5 Steps to a Killer Webinar Strategy that Will Increase Your Sales

Webinars are a great tool to help you build, connect with, and sell to your audience. There’s no better way to have a one-to-many conversation with your prospects than to host a webinar. At Demio, we’re webinar obsessed, because we’ve seen them grow businesses and communities.

In all our years of webinar experience, we’ve learned a few things that are key to seeing amazing success, so we’re sharing the 5 steps that will help you increase sales using webinars.

1. Plan It Out

Before you schedule your first webinar, you need to create a strategic plan that will help you stay on track, measure your progress, and make the most out of your qualified leads along the way.

A great way to plan a webinar event is to work your way backwards. When you start planning, know where you want to end and then fill in each step as you work your timeline up to where you currently are.

Consider these questions to start your planning:

1. What service or product am I trying to sell?
2. What are my sales goals?
3. Who am I selling this product or service to?
4. Where are these people online? For instance, are they on your email list, facebook group, Instagram followers, or will you be attracting a new audience?
5. When does the webinar need to launch? 12% of your registrations will begin 3–4 weeks before the webinar event. (The Big Book of Webinar Stats)

The answers to these questions will help you create a streamlined, results-oriented webinar strategy.

2. Prepare Your Presentation

The Introduction

Your intro has a lot of heavy lifting to do — it’s where you’ll grab your audience's attention and begin the process of connecting and selling. But, just like in the planning process, the end is the best place to start. Create your intro last, after you know what will be taking place during the webinar.

Six Steps to a Great Introduction

1. Showcase your authority – Share with your audience why you are the right person to host this webinar. Provide testimonies and results that make you the expert to learn from.
2. Get commitments from the audience – Ask your audience questions that you know they can answer “yes” to. This will help to frame their mindset around you solving their problem.
3. Crush objections – Your audience comes into the webinar skeptical; they don’t believe you can help them solve their problem. When you state their biggest objection from the beginning, you soften the issue and assure them that these problems will not stop them from succeeding.
4. Make a big promise and hope to inspire – Create a one-sentence benefit statement that promises them something they will learn or be able to achieve when the webinar is over. For example, “I promise if you stay until the end of the webinar, you’ll walk away with X, Y, Z.”
5. Create connection – A webinar is all about connecting and interacting with your audience. Show them you understand their situation, that you know the struggles they’re facing because you’ve overcome them.
6. Hook the audience and get their permission – Give them a preview of a few upcoming slides in the webinar and ask them if you can show them how to learn more after the webinar.

The Content

This is the bulk of your webinar. The job of the content is to teach your audience what they want, and to kill objections while providing value. In webinars, less is more. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience with too many details.

Think of your audience’s biggest problem or greatest goal, then identify 3–4 steps that will help them solve/achieve them. 3–4 steps is enough to cover the material without overloading them with information. For each step, tell them:

1. What the step is
2. Why that step is important
3. What the goal is for that step

With each piece of content, you want to keep your audience focused on the potential outcomes inspired by all the things they can achieve, and ready to hear how you can help them. Every step of your content should lead nicely into the pitch and offer without feeling pushy or salesy. You’re teaching and inspiring while selling, which keeps your audience intrigued and hopeful for your solution at the end.

Engagement

Don’t forget that a webinar can be an interactive event. Engage your audience by asking questions and reading answers in the chat box. Send out polls during your webinar to learn more about your audience, and personalize your engagement as much as possible.

Right now, only 40% of webinars use some type of engagement feature, which means you can really set yourself and your webinars apart by engaging your audience.

Speak directly to participants, call them by name, thank people for attending your webinar. A simple, “Hey guys, thanks for showing up today. I’m really excited to share these strategies with you. If you’re ready to [insert webinar benefit here], give me your favorite emoji in the chat box!”.

Also, when you ask a question, rather than asking a hypothetical or just posing a question to the audience, ask the question in a poll. Take every opportunity you can to engage back and forth with them. Engagement is the difference between your audience attending your webinar and participating in it. Encourage as much participation as you can.

Transition

The transition is the part of the webinar that takes your audience from listening to content and value to preparing them to hear the close and your pitch. To do this smoothly, recap your outline and remind them of all the things you’ve just taught them, and how much value they’ve received.

Call to Action

Your call to action is the final step of the webinar. This is your moment to share your offer, price, bonuses, and guarantees. This is the shortest part of your entire webinar; don’t spend more than five minutes presenting your offer and sharing your sign-up or purchasing link.

By the time you get to this step, you’ve likely got the majority of people ready and eager to buy. The order for a great call to action is as follows:

1. The Offer – Unveil product name + tagline, share one sentence benefit statement, and show quick results and proof.
2. The Price – Display early and add value.
3. The Bonuses – Reveal your best bonus last.
4. The Guarantees – Offer 1–2 guarantees. Money back is always great to offer.

You may see that order and think we’re revealing the price too soon, but there’s a reason we want to show it early in the offer. As soon as we reveal the price, the audience will list objections in their head like, “Oh, that’s too much,” or “It’ll take me forever to see the ROI,” or “That’s going to take up half my budget.”

