I had the good fortune to be interviewed by NY Times Best Selling Author, successful online marketing millionaire, iphone app creator; (and the list goes on) Joel Comm. Before this time, I had no idea what a webinar actually was, and I hadn t even been on a tele-seminar yet. All I knew was that I needed to create a slideshow presentation and speak about my LinkedIn tips to an audience of 1,000 people or so. As a green and struggling 25 year-old entrepreneur just a little over a year out of retirement from professional football, I was nervous and felt overwhelmed about the entire webinar process. Little did I know that this would be the foundation for helping me expose my professional brand, products, and services to a targeted audience in a time efficient and productive way. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 4

To make a long story short, I presented on Joel Comm s webinar to an audience of targeted buyers, and at the end of the presentation I offered a very soft pitch for a $150 in-depth, hands on training on how to get the most out of LinkedIn to build your business. When the webinar ended and my pits stopped sweating I got the courage to see if I actually generated any sales and I was amazed at the outcome. Within 30 minutes of the webinar...... There was over $6,300 in my account!!! I was blown away! I was running around the room like I just caught the winning touchdown in a championship game. It was really a great feeling for me, a struggling entrepreneur who again was very new in the online marketing world with very little business experience. This type of webinar was an affiliate webinar (more on this later) which basically meant I owed Joel a commission on every sale I generated as it was his network who was live on the call. So after I payed him his cut I came home with over $3,150 right then and there. And I was able to build a nice little base of customers, testimonials, and other opportunities based on this single webinar. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 5

I don t know about you, but after I brought in $3,150 for an hour of my time on a webinar I thought. I should do one of these every day!. Ever since then I have been using webinars nearly every week. Later in 2009 I connected with Twitter expert and friend Sean Malarkey and we had a similar experience with our first webinar doing over $12,500 in sales in a 60 minute session. I ve made a ton of mistakes on webinars including starting late (a cardinal sin), losing the audio from one of our speakers (sorry Joel), not having the right slides up, putting the wrong website link on our slides, emailing the attendees the wrong webinar link... and the list goes on. However, every time I made a new mistake, I added it to the checklist of things that needed to happen before, during and after every webinar, and my skills improved the more I conducted webinars on a consistent basis. I still make mistakes, or forget certain points I wanted to include on each webinar, but the more webinars I do, whether they be live, recorded, free, paid, affiliate webinars, content webinars, etc... my business continues to Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 6

grow and it feels good to know that this can all happen from the comfort of my couch (or anywhere I am in the world during the time of the webinar). What I m about to share with you in the next pages is the 10 most important things you need in place to create, promote, and manage magnetic webinars. These are the same strategies I use in during my webinars, and some of the same strategies of other marketers who successfully conduct six and seven figure profitable webinars on a monthly basis. I hope you enjoy, and feel free to learn more about me (Lewis Howes) by clicking HERE or sign up to learn how you can get more out of creating Magnetic Webinars HERE. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 7

1 Create A Compelling Registration Page This can definitely make or break your webinar. A clean sign up page with correct information and a clear call to action is the key to setting up the success of the webinar along with maximizing conversions for those who look at the page to those that actually sign up for your webinar. Even if you host a free webinar (which the majority are, for lead generation) the topic is still not going to apply to all that look at the page. If the webinar teaches job seekers how to get a guaranteed $100,000 a year paying job in one day or less and you send that registration page to 1,000 people desperately looking for a job, you may only get about 55%-75% of the people to actually sign up (and that s on the high end really). You can either use a generic registration page from GoToWebinar.com or other webinar providers, or you can create a custom-branded page and use a script to pass through the sign up information for your webinar. Here are three good examples of both options on the next few pages. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 8

Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 9

These three images represent two custom sign up pages and one nonbranded sign up page. All of which use the GoToWebinar service provider. Some say the branded sign up process converts better because you can add more images, incorporate some clean design, and make it your own. Then again, people are more familiar with the look of a normal GoToWebinar sign up page if they have been on webinars before, so that adds an element of trust for people as well. I believe you should keep it simple on yourself and just create a clean generic sign up page with the webinar provider you use, and test using design templates down the line. In reality, you want to create something you feel comfortable with, and include a message that fits your personality, otherwise it will be hard to keep up a facade with copy that doesn t fit your unique voice. Besides creating compelling marketing copy to entice viewers to register for your webinar, you want to make sure you are collecting enough information from them for you to use down the line. Personally, I like to keep things simple and usually only ask for first name, last name, and email. However, some businesses would like to have more Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 12

information when it comes to their lead generation and sales funnel process. Here are the optional fields you can use with a webinar provider like GoToWebinar: Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 13

