Optimize Your Webinar Marketing with Casey Zeman

Transcript

Casey, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Stephan, thank you for having me. I’m really excited about this.

First of all, let’s talk about webinars because that’s your thing. We could go into live streaming and other stuff too but I want to start with webinars. What inspired you to create a platform—EasyWebinar, in your case—when there are other options out there. Why not just piggyback on what other people are doing? Why create a whole other platform?

This platform was built a long time ago. Actually, I don’t know if you know this, we started off as a WordPress plugin. It’s called EasyWebinar plugin but, at the time, it was one of the only automated webinar platforms out there.

We started in a very specific niche and lane, and from there, we grew into a full SaaS platform that has live webinar capabilities, automated webinar capabilities, people can create series, they can create automated classes and all sorts of cool stuff.

We actually did a spring off of our own tech to build out a bigger platform. We did it because we just felt the need. We kept hearing the reasons why from people that they wanted something that was more intuitive. I was always on the journey for something more intuitive, where I could do a live webinar, and then quickly turn that live webinar into an automated webinar. I didn’t have to change the URLs and I wouldn’t have to restructure anything, I can just toggle from live to automated and turn what we previously live into an evergreen funnel.

I have nothing out there that did that. The thing I was using at the time when I was out looking for something was GoToWebinar. With GoToWebinar, I could run a live webinar but I couldn’t turn it into an automated webinar. I had to take out the video, dump it into an automated webinar system, build out all the pages and all the emails. I have to do all of that.

That was the impetus for building EasyWebinar in the first place. It was to have the capability of running a live webinar, and then quickly toggling it over and turning it into an automated webinar with only two clicks of a button. I don’t have to do anything. Once I have a live webinar that works really well, I turn it into a funnel and it’s always out there working and performing for me.

That’s what we built. We are a program that does live webinars. We have our own live stream, high-definition, no-latency streaming. You could share your own screen up to 4+ presenters on. You could push offers in real-time, you can chat—private or public chat.

Then, once that is over, all the emails are built into EasyWebinar, like the pre-notification and post-notification. We have a replay page as well inside of EasyWebinar, where you can basically do a duplicate of your live webinar or build out your own custom replay page, and then we connect that with all of your favorite CRM systems. You can basically pass the information from EasyWebinar into Infusionsoft, ConvertKit, etc. And basically, create segmented campaigns based on the actions performed in the webinar.

There is so much content out there nowadays, and sales funnels aren't what they used to be. People require more experience now. When you provide a unique experience, next comes connectivity. Click To Tweet

We felt that there wasn’t a holistic platform that allowed you to do this for live, and then took that same data and move it into automated. That’s what we do. We are really intertwined our live and our automated system. Most platforms that do have live, they’re either just live or there are other platforms that do automated. There are platforms that have both but not as intertwined and not as connected as our platform. It was because I wanted a holistic way to market and create better experiences for people and I thought webinars were those experiences. I just didn’t find the platform that gave me everything I want. So, it’s very selfish.

That was great that you were selfish because a lot of us benefited; I’m a customer. What I wanted to underline the value of converting your live webinar seamlessly to evergreen is so important. We burned a lot of hours going from recordings of GoToWebinar to turning that into something. We just eventually gave up doing all that on our own and that’s when we found EasyWebinar and signed up.

I’m curious. What do you do to get things like the Q&A, the polling and so forth to port over to an evergreen webinar, to something that’s automated without it being disingenuous like you’re trying to fool them, like this is a live Q&A but it’s not. The people who ask questions and I give answers to, that was in a previous time. The polling that’s happening and me commenting on those polls, that was a previous time, too. How do you reconcile that?

We had the same thought. We didn’t want to feel disingenuine. We didn’t want to have people feel like they weren’t at the highest level of integrity using our system. In fact, we don’t give you the ability to reproduce your same chat commenting for an automated webinar.

From the automated webinar experience, what you have is you have a question box. You can have that question box pop in at any point, where you maybe asked specific questions during the workshop. You can have it there for the entire time or pop in based on when you want it there.

We felt that we don’t want to give you the ability to dupe somebody. So, we don’t actually have what a lot of people will call “simulated chat” where it’s the same chat role from the live duplicated on the automated. What we often tell people when they’re using our system is never tell people it’s live when it’s not.

