Lead Generation Webinars And Creating A Sales Funnel

TAM 043: Tim Paige – Using Webinars For Lead Generation

Tim Paige Webinars ActiveCampaign Barry Moore

In episode 43, I chat with Tim Paige, host of ConversionCast. We talk about creating a sales funnel to get customers and leads into your business.

Tune in, as he shares experience on organizing a successful Webinar and the conversion tactics to get people to sign up in the first place. He also lays down some top tips on getting the sale.

We chat about:

  • Content upgrades
  • Webinar conversion
  • Split testing Webinars
  • Success and hilarious stories of webinars
  • Type of webinars
  • How to make your webinar interactive and engaging

Also check out Tim's program www.podcastconversionblueprint.com

If you would like to have a chat about how you could be using marketing automation to grow your business join us in the Automation Nation private Facebook group

Links Mentioned In The Show

Listening options:

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Announcer: We have found Adly pages that, the Webinar registration pages, not only that we use, but also that our clients use, tend to convert higher than other kind of landing page that we've ever seen. Welcome to the The Active Marketer Podcast where we talk about how to design, automate, and scale your business to the next level, using sales and marketing automation. You can find out all the tips, tactics, and techniques you need to get more customers and sell more stuff over at TheActiveMarketer.com. Now, here's your host, Barry Moore.

Barry: Welcome back to another episode of The Active Marketer Podcast. I am your host, Barry, and this is the podcast that's all about sales, funnels, and marketing automation. Got another great interview-type format for you today with Tim. Now, if you're not familiar with Tim, he runs ConversionCast which is the podcast over there at Lead Pages. The format of that podcast is really great because he gets marketers on to tell him and share with the audience, "What are some of their killer conversion tactics and conversion tips?" so I thought we might have Tim on to kind of summarise and share some of those tidbits he's got over the years. And, he also runs a tonne, tonne, tonne of webinars for Lead Pages, so I wanted him to also share with us some of the great ways you can use webinars for lead generation, some of the great tactics you can put in place to get people to show up, the conversion tactics he uses on the webinar, some of the format secrets that he's learned over the years running webinar after webinar after webinar. So, he's going to share with us everything you need to know about using webinars for lead generation.

But, just before we get to that, a little bit of news. If you're a SoundCloud fan or an avid SoundCloud user, it's good news. The Active Marketer Podcast is now available on SoundCloud, so if you want to subscribe by SoundCloud, just go over to SoundCloud, do a search for The Active Marketer Podcast. You'll find us. Subscribe, and you'll get it delivered to your SoundCloud app straight away. And, there's also a new SoundCloud player on all the show note posts as well. And, of course, how could we forget this shameless social proof segment.

Got a couple of quick five star reviews to read out for you this week. These two come from the Australian iTunes store this time. We've got two of them, two five star reviews. The first one is from Gambify Games SA, and they say, "five stars", also info, "How timely this interview is, with our new website only going live four weeks ago. Thanks for all the great info. Keep them coming." And, the second review from Gun Hudson in Australia says, "5 stars, another awesome super fast podcast," and he's referring to a mastermind membership community that I'm a part of, called SuperFastBusiness. Lots of podcasters in that community, so if you're thinking of creating a podcast of your own or you just need some marketing advice, I urge you to check out SuperFastBusiness.com. Lots and lots of great marketing information inside that community, so thanks Gun and thanks Gambify Games SA. Really appreciate you stopping by, and leaving us a review. If you want to head over to iTunes or Stitcher, or SoundCloud, and leave us a review, we'll read that out on a future episode.

But, for now, let's get into this week's episode with Tim. All right, I would like to welcome to the show, Tim Paige, the host of ConversionCast, one of the podcasts that's constantly on my playlist because there's great actionable advice every single time from there, so welcome Tim.

Tim: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me here. I really appreciate that, Barry.

Barry: Tim in the house. Now, I know you're a bit of a Marvel fan, so have you been watching the new Jessica Jones series on Netflix?

Tim: Oh yeah. My wife and I finished it. We loved every second. I think-

Barry: Oh, you're already finished with it? Wow.

