In the last article, I wrote about how to create a flawless live event so that you can take your leads off LinkedIn and into an environment where you can deliver value, explain what it is your business does and ultimately convert those leads into clients. This time, I’ll be sharing another tried and tested methodology that will show you how to do the exact same thing but using a webinar instead.
A live event is an ideal way of meeting clients and boosting trust and credibility face-to-face. But it’s not much use unless a large number of your ideal clients are geographically located near to you and your business. Of course, this isn’t the case for many businesses. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve the same results using a webinar.
A webinar is a perfect way of converting leads from LinkedIn into clients in a format that isn’t confined to a particular time or location. You can reach out to potential clients from all over the world and allow them to watch at a time that suits them best.
And while the webinar is the perfect tool for millions of businesses, they often don’t achieve the desired results because they don’t follow a specific format. Unsuccessful webinars are usually light on content, heavy on pressurised sign-up and have no clear method of conversion.
This methodology will show you how to use a webinar to create clients by following six simple steps. But before we crack on, let’s have a quick look at some general points to remember before you begin planning your webinar.
Time Is of the Essence
Most webinars run for less than an hour, and there’s a very good reason for this. While it may be tempting to create a longer webinar so that you can fill it with loads of great content, you should try to avoid this at all costs. The drop-off rate for webinars after the hour mark can be pretty significant, which is the last thing you want as it’s in this last section when you’re making that killer call-to-action and converting your audience into clients (as we’ll see later in the article).
Practice Makes Perfect
It’s important that you work on every aspect of your webinar so that it’s as fluid and compelling as possible. This means practice. Try it out on a friend or business partner, seek out feedback and tighten it up so that you’re more than prepared for the big show!
Picture Perfect
Webinars are audio and visual-based, so it’s vital that you have some really good slides. Don’t cut corners here in terms of time or cost. If your webinar looks unprofessional, your audience will drop off pretty quick. I would recommend using Adobe photoshop to source your images. They’re not the cheapest, but in my experience they have the biggest and best collection, which is important if you’re going to be producing between 100 and 150 slides.
Timing Is Everything
You should host your webinar in the early evening to attract the biggest live audience, but don’t forget to take different time-zones into consideration. If most of your potential clients are based in the States, then you’ll want to adjust to suit them. Likewise for when you release the recording, which should be the morning after the live show.
Okay, now that we’ve got those points out of the way, let’s head to the main event: The six steps to creating a great webinar.
Making a Smooth Transition
This first step is all about planning the main sections of your webinar and thinking up ways to move in and out of them. Remember, you’re putting on a show here so all transitions should be smooth and elegant. Below are the main points you want to be hitting in your webinar:
- What’s the webinar going to be about? What problems will it solve and what takeaways are you going to offer?
- Delivering the content
- The call-to-action. Getting your audience to take the next step.
Use your brilliant slides, audience participation and answering questions to move effortlessly from one point to the next in a way that will keep your viewers engaged and intrigued.
What You Do and Why They Need It!
Once you’ve explained exactly what your webinar is offering, you need to explain very clearly what your service or product is and why it’s of value to your ideal client. Don’t be vague on the details here. If your viewer isn’t perfectly clear what it is you do, they’ll drop off before long.
Creating Credibility and Trust
This point is important in so many areas of business, not least of all here. If your audience doesn’t trust your business or your product/service, then they’re unlikely to become a paying customer.
One of the top tips for immediately engaging with your audience and gaining their trust is quite simply to tell your story. Let them know where you and your business came from, and why you created your product/service in the first place. If your personal story isn’t relevant here, you can tell the story of a client and how your business helped them, but only if your own journey wouldn’t authentically work.
Make your damaging admission. This is the biggest step in building credibility and trust with your audience – where you admit that your process is not for everyone. You can say something like, ‘I don’t have a solution for every single person in the world. It will only work for certain people.’ This admission will make your product/service seem all the more appealing to those who are already interested in it. And, if you’ve marketed your webinar correctly, that should be the majority of your audience.
Testimonials. This one’s always a crowd pleaser – real people who are genuinely happy with the service/product your business has provided. Ideally, you want two testimonials from clients who talk about the problems that you’ve solved for them
Your Magical Offer
This is make or break time, the point where you have to make the conversion from lead to client. If you don’t convert them now then they’re never going to come back.
You should have already talked about exactly what your product/service is and what problems it will solve, but now’s the time to reiterate. Next, after outlining the normal, day-to-day price, offer your audience a special, webinar-only deal. This doesn’t have to be money off. It could be an additional package on top of what you’re already selling. The point is, you need to convince them to strike while the iron’s hot.
Don’t forget to make your offer limited-edition. Tell your audience that they only have a certain amount of time to profit from your special deal. We find that the sweet spot is 48 hours – this means that the impact of your offer is still relevant for those people watching the recording the next day.
Be sure to offer your audience a guarantee on your product, such as a money-back deal, to further enhance your credibility and trust when pushing for the sale.
Call-to-Action
Now that your audience is interested in your product/service and unique, webinar-only offer, it’s time to take them to the next step. Encourage them to visit a landing page such as your website, where they’ll be a countdown timer so that your clients know very clearly when the offer expires.
It’s absolutely crucial that you give very detailed instructions at this point. The last thing you want to do is to ruin the deal by confusing your client. Tell them what links to click, what they’ll see when they come to the landing page and exactly what they need to do when they get there. It sounds simple but you’d be amazed at how often webinar hosts go wrong at this point. (And, yes, I am speaking from personal experience!) Don’t leave any stone unturned… believe me.
Welcome Party
Once you’ve delivered your call-to-action and told your audience in minute detail how to go about doing business with you, it’s time to solidify your potential clients into a community. By this point, anyone watching who hasn’t dropped off is likely to purchase your product/service. Now, you want to start treating them like a client who’s going to return to your business in the future and/or refer you on to others.
Adopt a friendly, conversational tone and use the time to answer any questions your audience might have. Have a few questions prepared in case no one speaks up. Pre-prepared questions should be those that your viewers should be asking i.e. how can you continue working together in the future? what else can you do for the client to help solve their problems?
So, there you have it. Six easy to follow steps plus a few pointers on how to go about setting up a winning webinar that will convert LinkedIn connections into genuine clients for your business.
As with the methodology I wrote up in the last article, it’s crucial that you don’t cut any corners when planning and executing your webinar. Remember that this is an investment in resources, and you need to make your webinar as professional and polished as possible if you’re going to maximise on success.
If you’d like a more detailed approach that will help you to with all aspects of your webinar, then check out Web Traffic That Work’s latest offer, The LinkedIn 2 Success Program (Do It Yourself). This program includes a hard copy of our best-selling book The LinkedIn Playbook, a workbook and video series for profile optimisation and lead generation, email support for a six-month period, a software check-up prior to launching, plus additional training and support videos, workbook and slide deck template.
Finally, go ahead and check out our FREE 4-Week Twitter marketing course if you’d like to learn how to generate high-quality leads on Twitter.