Show Notes

In the world of marketing, there are so many things a business owner can do. It’s not a one-size-fits-all process, so shunning a whole niche of marketing because it didn’t work for one, isn’t exactly fair.

Marketing is all bout finding what does work for your business, and doing more of that. I am going to bust another marketing myth today about webinars, no, they’re not dead.

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Hey there. Thanks for listening and welcome to the marketing matchmaker podcast. If you're looking to grow your business, increase your revenue and scale your impact all while staying true to who you are and the people you serve. This is the show for you. I'm Jennifer Tamborski, digital marketing strategists, fractional CMO, and founder of Virtual Marketing Experts. My team and I work with six and seven figure coaches, consultants, and online entrepreneurs who are tired of playing the guru game of one size fits all marketing. They're ready to create a business and marketing strategy that actually builds relationships with their ideal clients creates massive shifts in their business and rapidly increases their revenue. As your marketing matchmaker, I'm going to help you find the perfect marketing match for you. This show will teach you how to reach your ideal client, connect with your audience, build that perfect relationship and generate more revenue. All through a process I like to call dating your ideal client. Now let's go have some fun!

Hey there, welcome back to Marketing Matchmaker. I hope that you are having a fantastic year so far. We're getting close to the end of January and I found a something interesting this last week. Did you know that last week, on the 17th to be exact, was ditch your new year's resolution day?

Yeah.

I didn't know that either until a friend of mine pointed it out in her social media. Evidently most people give up on their new year's resolution around the 17th of January. I kind of think that's because most people tend to make these big, huge goals, or try and do things that are really hard. And they set these like expectations of themselves to start getting things done really quickly. And they give up within a couple of weeks before they even really get started too far into it, they've already given up. I have a feeling that this has more to do with mindset than anything else.

However, one of the things that I've noticed is this, this happens in beyond the new year's resolution kind of thing. Right? Oftentimes I see business owners start their marketing and they start with these big, huge plans and they give up before they even get on the field, as they say in football.

I once had a, potential client come to me and they had started marketing and they legitimately had only been open in business for like 90 days. And they were already ready to give up on their marketing. They had barely run ads. They ran ads for like seven days, and then they were convinced it didn't work.

Here's the reality. They didn't give it enough time.

I think that happens a lot in our personal life and our business life, people set these expectations that are unrealistic and that they can't meet and they give up on them. Well, before they even have any data to sustain whether or not it worked. Right?

I know I've talked about in the past about data a lot, because I think it's really important looking at what's working and rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water, as they say, really look at the data and see what tweaks we can make in order to make the marketing and the campaigns better. If you get the information, so let's say you're creating a new marketing campaign and you give it a couple of weeks and you say it didn't work, here's the thing; number one, two weeks is not long enough to decide whether marketing is working or not.

I mean, quite honestly, two weeks, isn't long enough to decide whether your new year's resolution is working in not, it takes 45 days to even, and create a habit!

So two weeks, not enough time. I know it probably to a lot of business owners feels like they've given it a long time to work. Most likely they haven't. But what two weeks can provide you is a little bit of data. Sometimes depending on how much money you've poured into the campaign, it may give you a lot of data. It gives you some information about maybe what you need to tweak.

So if you're writing Facebook Ads, say for two weeks, you will notice what ads are working, what copy is working, what headlines, what images, video, those kind of things. Or if the ads are working great, and people are landing on the landing page, but they're not doing anything else, you also get to look at that and start assessing what's working and what's not on that page. And there's all kinds of ways to gather that data, but that is incredibly important when it comes to running marketing or life in general.

Rather than completely giving up on your marketing or on your new year's resolution, let's look at what you've done so far, what you can keep and what tweaks you can make in order to really make that successful and make your business and your life successful. So I am encouraging you to toe the line, hold space for your marketing or your goals or whatever it is, and really look at what you've been doing, so that you can assess and make pivots small or large, rather than completely giving up.

Last week's episode I was really talking about going back to the basics and that's really what this rant was about, right? It's about really drilling down into the basics of what it is that's working and what's not working. And when you are doing that and your basics, one of your large basics should be your data when it comes to your marketing. So when you are looking at your data and assessing what is working and what is not, you really do have a better foundation to pivot on.

The whole point of business is learning what to do and what works and doing more of that. There's a statement out there to fail faster, to fail forward. It's not really failure, it's all about learning what didn't work, so that you can do more of what actually worked.

So on the train of thought of going back to the basics, I actually wanted to focus most of this episode on a Marketing Mythbuster. So we are definitely going back to basics on this one.

Marketing Myth: webinars are dead, in general.

There is always a grain of truth when it comes to a myth. So for this one, there is definitely a bit more than a grain of truth. Truth of the matter is the way businesses and especially online entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, course creators have been doing webinars in the past is dead. However, the idea that a video recorded training won't grow your business is definitely a myth.

The way webinars have been done in the past can be considered a little old fashioned or a lot of them have been done in what they call the "bro marketing" approach, right? Which is a whole lot of sales and very little actual content. And that is what is dead about webinars. Not to mention the fact that over the course of the last two years, people have spent a lot of time online doing zoom calls and, and that kind of thing. So the length of time a webinar also needs to be taken into consideration.

Some of the things that we really wanna change when it comes to creating a lead magnet, a webinar-based funnel, are things like, well, first the name, seriously, stop calling it a webinar. The name webinar is not sexy. It is not something that somebody wants to attend.