Tim: Oh, yeah. That's the kind of stuff I sit and like, my countdown. It was midnight the day before it came out, and I'm sitting there like, "Well, I could stay up all night and be exhausted for work tomorrow, or I could just sleep, and deal with it and watch it after work," and I ended up sleeping because I'm too tired for that crap.

Barry: Fair enough. Fair enough. I'm hanging for the Iron Fist one.

Tim: Oh, it's gonna be good. It's gonna be good there. Rumours flying that they want to make it a movie instead of a series. I hope that's not true.

Barry: The Daredevil one was great as well.

Tim: Daredevil was great. I think Jessica Jones one-upped it, but Daredevil had better fight scenes. The Jessica Jones fight scenes were kind of eh.

Barry: Faire enough. Oh, enough of us geeking out on Marvel stuff. I wanted to get you on the show because you are constantly talking to lots of entrepreneurs, running sales funnels over there on ConversionCast, and they're constantly sharing some top tactics for you, so I wanted you to come on the show, and perhaps, share some of those secrets with our audience, so once the listeners probably either have a rudimentary sales funnel, or they're just starting out with the first steps of creating a sales funnel, so maybe we start there. What do you think the first steps are? You've got your product. You've got your idea. Now, you want to create a sales funnel to get customers and leads into your world, so where do you reckon is the best place to start?

Tim: It's really interesting. This is something that I've been playing around with a lot myself lately, as the majority of the work I do is Adly pages, but I also, you know, I'm a voice actor, and I do a lot of stuff for all sorts of different companies, and I've been really focusing a lot on getting that more systematised myself, and one thing I found that's really interesting is that it's easiest, and maybe most effective to start with the end, and work your way back to kind of the beginning. And the beginning would be at least, in my viewpoint, the lead, getting someone on your email list.

Barry: Okay, and do you have some most effective means to do that? Everyone always talks about having a lead magnet or some downloadable PDF, or free training course. Have you found that that's the best way that works or?

Tim: Yeah, you know, I found the two most effective ways to grow your email list, depending on what your business is, and what you're looking to accomplish. The two most effective ways are, number one, webinars. We have found Adly pages that webinars, the webinar registration pages, not only that we use, but also that our clients use, tend to convert higher than any other kind of landing page that we've ever seen. So, our average webinar registration template inside of Lead Pages converts around 72%.

Barry: Wow.

Tim: And that's based on 40,000 customers that we have, so that's a lot of data. That's not like, "Oh, sure. Three successful internet marketers are using them." No, that's based on every kind of industry and business model you can imagine, so that's the number one thing. And, I would say maybe, right on the same level, would be content upgrades, and if anybody hasn't heard of content upgrades. Basically, what it is, is every time you create a blog post, a podcast episode, a YouTube video, you create some kind of content. Along with that, you create a little something extra, a little bonus, a checklist, a worksheet, a mindmap, a transcript, something. Something extra that provides additional value that anybody reading that blog post would want, but in order to get it, they have to opt-in. They've got to give you their email address, and we found that can be one of the biggest drivers of leads for your business. In fact, before we were implementing those content upgrades, we had a half of one percent site-wide opt-in rate. And, within just 30 days of implementing content upgrades, we had gone from half of one percent to over 10% site-wide opt-in rate.

Barry: Wow. Yeah, that's cool. I want us to loop back to the webinar there for a second. I know you guys do tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of them, but that's really surprising. That number really surprised me because I would've thought that most people would be, "Oh, I'm showing up for this 45-minute or 30-minute, 60-minute webinar." That's such a commitment to time. I wouldn't have thought the conversion rates are that high. Do you have any thoughts on why someone would convert that high to something that's taking that much of their time as opposed to the, "Here's the five step cheat sheet for taking better photographs?" Or whatever.

Tim: Yeah, and what I think is also interesting about that is, most of the time, our content upgrades are quick, easy, little things like you mentioned. You know, a checklist or something. And, they convert about the same or very close to webinars, so it's really interesting there's such a dichotomy there, where a lot of people are opting in for the simple, easy thing, and a lot of people are opting in for our webinars, which our webinars are all 90 minutes. So, they're big time, you know, a feature length movie. And, that's what they're listening to me talk about growing your lists and that kind of thing. Why I think that is? A part of it, for us at least, is that what we talk about, what we promote, what our software helps you do, can be quite complicated, and it's something that people, I think, are really frustrated with, and people hear all kinds of advice. Some of it has worked. Some of it hasn't, and some of it, they've never even tried, and they don't know where to turn for something in their specific situation.