Now, the cool thing about our system is that we can stream these broadcasts out in real-time with the experience of live. In fact, they’re all live because at [8:00] PM the stream starts. If someone shows up at [8:05], it’s not like it starts from the beginning. It’s going to be five minutes into the workshop because it’s streamed live.

That is something that I’ve seen before with other platforms and it’s so sketchy. This is a live webinar, you come in at [8:05] and it just starts. It’s so obvious that it’s not real.

Exactly. What we encourage people to do is let people know it’s streamed in real-time. For instance, I’ll say use streamed workshop. Call it a streamed workshop. Don’t call it live, “Hey come to our live webinar.” It’s a streamed workshop. That’s what we pretty much tell people to use, either that or workshop, webinar, etc.

We don’t want you to lie about it. Therefore, we don’t have that ability. People like Amy Porterfield, Jay Shetty, and many others who use our system will typically just call it an online presentation, online event, online workshop, and they don’t say it’s live. I think the best thing to do is let it do the trick of engaging without you having to oversell it.

That’s what we do. We try to put people in the position of being at the highest level of integrity because of how the system streams out these events. People are using it very effectively and without having to have all the duping and without having to have the simulate chat and stuff like that.

What about polling? How do you feel about polling as a tactic for webinars?

I think polling is strong. To be honest with you, we don’t have a polling mechanism in our system right now. What we allow you to do is you can ask questions at any given point and people can send you their response. We are adding and it’s on the roadmap, but it might be available in the next 6–8 weeks because of the requests we’ve gotten.

I do think it’s a good way to get insights from the people that are on your workshop, even if it’s automated. It’s just like anything. Using a poll link on an automated webinar or asking questions—the same thing—it all stems from keeping engagement up even while you’re not there. So, having a question going out like, “So, tell me where are you coming in from the world? Go ahead and post in this question box.”

Being engaged is still fine. It’s really about how you set this up. What do we typically do? Here’s what we do when we want to listen in a really effective way. I’ll say in my webinar, “Welcome to this workshop. I’m so excited that you’re here. This workshop should be for about an hour. There’s going to be a point where I’m going to be answering some questions at the end of this workshop. Probably you know some common questions we get. If you have a question during the workshop, if it’s not answered by the end, don’t worry. Somebody will be reaching out with a customized response. So, feel free to put a question in the question box there. Whether you get a response during the workshop or after, someone will reach out,” because it actually is true. I or someone on my team always answer any questions coming in from the automated webinars and people love it. I get some many conversions just simply by responding to someone in a customize, personalize email.

That’s great.

Still, the whole idea is how can you leverage your time in the best way? You’re not putting on a presentation but you can be manning the questions coming in right from your phone while you’re grocery shopping or doing maybe other stuff. It’s just a really powerful way to leverage your time.

Engagement is still key even in an evergreen webinar. Asking questions and having questions pop up at given points. Having maybe a worksheet that they can work on while the webinar workshop is going on. Even when it’s pre-recorded, it doesn’t matter. It’s still a high-level of engagement that you want to put attention into because you’re nurturing. You’re going through a process with them.

That’s what I encourage for our webinars. Polling would be an addition to that. Again, we don’t have it as of yet but we’ll have it soon.

Okay. Who would you say is a great, gold standard to look at and reverse engineer what they’re doing in terms of their webinars, their funnels, the follow-up sequences and all that. Is there Amy Porterfield. Is it somebody else?

Amy’s really good. I love Amy. We have a slew of customers that are doing this, but there is a woman named Alanna Kaivalya. She has a yoga program and she does about six figures a month on her automated webinar. I have all these women examples, but Alanna Kaivalya is one. Tanya Aliza is another one. Tanya does 200,000 or so plus a month. There’s another person, Kim Constable, who is the sculpted vegan. She’s doing really well. She did 1.5 million in the last 15 months just through the EasyWebinar funnel. I’m only giving you women as examples for some odd reason, but I would say Amy Porterfield is strong. I’ll type these in so you have them.

So, I just gave you the names. You can find their workshops. Some of them have their workshops from their home page. Some of them have their workshops just finding Google because our system is obviously search engine optimized and stuff like that.

Very good. The webinars that they’re doing are all automated, correct? They’re not doing live ones as well or are they doing a mix of both?