My current marketing needs really only require a name, email and sometimes a phone number, but other than that I don t need a lot of information from people to have the register for my webinars. This can help or hurt me and my business depending on the way you look at it. For starters, by having only three fields for attendees to sign up with, it breaks down the barriers of entry, or sign up, and I m able to get more registrations with names and emails than if I had a longer sign up process with more required fields to fill out. See the example image on the next page to see how you could ask for more detailed information and really be able to know your audience better, and have more information to follow up with in your sales process. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 14

Again, there is no right or wrong way to have people sign up for your webinars, it just depends on what your main focus of the webinar is, and what you need for it to achieve your business objectives. Summary I like to keep things simple on my registration pages, however you need to know what type of information you need for your sales process with your leads. Try using the generic sign up page with your webinar provider, then get creative with branded sign up pages after you get the hang of it. Create compelling bullet points and give reasons for people to sign up, otherwise you will be the only one on the webinar. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 16

2 Promote It Everywhere In my opinion, and in the opinion of almost everyone that hosts webinars, the more people on the webinar live, the better the outcome (usually). There just seems to be a different atmosphere when you know there are 1,000 people listening and watching your webinar as opposed to 10 people. You become more animated, more excited, and there are a ton of interesting questions that come though the chat box. Overall it s a better experience for both the presenter and the attendees...if done right that is. Here is a list of the places you would want to promote your webinar: Email Marketing Facebook Events Facebook Fan Pages/ Groups Facebook Ads LinkedIn Events Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 17

LinkedIn Groups LinkedIn Ads Twitter Creating a Free Report Webinar Directories Blog Posting Guest Blog Posts Live Events Summary All of these bullets are free ways you can generate potential sign ups for your webinar, except for the Facebook and LinkedIn ads, which both have a cost, but if done right will bring highly targeted leads as well. Promote your webinar sign up page in as many places possible, and the outcome will much more enjoyable for both the presenter and attendees. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 18

3 Remind Those Who Have Registered This is a biggie. Most webinar promotions go for roughly 4-7 days. If someone registers on day one of the promotion, you will need to keep them posted about the time the webinar begins. Of course you will post the date and time on the registration page, but we live busy lives and forget a number of things (at least I tend to from time to time). In order to get the maximum amount of attendees you will need to send some type of reminder to those who have already signed up. The best way is to simply send an email reminder to all of the registered attendees. You can either use a script that sends sign ups directly through to your email marketing provider in a list that you can mail at another time, or you can export your registered attendees list (if you are using GoToWebinar) and import them into icontact (if that happens to be your email marketing provider). Unfortunately some email marketing providers don t allow you to import lists and therefore you could use the script to bypass this process. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 19

If you are hosting a free webinar you are looking to get a 50%-60% attend rate from the people that have registered. If it is a paid webinar (one that attendees have paid to attend) then you are likely to receive a higher percentage. One way my partner Sean and I like to approach this strategy is to send a reminder email anywhere from 10-30 minutes prior to the start with a simple message like this: Subject: Message: Hope to see you in 10 minutes... Hi [first name], I just wanted to remind you that the webinar on XYZ is starting in a few minutes and we would love to see you on. Feel free to ask a question live if you like as it would be great to hear from you. See you on the live webinar and here is your link to join right now: www.webinarlink.com Lewis Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 20

With the amount of people who need friendly reminders about many things including webinars, it can only help to send out a quick note to catch their attention and let them know what they signed up for in the first place is about to start. I also like to send a reminder message about an hour or two before to those that have registered on the Facebook event created for that specific webinar. Summary Anything you can do to remind those that have registered will increase the number of live attendees, and in the long run increase your profits if you are selling a product or any type of service towards the end of your free webinar. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 21

