Fun fact: webinars used to TERRIFY me. An hour before my first webinar, I literally threw up because I was so sleep deprived (working on my webinar) and nervous.

Now, they are one of the most high-impact strategies that I’ve used to grow my business. And honestly, I LOVE doing them.

Here’s a little snippet of how webinars have rapidly grown my business and audience…

• They’ve helped me build relationships with people I deeply admire.
• They’ve earned my business hundreds of thousands of dollars within a matter of months.
• They’ve connected me more deeply to my tribe online.
• They’ve set me apart as an authority in my niche because I’ve been able to teach my strategies to thousands of people.

I mean seriously, what single business strategy can do ALL of that?

For that reason, when someone is starting their business and feeling those pangs of overwhelm — trying to go 15 routes at once — I encourage them to shove everything else aside and just start doing webinars.

It’s also why I encourage seasoned businesses that are already earning money to get into doing webinars, too. There’s always room for growth.

No matter where you’re at, webinars can help you quickly grow your revenue and audience.

Now, before we move on, here’s an audio version of this exact blog post, if you’d prefer to listen to this post rather than read it. 🙂

So, today I want to chat about a few of the specific reasons why webinars will majorly impact your biz, as well as how you can get started with webinars yourself.

Now, let’s get crackin’ on today’s post.

Why should you do webinars?

1. They breed connection with your audience.

There is nothing more personal than seeing someone live — whether it’s in person or online, live interactions are inherently more intimate than, say, reading a blog post or scrolling through someone’s Instagram.

And if you’re doing business online, there can be a bit of disconnection between you and your audience, simply because they aren’t getting the full impact of who you are.

The solution? Webinars!

Webinars allow you to share a live video with your audience, which humanizes your brand and gives your tribe a chance to get to know you.

Think about it — if you saw someone on a live webinar and they had a great, relatable personality, wouldn’t you be rooting for them even MORE than if you had just been reading their blog?

There’s only so much of your personality that you can infuse into text or even a podcast. Webinars give your audience a more complete story on who you are.

So, if you wish you had a more engaged tribe, webinars are the perfect place to breed engagement and connection with your peeps.

2. They help you stand out as an authority + expert in your niche or industry.

It takes work to create a webinar.

It’s one thing to write a stellar blog post about a topic, but it’s even more impressive if you can then turn that blog post into a 30-45 minute live online workshop. Webinars also tend to have more visibility than blog posts because they are an “event.”

Think of it this way: What would be more memorable? If your favorite author gave you a copy of their book? Or if your favorite author held a private reading for you and a few friends where they read excerpts of their book and told some off-the-cuff stories, too? To me, this is the difference between writing a blog post or an email vs. setting up a live webinar.

Plus, as you’ll learn below, you can do webinars to OTHER people’s audiences — not just your own. This further adds to your credibility because other people have essentially said that they trust your knowledge and want to share it with their audience. It’s like a mini endorsement, in a way.

Again, this all adds to your authority online.

BTW do you need to be an “expert” to start doing webinars?

Absolutely not! You just need to know more than the people you’re teaching. 🙂

3. Bottom line: you.will.grow.your.revenue.

There’s just no doubt about it: If you use webinars consistently, you will make sales and grow your revenue. You obviously need to add a bit of strategy to your webinars to make lots of sales, but once you have the right framework, there’s really no ceiling.

Webinars have helped me earn hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past year and I am certain that if I never started doing webinars, my business would not be where it’s at right now.

I truly believe that anyone — regardless of niche or industry — should do webinars or live videos to their audience. There’s nothing like them in terms of connection, authority, and income. 🙂

How can you get started with webinars?

Well, there are a few types of webinars you can do, and plenty of ways to get started (even if the thought of doing a webinar totally freaks you out). Let’s cycle through the timeline I recommend.

1. Start with Facebook Live or Periscope.

This is a great way to dip your toes into the live video world because both Facebook Live and Periscope allow you to broadcast a live, streaming video to your audience.

Here’s an example of a Facebook Live session I did:

They are much less “formal” than a standard webinar because people don’t need to register to attend your FB Live or Periscope and generally, you are not sharing a slideshow presentation (it’s often just you talking).

If doing a “formal” webinar sounds terrifying to you (it sounded terrifying to me when I first started doing them!), then doing a few days of FB Live sessions first can *really* help you to feel like less of a nutcase when it comes time to do your actual webinar.

How can you get started with FB Live or Periscope?

Try teaching ONE tip or strategy in your first few sessions. You can keep it relatively short, too — like 5-10 minutes.