Some do a mix of both. We have other people that are solely using our system to do live webinars literally on a weekly basis and they’re doing quite well. They just have a weekly live workshop. Same workshop and they’re generating really good revenue, five-figure revenue, just from running the same workshop weekly.

I really find that what you discover is that it’s really about creating a structure around how you’re using webinars as a marketing engine. If you can do live, you could probably just repeat the cycle, repeat it over and over. If you’re going automated, then it’s a question of just refining and tweaking the process and seeing how people are consuming, they’re resonating to use your price point correct and all that good stuff. That’s the fun of it. It’s systemizing webinars, basically.

If I have to give anybody any advice, I’d say start running live webinars first, and then when you’re ready and you have a converting webinar, turn it into an automated webinar. Make sure you pull out some of the pieces, though. I would say if you’re going to run an automated webinar, still have Q&A, but think of 10 frequently asked questions, 10 should ask questions, and then have those in the back-end when you start to do a Q&A part of your webinar.

You don’t have to say, “Jill is here and she says…” or, “Sam is here and he says…” You can just simply say, “Here are some common questions we get. Casey, what’s the best way to do X, Y, and Z.” So, you have that at the end. That way, it’s more generalized and you’re obviously not trying to…

You’re not trying to fool them. You’re being authentic.

Exactly. So, I would suggest that. A Q&A is still very powerful in an automated webinar because it still handles the objections that someone will have probably towards the sale.

Right because you want to preempt those objections before they even verbalize them or even think of them.

They might be thinking of them (or not) and you’re right. You just knock them out.

Is there an optimal time frame for these automated webinars? I’ve seen, for example, that they start on the top of the hour or they start at 15-minute increments. You can sign-up for the webinar that’s [2:15], or [2:30], or [2:45], or there may be an option to just start watching it right away, or watch the previous day’s recording. What’s the best approach here?

This is a great question. I want to share this app. Here’s the thing. It really depends on where someone is entering into the webinar with what they already experienced with you. As an example, if you have someone going through an opt-in or maybe they consume six videos or seven videos. Maybe they consumed a challenge video, or maybe there are people that are watching you consistently on Instagram, or maybe there’s someone who’s consistently watching your podcast.

A cool thing about webinars is it enables you to create conversations. Even if it's automated, you can still bridge that experience of authenticity and connectivity. Click To Tweet

Moving people that are warm traffic into an automated webinar, compared to people that are cold traffic where they’ve never touch touchpoints with you moving them into a webinar, there are going to be two different strategies and two different optimizations for the scheduling. As an example, for warm traffic, you could send warm traffic into a webinar where they can consume it right away because they already feel connected and engaged with you.

As an example, setting that right-on-time or just-in-time webinar where, if they come to the page, my clock says [2:27] PM, I can have a webinar starting at [2:30]. That’s what we call our right-on-time scheduling where you can have a webinar starting every 15 minutes or 30 minutes or however. If it’s [2:02], you can have a webinar starting at [2:15]. If it’s [2:20], you can have a webinar starting at [2:30]. 

So, 15-minute increments, 30-minute increments, or top of the hour increments. In that regard, if you have warm traffic, sending people into a right-on-time webinar actually does make sense because you don’t have to warm them up as much.

Now, on the flip side of that—cold traffic—if you are sending them into a right-on-time webinar, where they are registering instantly and coming into a workshop, you may not get them sticking around, staying for the whole duration of the webinar, and you might not get them to commit to purchasing because they don’t know you yet. They still have to get to know you a bit more.

What we’ve seen is that you have to either have a kick-butt webinar that can get some conversions and then a really strong follow-up sequence that has scarcity and that has that definitely talks about a couple of pain points, how you can alleviate the pain, and then also testimonials and case studies following-up to completion of the offer. If that’s strong, then you can make up for the fact that the cold traffic is instantly watching the webinar and not nurturing on the front end. 

If you’re nurturing on the back-end, then you can do that on the front-end. Another way to do it if you have cold traffic is you can nurture it on the front-end. Instead of letting someone watch the webinar right away when they hit the registration page, maybe create a couple of days where you block the days. It’s like they hit the registration page on Monday, they can’t watch a webinar until Wednesday. If they register on Monday, they have two days before the webinar starts. Now, you nurture them over the next two days, before the webinar starts.

