How to make webinars your number one lead generation tool
Webinars. I’ve done a few before, but I must admit I’ve never quite been 100% sure if they work.
Are they the secret to wonderful lead generation or are they a little bit worn out and not working quite as well as they used to?
Well, today I’m honoured to have Omar’s Zenhom from WebinarNinja on the show, to give us the lowdown on webinars for beginners, and also some tips for the more advanced amongst us.
Tune in to learn:
- How to get started with your first webinar.
- How to use webinars to build your email list
- Why webinars are the #1 sales conversion tool for any product
- How to market your webinar for free- How to use webinars as a product to sell your audience
- How to use webinars as a customer retention tool
- Avoiding rookie mistakes
- Different and new ways to do a webinar to appeal to different audiences
- Tips for the non-tech
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And big thanks to ClementKC from Australia for their lovely review.
About Omar
Omar is also the host of the iTunes Best of 2014 podcast, The $100 MBA Show. With over 100 million downloads and over 1,400 episodes, The $100 MBA Show is ranked as a top business podcast in over 30 countries.
Despite being 6’5 he is an above-average dancer
Connect with Omar
Transcript
Kate Toon:
Webinars. I’ve done a few before, but I must admit I’ve never quite been 100% sure if they work. Are they the secret to wonderful lead generation or are they a little bit worn out and not working quite as well as they used to? Well, today I’m honoured to have Omar’s Zenhom from WebinarNinja on the show, to give us the lowdown on webinars for beginners, and also some tips for the more advanced amongst us.
Kate Toon:
Hello, my name is Kate Toon and I’m the head chef at The Recipe for SEO Success, an online teaching hub for all things related to search engine optimization, and digital marketing. Today I’m talking with Omar. Hello Omar, how are you?
Omar Zenhom:
Good. How are you today?
Kate Toon:
I’m very well. I’m excited to have you on the show because I was a very early adopter of WebinarNinja way back when, I don’t even know. Two or three years ago?
Omar Zenhom:
Maybe even more. I think you joined in 2015.
Kate Toon:
Oh, wow. He even knows. He’s got my user profile up, he can see everything I’ve done. Also we’ve been lucky enough to meet at podcast and several other events because you’ve got super successful podcast which we will mention later on in the show. Actually, I’m going to mention it right now because I’m going to awkwardly read out your bio. Are you ready?
Omar Zenhom:
I’m ready.
Kate Toon:
It’s always weird to hear your own bio, but it needs to be done. Okay. Omar Zenhom is the co founder and CEO of WebinarNinja founded in 2014. Over a million people have attended a webinar on WebinarNinja and it has been named as one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in 2018. Omar is also the host of iTunes best of 2014 podcast the hundred dollar MBA show, with over 100 million downloads and 1400 episodes. The hundred dollar MBA show is ranked as a top business podcast in over 30 countries. Despite being six foot five he’s an above average dancer. You’re a good dancer?
Omar Zenhom:
Yes.
Kate Toon:
I am yet to see this. Really?
Omar Zenhom:
Yes, when the next conference?
Kate Toon:
I need to see more of this. This is exciting. He’s dancing in his chair people at the moment, you can’t see it but it’s a beautiful thing. I’m going to start right at the basics. This is not even a question on our list, because some people in some of the groups that I’m in, didn’t really even understand what a webinar is. Before we decide whether it’s good to get started with it, how would you define a webinar?
Omar Zenhom:
I would define a webinar as an online workshop. That’s the best way I describe it. It’s a way for you to provide value to your audience in a live or automated fashion. Just be able to present and give that value.
Kate Toon:
I think that… We’re going to come on to this. This perception of webinars is changing over time. But essentially, that’s what they started as, and I guess you differentiate it from just delivering content over Facebook Live or LinkedIn and that there is registration. It’s a little bit more formal than just flopping out a video onto the internet, isn’t it?
Omar Zenhom:
Yes. There’s a sense of expectation from the attendee as well as the host. When I register for a webinar, I allot for the next hour that I’m going to be watching this thing and participating and taking notes. It’s a different perspective, a different expectation than watching a Facebook Live, whether I’m just scrolling through my feed [inaudible 00:03:33].
Kate Toon:
It’s like tuning in to a TV show, I guess, rather than just… Like saying my favourite show is at this time, if it’s still a terrestrial person or, I’m going to be getting my Netflix on at eight o’clock, and I’m going to get everything ready and I’m ready for my Netflix. Rather than just randomly stumbling across some content online.
Omar Zenhom:
Totally, yes.
Kate Toon:
Cool. Imagine me, well, you don’t have to imagine me because I’m here, but I’m just about to do my first webinar and I did a lot of webinars back in the day, I must admit, I haven’t done them for a while. I’m actually really excited about this episode because it’s something I want to get back into. I’m about to sit down and plan my first ever webinar. How do I get started? What are the first things I should think about?
