There are basically two types of webinars, live webinars and automated webinars; they are pretty much the same with only slight technical differences.
We will focus on automated webinars here because automated webinars allow you to have a life while still conducting webinars. At one time, I did webinars to other people’s lists. This can be a good way to increase your reach and build your own list as well as sell products.
These people would promise me 100, 200, 300 even 500 attendees. What happened? Nothing! I’d have two or three people on the webinar, but, I still had to spend my time doing the webinar. It was a horrible waste of time.
Now, on the other hand, I have several automated webinars going on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I set them up and never think about them again. I call this “beach money” meaning I can be on the beach, or anywhere else, doing whatever I want while my automated webinars are working around the world for me 24/7. I could never do that with a live webinar.
I’m going to teach you tips and strategies that are going to contradict everything you’ve ever heard about automated webinars. I’m not saying everyone else is wrong, I’m just saying I’m right! I’m going to show you the what, the why and the psychology and mechanics behind doing automated webinars correctly.
There’s a very important word I want you to remember— Premeditated. It is what makes automated webinars work. Everything about these webinars, if done correctly, is premeditated.
The biggest mistake people make is allowing their webinars to be watched instantly. Most webinar software has a system built in where if you would like to watch yesterday’s webinar instantly, you can. That is 100% wrong.
Let’s start off with a typical person. They wake up in the morning, and it’s a beautiful day. They go online and see an ad or click a link in an email and they come to a page on a subject that they’re interested in and it says, “We’re doing this webinar over the course of the next few days. Please select the day that’s best for you and choose the time that you’ll be able to attend.”
The first thing that person has to do is start planning. If the opt-in video was done correctly, they would have a rough idea of how long that webinar is.
Secondly, they now have to think about a time, over the course of the next three days, when they have an extra 60 minutes to spare. They start planning to attend that particular webinar.
Now here’s a blatant fact—70% of the people won’t show up to the webinar. Now, that may seem like a shocking number for you. I hear marketers tell me they are getting 60% of the people to show up. But most of the time when people tell me that, they’re full of crap. Because I know from experience, from doing it again and again, for many years, that only 30% of the people will show up, and that’s what you should count on. If you get more than that, you are golden!
Now, think about what just transpired. Several days ago, they went to a page, they selected a day and a time they’re
going to be available to watch this particular presentation. They then waited a day or two, with some anticipation. They remembered to come to the presentation (there should be reminder emails going out), and they are now prepared to spend a specific allotment of time to watch this presentation which means their level of interest is very high. The likelihood of them purchasing goes up dramatically.
That’s the perfect scenario for an automated webinar system.
Now let’s look at a second scenario, the one most people use, where the prospect can immediately watch the webinar.
This same person wakes up in the morning, go online, click on an ad, and they go to a page that says, “Hey, we’ve got this amazing presentation on this subject. If you missed it, you can watch yesterday’s presentation now or you can sign up for one in the next few days.” Person say, “Oh, I’m interested right now.” What they do is, select to watch yesterday’s presentation right now. But 20 minutes into it and they realized, “Oh man, I have an appointment in the next 10 minutes. I’ll watch it later.” Later never comes.
Most people, not even though the most lackadaisical person has an extra 60 to 90 minutes that they can just pull out anytime they want. The idea of watching a previously recorded presentation is great. Presenters will argue that they get incredible show up rates. Of course, it’s incredible; their impulse curiosity gets them to show up. The problem is they don’t stay, they have other things planned for the day; it was just a click out of curiosity.
Retention is key and beyond retention, is sales. Advocates of the “immediate” scenario never mention retention and sales aspect of it. I can guarantee that they’re not as high as a premeditated scenario. Premeditated is why this whole system works and that is what we bank on.
Automation is great…if we follow the system. We do want to make people wait. Yes, we do want them to jump through hoops. Because every hoop they jumped through, every day that they wait, every minute that they wait, every hour that they wait, just means that they’re a more qualified prospect when they do show up. That’s what we’re looking for.
That is also the reason why their conversion rate on a webinar is 2% or 3% and our conversion rate on a webinar is 10%, 15%, 20%, even 30% because we made that person plan to watch that particular presentation. That is why this works.
You now understand the “why”, but there a few more pieces to comprehend in order to utilize them most effectively.
Most people don’t understand the psychology at each step along the way—what needs to be said and how it needs to be said in order to get a person to do what we want, which is to number one, register for the webinar, and number two, actually buy something from us. There are distinct things we
need to say in order to get as many people as possible to come and watch our webinar and purchase.
Now let’s look at the three distinct parts of the webinar process.
1. The opt-in page
2. The thank you page
3. The actual webinar
We’re not going to talk about the actual webinar here. What we are going to do is break down the distinct parts of the webinar process.
