Ads are getting expensive to run, people aren’t showing up, and even when they do…
…they flake out and don’t convert into sales.
If these pains sound familiar to you, then you’re probably running webinars in 2024.
In this episode, we’ll reveal the top ways you can save yourself from a few headaches – and get more people buying at your webinar.
You’ll learn:
- How to add a “personal touch” that makes your reminders more effective
- An interesting mind-hack to make people feel more invested in your webinar (so that they actually show up!)
- Four techniques to get past high cost per leads for your ads
- How to “shift beliefs” so that people trust you and buy your offers
Terence: [00:00:00] Today on Founders Go Naked, I’m going to talk about the top three challenges that webinars face in 2024 and how to tackle them. Hi and welcome to the Founders Go Naked podcast, the show that helps six figure high ticket coaches who hate their marketing scale to seven figures and beyond with webinars. So this week I have Debbie back from shopping from Bangkok.
OR listen on:
Terence: So hi, Debbie. Welcome back. So, what did you buy Debbie from your shopping trip in Bangkok?
Debbie: Thanks, Terence. I bought a lot of food and clothes, like around 40 kilos, cause everything was so cheap and nice in Bangkok. Anyway, what is the number one challenge for webinars in 2024?
Webinar Challenges in 2024
#1 Getting People to Show Up to Your Webinar
Terence: All right. So I’m glad you’re interested to find out what is the number one challenge?
So the number one challenge we see from helping a lot of our clients with their webinars and their seminars is that they are having trouble getting people to show up for the webinar. See the thing is in the pandemic people were in lockdown.
People were happy to show up for webinars [00:01:00] because they probably didn’t have anything better to do, apart from watching Netflix and playing computer games. But apart from that, hey, it’s just like work and attending webinars. Right. So that was the way they could connect with other people.
But today, there are two problems.
How to Overcome Low Show Up rates?
Number one, with webinars, people have so much distractions now that they’re going out again, they’re like, Oh geez, do I really want to go out or do I really want to attend a webinar? It’s like, it’s kind of like a no brainer for a lot of people. So I think that is so important for us as marketers and as webinar presenters, to actually understand this dynamic and start thinking about how we can address this problem of no-show.
Because there’s no point spending a whole ton of money, getting people signed up if they don’t show up, right?
- So, number one, the first thing I want to encourage you to do, if you haven’t done it yet, go back and watch episode number 17, which addresses [00:02:00] this problem in detail and how to get people to actually show up and attend your webinar or seminar. Okay, some of the few things I would just explain briefly is that number one, try getting people to call those people who have signed up. Have someone in your team called them up, get people to call them and just confirm that they’re coming. Having that human touch and that very personable thing where you’re saying, Hey, this is Terence here, I really look forward to seeing you at Mark’s seminar or webinar this weekend. That adds that personal touch to it. And I think that is so important to getting people to show up.
- Second thing you can do is you can create personalized videos, short, personalized videos. May not be you exactly, but get your team members to actually create short personalized videos saying something along the lines of, Hey, this is Terence, so glad you’ve decided to sign up for my webinar that’s on the 14th at 7:00 PM on Thursday. I hope you show up because I’m looking forward to show you, Alex, [00:03:00] these three things. And then I hope it’s going to help you along to solve this particular problem. So that is the second thing I’ll recommend.
- The third thing I would recommend is to make sure you have re-targeting ads happening so that people, whenever they log on to Facebook, they log on to YouTube, they’re reminded about the fact that they have registered for your webinar.
- And the fourth thing I’d recommend you do is to make sure you have an email sequence that’s very personable. So instead of just your standard, Hey, congratulations for signing up for my webinar. It’s like, okay, throw in some of your personal stories. Throw in some of your pictures with your dog, with your family, just make yourself look like, you know, just a regular guy or girl that they can identify with, right? There’s no harm throwing in some photos so that people get to know you better. Even make a short video for them, you know, just to remind them what they’re going to get at this webinar that they’re showing up to and what you hope to help them achieve. Share a bit about your stories. Get some value out there [00:04:00] before the event itself.