Omar Zenhom:
The first thing I would say is you have to get your mind right. You have to get the mindset of what makes webinars powerful. What’s the superpower of webinars? A lot of people, they run webinars, and they don’t really leverage the strength of webinars. I believe and what we believe at WebinarNinja is the number one reason why webinars work is that it’s great at building trust.
Omar Zenhom:
I always tell anybody who’s getting started is that that’s your only goal. Whether you’re running the webinar to build your email list, to sell your products and services, whether it’s to build retention in your own customer base. Your whole goal, and your whole focus is how can I build trust with the people that are on this webinar? How can I earn their trust? How can I give them value? How can I make them feel like, I have their best interest in mind. Make sure they understand that I actually want to help them.
Omar Zenhom:
By just having that, you understand, okay, that’s the focus. I need to really just focus on a great workshop, a great next hour where I can really showcase my best talents, but at the same time, offer solutions to their problems. That’s where you want to get started is how can I solve them. The next step in that process is nailing the topic for your webinar.
Omar Zenhom:
A lot of people they get stuck here. They kind of just, “I want to run webinars.” And they’re just like, “But I don’t know what to do one on.” And they just fizzle out from here. Usually people that nail their topic. It’s that turning point where they’re like, okay, now I know what I’m doing, I can outline, I can keep going and it just propels to the next stage. What I like to tell people is when it comes to nailing your topic, the best thing you could do is be specific as possible.
Omar Zenhom:
The more specific, the better, and actually, I would rephrase topic as promise because it’s your promise your audience. When your audience sees the title of your webinar, they’re expecting to get that. I jokingly say, if I see a webinar, it says how to groom your Persian cat in five minutes, I want to know how to groom my Persian cat by the end of the webinar. If I don’t know how to do that, then I’m going to feel you’ve neglected me and you break trust. You don’t build trust in that way.
Omar Zenhom:
The best way to deliver is to make sure it’s specific. In terms of what to do, you’re great at this Kate. You’re awesome at social media. I’m so envious how good you are at this, but you have your finger on the pulse on what are the pain points of your audience? What is the number one thing your audience is suffering with, dealing with and your product solves? For us at WebinarNinja, the number one pain point is there’s so many moving parts. I don’t know how to put this thing together. A great topic for our webinars is how to create a webinar in five minutes with all the moving parts.
Omar Zenhom:
This is what you want to nail, what’s the pain point and how can I make it specific so I can make sure I could deliver?
Kate Toon:
Okay, fantastic. I’m going to stray from our questions a little bit, because I’d rather just come back to you on some of the things you’ve mentioned there. I love the idea about trust. I think it’s also an opportunity to show your expertise and authority to position yourself in the market as someone who really knows about this topic in a way that’s quite unique. In a way that’s a lot stronger than just social media content. Because it’s that teacher student environment.
Kate Toon:
You already have a little bit of authority, simply in the nature that people have signed up to watch it. You know what I mean?
Omar Zenhom:
Totally. I was a teacher for 13 years, it’s what gravitated me to webinars. I feel at home, but it definitely gives people a chance to step on stage so to speak, because people are signing up to see you.
Kate Toon:
I think with the headline, one of the great places, or the other topic or the promise, I love the promise, all headlines should make a promise and then the content should deliver. Obviously you can use the same tools that you’d use to come up with a headline for a blog post. Five easy ways to do X in X amount of time, and then delivering. I guess the big problem, and we were going to come to this later, but I want to address it up front. Because so many people will say, “Well look, Omar, I signed up to this webinar, and I sat there for half an hour while this person banged on about how awesome they were. Then I got two minutes of good content. Then I had to sign up to an $8,000 mastermind.” That’s broken [inaudible 00:08:30]-
Omar Zenhom:
Yes.
Kate Toon:
… a little bit, because I don’t want to sign up for a webinar because I’m just worried that it’s going to be rubbish. Do you know what I mean?
Omar Zenhom:
I know what you mean and Kate this is great news. This is great news. I tell all our members that this is fantastic. Why? Because it means the bar is so low, the bar is so low that you have to do very little to differentiate yourself and to really stand out that first five minutes of the webinar where people realise, wow, this person actually is giving me value. I’ve already learned five things in the first five minutes and automatically they feel like, wow. This is not what I’m used to.
Omar Zenhom:
Right there, that’s a huge bolt of trust building that happens there. Because they realise, okay, I’m dealing with a professional here. One of the things that we teach at Webinar Ninja for our members is what we call the minute of power, is the first minute of your webinar where you want to create that impression the first minute, where they really feel this is different.
