For the last 4 years, my webinars have only made a few hundred dollars.
It was so depressing. I’d get all hyped up, prepare, deliver a tonne of value, finish the webinar, then look my wife and baby in the eyes and go “we failed again.”
If all I did was webinars to make a living, I’d starve. My baby would be skin and bones. Child services might even take her gorgeous face away. But daddy finally figured out webinars. Yay.
The last webinar I ran made $10,000 USD in 60 minutes.
Here’s what you need to know to do the same.
The goal is to teach, inspire, or entertain — not to sell
Let’s talk about the elephant in the webinar room.
99% of webinars suck because they’re a salesfest. And nobody likes to be directly sold to by a used car salesman in a cheap suit.
I knew this from day one as someone who has spent their entire career working in sales. So what I’ve always tried to do — rather than sell — is to teach, inspire, or entertain.
I sell online education so this is an achievable goal. I try to teach people something practical and get them to practice the new skill on the webinar. I’ve never been on someone else’s webinar who does this. It feels so much more real.
I also aim to entertain a little although I’m not great at this. I’ll make faces, crack jokes, and tell stories.
Takeaway
Stop trying to sell so hard. It’s a turn-off that makes the audience go soft.
The magic feeling you want your webinar to create
After I join the typical webinar in my underpants and get pitched to death, I want to cry. I walk away with nothing unless I hand over $5000 for some product I don’t need.
The feeling you want your webinar to create is that if people buy nothing, they still leave knowing they got a lot. Its hard to do.
The reason to do this is a person may not buy on your first webinar. But you don’t want to become a churn-and-burn webinar shop.
You have to nurture people and meet them wherever they are. I’ve had people attend 10 webinars in a row and then on the 11th spend $2000 USD with me in one hit. You never know who’s listening.
Leave people better than you found them.
Don’t be afraid of the pitch
I shouldn’t share this.
Whenever the pitch for my product is meant to happen in the webinar, I go all red and feel a little sick. It’s hard work and feels uncomfortable.
The more webinars you do the more you get over this feeling.
There’s nothing wrong with charging people money to help them solve a problem. It’s not sleazy McGeazy and it doesn’t make you a sellout. It’s human nature to want to help — and you can help people better if there’s money involved.
As my motto goes: sell or be sold.
You will either pitch and sell, or work a job where your employer does the pitch and sell and gives you the scraps. There’s no way to avoid sales.
Ask for questions beforehand to know the objections
Many people fly blind with webinars.
They guess what people want rather than know what people want. I don’t. With every webinar I collect questions beforehand. 1) To be helpful 2) To know what features of my offer will resonate.
Once you know the objections, you can proactively address the biggest ones in the webinar. When the key objections that act as roadblocks are gone, it’s ten times easier to get people to buy your thing.
Learn from the pros like Russel Brunson
For years I battled with bad webinars.
I was too much of a smartass Eddie Expert to get help. I thought my sh*t didn’t stink and that I was unstoppable. Wrong.
In the last 6 months I’ve admitted my webinar problem and got help. It led me to webinar anonymous AA meetings (joking).
I read books from people like Russel Brunson and Alex Hormozi. I also got help from a Pinterest webinar guru who listened to my webinar and boldly said “you s-u-u-u-u-u-u-uc-c-c-c-c-k-k-k-k!” Now I know 🙂
Some people are too precious to get help. Those people fail.
Make the pitch no more than 10 minutes
Many webinars are one long sales pitch.
I refuse to run those. My rule is to ensure the pitch with my offer is no more than 10 minutes. Ideally I like to be under that time limit.
That’s why I focus only on the key points and then move on.
Attention drops at the 60-minute mark
In a 90-minute webinar my stats show people start to drop off at the 60-minute mark. The best time to make your pitch is before they exit.
Add a deadline and special offer
Webinar sales went up by 10x after I added a special offer only available on the webinar. It wasn’t a BS offer either.