- The other thing that really helps to get webinar show up rates higher is to actually get people to answer a questionnaire. Now you might think that, hey, if I get people to answer a questionnaire, wouldn’t the sign up rate be more expensive? Well, in our experience we have around 70 to 80% of people that that sign up, actually fill up a whole questionnaire, right? And we need to structure that the right way and make sure we ask the right questions. And by having that questionnaire, people who fill in the questionnaire, actually a higher percentage of them actually end up showing up in your webinar. Because they have invested that two, three minutes extra just to fill up that questionnaire to get that free ticket. Right. So they’re more committed to actually show up to your webinar. So I think filling out the questionnaire as a prerequisite to attending your webinar or getting a ticket to attend your webinar or seminar, I think that is going to help you as well.
#2 Increase in Cost per Lead across the board
Debbie: Okay. Again, you are going over time. Hurry up. Tell me the second big challenge.
Terence: So the second biggest challenge, Debbie, [00:05:00] is that we have an increase in cost per lead across the board. think that’s due to more and more competition coming in. Not just in the space of the coach’s market, but also, you know, these e-commerce stores, these services all coming in more and more people are advertising on the regular social platforms like Meta, like Google and all these places.
So that’s driving the costs of showing ads even higher. So I think competition is one big thing. Because of competition as well, it’s so important now to have better ads, right? Because the other thing that’s happening is lot of people are just getting lazy with their ads. And what, what they’re turning to is, like, they’re using AI to write ad copy, right? Which is not great because we use AI and, you know, the ad copy that out is not that fantastic. You really need to edit it heavily make it sound good. And if you don’t know how to do proper [00:06:00] copywriting, you don’t know what to edit. You think that, Hey, Chat GPT just created this awesome copy for me, but it’s actually pretty crap, right? Because you don’t know what good copy looks like. If you want to use AI to write your ad copy, make sure at least you invest in your knowledge about copywriting so that whatever comes out, you can know what’s good, keep the good parts and what’s bad, kick out the bad parts, right? So yeah, it’s creating a lot of laziness with agencies, with business owners. They’re creating bad ads.
Okay. So that’s the problem with using AI.
Debbie: Hey, don’t forget I’m also an AI voice. Are you bad mouthing me?
Terence: Uh, Debbie. Yeah. I am not bad mouthing AI. I am actually, because you know, you are an AI character and you’re super valuable to this podcast, but what I am against is people being lazy and just using AI without actually learning the skill. It’s just like, yeah, AI can create all these awesome images, right? But if you don’t know what images actually work on the social [00:07:00] media platforms, on the ad platforms? Then you think Oh, this picture looks really good. But does it actually help you to actually get conversions? That is the main thing. And that only comes with experience, that comes with a knowledge of your particular field that cannot, at this stage at least, be replaced with AI.
How to Overcome the Increase in CPL
So learn how to write good ads, learn how to write awesome video scripts that get attention, get engagement, get conversions. That is super important.
So the other thing to overcome this increase in cost per lead is to actually build authority.
- What we do for a lot of our clients is that we run branding ads, right?
- So, we have, you know, pure content videos that our clients generate and we use those videos and run them on Facebook. We run them on Instagram. We run them on YouTube as pure branding ads. So, you know, basically it’s about visibility and also creating value from your videos, so that number one, we can use this to [00:08:00] differentiate yourselves from other people.
Number two is you want to build that likability, that authority, that credibility, using these branding ads, right?
And then number three, we can use the video views re-targeting down the track as well, which we have realized that this actually gets us lower cost per leads and also better quality leads as well, because it’s not the first contact with you.
- They have actually watched your video before. And they have gotten value before and now you’re showing them an ad. They’re like, okay, I have seen this guy or this girl before. I’d like to find out more. I’d like to sign up for their webinar or their seminar. Okay.
And one of the other things we have been doing to combat the rise in cost per lead is that we are helping our clients now to activate their email list a lot more.
- Before this, a lot of our clients would just basically spam their email list whenever they have a new product launch or when they have a new webinar. But what we have been doing recently is that we have been helping our clients [00:09:00] to nurture their list. And give value to the list so that when we have the ask, it’s not just about taking and taking and taking, but we have actually given so much value, so much content before that, so that when we ask, the ask is so much more effective.
- So if you have an email list, we have found that if you nurture that and you know, you get them eventually to come to your webinar or seminar, that can dramatically lower your cost per lead as well. In fact, you know, It’s pretty much free apart from writing the emails.
- So make sure you nurture your list and that’s what we have been doing. And we have found that to be extremely effective as well.
#3 Low Conversion Rates at the Webinar
Debbie: Okay, let’s move on to the third challenge, Terence.