Omar Zenhom:
The parallel I like to give is if you remember back in high school, your first day of school, you’d walk into that first period of class and you make a judgement in that first minute. Am I going to [inaudible 00:09:30] in this class? Mr. Johnson is going to be walked all over or you walk to your second period of class, totally different expectations. Totally different impression where you see Miss McCormick she’s giving you a seat number and signing on the board and all sudden you make a judgement , okay, Miss. McCormick, I got to button up and bring my A game.
Omar Zenhom:
You want to do that same thing when people enter your webinar. You put them on task, they feel like it’s interactive, that they’re getting value like okay, I can’t do something else while I’m on this webinar. This is different. The bar is so low. This is what I love about this space and just being able to show people that a lot of people are breaking trust. They’re misunderstanding the purpose of a webinar and you can really differentiate by really being transparent, being honest saying, “Hey, this is my first webinar. If I make a mistake guys cheer me on the chance.” They go okay go.
Omar Zenhom:
That alone, that one sentence right there will allow you to really differentiate yourself from the other webinars they’ve been on.
Kate Toon:
I love that. It’s actually… You won’t remember this but you gave a tip at a podcasting conference over two years ago about podcasts and how… A lot of people start their podcast with lots of music and it goes on for ages. Then it’s like some [inaudible 00:10:41] voice saying, “Hey, this is the Omar Zenhom show.” Blah, blah, blah. What you said was the minute of power. Tell people in that first minute what they’re going to get from this episode, which is the reason I changed the format of my podcast. I think it’s true of every blog post. I think it’s true of every webinar, every Facebook video. Tell people at the beginning what they’re going to get by staying on the call and then deliver it.
Kate Toon:
As you said, that first five minutes is where everyone drops out. They go, “Oh God it’s another one.” So many webinars I get on them and either the person is fanning about. They’re like, “Oh sorry. Just a minute. The chats not working.” I mean that’s forgivable. Your first few podcast of course that’s going to happen but then they spend ages going, “Hi, Sue. How’s your cat?” Or, “Hi Bob.” Then you’re 10 minutes in and nothing’s happened. Cut to the chase.
Omar Zenhom:
You mentioned when people go on and on about their accolades and they can introduce themself, I’m the host. This is what I’ve done. I was student body president of my high school and all this weird stuff that’s irrelevant.
Kate Toon:
I can hola hoop, I make a mean sausage raw.
Omar Zenhom:
Right. I’m a believer that storytelling works and you really should talk about what got you to this point today. But what people forget is that you need to share the ups and the downs. Because if you look at any characters, or any movies or stories we love… One of my favourite shows recently is the good place on Netflix. What I love about these characters is that they’re all flawed. They all have issues. They all have… That’s what makes you relatable.
Omar Zenhom:
If you just talk and beat on your chest, people are just like okay, whatever dude. Especially Australia. In Australia, they don’t like that at all. It really doesn’t resonate anywhere. The point is that if you’re going to share your story, talk about what got you to this point, what challenges did you have, the mistakes you made. You don’t want to be over descriptive or spend too much time on this. But at the same time, you just want to share a bit of your story.
Omar Zenhom:
I say, five minutes max, if you can make it shorter, it’s even better. What’s great is if you can tie in the different parts of the story with the content you’re going to be talking about. Whether it’s, “Hey, I had a real problem speaking in front of people.” Say for example you’re a public speaking coach. You’re like, I had a real problem speaking in front of people. I would look at my feet, and I would not be able to connect with them. Then I did this and I did that. I’m going to show you how I overcome these things. It’s tied in so it’s relevant so they feel, hey, that’s me. I feel inspired to be here.
Kate Toon:
Yes and be a bit humble as well.
Omar Zenhom:
Yes.
Kate Toon:
But also, I’m not necessarily sure that that story comes right at the beginning of the webinar.
Omar Zenhom:
Yes, totally.
Kate Toon:
Very important to talk about the takeout. I want to move into something different and again I’m completely straying from our questions. I’m sorry, but I know you can handle it. There are lots of different types of webinars. There are live webinars, there pre recorded. Obviously, some of the big entrepreneurs, you go to sign up for webinars and you can pick all these different times. Then you get on the webinar, and it’s clearly pre recorded. They’re doing this awful thing of going. “Oh my God, I can see you all joining in now. I can see… Hi, Bob. Hi, Sue in Dallas. Where you from.” And you can see in the chat that none of that is happening. What the hell are they doing? Why do they do that?
Omar Zenhom:
Well, they’re breaking the number one rule which is to build trust. It’s trying to get a short term gain. Not understanding that you may hoodwink a few people, but most people are going to eventually realise this is not live or eventually realise that… Even if they realise after the purchase, after the sale, they’re not going to feel so good about doing business with you. It’s just not going to feel right.
