It’s often said that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Although this probably falls into the category of “overused inspirational quotes”, there is some wisdom behind it—especially when it comes to marketing webinars.
As business owners, we have been taught to do our marketing webinars in a certain way for many years now. But there is a lot about the way that we have been taught that just doesn’t work or make sense anymore. So instead of continuing to do the same things over and over again just because they worked years ago, savvy entrepreneurs (that’s you!) have to dig in and evaluate if this is still an effective tactic for your business.
Things move quickly in the digital industry, and we need to make sure that we keep up with the changes. And if we’re completely honest, there are also things that never really worked in the first place. Here, we’re exploring some of the major problems with marketing webinars and digging into the alternative solutions that *will* work.
What Is a Marketing Webinar?
A webinar is an event in which you communicate with a group of people about your zone of expertise. Now don’t get us wrong—that concept is fantastic and will always be useful! But what doesn’t work so well is how they’re structured and some of the historic content that we’ve been told to teach.
What have people been taught to do when it comes to webinars? To teach, to teach, to teach…and then to teach some more. And—in case you haven’t heard us say this before—people don’t get jazzed about teaching. (Read more in our post, “Teaching Doesn’t Get People to Buy—Here’s What Does.”)
Sure, learning can be fun sometimes, but staying in a space for up to an hour just absorbing information is exhausting. You’ll start to notice more people drop off as time goes on because it’s a passive activity with little excitement. And by the end of an hour of learning, they’re more likely to want to go take a nap rather than feeling bought in to your offer.
Learning is obviously very important, but fundamentally, it’s an activity that drains energy. It takes brain power. And it certainly doesn’t get people amped up and thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited to buy!”
As business owners, we value learning and what we’re going to get out of it, but we’re not excited to do it. Think back to high school or college—were you bursting through the doors each day, dying to learn more? We look forward to getting the outcome, but the actual learning itself is energy zapping.
The Problem With the Content of Marketing Webinars
The problem is, when we structure our webinars around teaching, we’re not inspiring people. We’re not getting them excited. We’re taking that energy and we’re bringing it down.
There certainly *is* a place for teaching, but it’s within the course or program, after people purchase. Once they’re inside, they’ll find the structures in place to help them get through it like accountability and Facebook groups to support people. The learning is not the easy part so it should come at a different point in the user journey.
Before people are bought in is when they need to be excited—they’re not in the right mind space for learning. And once they’re bought in, they’re ready to do the learning because they’ve committed to the purchase, they want to make progress, and they know they need to learn in order to take action.
Plus, if people are already learning, they might find out that they don’t actually need to get into the full program. This is the concept of “little wins.” We’re taught to give potential customers a little win, so that they’re going to want a bigger win. But that’s almost never true.
It usually ends up going one of two ways. Someone gets a little win, and thinks, “Okay, this is enough,” and doesn’t even consider what that big win could mean for them. They’re happy with this little win, and so they don’t purchase. Or they get the little win and say, “I think I’ve got this. I think I can figure out the rest of this on my own. I don’t need to buy their program.”
Instead, what we need to be doing is giving them a little bit of insight into the transformation they could experience but also make it clear to them how much they don’t know.
Unless we make it clear to them how much they don’t know, a lot of people will think, “Yeah, I can probably figure it out.” So we need to show them there’s SO much more that they have no idea about!
But it’s not going to be little wins that get people excited—it’s going to be breakthroughs. And that’s something we talk about a lot with our students in the Circuit Sales System. We call them “paradigm shifts” and they’re all about changing the way that people look at things.
These are the accepted tenets or concepts that everybody says is the truth but you know that it’s not the truth—and it’s often things that have been holding our audience back. And when you open people’s eyes to what has been limiting their success, you start to see the real excitement shine through.
It’s not learning that gets people excited to take the next step, it’s breakthroughs. They help your potential customers understand what they don’t know, what you can help them learn, and that you *can* get them to that transformation.
The idea of just “teach, teach, teach” is easy because we know we’re experts. But just because it’s easy for us doesn’t mean it’s the best way to get people to want that transformation and to want to make a purchase from us.