I legitimately gave away more than $500 of stuff for free. Some existing customers were on the webinar and called it out, which made the offer even more honest.
The deadline for the offer was the end of the webinar. If people have forever to accept your offer all they’ll do is bookmark it and go, “yep, one day mate I’ll have time and come back.” Then they’ll forget for eternity.
Help people help themselves with a deadline.
Use the Q&A time wisely
The best webinars have Q&As at the end.
After all, the webinar isn’t about you and your superstar offer. No, it’s about the audience. What I do is, as the Q&A is underway I remind people of the offer, gently.
And I keep people’s attention on how much time is left for the webinar. I also try not to answer too many questions about the offer in the Q&A as it feels like a sales pitch.
At the end of the Q&A I do what auctioneers do and give the last chance for people to get in. Then I end the webinar exactly on time.
Invite existing customers
There’s a school of thought that says don’t invite existing customers to a webinar. I disagree.
My existing customers have results and are my biggest advocates. They often light up the comments section with insights. And they even answer questions from potential customers on my behalf.
That’s the power of community. Leverage your community on a webinar.
On my last webinar I had a big-name Twitter creator join without me knowing. He said hello in the chat and everyone recognized him.
You can’t buy this type of credibility — and it all comes from being a practitioner in your field with social proof.
Use a sticky link
The link to your offer should be posted in the chat box once you’ve made the pitch.
I recommend you make it a sticky or pinned link so it doesn’t go away. Ask people to click the link to make sure it works. It also helps people see your offer in writing and start to think if it’s for them.
Use kickass webinar software
I use WebinarJam.
Here’s why:
- Easy to use
- Killer chat box
- Dedicated Q&A section
- It automatically records the session
- You can highlight certain comments
- You get kickass signup landing pages
Don’t be a tight ass and use Zoom for webinars. It’s not the same.
Use the chat feature
Many webinars are one-way chatfests, where a guru who’s in love with themselves talks at you for 90 minutes.
But the best webinars are interactive.
Therefore, ask people to introduce themselves in the comments section. Ask the audience questions. Check they’re engaged at multiple times and say stuff like “is this helpful?”
When you do, all the yeses should flow through and that increases the credibility of your webinar. It’s social-proof.
One thing that’s different with WebinarJam is audience members can’t come off mute and say their questions or comments. On Zoom they can.
The problem is when the interactivity isn’t text-based, people tend to rant and randomly unmute themselves. This interrupts the flow and you lose control of the session.
Text-based engagement with the audience is a win-win.
Don’t miss this big opportunity after the webinar finishes
Sales is all in the follow-up.
Not everyone can attend live. And some have to drop off halfway through. I always try to send out the recording of the webinar afterward.
In the email with the link, I offer a similar product. But to be fair, I make the offer only half as good as the live offer.
This still works out better for a customer because the post-webinar offer is often better than the official launch offer, where 135,000 people on my email list get access.
Have a simple format
I used to run ad hoc webinars.
- They were all over the place.
- No logical rhythm.
Then I got the feedback to add a few slides. Not death by Powerpoint, but a few one-sentence slides that act as bookmarks and anchors for where we are in the webinar, so the audience doesn’t get lost.
The feedback since this change has been much better. The format I use looks like this:
- Intro — small talk and getting people talking in the chat
- An introduction from me with a few unique phrases I’ve made up that describe the session topic
- An overview of the three key lessons
- Then … lesson 1, 2, 3 in a concise manner
- Summary of lessons
- Offer pitch
- Q&A
- Final call for offer
Closing Thought
Webinars have been around for a long time.
Like most things, many people think they don’t work anymore. They 100% do. My $10,000 in a 60 minute webinar is proof. The key is you have to learn the updated version of how to run one successfully.
Gone are the days of endless sales pitches. People want to learn. They want to interact. They want you to give a damn. And they want a killer offer that solves a data-backed problem and has a deadline.
Honest people can make far more money on webinars than internet marketers. Try it out for yourself.