Omar Zenhom:
I’m very proud that our company WebinarNinja is the only webinar software in the industry that stands up against this. If you go to our blog, we have several blog posts talking about why simulated webinars don’t work and how you can actually run automated webinars properly. One of the things we teach in our challenges is to record a separate video for your automated webinar and at the top of the automated webinar say, “Hey, thank you for registering for this automated webinar.” Even though it’s automated. It’s going to be very interactive. You’re going to answer questions. You’re going to take down notes, you’re going to answer polls and just getting in front of it automatically gives you credibility, gives you trust.
Omar Zenhom:
At the end of the day, why do you want to do that to your customer? Why do you want to treat your customers that way? I understand sometimes people are in a desperate situation. They’re looking for a hack, there looking for an easy way out. But these are just things that just won’t work in the long term. It’s just breaking the golden rule. The whole point of webinars is to build trust and you can’t make a sale without that. You want to make sure that you re-emphasise that.
Omar Zenhom:
We’re big on making sure that you’re transparent about what’s going on. We don’t have simulated live webinars. You don’t have the chats rolling, which… Some of our competitors literally allow you to write fake chat messages and insert them at certain points of… What, are you serious? One of our users actually came from one of those competitors, because they do a lot of business in Europe, and they’re like, we can’t do that. That’s against the law. It’s false pretences to say that so and so bought this offer. They didn’t buy that offer right now.
Omar Zenhom:
We’re just big on just making sure that people understand that you can’t win in the long run by doing that.
Kate Toon:
Yes, it’s transparency. I just did a little training session on chat bots and how it’s so important to actually make people aware that it is a chat bot. That’s still okay. They can still interact, but don’t pretend that there’s someone really there if there’s not. Obviously, one of the main reasons people do webinars is to build their email list. Again, I like the way you said, the objective is not to build an email list, the objective is to build trust and off the back of that you’ll build your email list.
Kate Toon:
It’s very easy for people to unsubscribe. If I’m going about this, I’m completely new. I want to set up my webinar. All the platforms allow you to have a registration form where you get first name and email address, and then they allow you to send automated emails saying, hey, you’re registered. It’s coming up. Bloody blah. But the thing that I think often… Then afterwards, it’s like, hey, you showed up. Hey, you didn’t show up. Here are your two options. But then I guess, for most people, what would you say is the next step after that? Because I think the webinar email process is pretty well thought out. If they’ve done your webinar, it’s 24 hours later, what do you do next?
Omar Zenhom:
Well, you definitely need to understand that… One thing I always like to say is that you can’t make people buy. You can’t force anybody to buy anything. But what you can do is build a relationship with them so that when they’re ready to buy, they don’t shop around, they’re going to go with you. If I’m on a webinar on how to improve my golf swing and I’ve learned so much from this person. I like their teaching style, that kind of stuff. When I’m ready to dive into golf. I’m not… Who wants to go and do all this research?
Omar Zenhom:
They’re like, “Okay, already I know this person is good. I’m going to go and buy from this person.” Your job is to do like any good friend would do and stay in touch. What you want to do is periodically, and it could be once a week a newsletter, it could be twice a week with your latest blog posts. With invite to your next live webinar. Invite to maybe a local meetup that you’re doing. The point here is that you want to move them over even to your CRM.
Omar Zenhom:
You could do it inside your webinar if you wanted to, but you can move over to your CRM and just give them a continuity, add them to a list or tag them where they’re going to get great value. We actually did some research on our own business like how many times does somebody have to watch a webinar to actually become a customer. We were surprised. Some of our best customers, it took them three, four webinars. Three, four live webinars to be a customer. But what’s great about that is they actually showed up four times.
Omar Zenhom:
That means that I did build that trust and that they do want to spend more time with me and learn more and get some of their questions they had answered and all that kind of stuff. I want to reiterate that when you’re building an email list, make sure you understand that you’re trying to build a relationship. You want to make sure that you can stay in touch so that when you do ask for the sale and you do have an offer and you do have a launch, all that kind of stuff. It’s not like they never heard of you before they’ve been continuing, they get value from you. They are totally insight in mind, they understand what’s going on.
Kate Toon:
I totally agree. I think often what people do and I see it in the market is they’re just about to launch their big course and then they wack out a webinar. Do think there can be a big gap between webinar and final thing? The big thing that I say to my students is, if you can’t get someone to sign up for a one hour webinar on your topic of genius, are you expecting them to pay one and a half grand for an eight week course. People seem to think… I see people going out with the course, going buy this, buy this and they’ve done no prep.
Kate Toon:
Because actually getting people to give you your email address these days is not as easy as it used to be. You can’t just bang out a checklist and get it or do… It’s that understanding that this is a good tester. It’s also a great way to test your material because you will see drop out. You will see people not being engaged and go Okay, well, maybe this thing that I was going to try and sell for money, it’s not working for free. It’s not going to work on, it’s being paid for.