Now, here’s what happens. You may get fewer people showing up to the webinar, but of the people that do show up, they are more likely to buy and chances are they’ll stick around more towards the end because you spent a couple of days nurturing them, reiterating why they need to show up to the workshop, really getting them indoctrinated into who you are. You will have a strong follow-up after that.

Again, it is going to depend on where the traffic is coming from. If it’s warm traffic, sending them right into a webinar that’s starting right away or yet watching a replay. It is going to serve you just as much and still having a pretty decent follow-up.

What we are seeing for our clients is that we’ve seen for cold traffic or maybe one touchpoint where maybe someone writes an article and then they got invited to a workshop. What we typically see is a day of block. So, you come, you read an article somewhere. There’s an ad that talks about it. They see the ad, they, “Oh, I can learn how to do this.” They go to it, it’s a whole blog post written about X, Y, and Z.

At the end of it, they can register for a workshop or they go back into Facebook and then they re-target the workshop. If they click on it, a workshop can start either right on time, so in the next 15 minute increments, or tomorrow a few times during the day. You get multiple times during the day the next day as well as a time to watch that same day.

We’ve seen this work pretty well. For those who choose to watch it in the future, you have a 24-hour period of time to nurture them. You’re going to have a welcome email to go out right away, you can have an email that goes out three hours before, one hour before, 15 minutes before the webinar, all nurturing and getting people excited to come to the workshop. So, you seen that work quite well and then at the end, do a two- or three-day replay. The replay expires, let’s say, after two or three days on the back-end.

So by making it somewhat scarce, that pushes them to take some action rather than, “Oh, I can watch that replay whenever I want forever.”

I would suggest definitely having a limited time to watch the replay and even get the offer. Many times, people do them at the same time, so it’s congruent where the replay and the offer will expire on the same day. Some people don’t. Some people let the replay expire first, and then sometimes the offer is maybe on the elbow still for another 24 hours.

What do you do with EasyWebinar? I’m assuming that you’re buying some cold traffic like Facebook ads or paid search or something and then you drive them to a landing page or somewhere that they can do the demo, watch a webinar, whatever. Can you walk us through the process that you do for your leads?

I have a couple of different ways to do this. We do this straight away, cold traffic into our automated webinar that has people book on a calendar to have a conversation with someone about our coaching program or enter into EasyWebinar. We have basically a high-ticket funnel straight from Instagram and Facebook.

The whole idea is it gets people on a workshop, the workshop is 20–40 minutes long. Ours is 40 minutes long. From the workshop, they can book a time from the booking page. That will get them into my calendar. From my calendar, they will fill out an application to work with. Then, they’ll get on a call with somebody.

We have a high-ticket funnel like that. We have another funnel that sends people to my EasyWebinar evergreen webinar as well. We have a couple of ways to do it, but right now, we have a PDF funnel that leads to a nurture sequence that invites people to our Six Strategy webinar, so it’s granular and detailed. If they don’t come into that one, we move them into our webinar mini-course. If they don’t come into that one, we send them to our automated webinar that teaches how to sell your courses and programs 24×7 leveraging one simple webinar. So, we take them through different funnels from a PDF entry point. We drink our own Kool-Aid.

That’s great. What is the typical show-up rate for live versus automated? I know there’s a very big difference between cold traffic and warm traffic in terms of the show-up rates, so maybe you can differentiate that as well for us.

Typically, we see 30%–40% show-up rate on webinars across the board, whether they’re live or automated. I think that if you add an element of SMS, you can typically get another 5% bump on that. And if you have enough video content and possibly even some nurturing, that can increase show-up.

We always see a higher show-up rate for right-on-time webinars just because people register and then they can show up right away. But we also see a faster fall-out rate. So, I think that you may get a 50% show-up on a right-on-time webinar, but again, you don’t have as much of a commitment to it.

So, the stick rate or whatever metric you want to call it, then watching it all the way through the end doesn’t happen as much if it’s a right-on-time webinar.

Right. So, your webinar has to be awesome. There’s room for error. There’s margins of error that you can have on a webinar where you have time to do authority seeking or comes off as warm traffic, where maybe you’ve already done some nurturing.

But when you’re sending someone directly cold traffic, it’s going to be a little bit different. You have to have either a killer webinar or move people from a webinar into a conversation on the phone or one-on-one conversation like this, like what we’re doing, and doing it that way because that will break the ice quicker. You know what I mean?

