Some years back I was mingling at a networking event and found myself intrigued by some apparent webinar gurus clinking top-shelf Manhattans at the bar while I was inadvertently holding out for happy hour prices. I knew it was a small, but telling manifestation of our difference in expertise and success.
What I learned in the years to come was that these master webinar producers know very well where the hidden opportunities are throughout the webinar management process to double—even triple—their sales.
I was investing so much time and energy into producing and promoting my webinar, but was failing to maximize my ROI. After a dozen or more outlines, countless hours of work and brutal late nights prepping your webinar, don’t blow it all by wimping out on pitching your sale, or worse—forgetting to follow up with attendees.
You can do this in four painless steps including pitching your product offer like a pro, queuing up a high-converting email sequence, modifying product offers for fence-sitting prospects, and tapping bonus strategies to really amp up sales.
Let’s get started with arguably the most critical element of your webinar:
1) Craft Your Offer (During Webinar)
How to pitch an irresistible product offer to your live audience
You’re already a big winner when you’re in front of your webinar audience. Participants were interested enough in your content to register, hold space on their calendar, then show up attentively to your webinar. They have self-qualified themselves as being in the market for the type of product or service you offer, and think you’re the God of SEO (or whatever your schpeel is on).
Now, at the height of their attention and trust, the time is ideal to pitch them your product. C’mon, even your audience knows the real goal of your webinar is to sell something (of value, of course).
But don’t do it sleazy salesman style. Be a class act and craft a killer offer. All you really need to know is what to sell and how to sell it through strategic messaging.
With our webinar software you’ll be able to create killer product offerings.
Ready? Here’s how:
Offer a Coaching Call or Membership Site
So first, what to sell. You may already have a widget to offer, which is great. But honestly, nothing sells better than a personal coaching call with their newest idol—you. And if you can sell a coaching call, tacking on the sale of your bread-and-butter product in that call is pretty much a given.
Customers know that private sessions allow them permission to ask endless questions and discuss their unique obstacles in a safe, constructive setting. You can build immense trust and loyalty through calls like this and transform customers into brand evangelists that double-duty as promotional machines for you. Thirty to 60-minute calls work great. You could even record these calls and repurpose them as products in the future. Cha-ching.
If a live coaching call isn’t your thing, the next best option is to sell them a membership site in which they can get their questions answered by you. Just charge a double-digit monthly fee and, boom; there’s your recurring revenue stream.
Only Sell a High-Ticket Item ($100+)
If you’ve spent close to an hour training people for free, you undermine your efforts with a low price tag. You wouldn’t fly across the country to court a business prospect, then offer them a monster discount on your services, right? So hike your prices or you risk your rep.
Charging at least $100 is a must, though offering a $197 personal coaching call can work exceptionally well. On the backend, you could also offer to upgrade to a $497 six-month coaching program.
Whatever your product or service—a coaching program, a downloadable guide, an online course, a physical product—the important thing is to protect its value (and yours) with a minimum $100 price tag.
This does two things…
First, it gets you the most money with low volume. And second, it keeps the tire kickers out; you’ll only get people who are certain they want to learn from you.
OK so you know what to sell; now how do you sell it?
Keep It Simple
Your entire webinar has served up value to your audience and convinced them that they risk failure without your product. So, when it’s time to make the offer, get straight to it.
Phrase the offer in two parts.
Tell them 1) What your product is and what problem it solves. Then 2) Ask them to buy it.
That’s it. Simple.
Say something like, “Now that you know more about how to improve your golf swing, I have an online coaching program called ‘X’ that can help you implement these strategies and log your progress. You can buy it now by clicking the button below.”
Paint a Picture of Their Future Success
Once you’ve revealed what’s behind the curtain, your next job is to drive the sale home with some old-fashioned psychology. This is where you remind them of their misery and how your product can swoop in to save them. Create a visual of success they can relate to, and use the word “imagine,” as it’s one of the most powerful words in the English language.
For the example above, this might sound like, “If you’re tired of people asking to pass you on the golf course, this product is for you. Imagine how it will feel when you start winning games, and accepting business golf match invitations, because you’re confident in your newfound golf game. This program can help you make steady improvement that you’ll begin seeing within a couple of rounds.”