Omar Zenhom:
I want to give you two case studies just to illustrate that. Number one, we have a great user. He’s called a dividend guy. He talks about financial education. He does paid webinars to validate his course ideas. He runs the first module paid $20 or something like that. If he gets some bites, he understands he can build out this course. Guess what, who’s going to buy this course? The people that bought the $20 paid webinar. It’s easy to validate really quickly people are willing to part money for this idea.
Omar Zenhom:
The other thing is that a lot of people don’t realise that your best customers are your customers. Once they buy from you, this is a validation. They’ve already understand and committed to this way of life or this idea or this path that you’re taking them on. They’ve consumed your information. They’ve taken it seriously because they paid for it. One of the things that we’ve tried in the past is we tried to build out courses to attract customers. We’d sell these courses and to attract customers to move them on to the platform.
Omar Zenhom:
We found out that 80% of people are buying these courses were our customers already. They love the product and they want to get more out of it. So they take the course and they engage more, they engage with us, they engage with the community. Don’t be afraid to sell a paid webinar to somebody who’s already bought something from you.
Kate Toon:
Okay, I’ve got a couple of techie questions now.
Omar Zenhom:
Sure.
Kate Toon:
It does sound like a pitch for the platform. These guys aren’t sponsoring the episode. I wish they were but they’re not. They’re just some practical things. Your platform integrates with all the big CRM, like, Active Campaign-
Omar Zenhom:
Infusionsoft. ConvertKit. All the top ones. Then if we don’t cover you, we have a Zapier integration.
Kate Toon:
Zapier, okay. Then also can… This is an interesting question I want to ask you, people can pay for webinars through your platform as well?
Omar Zenhom:
Yes, we have stripe integration so you can run paid or free webinars with WebinarNinja so you can just basically click a button, sign into your Stripe account and you can set the price and make a paid webinar.
Kate Toon:
Do you have any stats… I should have asked you this before hand but do you have any stats on how successful free webinars versus paid?
Omar Zenhom:
Free is fantastic if you’re selling. I still have not seen a conversion tool for selling. We actually tried so many different kinds of funnels to get people to become a customer WebinarNinja. We tried free courses. We’ve tried blog posts, we tried content upgrades. The one that has a… Sorry. The one that always has the lowest cost per acquisition is straight to a webinar. Why? Because I can sell a bigger deal size. I can sell a bigger package. I can sell something with great bonuses and get them to be committed for a longer period of time, because I have that hour to build that trust and really get them committed and really answer all their questions and the rebuttals and that kind of stuff.
Omar Zenhom:
Free webinars are fantastic for selling, whether you’re selling a… We have people that are selling $10,000 coaching to $97 products. It’s all relative to what you’re offering. But paid webinars are great if you just want to run some intensive workshops. We have a webinar type called the series webinar. Basically you can run a live series of webinars where people just register for one time, they pay a fee. They pay $300 and they get 10 sessions and every week they go through the course with you live and then of course, they get the replay and the recording all that kind of stuff. That lends itself a lot more to paid.
Kate Toon:
With the recordings, how long do they leave it there? Is usually about a week or so?
Omar Zenhom:
That’s up to you. We will host all your recordings, we will save them. There in your account and you can offer it for… You can offer no replay, you can offer replay for two days. You can make it open indefinitely. Up to you.
Kate Toon:
Because one of the things I like about this model is, well, a lot of people are building online courses in learning management systems, but then the issue is that they have to be constantly updated. Whereas if you do a webinar, there’s no real promise that it’s going to be there forever. You see the webinar, people watch it, and they understand that it’s current, but then they don’t expect that six months later, they can still access that and it’s still going to be current. You do another webinar then and if they want the updated version, they can sign up again, great, but if they don’t fine.
Omar Zenhom:
The completion rate is great online.
Kate Toon:
Compared to courses as well. Hugely. Now, do you think the webinars work for everybody? Do they work for… Because obviously they work for SAS people, they work for people like me or for coaching or courses? Do they work for E-commerce sites? Do they work for other types of sites? Can I be a plumber and run a webinar?
Omar Zenhom:
We have… The funny thing is that I was actually quite surprised at all the different kinds of webinars and all the different kinds of businesses that use webinar ninja. Obviously we lend ourselves to the online course and information, playground as well as the coaching playground, but we have a lot of doctors, dentists, local lawyers, service workers that run their webinars to teach other people how to do things or to promote their different services or products.
Omar Zenhom:
The biggest surprise for me was the E-commerce. How many people run webinars selling the physical goods, but it makes total sense because before webinars, there was the home shopping network and QVC and infomercials. We used to buy things on TV all the time. There physical products and they would… Show it to you in the camera and they show you the gleam of the diamonds and all that kind of stuff. People do the same thing on their webcams, whether they’re selling iPhone cases, or they’re selling picture frames or whatever it is. We have all these different kinds of businesses.