So you get them on the phone, maybe an application funnel is the next step. Then, you’re qualifying them, you get the right audience, you’re not going to waste your time with tire kickers. There’s a way, with the high-ticket offers, to book time on your calendar using ScheduleOnce or Acuity or what?

We use ScheduleOnce just embedded into our page and then people sign up and then it goes and pushes into a Typeform application and that takes them into the calendar. First, they book on ScheduleOnce, then they go to the application. We just say to them they have to fill up the application in order to qualify for the call.

So the call will be canceled if they don’t do the application.

Exactly.

How many calls will have booked up in your week that are these ScheduleOnce scheduled high-ticket calls?

From the high-ticket? It depends on how much traffic we’re sending in. The high-ticket is not necessarily our top priority. It’s mostly getting people as EasyWebinar clients because we crave those internal conversations, too, with EasyWebinar customers who want an effective way to do it. In fact, we move more of those people into becoming clients. But I say we get about 5–10 bookings a week with minimal spend on traffic.

What do those calls look like? Are they 15 minutes? Are they an hour? Are you doing a demo?

They’re about 30-minute calls and it’s not a demo. Most of those are sales. You get a sales rep on and he does the conversations with him and finds out more about what their needs are, the gap that they’re experiencing, where the pain point lies. The whole point of these webinars that I have going out, this one webinar I have going out is that it already defines the pain and problem. Someone will sign up because they resonate with that pain and problem.

So, we’re not having to do any selling in that regard but people who get on the phone already understand the problem. My guys just basically get on and just listen, to understand how bad the problem is. That’s the whole idea of a webinar is that it qualifies these people coming through already and indoctrinates them through a process.

When they come in from an Instagram ad, they hit the registration page, they go to a thank you page, the thank you page has a video. The emails go out specifically talking about X, Y, and Z. They show up to the webinar, talks about how they might not be selling their programs effectively, or maybe you want to create a how-to leverage webinar to create a high-level coaching program, how-to leverage webinars to create a mid-ticket coaching program, or mid-ticket program in the first place.

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How to create an evergreen selling system is basically what we help them understand so that by the time you get on the phone, then they get that. Oftentimes, we ask them what their problem is and they say that, “My problem is I’m launching, the money comes in on some months and the money is not there the next month. I’m always having to create a program after product after program. I’m always doing one-on-one calls and my time is getting bogged down.”

All these things are what we hear. They want more time and freedom. They want a system, so we help them create systems. So, we get those conversations then.

That’s great. Let’s define what is considered high-ticket and medium-ticket. What’s a typical price point for a webinar-based offer? I heard conventional wisdom as don’t go over $997. That’s the ceiling for a direct sales via webinar without having a sales conversation. What sort of numbers should we be talking about?

I think if you’re going to sell a product on a webinar without getting someone directly on the phone, $495–$1000 is a really good sweet spot, maybe a little less, $397, something like that. $297 depending on what the value is of the program, what do they get out of it. I got it all the way up to $2000 in an effective way.

When you say $2000, you mean like $1997 or $1999 sort of thing.

Those are the payment options. But, I’d say anything above that, you’re going to start to want to have a sales conversation. The cool thing is we are seeing, for people that have $1000 or $2000 program, having both options actually does work, too. Offering the, “Here, you can buy it right now,” or get on the phone to summon.

Nowadays, there’s so much content out there. Sales funnels aren’t what they used to be. People are getting a little more hip on them and it requires a bit more of an experience now. I think that with that experience comes connectivity. That’s why I think webinars differentiate themselves in the marketplace with how do you do that. You can create those conversations and that experience. Even if it’s automated, you can still bridge that experience.

I’d say for a mid-ticket, you’re talking anywhere from $2000–$5000. $5000–$10,000 is high-ticket. Ours is a high-ticket program that we have. Then, we have EasyWebinar and different programs inside EasyWebinar as well.

What’s the high-ticket program called?

My program is called TribeMinded. It’s a six-week fast track program that teaches you how to basically create an evergreen webinar funnel to promote a high-ticket coaching program. We show you also how to build out an evergreen program as well.

Are you getting most of the leads for that high-ticket offer from existing customers or is that more of half-and-half?

We mostly get it from the existing customers who are using EasyWebinar. Oftentimes, they have it, they want to do something, but they need a very strong direction. We have training on how to use EasyWebinar on our system, but sometimes, hands-on support where you work with a coach is going to get you there faster.