Regardless of your price, your audience will have some objections. So, we share the price in the beginning of the call to action, because then we have ample time to:

1. Value stack to a higher price point
2. Stair-step down to the actual price point
3. Reveal the price for them to buy today
4. Explain why the price is exclusive to them
5. Give the URL and launch a featured action in Demio

Don’t forget that a webinar can be an interactive event. Engagement is the difference between your audience attending your webinar and participating in it. Encourage as much participation as you can. #Youpreneur Click To Tweet

3. How To Set Up a Demio Webinar

This is the easy part.

1. Go to https://demio.com/
2. Click the “Get Started Free” button
3. Fill in the fields to create your account

That’s it! Your dashboard gives you the option to add a new event or learn more through our knowledge base. I highly recommend trying out the “My First Webinar Experience on Demio” webinar. It gives you the chance to practice a webinar with participants, polls, chats, and everything a Demio webinar has to offer.

Demio’s dashboard is easy to use, so when you’re ready to create your first webinar, click the “Add New Event” button.

 

From there, you can select if it’s a live or automated event.

Then, schedule the times and choose how people will register for the event.

Click “Save and Finish” and you’re done! Voilà! You’re ready to record and host your first webinar.

4. Promote Your Event

Now that you are all prepped and ready, it’s time to let your people know you’re hosting a webinar for them. You have several options here, so let’s break down each one so you can decide which combination will help you increase your sales.

Email

Promoting your webinar via email is the most popular way to do it. In fact, 57% of businesses use email as their means of promotion. Why? Because these are your people! You’ve spent weeks, months, or years nurturing these relationships. They recognize your name and know/trust your company or brand. So, when you have news, like an amazing webinar coming up, chances are pretty high they’ll want to be there.

Here’s a fantastic example from Inbound:

This promotional email does a great job at being pleasing to the eye with lots of white space, clear graphics that support the text of the email, and a large straight-to-the-point call to action with that “Register Now” button.

Web Summit is excellent at creating a sense of urgency with that countdown timer. They also provide multiple opportunities to purchase with the only other outbound link going to their Twitter feed.

Start sending your promotional emails 3–4 weeks in advance, and be sure to remind them one week before, three days before, and the day of the event to register.

Social Media

Use social media to create a buzz around your webinar. Announce your webinar wherever your audience is most present, which will vary from group to group. One of the greatest benefits of promoting on social media is that your audience can help as well: every comment, like, retweet, and share is a recommendation from one friend to another.

Keep the social media buzz going and create a Twitter chat during your event. Create an original hashtag that everyone can use.

This serves to promote your event as it’s happening (which will bring more attention to you, your brand, and help build those relationships) while simultaneously engaging a wider audience beyond your webinar attendees.

Registration Page

This is the most important piece of the promotional pie. This is where everyone will land after seeing your promotions through email or social media and then register for your event.

This is also where lead qualification happens.

4 Quick Steps to a Registration Page that Converts:

1. Write clear copy that tells the reader exactly how they will benefit from attending your webinar.
2. Have one call to action and no other outbound links. The only thing you want them to be able to do on that page is register for your webinar.
3. Have enough registration fields that you are able to segment your audience after the webinar, but not so many that they are overwhelmed by your form and leave. Only ask what you must know in order to get them registered.
4. Add social proof, testimonies, or reviews. This is a great space to continue showing the audience that your webinar event is going to be worth their time.

5. Follow Up

Your follow-up strategy is crucial to the entire sales process. Sales Handy found “80% of sales requires 5 follow-ups after a meeting,” but most people stop after one follow-up. The great thing about webinars as a part of your sales strategy is that your prospect goes from an unaware lead to a fully nurtured, potential client or customer after just one webinar.

Demio integrates with numerous CRM’s, which makes segmenting (and therefore personalizing) your follow-ups a no-brainer. To amp up the personalization, segment the follow-ups based on attendance.

If they weren’t in attendance, create a nurture sequence with copy that lets them know they were missed, and send them a few pieces of info they missed out on. If you’re running an evergreen event (if you’re not, you should be!), send them a link to sign up for the next one. Continue to grow that relationship by sharing tips, blog posts, and other cool people they should connect within your industry.

If they attended your webinar, but didn’t purchase, segment your follow-ups to continue to nurture, engage, and provide the link to purchase. You want to make purchasing from you as easy as possible. It’s also another opportunity to ask for feedback from your audience.

Integrating Demio with your CRM is straightforward and doesn’t require an engineering doctorate.

In your Demio dashboard, under your profile pic in the upper right corner, click on settings.

Then, choose integrations.

From there, select your CRM or email campaign software.

Follow the next few steps to integrate the two, and Boom! You’re all set for hyper-personalized segmentation that can run a webinar campaign. Walk away from that sucker like Danny DeVito struttin’ away from a massive explosion raining sweet, sweet, money.

If you’re looking to create a steady stream of qualified leads, a webinar is the perfect tool to help you close more deals and increase your sales.

Now for the Summary Section!

• Preparation is key to a really successful event — work from the end to the beginning.
• Provide a ton of value, hope, and fun during your event.
• Start using Demio to run your webinars like a boss.
• Follow up in ways that will continue to build a relationship with your audience.