Use evergreen webinars to grow your business. Here’s how…
Have you ever hosted a webinar? Whether it’s for a current client, or for a vast pool of potential clients, if you are a consultant or trainer webinars are one of the simplest ways to convey value, demonstrate your expertise and market your business.
According to GoToWebinar 76% of B2B buyers have used webinars in the past 12 months to make a purchase decision. And people who sign up are willing to give you almost an hour of their time. That’s a huge window to make a case for your business.
But running a new webinar every month can be exhausting — especially if you don’t have a huge list to market to. So how do you get past the heartbreak of 5 registrants for an event you’ve put a lot of effort into creating and promoting?
Why not turn your amazing one time webinar into an evergreen event that will perform for you morning, noon and night 24/7, 365 days a year?
Not every event has to be a live event
That’s right, you don’t have to deliver your webinars in real time. You can record them.
Last year I delivered a webinar to a local chapter of the National Speakers Association. My intention was always to record it and post it to a landing page with some Calls to Action to catch the folks who couldn’t make it. About halfway through I realized that I hadn’t hit record.
When the Q and A portion was over and the webinar ended — I didn’t have a recording to share. So I used my trusty MacBook and went through the webinar again using the screen recorder on Quicktime.
Maybe it was because everything was still fresh in my mind or maybe it was because I wasn’t worried about screwing anything up or dropping an f bomb in front of a large group — but the recording turned out better than the live presentation.
I’ve used that recording many times since then as a way to promote my business.
So how does that story work with creating your evergreen webinar? I recently started working with a client who is using EasyWebinar.com to host evergreen webinars to present canned programs as if they were live events!
What I like about this approach is:
- Folks have to go through and register to watch the content (grow your list)
- There are custom scheduling options
- It comes with notifications for both before and after the webinar
- It has actual links to Calls to Actions that appear at specific times you choose during the presentation
If you have a webinar that you’ve presented numerous times live — wouldn’t it make sense to automate that content and include CTAs that drive revenue?
You don’t need a huge mailing list
I use my webinar to promote my online course (DIY Marketing for Consultants, Trainers and Professional Speakers). If you get to the end of it there’s a code for 50% off. I’m confident the content is strong enough that most people are going to stick around.
But what if you don’t already have a huge list to promote your webinar?
This is a huge stumbling block for most people — they simply don’t have a list of thousands of emails to use for marketing.
The other week I came across an article from my favourite online marketing resource — Neil Patel — talking about how he used a combination of two different kinds of Facebook ads to drive people to his webinars.
The quick and dirty synopsis is that he has a set of ads that promote content related to his webinar set to increase engagement. Then he used a custom audience built around anyone who had engaged with his FB page or any post in the last year.
The thinking is that those who have already engaged with your content are already primed for your funnel — so it’s worth marketing specifically to them.
It’s a great article and it walks you step by step through the process of setting up the ads. Click here to read it (and bookmark it!)
Another trick I’ve used is to repurpose the Ad Inserter plugin on my WordPress site to insert a registration box after the 4th paragraph of every blog post.
Those posts are shared out multiple times a day to various social media platforms using a tool called Revive Old Posts.
It’s not hard to get started
So what are your next steps?
- Record a new webinar with distinct calls to action for your products and services
- Set it up in EasyWebinar.com as an evergreen webinar
- Create some engaging ads on FB using content related to the webinar
- Use custom audience ads to send people to your webinar.
Your amazing content is the key to building credibility and attracting more business. So having it work for you all day, every day, just makes sense. And an evergreen webinar can really move the needle if you just give it a try.
About the author
Aidan Crawford is president of Short Circuit Media. His main job is helping consultants, trainers and professional speakers get their marketing in order by creating and implementing strategies to help them reach their target audiences. He costs a fortune when you hire him because he gives 99% of his stuff away through free consultations. aidan@shortcircuitmedia.com
Originally published at shortcircuitmedia.com on September 11, 2019.