It’s probably more so people that are internal with EasyWebinar. Sometimes, it’s even people that do demo pulse, that are having conversations that we get to understand where they’re at, the gaps that they’re experiencing, and sometimes we get to close them on bringing them to EasyWebinar and the coaching program at the same time. So, right from the demos. We get organic traffic coming from the demos. That’s probably a traffic point of view you want to leverage a bit more.

So, leveraging organic for getting more demo sign-ups.

Getting demo sign-ups because demo sign-ups have been proven to convert on a really good level. We haven’t push any auto traffic, any paid traffic to the demos yet. We might do that in the future, but right now, we’re working on SEO to do a lot with trying to get more organic search for those demos because we definitely see strong ROI on those demos.

What do those demos look like in terms of the length of the call? How are you screen-sharing with them? Are you giving them a recording? How are you following up? Tell us a bit about how that all works because there are plenty of people who are listening, I bet, who want to demonstrate something to help move that sales process along.

When we do the demos, basically we try to listen to what they want and what they’re looking for. We have conversations and we get suggestions as to what they can do, and then we show them the software and show them how they can achieve it with EasyWebinar. We also start to really understand the fundamental need that they have.

The people that do our demos are people that understand how to create a Socratic dialogue with people, to know what they need. It’s not necessarily like, “Here, let me show you this cool feature that does this.” It’s about, “How is that feature going to get me to my goal?” What we’re doing is we’re being very goal-oriented on the conversations with people. “What is your goal? What are you looking to achieve?” “Okay, so you wanted to do evergreen webinars. Why are you looking to do evergreen webinars?” “Well, because I’ve been having issues with some of my courses. I’m doing it, it’s one-off, and not really getting it really dialed in.” “Okay, let’s quickly show you how some of the evergreen stuff works. How we suggest doing it. And, by the way, if you want, if you’re going to do live as well, you can come into these levels.”

Our guys are really good at trying to show the best level of EasyWebinar, which is Pro. Our Pro annual is our best deal and you get access to all of our features. The feature of being able to push live into Facebook and YouTube at the same time. When you’re doing your live webinar with EasyWebinar, we have that syndication tool called EasyCast.

Of course, we incentivize them to go Pro annual to get my Elite Webinar Mastery course, which sells for $2000 on its own. We get a lot of value on the call and try to give them a discount and deal on the call as well, and we just listen to what their needs are. That’s where we’re doing our strategy calls. They’re demo calls but they turn out to be strategy calls as well.

Right. Now, you generously offered to give our listeners here a discount on EasyWebinar Pro annual. That comes with the Elite Webinar Mastery. Can you tell us what that special deal is?

If you pick up EasyWebinar Pro—the yearly—the price is $1080. You go to the sales page, it’s also $1080. What we don’t offer is my program, Elite Webinar Mastery the full program, which sells on its own for $2000. What we offer from the sales page is just the foundation of that course, which is ¼ of it, and that value is only $300. What we have for you now is you come through and just let me know that you come from Stephan, then I can have Elite Webinar Mastery the full program opened up, which again is valued at $2000 and you also get access to all of Pro. It’s pretty cool. You get all of the cool stuff.

Okay, thank you so much. So, they just mention either Stephan or Marketing Speak and you’ll hook them up. Thank you for that. Now, one point before we move on to other topics around the Socratic dialogue. You’re trying to get at the why behind the why, right? For those unfamiliar with Socratic dialogue—they might have heard of Socrates, but that’s about it—what is the point behind the Socratic dialogue on this demo call?

The Socratic dialogue is exactly what my salesperson talks about. I am, by no means, a sales expert, so that’s what they refer to. The Socratic dialogue is just unpacking and listening to what their pains are.

As an example, that dialogue is listening more than talking. It’s hearing what you have to say, “Okay, I hear you. If there’s any part of that that you would change, what would that be?” It’s just having you unpack and tell me. It is simply the gap, how valuable knowing the answers to the problems you have on.

“What if I gave you the answer? If you could do that, what would you want to do with it?” “Well, I’ll have more free time. I could travel. Ultimately, I could be able to spend time with my kids more, with my family. I would be able to write that book that I’m going to write.”