Emphasize why your product can help them accelerate success and infer that their struggle will continue without your product or service. “Don’t get stuck in the same old cycle. Our product can help you break through the plateau in a few short weeks.”
Add Urgency and Scarcity
Urgency and scarcity are the holy grail of webinar offers. Pounce on your audience’s high energy and attention by slapping on a sense of urgency or scarcity so they will bite before their next meeting or before some social notification pops up on their screen. What you don’t want to happen is lose a sale simply because an interested prospect who planned to purchase forgot to return.
Urgency can be accomplished with a countdown timer or deadline. “Invest only $120 for this product by tomorrow, February 2 at 12:00 midnight Pacific Time, because the full price will return to $275 on February 3.”
Use WebinarJam to Create Urgency with Countdown Timers
Scarcity is created by limiting the number of items for sale, a limited number of items at a given price, or capacity for spots in a program. “We only have 50 spots remaining in this coaching program.”
Combine urgency and scarcity to really put the squeeze on. “Only 50 spots remain in this class at $120, which will be sold after today at $275. Save big with this offer exclusive to webinar attendees today only!”
Crafting the offer for your webinar is not a difficult art. It comes down to describing something that can bring value to your audience, then asking them to buy it.
2) Email Follow-Up Sequence (Post-Webinar Part 1)
Capture the sale by addressing objections and underscoring value
Sell through automated follow up sequences using our webinar hosting software
So you crushed your offer pitch and are swimming in sales from your webinar. If you want to add (or multiply) to that happy feeling (and sales), you must send a follow-up email sequence to attendees. Don’t even get me started on how much easy money you’re leaving on the table if you don’t.
Follow-Up 1: Promote the Replay
Why should you provide a replay? You may be thinking, “I spent a lot of time, effort and energy getting people to the live webinar. I showed up, so if they didn’t show they missed out.”
Well, get this—we’ve found that as much as 75 percent of the sales come from the replays of the webinar, so adding a link to your replay in your sequence is a must.
Look guys, people get busy. You can’t take their no-show personally.Besides, providing a replay is a chance to slice out all your “um” marathons and awkward silences. Clean up and polish the recorded version for the best ongoing presentation.
Besides, providing a replay is a chance to slice out all your “um” marathons and awkward silences. Clean up and polish the recorded version for the best ongoing presentation.
Check out this short video and see how we use replays to grow our business.
OK, so you’ve pitched your offer in your live webinar and promoted the replay. Now it’s time to try different angles on the sale through the next few emails in the sequence.
Remember, people don’t buy for a variety of different reasons, and it’s your job as a marketer to handle the most common objections in this order:
Follow-Up 2: Price Objection
As the most common obstacle, you’ll want to combat the price objection first—without dropping the price. You’ll needlessly devalue your product as there is still plenty of room to convert prospects at full price.
So what you want to do is reiterate the benefits of your product in three to five simple bullets.
Next, offer to break up the price into three installments. This assumes you’re selling a product at $297 or higher. Be sure to use the word “installments,” which has shown to convert better than “payments.”
Finally, on a practical level, pointing out that they can use PayPal or which credit cards are accepted can help them take the next step.
Follow-Up 3: Time Objection
People are stretched thin and want to trust that their time will be well-spent on your product. In this email, you can discuss the actual minutes, hours or days involved with using your product, while positioning your product as something that can save them time.
Think about which aspects of your product your audience probably was rolling their eyes at during your webinar. Like when the chat feature slowed to idle as you detailed how to “install the software” or “map out your annual plan.”
What do you suspect they think will take a long time? Talk about that head on. Build the perception that even though it may take X minutes/hours, it’s easy and worth the investment in the long run.
Some language to try:
- “You can start this part-time while you’re employed.”
- “So this isn’t going to take three minutes. Try more like 30 minutes. But these 30 minutes will save you days of work.”
Follow-Up 4: Skills Objection
People are skeptical in their abilities, even if you show them point blank that anyone can do it with proven results.
Appease their self-consciousness through a leveling statement like, “I started out just like you. I was where you are, making some of the worst mistakes you can imagine.”
This takes you off your podium and alludes that you can help them rise to your success by following the same path you took. Build their confidence that no matter their experience level, the skills they need are teachable.
Follow-Up 5: Proof of Concept Objection
Proof of concept means to proving that what you are selling actually works, especially if it’s a new idea or product. Even if people attended your webinar, they may not understand how it actually works or be confident that it produces the results you say it will.