As you start to feel more comfortable, you can extend the length of your sessions. This will get you comfortable speaking on live video.

But how do I get people to show up?!

Great question!

On Periscope, your followers will get a notification when you go live. Your broadcast will also be shared with your Twitter followers.

A couple other ways you can increase your Periscope attendance is to tell your email list about your Periscope session in advance (like a couple days notice). Since your broadcast will be shared on Twitter, you can also use hashtags in your presentation title to attract more Twitter users to your session.

As for Facebook Live, I *believe* your followers get a notification if you go live, too, but my understanding is that this only happens if they are already on FB at the time. I’ve turned off notifications for pretty much everything, so I’m not 100% sure — anyone have a definitive answer on this one?

Whenever I do FB Live sessions, I aim to tell my FB Page or FB Group audience about it 24 hours in advance, regardless. Here’s a recent post I shared on my FB Page to let my followers know when I was going live (and what I’d be talking about)…

2. Hosting Your First Solo Webinar

Now that you’ve got some FB Live or Periscope sessions under your belt, it’s time to get crackin’ on your initial webinar presentation.

Typically, webinars utilize slideshow presentations for most of the webinar (though you could do a slideshow the entire time if you prefer to not be on camera). You can use PowerPoint or Keynote to do this.

When I create new webinars, I like to teach 2-3 really valuable tips, as opposed to 10 strategies that barely skim the surface. I want my viewers to leave feeling like they got something actionable out of my webinar that they can implement right away.

When coming up with a topic for your webinar, try to think about the first 2-3 steps that someone would need to take to achieve a specific goal. Basically, get them started. Give them some momentum to keep going.

Whether or not you pitch a product at the end of this webinar is totally up to you, but it’s not necessary if you’re just trying to grow your list or get some practice in.

In fact, if you’re just getting started with webinars, I’d encourage you to NOT pitch something on your very first one.

Try doing a no-pitch, value-only webinar that shares some helpful tips and grows your email list.

This will help you work out the kinks before you do a pitch webinar and you’re also likely to be less nervous if you know the webinar is just for fun and not for sales.

3. Host a Joint Venture/Partner Webinar

A Joint Venture (or JV) webinar is a great way to grow your list, collaborate with influencers in your niche, and make sales of your product without tiring out your list. There are a couple ways to do this:

The first way is by YOU teaching a webinar to someone else’s audience. 

If you go this route, then you will be creating the webinar presentation and your partner will simply invite their audience to join the webinar.

In this case, you will create a webinar registration page, give it to your partner, and they will share that opt-in page with their audience. Therefore, anyone who signs up for the webinar from THEIR list will end up on your list.

Do you see how this can quickly help you grow your email list?

Not only that, but if you have a product to sell, you can pitch your product on this webinar and give a commission to your partner. Typical commission rates for partner webinars are 50%.

This means that you can get in front of entirely new audiences to pitch your product to. It also means that if you have just ONE webinar presentation, you can teach your webinar to a new person’s audience each week and make consistent sales of your product.

I recommend first reaching out to your potential webinar partner on social media. Leave comments on their Instagram. Share some posts from their blog. Basically, begin building a relationship.

That will get you on their radar and show that you are in this to help them, too.

Then, you can shoot them an email to see if they’d be interested in having you do a webinar to their audience. Make it clear what’s in it for them. 

For example, let them know that they’d receive a commission of sales, and that you’d give a ton of free value to their audience within your webinar presentation (which makes them look good for finding someone as helpful as you! ;)).

You can also provide some stats if you’ve done this webinar before. For example, the conversion rate (percentage of viewers who purchased).

JV webinars are a fabulous strategy, especially if you’re looking to grow your email list and make more sales on a consistent basis.

The second way to do JV webinars is to invite someone to teach one to YOUR audience.

In this instance, you can reach out to others in your niche who are doing webinars and ask them if they’d like to do a webinar to your audience.

If they agree, then they will create a registration page and give it to you. You can then share that registration page with your audience to encourage them to sign up for the workshop.

If your partner has a product that they’ll be pitching, then it’s standard for you to receive a 50% commission on any sales made on the webinar since you will be inviting your audience.

This can be a very worthwhile monetization strategy because the only thing YOU really need to do is share the webinar registration with your peeps and then show up to the live webinar.

The presenter will be the one to teach the webinar, so there isn’t a ton of work involved on your end, yet you’ll still earn a commission of sales. Woo!

Overall, webinars can easily become your secret weapon for making sales, humanizing your brand, growing your list, and elevating your business to new heights.

 

Are you interested in doing webinars for your business?