The thing that people have grown to love about our webinars is that there's so interactive, and I know that not everybody's are like that, which is why I think some people have struggled with webinars. But, our webinars, when somebody gets on, they can ask a question five minutes in, and get an answer shortly after they ask it. I actually answer questions live throughout the whole process.

And, so I know that a lot of the people join our webinars as a result of the word-of-mouth promotion that we have around our webinars. Some people have joined many, many times. They've seen the same webinar two or three times or maybe they've been on, they join every one of our webinars because they've gotten a lot of value out of it, but the other thing is, I really think that there's something to be said for people wanting to get an answer that is specific to them because a checklist doesn't solve their problem. If I'm struggling because I'm in some weird niche, like I sell industrial air purifiers to only large warehouse buildings. If I have some weird, weird niche like that, a checklist isn't going to help me.

Barry: Yeah.

Tim: Whereas if I get a pro on the line who's maybe dealt with somebody in a weird niche like that, and I say, "Here's my issue. Can you help me?" Then, I'm going to get something that specifically helps me, and I think that that's one of the big reasons why people register for webinars. Now, on the flip side, it's really funny because most of the people that go, "Well, I am a," inserts career type here. A lot of those people, it's a really common thing. A lot of the times, it's like "I am a brand new solopreneur who's working part-time on the side to grow this business, and I want to do affiliate marketing. How do I make this work?" And, it's like everything I'm talking about is so clearly laid out for that industry, but people are so focused on their own individual thing, that there's so much magic in seeing their webinar go, "Oh, I can ask my questions and get those answered."

Barry: Yeah. Very cool. It is real interesting that you guys have gone down a different path than most internet marketers, in that, all your webinars are actually live. They aren't evergreen, pretend live-webinars.
Tim: Yeah, that's right. It's been big for us. It's been big for me being able to answer those questions, and in all fairness, I recognise that is also not necessarily the easiest thing to do. We do have me on staff, which this is literally my full-time job is ConversionCast, and doing webinars. So, for somebody who's running the business, and that's their whole thing, and they're kind of handling everything, it'd be tougher to do this. In fact, I think it would be near impossible to do exactly what I'm doing, but what I tell people to do is, a webinar once a week. Do one live weekly webinar every week. It doesn't have to be a different webinar every week, but it can be a Q&A webinar. Every week, you're going to get on, and you're going to do a Q&A webinar around a particular topic.

If you're a health coach, every month, say you've got four weeks every month, so you're going to do four webinars a month, and week one can be about food, and the right kind of foods to eat to have more energy. And, then week two can be about lifting workouts, that kind of thing, and people can ask you questions. Week three, et cetera, et cetera. You can make them topical like that, but that live webinar, that live interaction, there's no comparison, not only from an engagement standpoint, from a connecting with your audience standpoint, but from a sales conversion standpoint. There is nothing like it.

Barry: Yeah, and I think people want to see that. They want to know there's a real person there. They want to interact. At the end of the day, you buy it from people right? I'm not saying there's no place for evergreen webinars, but if it's some bullshit prerecorded one, where you're pretending to be live, and you're real. I think people see that pretty quick, and they just go, "This guy is just out for my money," but if you're there providing value and answering questions, and being genuine, I think that goes a heap more-

Tim: Yeah, and I-

Barry: To garner loyal customers. People think that there's a genuine person behind it.

Tim: Totally agree, and I'll tell you. If you want to do evergreen webinars, I think that's great, but I encourage you to not pretend they're live.

Barry: Yeah.