One way to address proof of concept concerns is by creating a quick video about your product. For example, for our Video Genesis product, a number of people claimed that the only reason our videos were so crisp and professional was due to our expensive equipment and software.
To demonstrate that it was the techniques taught in our course—and not all the fancy-pants equipment—that were responsible for the quality, we did a simple video that was crisp and professional on an iPhone.
How can you film a quick video to demo the results of your product in a fun way?
Follow-Up 6: Social Proof Objection
Let’s face it. Your audience has been conditioned to think “show me the money” by all the scams, gimmicks and otherwise sketchy products out there (and if not that, through Jerry McGuire movie quips for sure). If attendees still haven’t purchased anything several days after your webinar, they are probably thinking, “Your product sounds great, but show me real results from real people like me.”
Whereas the skills objection stems from prospects’ fear that they are too novice to succeed with your product, the social proof objection is more about wanting proof that customers are seeing real results.
You can do this through statistics or survey results from your existing customers. Imagine the conversion capability of a statement like, “Seventy percent of customers using our product shaved 10 points off their golf game within a month!” You can just hear them clicking your CTA. Just be sure not to make any outrageous claims—especially income claims. You want to preserve their sense of trust in you.
Social proof can also be validated through videos or pictures of customer results.
So if your webinar was about weight loss, you could have people talking about how healthy they are feeling already, or how motivating your program has been. If you were selling a traffic course, you could show people getting their first site up and already seeing their first spike in traffic.
No decent pics or videos? Then try written or spoken testimonials like, “Kari from Ohio was on the webinar Monday. Yesterday she contacted us and shared that her handmade jewelry business is producing six figures using our marketing strategy.”
We use Social Proof to help show users that others are having success with our webinar tools.
The more you can show your prospects that others like them are getting results, the better. This leaves them asking, “If that person like me can do it, so can I! What am I waiting for?”
By sending these follow-up emails, you will address each objection head on, overwhelming them with reasons and evidence along the way.
Note that there is no reason to get long-winded. Keep the emails short. Sell the click only and shoot them over to a purchase page. On that page, add all the proof you can: short video testimonials from your customers, Facebook comments, your feature in Success Magazine, emails you’ve received praising your offer, and so on.
Then, just tie it all up with a big buy button (Click here to get the same results…).
Ultimately, you will leave little if any sales on the table, reaping the max from the hard work you invested in your webinar.
3) Modified Sales Strategies (Post-Webinar Part 2)
Convert lingering fence-sitters with ridiculous offers
Your best customers bought immediately. Your hesitant customers were pushed to buy with some follow-up and encouragement. Now, armed with creative pricing strategies and bonuses, you’re left to face your stubborn prospects and clean up any outstanding sales.
The following is a hard-sell email sequence to send to your remaining leads immediately following the series above.
Pro tip: Don’t forget to remove people who’ve already bought from your list in case they’ve paid a higher price. You could also CYA with a P.S. indicating that if they’ve already bought, they can still get this offer, too (in the circumstance where someone subscribed to the webinar with one email and bought with another). It happens, trust me.
First Email: Introduce another Bonus
For your webinar, you may have persuaded your prospects to either register, show up, or stay until the end with a monster bonus, or offered it as an added incentive to purchase your product.
Now, introduce a bonus that you didn’t mention on the webinar. A great source for this is your FAQ from the webinar, or the notes and slides from your keynote.
For example, if you’re hosting a webinar on how to use WordPress blogs, and participants are asking a lot about increasing traffic, you could position your email like this: “I’m getting a lot of questions about boosting traffic to your blogs, so I’m throwing in a bonus how-to guide which will be sold later for $97, but you’ll get it free if you act now.”
What you’re hoping to do is convert them by adding something of value that they didn’t expect at no cost.
Second Email: Low-Price Trial Offer
You never want to drop your price too soon (and yes, you’re good enough, smart enough and doggone it people like you). Webinars typically capture their most sales from committed prospects who are willing to pay full price right away, so don’t mess with that.
But then there are prospects who just won’t buy until they see some real results for themselves. They need to try the product or software themselves, before they buy it. So go ahead and hook them up with access to a portion of your product for a tiny investment. Let them experience it and decide for themselves.
