Ep #20: How To Host Your First Webinar in 2023
Last week I was hosting my very first zoom webinar, and today I want to share my experience, results, what I have learnt and what I will do differently next time.
In today’s episode you will learn why you should host a webinar, how to set it up step by step, how to promote it and what results you can expect.
Before we'll jump into the topic, I just want to remind you about my free checklist of 20 Ideas to Drive Leads to Your Website, great for everyone who would like to have more visitors and clicks on their website. You can download it for free here
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EPISODE SUMMARY:
What is a webinar and why to bother?
Webinar is an online seminar (a teaching) to a group of people. You can educate your clients on your topic, you can demonstrate your product or explain your services.
In my opinion, hosting a webinar is the quickest way to build a relationship with your audience. Not only they get to know you as an expert on your topic but also, they get to know your personality, they hear your voice and feel your energy. In fact, they get a taste how it is to work with you and then it’s easier for them to make a decision.
What are the benefits of hosting a webinar?
You build a relationship and trust with your audience
You build your email list
You show your expertise
You sell your services and programmes
You get to know your audience, what resonates the most with them, what questions they ask
You can test your new ideas and offers
I was very reluctant to host a webinar myself. I had this thought that nobody would like to listen to a web designer. But in fact, no matter what you do, it’s the topic of your webinar (hint: topic that addresses frustrations of your ideal client) that will attract the right people. My clients, coaches and service providers are tired of spending hours on social media every single day with little or no results and they want their websites work harder for them in the background. They want to attract and book people who are already looking for their services online with calm and ease. They want to spend less time on marketing their business and have more time and energy to work with their clients.
My first webinar in numbers.
I hosted a zoom webinar on How to Get More Clients Through Your Website. I was talking about 4-step website selling formula, how to drive traffic to your website and how to make your website irresistible to your ideal clients.
Duration: 40 minutes on zoom
Audience: I had 16 people registered, 2 persons attended live and I have two calls booked.
I promoted the training daily to my email list, on my private Facebook and Instagram through posts, stories and DM’s for one week prior to the training.
Overall, I’m very happy with the results. The training and follow up went smoothly. The biggest challenge was to get people to register because I don’t have big email list or network.
What I have learnt and will do differently next time
I will narrow the training to one pillar only and go deeper into topic to be even more specific and helpful so people will leave the training with one thing to implement and improve on instead of three things that can feel overwhelmed.
I will keep the training time under 30 minutes. People are busy, they want to get a value without the fluff.
Also, I will ask for Instagram and Facebook handles on the sign-up form so I can follow up with people through DM’s after the training.
I will focus now on building my email list and my network, because it will help me to fill my future webinars so much easier.
Thinking about hosting a zoom webinar, but you don’t know where to start? Here’s my step by step process.
Choose a topic for your free event
You can test 3 different topics in a poll on your social media or in Facebook groups or just ask your email subscribers (I’ve done a poll in two different Facebook groups).
Prepare your presentation slides or your speech.
I prepared my slides in Canva. You may also use Google docs or Power Point. I decided to have slides to make sure I will share everything what I want, that I won’t forget about anything in case I will be nervous.
Create your sign-up form
and integrate with your website (it will boost your website traffic/ SEO). I used ConvertKit, but all other email providers like MailChimp or Flodesk, they will have their signup form that you can integrate into your website. Or if you’re not tech-y at all just use a zoom registration link that it’s automatically generated once you schedule a zoom call. People who registered through zoom will also receive a reminder prior to webinar. Once registration is close, you can just copy and paste emails of the participants into your regular email app.
You registration/ sign up form should be very clear. Start with FREE WEBINAR, title of your webinar, benefits of attending, what people will learn and Call to action (sign up now). You can see example of my registration page here at ellawebdesign.ie/website.
Promote your webinar.
I was marketing to my email list and on social media through different types of posts and stories. You can also use your network and ask other friendly businesses to spread the word about your event or promote it during guest podcast or video. You can create Facebook event and LinkedIn event if you have a following on these platforms, you may have a competition – invite 3 friends and win. I was promoting my webinar for one week. I think 1-2 weeks it’s perfect for a free event.
Deliver your zoom webinar.
You can make it live or you can pre-record the training. Going live gives you better chance to get to know your audience but it’s absolutely up to you. I found it very reassuring when I had 2 people watching me live. It gave me much better energy to present because I knew I’m helping at least these two people and not talking to an empty screen. Beside when you’re live you can ask questions, your audience can ask questions so it’s more interactive, which is nicer for you and for them as well.
Make an offer.
As I mentioned at the beginning, one of the reason of hosting a webinar is to sell, so at the end of the webinar I offered a time sensitive bonus and ask to book a call with me. I had no calls booked on the webinar.
Follow up.
They say money is in the follow up and it’s true. They also say you need to follow up 5-7 times to make it count. I sent 3 follow-up emails and send a DM to people who I knew from my social media and I finished with 2 calls booked. The main purpose of the follow up is to make sure that everyone had a chance to see the replay and learn about the special offer. It’s up to them to decide if they want to move forward and book a call with you. You may prepare your follow up emails in advance and set up an automation, or if you’re on a free plan, that’s ok as well, you will just need to send the emails manually every day just remember to send only to people who registered to your webinar, not to your all email list.
And that's it. As you can see, setting up a webinar is quite straightforward. To make it really simple, use zoom registration link, prepare your speech (you don’t even need the slides), promote the webinar to your email list, deliver the presentation and follow up with emails to make sure everyone had a chance to watch it.
If you found this blog helpful, please feel free to share it with others. Thank you.
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