A webinar has a way of getting your heart racing, don’t they?
They give you the opportunity to connect with your target audience on a live platform as a way of offering something to purchase that can result in 5 – 6 figure webinar sales for your business.
But let’s be honest for a minute. If it were easy everyone would be doing it.
After working with me, many of my private clients end up using webinars as a main model to grow their business and accelerate their profit.
I myself use webinars to grow my list, offer programs and services for sale as well as use them to create evergreen products that can generate revenue for years to come.
What I’ve found is that you can do a lot of things right when hosting a webinar but there are some things that you can do wrong as well that can really decrease the results you experience.
There are 5 common webinar pitfalls that I want to discuss with you today as well as how you can avoid their grasp as you incorporate webinars into your business model.
Common Pitfall #1: Not promoting your webinar across all platforms, paid and organic, often enough (Before the webinar)
When I work with a client to map out their webinar strategy we always start by reverse engineering their promotion calendar starting with the day of the webinar.
Mapping out a strict promotional calendar for your ads, emails, social media post and Livestream invitations completely changes how many people register for your webinar.
When you get in the middle of promoting your webinar there are lots of moving parts that you must pay attention to. Having a pre-planned schedule of what happens and when takes all the brainwork out of promotion so you can give your attention to other aspects of the webinar.
Common Pitfall #2: Not getting your audience actively engaged in your webinar (During the webinar)
If you’ve spent any time at all on a live webinar, (which my guess is you’ve been on lots of them), you know that the webinars that encourage you to become actively engaged are always much more interesting than those that are just sharing information.
When you begin mapping out your webinar content and slides you want to be sure to include several opportunities during the presentation for your audience to participate.
This is above and beyond any pre-planned Q&A at the end.
This is critically important for your overall sales because you want to keep your guests listening, interested and waiting for you to share how they can work with you further on your designated topic. In other words… how they can purchase your program or service.
Common Pitfall #3: Not telling a story within your webinar (During the webinar)
Ahhh… this mistake is a BIG ONE!
Mapping out your content in advance is a vital piece of the puzzle to keep your audience engaged like we talked about in Common Pitfall #2.
You want your content to tell a story.
As you begin the webinar you want to be sure to specifically call out the ideal clients for your program. Discuss some of their pain points. Give an opportunity for them to self-identify with what you are saying so they have the aha moment and say to themselves, “yes, that’s me!”
Your webinar content should be addressing some of the pain points your target audience is experiencing. I call that the “WHAT” of their pain points.
The program that you are selling at the end should be the answer to their pain points. I call that the “HOW”.
Your webinar slides should present everything in a very logical sequence. First you call them out so they know they are in the right place and you understand their problems. Next you discuss those pain points long enough so they know you totally get where they are coming from. Lastly you make them an offer to purchase the solution to their problem, which comes in the form of your paid program or service.
Common Pitfall #4: Not spending enough time on your offer and call-to-action (During the webinar)
Many of my clients are experts at giving away free information. They feel so good when they are dishing out tips and strategies to make someone’s life easier. But they hate selling.
Maybe you can relate?
Never asking for the sale has become an epidemic with small business owners. It’s sad but true.
I’ll be honest, it is one of the main reasons it took me until 18 months into my business before I did my first official “sale” webinar.
It’s hard to ask for money.
What I had to remind myself is that my program was going to change how my audience would run their online businesses. They would get more leads and ultimately make more sales. I was helping them!
Once I switched my perspective it made the selling easier.
This common mistake usually looks like this.
The webinar host has given incredible value to their audience. They presented for 45-50 minutes and it’s went off without a hitch.
Now, when it’s time to transition to the selling part they begin to bobble their words, their heart races, their mouth gets dry, the tone of their voice changes.
They move into the selling part and rush through it so fast that anyone listening is so confused that they never pull out their credit card and buy.
Everything leading up to this point goes by the wayside because the audience doesn’t understand the value of the offer.
This is the portion of the webinar when you can help someone get off the fence and decide to purchase from you.
It’s also a time when you can turn an otherwise “non-buyer” into a “buyer” because you’ve presented the information so clearly.
In truth, practice, practice, practice is how you solve this mistake. It won’t be long and you’ll feel just as comfortable asking for the sale as you were giving away the free information.
Common Pitfall #5: Not keeping your slides simple
I’ll be honest, when I first started doing webinars I made this mistake over and over again.
I made my slides way too text heavy which ultimately made my audience feel overwhelmed.
The truth is all that text was my security blanket.
I didn’t want to chance not remembering the content I wanted to cover so I made sure everything was on the slides.
I’m sure I lost sales because of this design.
What do they say? “Live and Learn”. I think this applies to this mistake.
When you are designing your slides keep the content to just a few simple words or just an image.
The idea here is for you to tell the story and let your slides be the supporting role in your webinar.
This is a time when less is more.
In the long run you’ll be able to create your webinar content much quicker because you are only using a few prompting words or images on each slide.
You’ll be thanking me for this when you dive into your webinar creation. 🙂
So there you have it, 5 common webinar pitfalls and how you can avoid them.
I know how powerful webinars can be in your business. They can multiply your revenue 2, 3, 5 or even 10x’s what you earned last year.
The key is educating yourself on how to design a webinar, promote a webinar and execute a webinar is a style and fashion that resonates with your audience.
See you soon!
~Karen
Thanks Karen! There is so much in formation to sort out, out there…
Kw
There sure is Kathryn. Hopefully you found this post helpful. One step at a time and you’ll figure it out. I believe that. Please let me know if I can be of help.