4 Start On Time It s the top of the hour and I want to thank you once again for being one of the action takers to attend this live webinar. Let s get started... That s a sample of what attendees should hear at the moment the webinar is supposed to start. Not 5 minutes or even 30 seconds after the original start time. You want to start promptly because that is what you have promised your listeners you would do on the registration page. The most important thing you need to be focusing on is over delivering and serving your audience. This means you must respect their time and don t waste it by starting late. I have made this mistake before, and do my best to get on extra early for each webinar to make sure the audio levels are working, the slides are set, and that Skype, Gmail chat, and other applications that could interrupt my presentation are turned off. Remember, the first impression can make or break your entire outcome of the webinar. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 22

I have started late on a webinar only to see a flood of comments come though from people voicing their opinions (usually negative ones) and this only affects the tone in your voice, the flow of the webinar, and your attitude about your presentation. Starting late can absolutely be the difference from you making thousands of dollars in sales in less than an hour, or landing a major consulting gig, to making zero dollars and potentially harming your professional or company brand. I ve been on webinars with three presenters and one didn t now how to set his slides up, his desktop was showing, he constantly cleared his voice and sounded flustered... and I got off the webinar in less than two minutes. I m sure others did as well. However there are webinars where the presenter has high energy, starts off with a bang and gets the webinar running right on time. These are the ones I ll stay on until the end. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 23

5 Know Your Audience This seems obvious, but some people still don t take this into consideration. If your audience are job seekers looking for ways to optimize their resume, and learn how to better connect with hiring employers, then make sure you are serving their needs and you cover the main topics that will help them. Don t talk about how to get to the next level in your career, and give advice and information that isn t relevant to your audience. A good way to find out what your audience is specifically looking for is to have them submit questions beforehand so you exactly what to address during the presentation. Brian Clark, Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse do this exceptionally well within their online marketing site The Third Tribe. Each month they do a live Q&A call where the members submit their monthly questions, and they answer them live on a call. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 24

This isn t anything groundbreaking, however, it s a simple thing you can do to see what people want, what they need to solve their problems, and what you can address in the future to make each webinar more attractive to those listening. Summary Find out what your audience wants by doing a survey or encouraging questions, then deliver the best content you can in order to serve their needs. The more you do this, the more attendees you will get on future webinars, and the better experience they will have. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 25

6 Be Passionate! If you aren t passionate about your presentation and the topic at hand, then why should your attendees feel that way? Unless your webinar is some type of mandatory training webinar for your coworkers or clients, you better bring the passion to your presentation. If people are taking time out of their busy day to come and listen to what you have to say then make it the best hour of the day for them. Be yourself, but have high energy, and include some enthusiasm in your words, your stories, and your message during that webinar. People will thank you for your presentation, and they will come away with so much more than they expected, making them more inclined to be a fan of yours for life. Be Passionate! Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 26

7 Keep Things Interesting No one likes to watch a boring presentation. I tend to lack focus when watching low energy, informational presentations simply because if you don t catch my attention at the very start, then keep me focused on what you have to say, I begin to think about where I m headed later that night, what my next workout will be, who is emailing me or who RT ed my last article on Twitter. I ll do anything but listen to the presentation if it doesn t keep me interested. A good way to keep things interesting when hosting a webinar is to have a few key elements: Interesting Stories Interesting Content Multiple Slides Multiple Images Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 27

There are other advanced elements you could add into your presentation, however, by incorporating the above bullet points you will only set yourself up for much greater chances of success. Interesting Stories When you watch a live speech, those that you remember the most usually have someone who shares a number of great stories. Interesting Content Content is king; without good content you are only wasting people s time and hurting your brand. Keep the content interesting. Multiple Slides I have done a webinar with zero slides, however, I was constantly showing things on the Internet on various sites and demonstrating my points as I went. If you are using the Internet to showcase your webinar that is fine. If you are using a slideshow presentation then it helps to keep the attention of attendees by having a new slide move across the screen frequently. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 28

Multiple Images I have also done webinars with zero images and only bullet points on a few slides (something I don t recommend). The more interesting images you have on your slides the more focused the attendees eyes will be on your screen, and the more focused they will be on your message. Summary Think about the experience you would want to have when attending a webinar. Would you want to be bored out of your mind and fall asleep because the presenter didn t say anything worth noting or have anything interesting to look at? Present the way you would want to be presented to and this will make you look like a rock star :) Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 29