And then, you say something like, “What if you didn’t do any of that? Five years from now, what would you like to apply if you weren’t able to accomplish anything? How bad is it going to get?” So, it’s really just about pain and the picture of him really seeing how bad they need to solve the problem that they have.

Right, so stretching that gap. Not just showing them the gap between where they are currently and the pain associated with that and their desired end state, the outcome where they want to be, but really accentuating the gap between those two places. You’re basically sticking a knife or poking at the pain.

You highlight the pain and how bad it can get. I always say it’s like raising the stakes. If people have a point in their lives where they need something, if they need this to happen. The price point of whatever you’re selling, if you’re selling a $10,000 program, the $10,000 program has to be of less of a commitment than if they didn’t do anything. The loss has to be greater than whatever cost is of your program. That’s really what it is.

Again, I am not a salesperson. I’m not the one who does these conversations with people. My guy is amazing at it because he listens and he hears what they need. That’s really what sales is all about. It’s not pushy. It’s listening more than anything.

All right. What would you say makes for a killer webinar? Like you see something that’s just keeping people throughout the whole webinar and it’s super engaging, it gets the desired action, it gets high close rate. What’s the secret sauce to that?

I think it’s building an expectation and anticipation right out of the gate of what they’re going to achieve on the webinar, how they’re going to consume the content, letting them know, “By the end of this workshop, they’ll be able to do X lines. This is why you’re going to want to stick around because I’m also going to be giving you this by the end or you’re going to be able to achieve this by the end. I’m going to give you my 100% attention and you’ll give me yours.”

Listen and hear what your audience needs. That's really what sales is all about. It's not pushy. It's listening more than anything. Click To Tweet

You want to create these sticky factors in the beginning. Sometimes a workbook or an exercise for them to perform on a workshop is powerful. If you have four points, you’re going to have them fill out each point. Having them have some sort of realization or aha moment on the workshop will keep them engaged. If it’s you lecturing them, that’s not going to be beneficial for them. That’s not anything that they can walk away from. It has to be that you are creating some sort of change in them.

Transformation, not information.

Exactly. It’s transformation and no matter what price point it is, you’re doing a transformation. You do want to leave with value and you also want to help them have these aha moments. I always find that having engagement points are a good way to do that, whether it’s delivering them an exercise or bringing yourself on camera. Any of these things.

For me, I don’t think it’s a one-webinar-fits-all. There are different types of webinars and also different ways people pass knowledge from one person to the next. There’s no cookie-cutter way of doing a webinar. There’s a framework that will help you do a kick-butt webinar, but whether you just stay on your slides or whether you just be on the video, there’s not a one-size-fits-all type of concept there.

I’m assuming that you should be willing to experiment and try different things, run tests, have a hypothesis and see what works. Maybe you pop in on video for two minutes and then you go back to the slides. That works like gangbusters or you maybe you do it in the end, the network’s better. You don’t know unless you try.

Exactly. You’re exactly right. It’s something to test. It’s something to test within your comfort zone but also stepping a little bit outside of your comfort zone, I think is a really good rule of thumb. And allowing yourself—here’s the biggest thing—to fail and get back on.

A lot of people don’t do webinars because they failed one time at it, or they didn’t produce sales, or they felt inauthentic how they did it, or they’re scared to death of getting on the camera. There are ways around all of these things. It’s going to be facing some fears. It’s going to be working within your boundaries but also challenging your boundaries as well and allowing yourself to not get stuck if something goes wrong—a tech issue or someone comes running behind you. That’s life and it’s just getting back on and doing it again, and again, and again.

Can you think of an example where there’s just a really great follow-up sequence? I’ll give you an example. I learned that ConvertKit sends a Bonjoro video to every new customer that signs up. So, even if they sign-up for the trial period, they get a personalized Bonjoro video from their account manager saying, “Hey,” and then the person’s name, “I’m the customer success consultant at ConvertKit. I want to welcome you and very excited to have you on board. I’m here at your disposal, ask me anything, da-da-da-da-da,” and that might be a 30- or 50-second video. Pretty cool.

Do you have any examples that kind of outside-the-box thinking in terms of moving people post-webinar through to the advocacy stage, to high customer lifetime value?

