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Webinars work. Full stop. And if they’re not working for you… it’s possible that your strategy is a little off.
How do we know? Well… we generated over $30k from one webinar at the beginning of the pandemic of 2020. We’ll share how we did it – and how you can, too.
Step #1: We took FAST action
Step #2: We were authentic and timely
Step #3: We delivered ACTUAL value
Step #4: We made a really cool offer
Step #5: We delivered MORE value
Step #6: We personalized the sale
Alyson Lex 0:02
picture it. It was like Sophia from the Golden Girls, right? It was March 2020. And in case you've like blocked it from your memory, there was kind of a big pandemic thing happening. And businesses were suffering everywhere. And Jenny and I knew we wanted to do something big, something different for our audience. So we took massive action. We created, promoted and hosted a webinar inside of one week. And we generated over $30,000 for ourselves. This episode is going to break down how we did it. We're going to give you our steps, we're going to give you some action items, and we're going to give you the behind the scenes of exactly why it worked. So step number one, no preamble, I'm diving right in. We took fast action, super fast. We had the page up, and we were promoting within 24 hours of the idea itself. Now, this was helped by the fact that I'm a writer. And Jenny is an amazing builder. Right. So we had some things on our side. But it was really important to take that action. We didn't let that indecision hold us back.
Jennie Wright 1:26
Yeah, exactly. And planning is super important. And you know, I'm a big proponent for planning. But we didn't let that hold us back and use it as a crutch to keep us from moving this project forward. At an incredibly fast lightning esque speed.
We were completely and utterly singularly focused, there was nothing else this was the thing. And this is what we were promoting. And we just put our blinders on. And we were just promoting this full on.
Alyson Lex 1:55
And I think that that's really important when you consider doing this massive fast action is there isn't a lot of room for distraction. Right when you want to take fast, massive action, like we did webinar, live promoted and held in seven days. We couldn't dilly dally with growing our Pinterest exposure, or hustling for clients in Facebook groups, or building our YouTube channel, or any of the other shiny things that distract you. We focused on leveraging the assets we already had in our business are following in our list. And we promoted this thing. That was it. Mm hmm. It was,
Jennie Wright 2:39
it was extraordinary. So what we want to take what we want you to take from this is an action item. And when you have something that you want to do, get focused and stay on it until it's completely done, don't mess around, don't dilly dally, don't let insecurity take over, don't have that imposter syndrome stuff happening. Just get it done and see how it goes. Follow those instincts. And make sure that you're putting your all into it. And see. So you know, if you do something like this, and then you only promote it for two days and put up one post and then wonder why. You know, 50,000 people didn't sign up for your thing, then you kind of know why, but take some real timely action on this. Okay, step two, we were incredibly authentic. And we were timely. We didn't sugarcoat why we were doing this, the pandemic was starting, it was full blown. We were all in lockdown. People were freaking out, everybody was looking for a solution. We told them that we could help them because we could it was a true statement. We also knew that the pandemic was going to bring about change, we saw it coming in the way that people operated in their businesses, we knew a lot of people were going to be worked from home starting side hustles. So we had this opportunity to give our audience some tools and try and get in front of this as much as possible. That's exactly what we did.
Alyson Lex 3:58
But at the same time, we didn't make these huge promises that we knew we couldn't deliver. And that's really important. We didn't promise six figures next month. That wasn't reasonable. Not for us, not for our audience, not for the situation. What we did promise them was a plan for the future. And that's what they really wanted was that stability. All right, this is the benefit behind the benefit. That's super important to your marketing. Okay, and that's going to lead us to your action item, which is to look for the benefit that your people really want. Especially if you have something timely, right, I want you to think about what you can promote right now that's going to help your customers. Okay? Every time you land on a benefit, I want you to ask why. Alright, so let's look at what we did. They wanted a strategy to help them move forward. Why? Well because their world has been turned upside down and they want security Why? Because they don't think they can survive this. Why? Because they don't have a plan. Why? Because they never needed one before. So you see how it builds and it builds. And it lands us on really getting deep into their heads. That make sense?