Tim: Let people know. Make it clear. This is a prerecorded webinar. Every webinar I do, I say the date and time, so I'll be like, "Thanks so much for being here. It's November 20th," or whatever the heck the date is of the webinar, "September 20th at 3:00 pm Eastern. Thanks so much for joining us live. It really means a lot that you're here." And, so if somebody got a recording of that, they would see it, and go, "Oh, it's not today. It's prerecorded. No big deal." You know? I think it's one way that you can have a connexion and a relationship with your audience because, let's say, somebody sees a registration webinar page, and it says, "Live Webinar. November 25th" or whatever, "at 3:00 pm. Hop on the webinar, we'll do," whatever. And, that's the first time interacting with you. If they get on that webinar, and you're saying live, live, live, live, live, and they figure out it's not live, you have destroyed that relationship with you. The first interaction they had with you is a lie. Why would they ever buy from you?

Barry: Exactly right. I actually know there's a guy who's whole business is to replay webinars and answer questions. So, instead of just being an evergreen webinar where there's no interaction. They replay, insert marketers name here, webinar, and then they sit there and answer questions in the scratchpad. And, that's their whole thing-

Tim: Interesting.

Barry: Is pretending to be a live web-

Tim: Yeah, that's interesting.

Barry: I want to get back to the webinar stuff for a second, but just on that loop back to that content upgrade stuff, now are you creating a specific, unique content upgrade for each thing or you have like 10 or 15? If we're doing a post about lead gen, there's two or three lead gens, ones that you recycle each time or are they completely unique per post, per video, or whatever?

Tim: Yeah, so you can do it either way. We actually create a new lead magnet for every blog post. It's custom for every single thing. It's the best way to get the highest conversion rate, and to really solve a specific problem because let's say, I don't know, again, if we do the health example, let's say somebody is talking about health foods, and how to eat healthier. There's a million different things that you can talk about-

Barry: Yeah.

Tim: when it comes to eating healthier, so I could do a blog post that's like, "Five ways to incorporate super foods." Well, if I have a generic lead magnet about eating healthier, that's great. It's helpful, kinda, but I'm reading that blog post because I'm interested in super foods, so why not give me five recipes to incorporate super foods in my everyday life? We make it very specific. If I do a episode of ConversionCast, then we have a breakdown of exactly the tactic that the guest talked about, and how you can implement that in your business, typed-up format, so that you can download it, and you don't have to go back and listen to the show, and freak out taking notes. We basically lay it all out for you.

Barry: Yeah, for sure, and I think you're absolutely right. Those certainly would give the highest conversion rate, but that's a lot of work-

Tim: It is.

Barry: For every

Tim: Yep.

Barry: blog post or every piece of content to have unique lead magnet, and then an opt-in for that unique lead magnet, et cetera.

Tim: It is, and this is what I tell people about that. There's a few different things. One, if you try it for, let's say, two months, and you create a content upgrade for every single blog post, it's a custom content upgrade for every blog post. First off, how much are you blogging that it takes up that much time to create the extra thing? If you're like writing a blog post every day, oh my god, yeah, content upgrade is going to take up all your time. If you're writing one blog post a week, you can take an extra 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes to create something that's special, that's going to grow your list really, really quickly. But, on the flip side, if you take too months, and it's not growing your list quickly, it isn't getting you a return on investment, then sure, make the switch. Stop doing it, or do something that's simpler, or whatever.

But, on the flip side, if you just really aren't willing to invest that time to grow your list, which you know, I believe to be your most important and most valuable asset as an entrepreneur. If you don't have that time, then sure. If you know there are specific categories that you always write about, you can batch it all together, create a bunch of lead magnets, and then when you do a blog post about one thing, put up the lead magnet for that. But, we are living proof that doing this specific lead magnet is worth it. It is so worth it if you're doing it right. Now, I will say, you can actually do that wrong. You can spend a bunch of time creating stuff, and have it be wrong. I was talking to a friend the other day, who is a fantastic marketer. Okay, she's a rockstar killing it, and she heard me talk about content upgrades, and got really inspired, and went and did this blog post, and I'm going to use an example because I don't want to call her out, but I want to give an example of how it can be done kind of seeming like it's right, but it's not.

So, let's say it was a blog post about how to do time management. Let's say, she did a blog post, and it was like, "How to really effectively manage your time," the content was like, "The ultimate guide to time management." Okay, so it's very specific, it's very related. If you read the blog post about time management, then the ultimate guide to time management makes sense, right? But, it gives a weird perception of the blog post, itself. You don't want it to feel like in order to have gotten value out of the blog post, you need to read the guide-

Barry: Yeah.