Omar Zenhom:
I was actually impressed by how well people do with their physical products. They launch a new series of products every week and they do a webinar and they show their new products off and they say hey, we’re doing introductory price of so and so and they have their offer buttons and they promote that way.
Kate Toon:
I want to talk about the funnel here because we’ve talked a lot about top of funnel, the tofu people. They maybe don’t know about you’re building that brand awareness. They have a problem, you could possibly be the solution and you’re building that through. Then we got the MOFU people who maybe have made a small purchase, but they are not fully in. Webinars can still work for those guys in terms of upgrading them to a bigger product or making them pay for something or do you think with MOFU people… MOFU?
Omar Zenhom:
One of the things that a lot of people forget is how to retain a customer. It cost so much money to get a customer ads and copy and time and blog posts and all that kind of stuff. Then we once they buy, we just forget about them. Especially the small customers, ones that make $37, $97 purchase. You need to offer something to them in terms of continuity, Some people will continue to pay subscription or continue to buy things from you just because they bought from me before and they have the privilege of being on a members webinar.
Omar Zenhom:
This is one of the things that allowed us to really drive down churn at WebinarNinja is people will attend our monthly member webinars, they’ll get tips. They’ll learn about how to use the software, they’ll learn about our latest features or next product. On occasion, not all the time but on occasion, we just make them aware, hey, by the way, we are running a challenge. By the way, we have a new product, By the way, you might be interested in this new feature that’s in this higher tier. For Members, we’re doing a special offer, here’s the offer. I’m just going to leave it here in the offer area. Let’s keep on going.
Omar Zenhom:
It just allows them to understand… A lot of people are not aware. They’re not aware that you have things that can solve their problems. A lot of times we think that everybody reads every single email and they know every page on their website. No they don’t know. They bought something, they’re probably happy with it and they probably want more but they just don’t know what they need next. That’s your job. Your job is to tell them hey, if you’re in this $97 level, their next step is to take this $300 course, that this is going to show you 1234. Here it is, this is where you can go. Sometimes we just need to just make it available to people.
Kate Toon:
Yes, I so agree. Now, obviously one of the ways that you can promote your webinar is Facebook ads and Google ads, but let’s assume we’ve got no budget, we’re right at the beginning. What are some ways that you can get the word out for your webinar so it’s not just you and your pretend friend Sue on the webinar? How do you get the word out?
Omar Zenhom:
There’s three types of traffic as you know. There’s traffic you own, which is your own email list and people that you can call upon at anytime. Traffic that you can borrow and traffic that you could buy or rent, which is paid ads. But I love the middle one, which is traffic you could borrow, which is understanding that you are not the only person that has access to your audience. We have similar audiences.
Omar Zenhom:
Sometimes we don’t think really outside the box. One of my best partnerships was with digital photography school Dan rouses site. I guest posted for them. It’s a photography. What does that have to do with webinars, have to do with business, but there are so many photographers that want to go pro as a photographer and they want some tips. They want to understand how to build their portfolio, how to build their website, how to set their prices, all that kind of stuff.
Omar Zenhom:
A lot of those niches and sites were underserved. I tapped into that. I wrote the whole blog post, 2500 words with images. Then I emailed them and said, “Hey, attached is my guest post. I’d love for you to take a look at it. I’d love to be a guest post. I found… I searched your website, I saw that there’s some gaps in these areas. Hopefully you can find value in it. I just mentioned at the end of the blog post, I said, “Hey, you made it to the end of the blog post. That’s amazing. It looks like you’re serious about this topic. Why don’t you sign up for my automated webinar to continue your learning on this topic.” It’s just a great Legion, evergreen Legion.
Omar Zenhom:
We get four to 500 emails every month just from this blog post. Because it’s just an underserved market. The thing about borrowing audiences and writing guest posts or being on podcast or getting on stage at events. It’s not costly financially, but is costly in terms of time and effort. What I love about that is that most people don’t do it. Most people don’t write guest posts. Most people don’t get themselves out there and get on podcast. Most people don’t apply to get on stage and speak on stage and say, “I’m only going to speak in front of 200 people, is that really going to make a difference?”
Omar Zenhom:
It will make a difference. Why? Because those people will tell other people, you’re making deeper connections with people, you’re going to get fans that are going to be again, promoting what you do. Always go for the things that people are not willing to do. I believe that by leveraging other people’s audiences, doing some sort of partnership, hey, how about, I help your audience you help mine. You don’t have to be competitors. It could be just people that have the same audience.
Kate Toon:
I love that. That’s the whole ethos of everything I’ve ever done.