It’s the difference between teaching people very tactical concepts versus getting them to think bigger and understand the value of your program. If you’re teaching them tactical ideas, they can see the step-by-step path. But if you’re teaching them something inspirational and aspirational, it’s so much more—it opens their minds to the bigger possibilities for them.
The Problem With the Structure of Marketing Webinars
The way that we’ve been taught to structure webinars essentially penalizes people for having lives. We’ve all seen the classic, “Okay, I’m doing a webinar on Tuesday at seven o’clock. You have to be there live. It’s going to be so exciting!” And so we sign up, fully intending to be there, but then life gets in the way—especially when it’s an evening webinar. Kids to take care of…dinners to cook…houses to clean…yeah, that webinar ain’t looking so promising!
Requiring people to show up live makes it very difficult because it segments your group into who’s actually available to do it during that time. We’re forcing people to operate on our schedules instead of their schedules and when it works for them.
You could offer replays, but there’s a very good chance that this just sits in someone’s inbox. Even if they do click and open that email and decide to sit down and watch the replay, there’s no incentive to do it right as the replay comes. And maybe they start it and stop it and maybe they forget to come back to it and they don’t watch the full thing. They might get just a snippet of your message.
Even if they are opening it after the fact, again, that energy level is decreasing. That motivation, that excitement—it’s all declining. That timeline is still burning up as the days and hours pass. It’s just not as exciting, obviously. It’s not as energizing and motivational.
People are most excited about you and most motivated when they first encounter you, when they first opt in for your list, when they first find you on social. At any point after, because motivation is a chemical state, excitement is a chemical state, it decreases. So, the longer that they have to wait to get your offer, your solution, the more that that energy decreases.
What about just-in-time webinars? They’re bogus. When you tell people, “Oh, just your luck! In 15 minutes, there’s a webinar starting,” obviously, that’s not live. People see that it’s a gimmick, that it’s disingenuous, and it doesn’t help build trust in you or your brand.
Again, 10 years ago when the digital industry was just getting started, it was new and it was exciting, and people didn’t know what a webinar was going to entail, and so they would make more time. There were also fewer webinars.
Some Solutions to the Outdated Marketing Webinar
It worked a lot better back then because it was fresh and new. Anything that’s fresh and new is going to work for a while. However, today it’s a very different place than it was 10, even five, years ago. We work with students who used to launch once a month. We work with students who used to launch or do a webinar once a week, and they would have trouble getting people to show up, because again, we’re forcing them on our timelines, not on theirs. And the world is busier now than it has ever been. We need to make it easier for people to consume our messages, not harder, and that’s another huge problem with webinars.
We talk about how running our own business means having the freedom to make our own schedules. So, why wouldn’t we want our customers to have that freedom? Often some element of what we offer is to have more time, more freedom. And so to start off our relationship with those customers with something that doesn’t offer them more freedom and doesn’t allow them to do it on their schedule and their timeline feels very antithetical to what we’re trying to achieve.
We’re not saying just give them your training and let them watch it whenever until the end of time whenever it’s convenient for them. Because, as we know, people don’t take action unless they have a deadline. But you can make these two things work together. You can let things be convenient for people, but you can also give them a reasonable deadline in which to consume your content.
We’re not saying that webinars as a concept are terrible. But the concept of having a group conversation and sharing your message in that kind of way via video is very valid and it works exceedingly well when it’s done right. What we would suggest is looking at what you’re currently doing from the perspective of your target audience. Is it something that is easy for them to consume? Is it something that is exciting and inspiring for them to consume? Or is it something that’s actually hard for them to consume? Or is it something draining for them to consume?
You have the opportunity to make changes and make your sales system more effective! Click here to read more about our innovative Circuit Sales System.
Watch More!
In this episode of Energize Your Online Business podcast, Nicki and Kate discuss the downside of these outdated webinar practices and explore tactics that are more effective and actually yield results! Check it out now.
Your Turn!
What has been your experience using marketing webinars? Tell us in the comments below!