8 Content, Content, Content If you are presenting your webinar because you want someone to buy something from you afterwards, then you better give away your best content and over deliver on your webinar. A number of people seem to be afraid to give away their top tips and best information (if they have a product or service to sell) because they don t want people to run off with their content for free. The opposite approach has worked for me (and many others). By giving away your best stuff, the thought of the attendee is, wow, if this is the type of information and strategy I m getting on this free webinar, I can only imagine how my business/life/relationships will be once I get his product or service. Sometimes people will feel overwhelmed from the information you have told them, and they will realize why they need what you are presenting in their business/life, but they won t have the time or energy to actually figure out how to implement all of it themselves. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 30

This leaves them with the solution that you are offering (a product, service, consulting gig, etc). If you do a good enough job setting this up during the call then you will have the opportunity create a number of sales or bring on new clients after your presentation. By delivering some of your best stuff, people realize how knowledgeable you are, and they want you to help them from then on out. Make sure you content represents who you are and your knowledge base so the decision to work with you is simple. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 31

9 Call To Action And thanks everyone for attending this webinar, I hope it was helpful and have a great day. If this is how you end your webinar, without including some type of call to action before or after, you have missed a huge opportunity. You need to think about what you want to get out of every webinar. Do you want someone to buy your product, vote for you, enroll in your services, recommend you, give you feedback, etc? It s important to know exactly what you want to happen at the end of the call, so you can seed that throughout your content, and then provide a call to action towards the end. If you want someone to buy something then you want to give them detailed information on how they can buy it. Where can they go online to buy your stuff? Should they go to a website link or call a phone number? How much is it going to be and why should they buy it right now as opposed to another Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 32

time? Are you creating added bonuses or a discount for those that buy right then, or are you offering some type of additional coaching or consulting? All of these questions need to be answered by you, and you need to be direct and clear about what you want people to do, how you want them to do it, and when you want it to be done. Otherwise, no one will be able to read your mind, and without your guidance on the exact steps you want people to take, it s highly likely they won t take them. You don t need to be salesy or pushy when you provide your call to action, but you need to be clear and make sure everyone is aware of what you want them to do. Your audience will thank you for letting them know what you want to happen next, and they won t be left wondering how they are supposed to take action on what you covered in your session. By providing a clear call to action you will most definitely increase your conversions. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 33

10 Finish Strong and Follow Up You want to finish the webinar the same way you started it, with high energy and passion. Try your best to end at the time you said you would (although if you have a Q&A session at the end it s OK to run a little over as long as you delivered the promised content during the set time frame). The biggest buzz kill comes when people have a lot of high energy and passion for their content on a webinar, then they fizzle out at the end because there was no clear ending to the call, and you leave feeling confused as to what you are supposed to do next. You want to start with a strong introduction, then provide amazing content in the middle, and finish with a strong call to action with that same type of energy and passion. Passion is contagious, unfortunately so is being unenthusiastic. You have the power to determine how you finish the webinar and the results you want from the call. You can also save a webinar if you finish really strong, even Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 34

if you thought you lacked focus or were not prepared during the majority of your presentation. Summary Webinars can seem confusing and overwhelming to promote and manage in the beginning stages, however, just like anything else worth doing, it takes practice and repetition to become a master at it. In simple terms, think of a webinar like a conversation you are having with a group of friends. To keep your friends attention you need to be interesting, tell great stories, and share something worth their while, or else they will end up texting on their phone mid-conversation or leaving the webinar altogether. If you go into your webinar with a clear plan and practice it with friends then you will be just fine. The more you produce you will become confident at running them with little practice, just as you would feel having an everyday conversation with your friends. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 35

This information is a starter guide for those looking to maximize webinars in their business. However, there is much more to learn with webinars. If you would like to receive advanced training, and learn how to leverage the power of webinar marketing to generate more leads and sales then make sure you sign up at MagneticWebinars.com and take the additional training. My name is Lewis Howes and I m the author of two LinkedIn books, a world record holding athlete, sports social media guy, and I love to salsa dance around the world. Feel free to say hi to me on Twitter, or connect with me on my blog at LewisHowes.com Special thanks to Clement Yeung and Stephanie Linson for their design skills. Lewis Howes - MagneticWebinars.com 36