I think you have to be creative and get more personalized. I think that’s awesome that ConvertKit does that. We don’t have anything detailed like that right now with our demos or our free trials but definitely, for our clients that are using evergreen webinars, I would definitely look at Tanya Aliza because they have really strong follow-up series that are probably 7–10 emails that are just crushing it. They’re just doing really well with conversions.

It’s about personalization but it’s also about empathy and connectivity. If you’re a personal brand, I think it’s about connecting your story to people. You want to make sure that you’re talking about how their story is related to yours or your story related to theirs. And having a story and also offers, story offers, a story of, “Here’s the webinar,” story of, “Here’s also somebody who also went to the same struggles and here’s the outcome.” I’d say follow Tanya Aliza. She’s got a really good follow-up sequence.

Give your audience the chance of realization or an a-ha moment during the presentation. This is what will keep them engaged. They will not walk away with anything through lectures. It has to be you who creates some sort of change within… Click To Tweet

Awesome. As they say, “Facts tell, stories sell.”

Now, how about the SMS component? You said that can increase show-up rates by an additional 5%, particularly, if you’re trying to get them to show up a day or more in advance, they booked it, life gets in the way or maybe they signed up just purely to get access to the replay without any intention of showing up for the live workshop or webinar, what sort of technology solution or approach would you recommend involving SMS?

You can do SMS with EasyWebinar and do it through Zapier. For SMS, all you really need to do is let them know right after they register, “Thank you for registering. I’ll send you an SMS notice right before your event start.” Then, you send them a notification at the time of the workshop, like five minutes before. 

That and maybe you can include something like ManyChat as well. You can always do Facebook Messenger that lets people know about the webinar starting as well. So, there are different ways to notify or remind people of, “Hey, the workshop is going to start.” With so much content, so much stuff in people’s emails, it’s good to have other ways to connect with them and make sure they share that.

For sure. Okay, so we’re out of time. I wanted again to reiterate that offer, where they should go for that offer, and where can they connect with you?

Basically, you go to our Book a demo call, so easywebinar.com/consult-booking-form.

Okay, cool. Sign-up for a demo. Just let us know that you come from Stephan or you come from the podcast and we’ll make sure that you get that special deal. Just remind us and say, “Hey, I came from there.”

Yes, you came from Marketing Speak or you came from Stephan. All right, perfect. And to follow you and all your brilliance, where’s the best place?

Instagram is where I’m hanging out nowadays. @CaseyZeman on Instagram is the best place to go. You can follow my stories. You can send me a direct message there. Tell me you came from or watched this podcast, and I’d be happy to connect with you, talk to you, and send you some ideas.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Casey, and thank you, listeners. We’ll catch you on the next episode of Marketing Speak, This is your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

If you love this episode on webinar marketing, then you definitely want to check out episode 122 with Jon Schumacher and episode 6 with Jon Shugart, two awesome webinar marketing experts.

Important Links

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

Create a webinar funnel before inviting people to sign up for my event. Make sure that everything is ready to run seamlessly on the actual date. 
When hosting a webinar, start with doing a live session first. I should only move on to automated webinars when I know that my existing programs are converting.
Make my webinar evergreen to save time and effort in creating my presentations. My content should be something people can keep referring to for an extended period.
Be transparent in running webinars. It would be embarrassing once my audience finds out that it’s not live even when I say it is. 
Find ways to keep the engagement going while the webinar is running. Ask questions, give out small prizes to participating audiences, or do polls.
Optimize my automated event’s scheduling with 15, 30, or 1-hour increments so that continuous traffic always has an available nearby time to sign up to.
Nurture my audience by adding them to my mailing list. Keep the relationship going as they  can become potential clients or customers.
Create an offer my audience cannot refuse by offering solutions instead of products or services they don’t fully understand.
Give my audience a great overall experience from sign up to follow up. It’s all about catering to their needs and making it as convenient as possible.
Check out Casey Zeman’s Elite Webinar Mastery offer for Marketing Speak listeners.

About Casey Zeman

Casey is the Founder of the popular webinar platform EasyWebinar. He is also the founder of the TribeMinded system that combines the smart art of automation and engagement to build a scalable business. On average, his top clients are generating 10k-20k a day. ($300k-600k/mo in recurring revenue). His super-power is providing SALES & SCALABILITY SYSTEMS to business owners so they can work less, create more impact and make way more money. Casey has consulted such companies as Harper Collins, Estee Lauder, and Dell and has built his own 7-figure software/info product business.