Jennie Wright 5:18
Yeah, absolutely. And I like the fact that, no, I just I want to highlight the fact that it's getting the why behind the why. You know, and so, as Alison was saying, the action item here is what can you promote right now that your customers need? And do that why exercise Allison just described so that you're making something or you're creating something that fits where they are right now and where they want to be?
Alyson Lex 5:46
Love it? Alright, step three, we delivered actual value. All right, we didn't do one of those 55 minute webinars that was 53 and a half minutes of fluff. Because we've all been on those where it's like, Hey, here's 25 minutes about me. And we, right. We told the attendees a little bit about us at the start, like one slide for bullets. Hey, I live in Baltimore. I have cats, I write copy, like that was what they learned. Yeah, pretty much. Right, we dove into the content. And we let our experience speak for itself. Let our expertise show through the content that we provided them. By the time we got to the end of the webinar, we had not lost a single attendee,
Jennie Wright 6:39
which was incredible. Huge, huge. This is absolutely his most most webinars see a massive drop off, drop off, drop off rate, the further you go into the actual webinar, you actually see, you know, you start off with whatever amount. And as the webinar continues, you see less and less people there, they're leaving, and a lot of them leave before the offer. So think about this, we made an offer. But the majority, if not every single Yeah, that's right, we had it every single attendee, nobody left, even when we made the offer, they were still there. Right, which I think is amazing. So the action item here is, when you build your webinar, give massive amounts of content, overload them, if you have to give them the full experience, give them the full plan they can leave with give them a ton of value. If you think this is giving away the farm, or it's too much, we will push back on that a little bit and say, No, we want you to we want you to actually over give, you're not giving them your signature plan, let's be honest, but you're giving them some great value and something that they can do going forward.
Alyson Lex 7:47
The way that I like to think of this is you're going to tell them what to do. You're going to charge them for how to do it. Okay, so they have the plan, but they might need help actually getting that plan in place. Give them the what they pay for the how. That's how it works.
Jennie Wright 8:06
Absolutely. Step four, we made a very cool offer. We tried something a little different. We actually saw it on a different webinar that we had watched. Not too long before this actually took place for a totally different product. It was about gardening were super cool. And we decided that we would swipe the idea for ourselves because it was timely, and we thought it was a perfect thing. So this is a key thing to be on the lookout for people outside of your industry, in different niches for what they're doing and their marketing and their conversion tactics. We're definitely going to do a quick tip on this at some point. So be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, so that you get the quick tip on this. Actually,
Alyson Lex 8:49
I love that point so much. I will happily do a quick tip on that. this coming week. Yep. So the next tip that gets published, that's what this is about is looking outside your industry and using creating a swipe file. Okay. But here's the offer that we did. We let people pay what they wanted. And we've talked about this before. But this made it super easy for them to take that next step. And the reason that this was important is we wanted that commitment from them. We wanted something more than free to get them to a sales call. But we didn't want money to hold them back. And actually because we charge for the sales call. Our show up rate was 100% which is pretty much unheard of for sales calls. I've been ghosted on sales calls a lot happens. Right, but letting money hold them back would have gone against our entire purpose for having the webinar in the first place. And so that goes back to our step two about being authentic. We really wanted to help people. We really wanted to help them get what they needed in order To move forward. And so by allowing them to choose their investment level, they they could do that without money being an issue, especially given what was happening at the time. Yeah,
Jennie Wright 10:13
it felt good.
Alyson Lex 10:14
It felt great. I was super excited about that. I know we were both totally jazzed. And it was, pardon me. And it was really well received by our audience. Yeah. Okay, Step five, we delivered more value after it was over, which is really cool. On a sales call, we delivered a ton more value, we created a download that we were able to personalize to give them more information even beyond the call. But that also allowed us to scale a bit more than if it was like 100%, custom the whole way through rates, weights and templates. And we had some stock stuff in there. And they left the call with that information. Yep.
