The Step-By-Step Guide To Creating A Webinar That Sells

Are you thinking of using webinars to sell more of your products, programs, or packages? Congratulations! You are on the right path. I am a big fan of hosting them to build your email list as well as increasing profits, and I truly believe webinars are an excellent way to grow your business quickly. 

If you have presented on a few webinars, and you feel confident that you are ready to learn how to convert live webinar attendees into buyers, this post is a must read for you.

Let’s dive straight in.

Step 1: Be crystal clear on your goal

Before you start planning your webinar, consider these questions:

What are you going to sell?

You can sell almost anything on a webinar. It can be a product, an online course, a coaching package, a done-for-you service or a live workshop. If you have more than one to offer, pick one.

If you don’t have anything to sell at the moment (you might be a newly certified coach, a blogger wanting to monetize their blog or somebody interested in monetizing a passion project or a hobby), consider offering a live workshop that can be taught in the form of a paid webinar using the same tools, or coaching sessions.

Is your product evergreen or do you have a cart closing?

Assuming you are new to selling on webinars, I highly recommend that you pick a evergreen product, meaning, don’t complicate the whole thing by picking something that requires closing cart on a certain day.

If you choose a product or service for which there is a deadline, this will put you under a lot of pressure. You’ll feel desperate to fill the spots because registration closes on a certain date. You’ll worry about what if you don’t get enough enrolments or buyers.

Just make things easy for yourself and do a promo for something that doesn’t begin or end on a certain date. I’ll tell you how you can add urgency or create scarcity and still sell even though the offer is still available in a minute.

How many buyers do you want?

Based on your price point, work out how many clients or customers you’ll need to hit your income goal.

Let’s say you are selling a $500 coaching package. You want to make five thousand dollars on the webinar. You would need 10 people to buy from you.

Now, I want you to come up with your numbers carefully here because it will set the tone for all the subsequent decisions you make. So if you are new, don’t aim for a six-figure webinar. Come up with something that makes you feel excited and not feel so stressed that you actually have a panic attack on the day (guilty!).

Step 2: Choose the right topic for your webinar

You may think that choosing a topic for your webinar is super hard. In reality, it can be very simple once you know how to do it right.

Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Look at the blog posts that go viral. Look at the webinars that attract thousands of attendees. What do they have in common? Their topic is super specific, they often arouse curiosity and they also promise a big benefit. Do the same.

Solve a single problem.

Firstly, your webinar needs to be super helpful above anything else. It doesn’t require slick slides, you don’t have to be the world’s greatest speaker, and you might face an occasional tech glitch and still have a successful webinar because the content was so valuable.

The easiest way to give value is to solve a problem your audience has. Now here’s where most people go wrong. They give away so much that they end up overwhelming their audience. They make their audience feel it’s too much work to get what they want and so they don’t buy.

The trick is to pick one challenge your audience faces and help them solve it. Then give some of your best stuff away so even if your audience doesn’t buy anything from you, they feel like it was the best use of their time and end up becoming a loyal advocate. They might also buy the next time or tell their friends about you so consider that a win.

The logical next step is your product.

You will educate people about why they are struggling. So you talk about the ‘why’. You also tell them what needs to happen to solve their problem and show them the ‘how’.

On the webinar, you will pick one specific area and teach them something. This is the ‘what’. However, you will offer your product or service as the complete solution. This is critical. Your topic needs to come off of your offer. Your offer dictates the topic of your webinar. If you choose a topic that has nothing to do with that you are selling, you will find it very hard to transition into a pitch.

Step 3: Get people to sign up for your webinar

Now its time to promote your webinar. Here are the most effective ways to do it.

• Before you promote your webinar on which you intend to sell, do a series of list building webinars. Go check out this post again to know how to do this exactly.
• Join Facebook groups where your ideal audience hangs out and promote if they allow it.
• Promote the sign up link on various social media platforms and via other digital marketing tools.
• Reach out to other businesses and bloggers whose audiences you can help and ask them to promote.
• Run Facebook ads to fill up the seats.

Pro tip: If you’re thinking of upselling your existing audience, you shouldn’t neglect the power of webinar invitation emails.

How many registrants do you need?

Even before you start promoting your webinar, you need to know how many registrants do you need. Going back to that number of buyers you figured out above, you now need to work out how many people you need to register for your webinar to meet your money goal.

Usually, the number of people converting on a webinar can be around 3-5% on average. So assuming everything goes to plan, aim to get 300-400 registrants to secure your 10 clients.

Create a killer registration page

Sending traffic to your registration page is great but now you need them to sign up. For this, you need to make sure your page is high converting.