I suggest swallowing your pride with a $1 trial for seven to 14 days. If that’s what they needed to take the next step, they’ll be more likely to pay for the whole thing after this trial.
The $1 trial does two additional things:
- It gets their credit card out of their wallet and in their hands, creating a psychological element where they are now a “buyer” of your products
- It becomes a micro-commitment, positioning them as a learner whom is likely to look to you as the expert in the future
Third and Final Email: Mop-Up Offer
This is for the last bunch of people on your list who, while stubborn, are still interested enough in your product to be converted at some point.
Even if they don’t buy anything down the line, their brand loyalty is still of value to you, as they are out there influencing others as they talk about your business.
With nothing to lose, the point of this email is to give them a portion of your product for free. This gets them consuming your content and product, which is way better than losing them entirely. And it gives you an opportunity to follow up with them later to purchase the entire product.
By giving these three tactics a whirl, you’ll essentially be exhausting sales from your webinar attendees. For people who don’t buy at this point, kick them out of this sequence to a new list and send them different offers altogether.
Or as I like to say, “Bye, for now, Felicia.”
4) Multiplying Profits (Bonus Strategies)
Strategic partnerships and maneuvers to expand your results
Webinars—in all their awesomeness—are the floodgates to serious sales. They give you a virtual platform to promote your product in living color across the globe. But how can you leverage their power even more? To max out your ROI and push your webinars to the next level, check out these three money-making techniques below.
Establish an Affiliate Program
Affiliates make great partners and can shovel tons of traffic your way. Having them hype up your webinar is a simple way to ramp up your registrations and sales.
With Webinarjam, you can either have affiliates promote and earn direct commissions on your paid webinar, or get backend sales commissions from people on their list who later buy your product if you’re promoting a free webinar.
Alternatively, you could have a front-end product that your affiliates promote and get 100 percent commissions on (say, a $7 report), and then have your webinar promoted inside.
To make it ridiculously easy for your affiliates, create some promotional tools (e.g., a blog post about the webinar content, a short report to give away, a mindmap), which allows everyone to drum up more traffic and build their email lists through lead magnets.
Do a Joint Webinar
By bringing together a few panelists to discuss one topic from their varying perspectives, you’ll set the stage for an interesting discussion that’s loaded with value. This format also leaves attendees feeling as though they received more bang for their buck (or time if it’s a free webinar).
But the true reason this format benefits you is because you can tap into the other panelists’ network of leads. Since they’re going to be part of your webinar, they’ll be promoting the webinar to their own lists and audiences, giving you more exposure and sales.
You can also offer them commissions each time one of their leads buys something on the webinar or through your killer email follow-ups.
Win-win-win.
Finding panelists isn’t hard either. Look around; your best panelists are likely your competition and colleagues. Pitch it as free exposure plus commissions.
If all goes well, you could make this a regular thing that you do with a new panelist each month. Which brings us to our final power trick:
Run a Series of Webinars
If webinars are so great, why do just one?
In addition to repeat (and new) sales, regular webinars help to build your brand presence. Regularly appearing in front of your audience to provide real value is an authentic way to build trust and familiarity with your business.
Don’t feel you need to do a weekly series. A monthly series works just fine, though twice a month is a nice middle ground. And if your schedule is too busy (and let’s be honest, of course it is…), then use a webinar platform like EverWebinar to host an automated webinar. You won’t even need to be there. Heck, you could be kicking it in Belize with a Pina Colada, watching the sales roll in while your webinar is running without you.
Another tip:
Schedule your webinars on the same day of the week each time so your subscribers get into the habit of expecting it. Plus, a regular webinar series makes it easier for you to invite other experts from your market (“Hey, I do this monthly. Why don’t you join me for this next one?”)
You could also do a series with a fixed number of webinars. So, you could choose a month and schedule four webinars, each one talking about a specific problem people in your niche have.
Having a great product and some charm isn’t enough. The reality is that your webinar audience is diverse in their budget, trust and communication style. You need to be skilled at appealing to a wide audience through a variety of sales strategies, while consistently spelling out the benefits of what you have to offer and how you can bring value to their lives.
You miss every shot you don’t take people. But now you know that and we’ve spelled out this four-step strategy so you can capture the attention of your prospects, build trust and nail threes like Steph Curry all day long.