Terence: All right. So the third challenge, Debbie, is about low conversion rates at the webinar itself. Now, Debbie, let me ask you, what are the reasons why people do not buy at a webinar or seminar?
Debbie: That’s easy. They don’t trust you or your solution. And, um, number two reason they [00:10:00] don’t trust themselves. And the final reason is they don’t have time or money.
Terence: Agreed. Fantastic. Those are the three things. Why people do not buy at webinars or seminars is because yeah, they don’t trust you. And that is the biggest thing that you need to overcome, and to start to get them to like, and trust you, on the webinar, right? It’s about your system. They don’t trust your process or system.
They might like you. I mean, you might look like a real nice guy like me. But hey, you haven’t proven yourself yet, so you need to demonstrate results as well. Right? So you need to demonstrate those results so that people can trust you as well. Not just like you, but they also trust you and your system.
Okay. And the other thing is if they don’t trust themselves, they’re not going to buy, right? So if they do not trust themselves to say, hey, yeah, I’m going to sign up for your course. And I am going to invest the time to actually make it work. And they think I’m too dumb to do this because I’m not good with numbers. Oh, I’m not good with this thing because [00:11:00] previously I attended a seminar, bought a similar thing. Didn’t work for me. So if they don’t trust themselves to actually do it. Then that is also a problem. The other thing is if they don’t have money, then there’s not much you can do. Right?
How to Overcome Low Conversion Rates
Terence: So how do you address this? I’ll list out in a few action things that you can do?
First of all, most people are not giving enough value with their webinars.
- And when I say value, I don’t mean, lack of content or lack of tactics. Right. They don’t have content that actually shifts the belief. So, what I mean by that is that they do not give the attendees that aha moment or that confidence to say, Oh yeah, I can totally do it too because, for example a 14 year old kid could do it. And it’s only three simple steps, so I could do it too. Right. Maybe it’s a shift of belief where, say you’re doing a webinar on investing.
- You need to shift their belief to say, Hey, I need to stop spending money on buying crap and start setting aside some of that [00:12:00] money invest so that I can be wealthy by the time I’m 50 or 60 years old, and I have something to leave to my kids when I’m older than that. Right. So, I think that shift in belief system is super important. And if you can do that, that is the number one value that you can provide to your attendees. So think about how you are shifting beliefs in your presentation. Shifting the belief so that they believe in themselves, to believe that it can be done with your system.
- So, just to reiterate it’s about adding value by shifting beliefs, not so much giving the how tos, because if people do not believe in themselves to actually do it, giving them the how tos is just like wasting time. So first you need to shift the beliefs before you give them some of the how tos.
The other thing I can recommend on a high level is that you need to address the objections as well.
- So you can address the objections through a Q and A session. Or you need to think about [00:13:00] what are the common objections that your audience is likely to face. And maybe you can show them case studies of other people similar to them who have overcome these objections and have gotten results from what you have to offer.
- So think of all these objections in advance and address them at your webinar itself.
Finally, what I would suggest is you should attend webinars by very successful webinar presenters like the Dan Henrys, the Jason Fladliens, the Russell Brunsons of the world. Attend their webinars.
- And even if you don’t end up buying anything, that’s fine. The thing I want you to actually do is to actually go to the webinars, learn how they do their stuff and maybe learn from how they present, how they do things and question why they do certain things. Why they talk about certain things. And from there, just get what is useful to you and your webinar and incorporate it into your webinar.
- I think that is the fastest way to actually make your webinars convert better, it’s by emulating [00:14:00] successful people.
- Bear in mind, of course, they do have the authority, they do have tons of social proof and all that stuff. But if you can emulate it on a smaller scale, I believe that is the key to your success.
Debbie: Huh, that makes sense. Thanks, Terence.
Terence: So Debbie, thanks again for being on this episode with me. And thank you all you listeners out there. Make sure you check out my other episodes, because if you want to run webinars successfully, there is a ton of information in this podcast that will help you to do that.
So thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next episode.
This podcast is hosted by Terence Tam, author of Lead Surge: 8 Radically Effective Marketing Funnels for Coaches and Experts. He is also the Founder of Radical Marketing, a digital marketing agency that partners with high-ticket coaches to scale their businesses with Webinars – by using a proprietary blend of story ads and battled-tested sales funnels to achieve better returns on ad dollars.