Jennie Wright 11:07
Yeah. So delivering on the call was super important to us, we created a structure for these calls. And it really, not only did it allow them to get to know us and everything, but it also helped us to get to know their businesses. And so it really worked out to like a mutual benefit, where we understood them, they got us. And as a result, you know, things worked out very, very well, we delivered a ton of value on this call. And we also recorded it and delivered it to the you know, to the people who purchased it, which I thought was helpful, so that they could play it back and grab some of the strategies. Because at the time, you know, I mean, if you've heard Allison and I riff on strategy, we tend to go pretty fast. And as a result, you definitely want to be able to re Listen to this. So yeah, so step six, is we personalized the sale. And we didn't make it a one size fits all, you know, an offer, like it's a coaching package for X amount of dollars, or it's a done for you package for X amount of dollars, we absolutely 100% customized this sale approach, because not everybody was in the same place. At the same time, not everybody had the same needs. And they definitely needed to have a customized package created for them.
Alyson Lex 12:24
This is Jennie loves this term, I love this term, this is prescriptive selling, you're listening to the problems that they have, and you're developing a solution tailored to them, this is going to convert better for you than if you're just trying to cookie cutter somebody into it. That's just how it's gonna work. People love stuff that's tailored exactly to their needs. And so your action item for this is to take a look at your offerings. How can you tailor what you're offering to their needs? Of course, if you have a course that happens to be like the right fit for 95% of your people, great, use that. But if if the person that you're talking to is not a fit for that course, don't try to shoehorn them in what else can you offer them, that will be a fit for them, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be doing done for you services are customized plans like Jenny and IR, you can just say I have this suite of offers, I have product a product B, product C, whatever, I'm going to talk to you and then I'm going to tell you which of those is going to be the most appropriate for you. When you go to the doctor. They say, Okay, I have this list of antibiotics, which one is going to be the right thing to solve the problem you're having, they're not making up a new medicine on the spot for you. They're choosing from a list of medicines that have different effects. Same idea in your business, you're choosing from your list of medicines.
Jennie Wright 13:56
And what this means with prescriptive marketing doesn't mean that you drop your prices. And it doesn't mean that you devalue what you do to fit somebody else's thing. So this is incredibly important. It's absolutely maybe making an adjustment on your package and knowing where you're where you're at, in terms of Okay, well, we'll make an adjustment on how many calls or make an adjustment on the deliverables. We'll make an adjustment on some of the other things, but you're never making an adjustment on your price, your price is your price. And we don't want you to devalue it as a result of trying to do this, you the principles of prescriptive marketing are not to devalue you at all. And this is you know, hard lessons sometimes to figure out because we want to close that sale. But it is more about having some flexibility and plasticity when it comes to making sure your offer fits the person but also serves your business. And that's really really important. That is super important.
Alyson Lex 14:54
I love that you just said that and making sure the offer fits the person And also serves your business. It was that good. I thought I should repeat it. Because remember it, because that's what we're here for. We want to serve our people and ourselves, guys. That's okay. We should all make money. don't discount your prices.
Jennie Wright 15:15
Absolutely not.
Alyson Lex 15:18
This is sorry, go ahead. So what can you take from this?
Jennie Wright 15:28
I don't know what to say here. I don't know what's going on.
Alyson Lex 15:32
All right. What were you gonna say before?
Jennie Wright 15:35
Nothing. I was just gonna start rapping. Okay.
Alyson Lex 15:50
Clap. Okay, so what can you take from this, we're just gonna round up all of our, our stuff for you. Be authentic, right, be real, actually offer value. Be timely. If something's happening in the world, or in the lives of your best customers, develop something to serve them, personalize your sale, again, over deliver on that value. It's important enough to say it twice. And take that massive action when the opportunity shows up.
Jennie Wright 16:22
I think this has been a really great opportunity to share how we took a webinar and turned it into 30,000 plus dollars in income and how you can take some of the lessons that we learned from doing it and apply it to your business. So thanks so much for listening. If you haven't already, please do subscribe to the podcast. We've got an incredible lineup for you, in 2021. In this season, season two, lots of great experts, some incredible episodes, lots of actionable information, tons of granularity, getting really down to the point and helping you in the best way that we think we can. And if you want to learn more about Allison and I don't hesitate to go to System to thrive.com. Check us out. If you like what you hear, definitely connect with us. And if you want to work with us, you can absolutely drop us a line on website and see how we can help you. So the last thing is is if you feel inclined, please do leave us a review wherever it is that you're listening to your podcast. We would love to get your feedback. Thanks so much. And we'll be back very soon answering another big question.