Tim: And you also don't want it to feel like if you read the guide, you're just going to get a rehashed version of the blog post.

Barry: Yeah.

Tim: It needs to be something that enhances the blog post, so in that case, it could be time management worksheet, download and print out this worksheet, and figure out the things that are taking up the most of your time, and see how much time you can save by eliminating them.

Barry: Yeah.

Tim: See. You don't need that to get value out of the blog post, but if you get that, it really enhances the value of the blog post.

Barry: Yeah, and if you download the ultimate guide, why do I need to read the blog post in the first place if it's the ultimate guide, right?

Tim: Right, exactly.

Barry: Yeah, right. Okay, very cool, very cool. I just want to loop back to the webinars stuff for a minute, since you do so many of them, and that funnel for you guys is working so very well, and-

Tim: Yeah.

Barry: I'd love to hear a little bit of a history about how that started, and how it's evolved over time, so I'm assuming you've been tweaking that kind of funnel to squeeze out the little extra conversion out of that month-in, month-out, and trying to figure out what works, and trying different things. So, how have you been measuring the effectiveness of that funnel?

Tim: Yeah, it's taken a long time to get right, and we're still always trying to improve it, and make it better. But, one thing that we've found is that, I think, actually, let me say this. The area that we have not perfected still is the lead up, leading up to the webinar. We have an incredible show-rate. I think we're hovering around 40% or 45%, the people that register for a webinar and show up, which is way above industry standard. And, it's interesting because we really don't have much of a lead up series. There's not much. We're working on putting in place something with some videos and maybe a little teaser, and that kind of stuff. We don't give away anything special just for attending. It's not like we have some worksheet that we give them when they join. There's literally nothing. They just show up because they know it's great content, but where we really have been able to be effective is what happens after the webinar is done with.

So, we know a lot of people aren't going to show up, so we've got a sequence in place for the people that don't show up, and that sequence kind of has two goals. It's either, one, to get them to join the future webinar, or two, to get them into some kind of a sales sequence, so that they do end up buying, and then we've got one for people who have joined the webinar, and blocked. And then, we've got one for people who join the webinar, and did not buy. And so, it's really evolved because, at first, it was just people that registered for the webinar, and then there was a sequence for that. Everybody would get the same sequence afterwards regardless of whether they attended, they bought, whatever. And then, we really started figuring out what actions people were taking, and were able to not sit there and send sales messages to people who are already customers, and not market to the people who didn't buy yet.

Barry: Yeah.

Tim: It's really been amazing to see what happens after a webinar, and we're still converting a significant amount of people that both attended the webinar and didn't buy, and didn't attend the webinar at all.
Barry: Are you getting them back to another webinar or are they just going straight to a sale?

Tim: There's two different things, so if they didn't attend the webinar, we are trying to get them to another webinar, and if they don't register for a webinar, then we basically put them into our regular sale sequence, which is really, really valuable in itself. I mean, I think they get four emails that are training courses on list building and landing page optimization, and really, really valuable stuff, then basically it gets them to sign up for Lead Pages. But, the other one is, yeah, we try to get them onto the next webinar. We know stuff happens. People forget. They register for the webinar, but then things come up in the meantime, and they just can't be there, and then they don't even think about it. So, we wanna get them onto another webinar because we know our webinars convert so well. So, those are the two big things, but then when people attend and don't buy, we know that a lot of the time, whatever happened. They were driving and listening to the webinar. It's amazing, how many people tell me that they're listening to the webinar in their car.

Barry: I've actually had that.

Tim: Yeah. That's what I mean. Or, they're not sitting next to their wallet or something. Weird things can happen, and so, just an email a couple days later that say, "Hey, you know what? We don't want you to miss out. Here's the replay, and by the way, we're going to offer you some bonuses if you sign up now." And, you just get these extra sales that you wouldn't have gotten. People always talk about, "well, what about the upsell you're missing out on business?" And all that kind of stuff. It's kind of the same thing. Just because somebody didn't buy, doesn't mean they're not the ideal customer. It just means, they didn't buy right then.
Barry: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we've all been there where we're looking at something, and doorbell rings or it's dinner time or whatever, and you just don't follow through-

Tim: Yeah.