Generally, a webinar nowadays is something that they do in corporate. And nobody wants to go to that. It's kind of like a meeting, right? It's not fun. So rather than calling in a webinar, rename it in your marketing to a masterclass or training or, something along those lines, something that's going to entice your audience to want to come to really wanna learn what it is that you're teaching. Even though all of us that are signing up for it still know it's a webinar, we still wanna go to a training or a masterclass, and we never wanna attend a webinar. So change the name of it, number one.

Two, is the length of your training. At this point, we sit around a lot already online, and we're already doing a lot of zoom calls, and we're already doing a lot of our own trainings or whatever that may be.

So keeping the webinar as short as you can feasibly keep it in order to provide the training that you are planning on. Providing in. This is critical. Honestly, if you can keep it 25 minutes or under, that would be ideal. However, do your best to not do more than 60 minutes.

I am telling you right now, you are going to have people bounce if you have a training that is longer than an hour. If your training needs to be longer than an hour, split it up into days my friend, do something else then to have it all bunched up into that time period.

The setup is step three, where I'd like you to focus. So here's the thing about past webinars. They were what I would consider a sales fest, right? People would set up a webinar and they'd train on this one topic. It's just one small thing, and that training may be 10 minutes of actual good meaty content that people wanna know. And then the other 90% of the time is going to be them selling, whether that's telling case studies or selling their service, or giving them reasons on why to buy whatever the rest of the time is spent selling your product, service, or solution.

And people have really gotten tired of that.

When they sign up for a masterclass or a training, they expect to actually learn something. So flip the script on that old way of doing a webinar, 90% of what it is that you are giving should be valuable content. It should start right away. Again, keep that introduction to who you are short, cuz quite honestly, nobody cares. They honestly don't. I know that's harsh, but they don't really care about you and your story.

They care about what you are going to help them fix whatever that problem is that you're fixing is what they need. So keep your introduction as short as possible and the meat of your training up front. And then the last, last piece of it, 10% should really be selling them your product, service, or solution, giving them that option of what's next. Because that let's be honest. How many trainings have we taken that were like, that was fantastic information and we've never done a dang thing with it. That's the truth of what happens when people take webinars, it happens.

That's why they hire you.

It's to help them implement whatever it is you are selling. That's why they hire you. It's not because of the sales fest they got during the a webinar. So the more, really great juicy content you can give them with a minimum of, of sales. The better you are going to have as results, because they're gonna learn to trust what you have to say and be able to take something away from that webinar.

Another thing I'd like to suggest is adding prework to your webinar. I've seen a lot of my clients do this and it is working really well because it really sets that stage for the webinar itself. So having them complete an assessment or fill something out or something along those lines prior to coming on the webinar really does help to get them focused on being in the webinar.

Make sure during your training that you're giving them really actionable items, that they can walk away from your training and make some changes in their life. That it's going to actually create some difference. Giving people small wins that they can do on their own is going to make them more likely to come back to you to implement the rest of your program, which will really help to establish that you know what you're doing. And that's the whole point of the webinar, is to establish you as the expert in solving your ideal client’s problem, right?

Because if you can't solve their problem, they don't need you. So establishing you're the expert and that they can, you can show them how to do it in a way that they could even implement themselves will really help to establish you as that expert to somebody they wanna come back to, and work with, on an ongoing basis.

And here's the last thing, and this one's just a pet peeve of mine, but it is annoying. Stop trying to make them think that your webinar is live, if it's prerecorded.

We can tell for real; we can tell.

It is not a surprise that it's been prerecorded. And quite honestly, a lot of people appreciate prerecorded content because they can watch it when they want, rather than waiting on your time schedule to do it live. There is nothing wrong with having prerecorded content. It is okay. In fact, sometimes it's preferable. Just stop trying to make it look like it's live because that just makes you look well, salesy and inauthentic. Establishing upfront in your marketing or on your landing page that, hey, this is an evergreen training, you get to watch it on your timeline. That's okay. And people actually like that version of honesty, it really makes it feel authentic to them.

And like, yeah, I can definitely trust that this person is doing exactly what they say they're doing. And I know it seems small, I really do understand that. It seems kind of silly that that kind of thing could make or break a decision, but it honestly can, if you are telling me, this is a live training and I go into this and it's completely prerecorded and I'm not able to interact with you or anyone else, it definitely shows me that you're kind of fake. As opposed to just saying, hey, this is a training I did here. Watch it. It's actually pretty awesome. And you're gonna get a lot of benefit of it. I understand that. I totally get it. Own up to the fact that we don't have 24 hours in the day. We're not always online is just reality.

And you know that sometimes our trainings are awesome and we wanna continue to show them to people because they were fantastic, and we think they're gonna get a lot of value out of it. Prerecorded is perfectly okay. Just don't try to make it look like it's live.

Webinars are definitely not dead.

The reality is, is that webinars and trainings are still a really great way to establish you as the expert in your business. It is a fantastic way to bring people into your funnel. And if they're done right, you can make a huge ROI with them. I mean, reality is I have my clients, that's one of their tops of their funnels.

Almost every one of my clients has a webinar as the top of their funnel because they are so effective. Now we may call it something else. We may call it a masterclass. We may call it, you know, a training. We may call it something completely different depending on the client, but it's always a webinar. So webinars are alive and well, however, the way we approach a webinar should be new and authentic. And this is what's really going to help you to grow your business, increase your revenue, and scale your impact.

Thank You for listening to the Marketing Matchmaker podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear your feedback. Please head over to iTunes and leave a review so we can hear from you. And if you are a coach, consultant, or online course creator who are looking to grow your business, increase your income, and scale your impact connect with me at yourmarketingmatchmaker.com. I look forward to hearing from you.