Omar Zenhom:
Well it works.
Kate Toon:
It does work. It really does and it’s just good karma as well if you got out and do these things. I’m a big believer in good karma. Look, I’ve got some great questions from members of the I Love SEO group. I’m just going to pitch these to you as well. Some of them are covered but we’ll go through them again. The first one is from Kate Merryweather from Dot Com Words. She asks, I’ve never done a webinar for my business. What are the big mistakes rookies make?
Omar Zenhom:
Okay. The biggest mistake people make is they try to be something they’re not. They try to… This is my webinar I got to be professional. I’m going to wear you know a suit. I’m going to completely meltdown-
Kate Toon:
Speak in an American accent. Omar, he’s not even American.
Omar Zenhom:
Completely meltdown if something goes wrong like I stumble on my words or skip a slide. My strategy for any beginner is just be honest with your audience. They will love you for it. Just start the webinar by saying, “Hey…” I did this at the beginning. I said, “Hey, if I mistake a mistake or I stumble on words, cheer me on in the chat. Give me an emoji. Give me a fire emoji. Say I love you. Say anything. Make me feel okay. Would you do that for me?” Yes, I’ll do that for you. By the way, this is-
Kate Toon:
Omar you’re so America.
Omar Zenhom:
I mean, what this does also-
Kate Toon:
Whatever works for you.
Omar Zenhom:
Yes, whatever works for you, whatever question you want. The point is that you’re getting them engaged. They’re feeling, hey, I got this person’s back. You’re making a bond, you’re being vulnerable. You’re saying, “Hey, this is my first webinar. I’m going to give it my best shot. I hope you get a lot of value out of it.” What’s great about that, is that one, it takes you off the hook. It also just puts you at ease and realise that hey, I don’t need to be something I’m not. I don’t have to be the Oprah or the Tony Robbins or the whatever of the world.
Omar Zenhom:
They don’t need that. Your audience doesn’t need the Tony Robbins. He’s way ahead of everybody. They need somebody who’s a few steps ahead. When I started to build WebinarNinja, I contacted my friends that are just maybe a couple years ahead of me in software, and I said, “Hey, what can I do the next two years to get to where you are today?” That’s really what people want from you and your expertise.
Kate Toon:
Yes. I was… It’s like people can’t relate to Beyonce because she’s so far above so try to be just a little bit far ahead. Also, I think things will go wrong during the webinar. I remember when I did a webinar, some Jehovah’s Witnesses, not only let themselves in through the main gate, but they let themselves into another gate. I have a little hut in my back garden and halfway through my webinar, there were just these two faces pressed against the window with a copy of whatever they carry around with them. I think it might be the Bible, I’m not sure. In the middle of my webinar, and I literally had to say to everybody on the webinar, I’m really sorry. There are two strange man at my window, I’ll be back and went off and dealt with them and came back. It was without doubt my most popular ever webinar.
Omar Zenhom:
Yes, totally.
Kate Toon:
There was no doubt that it was real. There was no doubt that it was live. This is no automation. I think it was endearing. That’s my word for 2020. The listeners to the podcast will know that I’m all about endearing content in 2020. Own your mistakes. Another question here from Marie Bankston from [inaudible 00:34:11] in Sweden. She says, what are some exciting ways to do a webinar? The 100 plus slideshow doesn’t fit for me or my subject.
Omar Zenhom:
That’s a great question. Because like I mentioned before, the bar is extremely low. A lot of people think there’s one way to do a webinar. Okay, I’m going to watch John Lee Dumas webinar, I’m going to just follow the same format. That works for John, right? That’s his style. If you want to do it in five slides, you could do five slides. You do with no slides if you want to do it. The point here is that you have to… I come from an education background, I come from teaching five classes every single day. My whole goal was what’s best for the students? How can I make sure they’re going to pass the test? How can I make sure they’re going to get a result at the end of this class?
Omar Zenhom:
You got a cater your webinar to that result. Don’t worry about what works and what sells. Your authenticity, your product and just showing what you can offer is really what you need to focus on. Okay? If you find something cringe worthy, you don’t have to do it, you don’t have to do that. What I like to recommend is I actually give a very simple outline in terms of the slides. Then you can add more slides, you can remove slides and things like that.
Omar Zenhom:
It just allows people to understand that, hey, this is what you want to cover. A lot of us we try to cover too much. Again, get specific, the more specific, the better. I actually say you should have three big moments in your webinar, which is the three key reasons why… Like mic drop moments. Things that make people feel wow, that was a great takeaway. Wow, I want to know more about this business or product. Any more than that it gets overwhelming.