Barry: You definitely need to follow them out. So, what about the format of the webinar? How heavy do you kind of change that over time to be more effective?

Tim: This has been something that the format has stayed fairly consistent. We haven't changed a whole lot about that. What we do, though, is we test a lot of different things. We test bonuses pretty extensively because bonuses are a dangerous territory. The wrong bonuses can make it seem like that people need something other than your product to accomplish their goal. They can kind of detract from your offer, and that can really hurt you on customers that aren't planning on buying on the webinar, but are going to buy down the road because then they're going to think they need those things that you're offering as bonuses. Bonuses can also seem more valuable than your product if you're not careful, so we've tested that pretty extensively. We've tested what bonuses get people to buy for a higher dollar value. We've tested sending people to particular offers, we've tested offering more than one thing, but it's really interesting because of the number of webinars that we do, and the numbers of attendees that we get, we're able to split-test pretty extensively. We switch in and out different steps to the webinar. Right now, our big split-test that we're running is if the number of attendees affects the revenue per attendee, so we're curious. Our hypothesis is that, if you have over 200 attendees on your webinar, you will almost always get higher revenue per attendee, then if you get under 200.

Barry: Interesting.

Tim: Yeah, and the thought behind that is when you have over 200 people, that's a lot of people's energy that's getting fed off of. There's a lot of questions going. And, as I answer questions live, that kind of stokes the fire of other people wanting to ask their questions, and making it really interactive, and then when we go to the end, and I'm reading people's names that bought Lead Pages, all of a sudden, all these people are giving all that social proof. It really becomes this machine that fuels itself, whereas, if you've got 50 people, it's not like 50 people on a webinar is a bad thing, but there's not the energy of like these 200 or 300 people that are all clamouring to get their questions answered.

Barry: That's an interesting observation. I guess it makes sense. I was just thinking, if you walk into a nightclub, and there's 10 people standing there, you're probably going to turn around and walk out, but if there's 500 people in there, it's pumping. You're going to walk in, but it's interesting that, that party dynamic translates to something as remote as webinar. It's interesting.

Tim: Yeah, and we don't have any kind of statistical significance on that yet, but we've been testing it. So far, it seems like it is the case, but we want to test this over a long period of time because then that impacts how we promote webinars, and the number of webinars we do, and how we treat smaller webinars. That kind of information can really impact the decisions you make on your future marketing efforts. But yeah, our webinars have really evolved, and it all comes down to what the goal is of the webinar. We want people to leave engaged. We want people to leave with positive feelings about Lead Pages, and I guess, equally as important, I want to say more important, but I'm not sure if it's more important. I want people to become customers as a result of the webinar, but it is really, for us, it's really effective. It may be our highest converting channel, is webinars. There's a lot to be said for the fact that, probably, a lot of those people are already familiar with us to an extent, and they're looking for that extra kick. There's a lot to be said for the fact that, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm somewhat engaging and energetic, and I think that social proof of having a bunch of other people there that are excited to buy is very helpful as well.

Barry: Yeah, for sure, for sure. So, just to loop back to the bonuses for a second, so on each webinar, are you offering a bonus, or some webinars just like a straight sale for Lead Pages, or does every one have some additional bonus that they can only get for attending that webinar?

Tim: Yep, every webinar has bonuses, and they're time-sensitive, so we tell people that they can only get the bonuses if they buy before the webinar is over with, and that is true. And, the reason for that is, we want to give some sense of urgency. We have tested different things. We have tested giving people two weeks after the webinar to buy Lead Pages, and we found that even when we waited the full two weeks, it didn't compare to when we told them, they only had until the end of the webinar. So, even although giving people all that time, and the people that, no matter what, would not buy, giving them the chance to buy, it still didn't even come close to getting them to buy right then and there. We tested giving them until the end of the day. We tested giving them 48 hours. Nothing came even close to just literally giving them until the end of the webinar, which it usual gives them about 30 minutes by the time I've made the offer.

Barry: And, you mentioned some kinds of right kinds of bonuses, and wrong kinds of bonuses. Could you just, maybe quickly, illuminate on that point?