Again, since you have come up with a killer topic for your webinar, your job ahead has already become so much easier. Trust me when I say this, nailing your topic is the harder part, the rest is just the matter of making sure people understand your free offer.

• Start with the headline of your page. Usually, it is the topic of your webinar and highlights the benefits. It needs to be specific and make a big promise.
• Make sure you tell people somewhere that it is a free, live, training webinar. If people are not used to words like webinar in your industry, you can call it a live training workshop or class, that is fine.
• Under the webinar title, you will give the bullets further explaining what they will get out of the webinar. Try to invoke people’s curiosity while detailing the benefit. Entice them with their copy so they feel like they must sign up.
• Ask for their name and email address, and perhaps their phone number if your service allows you to send text reminders.
• Add some credibility building elements if you can. Add a testimonial or praise from an influencer. Add ‘as-seen-on’ logos. Don’t forget to include your smiling photo so people can connect with you.

Start promoting your webinar before a week. 5-7 days is ideal and don’t go more than 10 days because people will forget what they signed up for.

Step 4: Get people to attend live

So this the story so far: You choose your product, then come up with the perfect idea for the webinar. You create a killer registration page and send targeted traffic to it so people can sign up.

What’s the next step?

To get people to turn up live. Because the majority of your sales will happen with people who are live on the webinar.

Once somebody signs up, you will begin the onboarding or indoctrination sequence. This sequence is simply a series of emails that will be sent out to everyone who registers.

Depending on the email service you use, you can use the autoresponder to set this up. Let’s say you start promoting on day 7 (counting down to the webinar). Somebody who signs up on this day will receive a thank you email there and then, then one email on day 5, then one on day 2 and finally on day 1. So they are receiving 4 emails altogether. On the other hand, somebody who joins on day 2 (again, counting down) will only receive the thank you email and those emails that are scheduled on day 2 and 1.

Remember, these emails are different to the standard webinar reminder emails that your webinar service (GetResponse Webinars, for example) will send out automatically. You are using onboarding emails to create anticipation and excitement for your webinar. You are giving them extra information. You are building a story that leads them into your webinar. You can even offer a freebie download.

To further entice people, offer a workbook people can use to follow along while you teach or a webinar-only bonus for people who attend live. Again, your webinar success depends on how many actually show up so do the work. It will be worth it.

Step 5: Sell confidently and follow up

So this is the part that scares most people. How to make a pitch and not throw up while you are doing it?

In order to make a flawless pitch, you have to feel like you have earned the right of doing so. This is a simple mindset shift but it gives you tons of confidence. So how do you do it?

It’s simple. Give a stellar presentation first. Make it totally worthwhile for them and give them highly valuable information that they can put into action today. Your content should be sooo could that you have no issues whatsoever transitioning into your pitch.

Again, go check out this post where I gave you lots of tips in how to create a stellar presentation and deal with technology so everything goes smoothly.

If the topic lends itself to your pitch naturally, the transition will be seamless. You can say something like, ‘Here’s what you need to do next if you want to go deeper with me, or learn from me, or work with me so you can achieve this result faster and with more confidence’. Play with the language. Speak from the heart. If your offer is good, and your desire to help is sincere, people can see that. And that’s a good thing.

Explain your offer clearly and confidently and give people the link to purchase. Give them extra incentive to buy on the webinar so if you are selling a pre-recorded program, throw in a 30-min coaching session with you (you might add this personal time and give it to first 5 people who buy). If it’s a coaching package, add a done-for-you service or critique. Give them a special discount that will expire in 24 hours.

This is also how you would add urgency to your ever green offers. To add scarcity, you can restrict the number of seats you sell but know that this is what you really want to do and don’t create false scarcity. So this may be where you are only taking 5 one-on-one clients, for example.

If you don’t get many sales, don’t be discouraged, you may still get a few during the post-webinar follow-up phase or when you tweak things and make your webinar even better the next time.

Don’t forget you still have these people on your list. And remember, you can do this as many times as you want.

Finally, don’t ignore the follow up process. Just like you created a series of 3-5 onboarding emails to get people to show up live, now you would create another 3-5 emails to get people to watch the replay and purchase your offer.

You will get some people who are in a tricky time zone and although truly interested, couldn’t make it live (happens to me all the time) but also those who were initially on the fence. You might even catch those who just signed up for the free info but blown away by your free content. So, put some effort into it. Good luck.

Phew! Selling on a webinar seems like a LOT of work, doesn’t it?

Of course, it is. Anything worth doing, is.

But remember, when you perfect your webinar presentation, pitch and follow-up, you can look forward to having multiple 5-figure days. 30K in a day? Not too shabby, right? So work toward it. It will get easier. You can do this! Share your experiences in the comments below, we’d love to know how you’re succeeding.