Omar Zenhom:
A lot of us we want to throw people into the deep end and say look at everything I have and everything I’ve done and everything I can do, and they just say the words of death in any sales transaction, which is, I think I’m not ready for this. I think this is too much. They suffer overwhelm and that’s a cardinal sin. Keep it simple. Keep it tight. Allow time for questions. Allow time for people to ask questions so you can actually give them the answers you’re looking for.
Kate Toon:
Because that’s that individual touch point as well, that actually got to talk to you. I think, again, it depends as well, whether you’re doing the sales kind of webinar, or maybe it’s the three mic drop moments, you don’t to give everything away, you’re just trying to show that you know what you’re talking about and show your worth. Or whether you’re doing a paid educational webinar, where maybe the level of audience is a bit more advanced, they understand the subject. They’ve signed up because they get it and therefore you can go a little bit deeper with the content.
Omar Zenhom:
One thing I just want to add is that a lot of… When I started doing webinars, just watching a lot of webinars and coming from a teaching background, I realised that a lot of people don’t know how to teach. They’re just rushing through the content. One of the things I do and I encourage our members to do which is really helpful is this format that we call input output, which comes from the teaching days, where basically you don’t move on to the webinar or move on in the webinar.
Omar Zenhom:
Every five or 10 minutes, you want to check in with your audience and you just… Say for example you just covered three tips. Okay, after you cover the three tips, don’t move on. Stop and say, “Hey, guys, which one of these three tips was the biggest takeaway for you? Which one are you going to implement first?” Get them to engage. It’s not about getting them to chat. It’s about for them to stop and think about, Oh, I just learned three things.
Omar Zenhom:
Yes, you’re right, which one I’m I going to do first? I think that one. It just allows them to comprehend and get a chance to think about what they just learned.
Kate Toon:
I love that. That’s fantastic. Let’s think about time. We talked about time investment. Webinars are actually really I think low time investment in terms of setup. You put together your PowerPoint presentation, hopefully not a hundred slides. You work out what your three mic drop moments are. Maybe have some pre prepared polls for people to fill out and maybe if you’re brand new, a couple of questions. Ones which engage the audience. As soon as people type one thing into the chat box, they feel more comfortable about chatting in the chat box again.
Kate Toon:
A really cheesy one I often ask is what Netflix show you watching. Everybody will type something in and then, oh wait, there’s the chat box. I found it it. It works. Oh, look, my name really came up. This is live. Proof of concept. But for you if someone’s starting tomorrow, they’re going obviously sign up at WebinarNinja and I don’t get my affiliate fee, but that’s okay. How long from yo to go. I start tomorrow, how long is it going to get me to the point where I can literally publish my webinar and say, “Hey, it’s happening. Come and watch.”
Omar Zenhom:
I usually say it takes about seven to 10 days if you are fully committed to make this work. If you are juggling a whole bunch of things, it probably take a little bit more than two weeks. But we’re talking about from the conception when you do a webinar to going live and running the webinar. You want to have at least two weeks anyway to promote the webinar and to get it out in the world and get some feedback from people about the title and the topic and all that stuff and crowdsource that through social media.
Omar Zenhom:
A lot of people they worry about the tech, that’s the easiest part. The tech is going to take you 10 seconds.
Kate Toon:
It takes an hour max to set it and once you’ve set up one, it’s so easy to then duplicate it and whatever. I was going to say seven to 10 days. It didn’t take me that long. What was I missing?
Omar Zenhom:
In terms of just building the material. Building your slides and refining your offer and making sure that when they go to that link, it actually appears and all that kind of stuff and just testing things out. I like to give people a bit more time just so they feel comfortable and they can… I really believe if you have never spoken in public, you don’t have a podcast. Maybe you don’t feel comfortable in front of camera that much. Rehearsal is a big part of getting over those nerves. Even if you just run a webinar just for yourself and watch the replay. That really helps a lot of our members.
Kate Toon:
It really does. I think the great thing about webinars as with Facebook Live and things like that is it’s… You set that allowance for a week, and then it’s gone. If it was the worst webinar you’ve ever done, it’s gone. Then you can improve it and do it again, unlike an online course, where you invest all this time, creating static content that lives on your site and it’s there forever. It’s a reassuring thing that the webinar can be refreshed and renewed really easily.
Kate Toon:
Well, you’ve made me excited about webinars. I’m logging back in. I hope you haven’t blocked me.
Omar Zenhom:
No, our support team is happy to help.
Kate Toon:
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on to the show. Of course, I will include links to all Omar’s bits and bobs including the podcast as well because it’s a great listen in the show notes. Thank you very much, Omar.
Omar Zenhom:
Thank you Kate. It was awesome. This took too long. We met what, four or five years ago and we’ve been wanting to do this for some time so I’m so glad we got it on.
Kate Toon:
Yes. It was worth waiting for. All right. Thanks a lot. Bye.
Omar Zenhom:
Take care.