Tim: Yeah, it's tough because it depends on what your offer is. So, ours is software, right? We found that some of the most effective things to give away are either features that you normally can't get at a lower level. I'll give a clear example here instead of trying to beat around the bush. So, we have a feature called Lead Digits. It allows people to opt-in by texting, right? So, you could text Lead Pages Live to 33444, and you would register for our webinar by doing that. And so, that used to be an advanced only feature, which is our highest level of membership. It's like $2,000 a year or something like that, and that was something you only got at an advanced level. Well, when that was the case, we did some webinars where we were offering, if people signed up for our pro level, they would get Lead Digits, and the webinars where we were doing that was our highest converting webinars to date, so additional features that are on a higher level of membership convert really well.

We found that, if you had the time and bandwidth, or the ability to hire somebody to do it for you, even on a contract basis, done-for-you things, are extremely valuable. So, one of ours that we use pretty regularly is a done-for-you lead magnet because a lot of people are trying to grow their list, and they're using Lead Pages for the landing, but when they want to create that thing to give away, that checklist or whatever, then they have to get it designed and then, they've got to hire a designer, or do it themselves. So, we have one of our designers do it for them.
Barry: Ah, yeah. Cool.
Tim: You know? Those are the biggest things that we found. Training courses are good, but they have less of a tangible feeling to them, especially when you give them away as a bonus, if it's just like this, "This is our list building training programme 3.0," or whatever. We do use those things. We have great training programmes, and because we're not a information products business, the only way to get information products from us is as bonuses on webinars until very recently, when we just released a $1,000 training course, but the problem is, at that point, you have to sell the bonuses as well.

Barry: Yeah, yeah.

Tim: We've had to work really hard to sell the bonuses, and to get the pitch down for our bonuses because you're on our webinar to check out our software and that kind of thing, but having an information product that they've never heard of means that you then have to convince them of the value of that, and then say I'm giving you this for free. So, the biggest things again are, if you have a software product, features to your software are beneficial. One-on-one time can be really valuable, or exclusive webinars, or Google Hangouts, or live meetups, or that kind of thing can be really effective. We did a podcasting webinar, a sales-based webinar for podcasters, and then we offered a special invite-only webinar as a bonus for if you bought Lead Pages on that webinar, those things tend to be really effective, but it's going to be different based on what industry you're in. If you're ecommerce, it's going to be another thing. If you are info products, it's going to be another thing.

Barry: Fair enough. All right, Tim. Thank you so much for all that killer information, and we might wrap it up there. I really want to respect your time, so obviously, webinars are a fantastic conversion tools, and a fantastic sales tool, so if someone's taking their first step, what's the first step they can take towards creating their webinar, and what's the one big common area to avoid when starting up?

Tim: The first step is to really get a good understanding of what problems your audience is facing. And, the biggest mistake, that I think people make, is to not go at a webinar as if the whole focus is to have people solve a problem. It's easy as marketer because you've got pressure and you've got a business to run, or you got goals to meet for your company or whatever. It's easy to go, "Oh, I've got to hit my numbers. I've got to get sales. What's going to get people to buy?" And yes, that's important, but at the same time, if you look at everything you're doing as if it's focused on solving one person's problem, then you're almost guaranteed that, if nothing else, you will have people leave that webinar with a positive taste in their mouth, and then again, you create everything around solving that problem.

Barry: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, for sure. And common errors? What have you seen that people do, that you just kinda face-palm every time?

Tim: Ignoring questions is a big one. People don't want to questions because they don't want to get it wrong, or they don't want to make some kind of mistake, or whatever, but you've got to answer questions. If you're not answering questions, if you're not engaging, it feels like somebody's watching an hour long YouTube video.

Barry: Yeah, for sure.

Tim: So, that's a big one. Another one is trying to be perfect and polished. So, I had bronchitis for two weeks, and I'm just a freak, so in the time I had bronchitis, I did ten webinars. It's really interesting. I thought, for sure, we would suffer in conversions. I'm sick, and my energy level is not going to be there, but I started every webinar by saying, look, "I have to forewarn you, I have bronchitis. I feel like garbage. My voice might cut out in the middle of the webinar. If it does, I'm so sorry. Also, if I accidentally cough in your ear, I really apologise. I'll try to mute my microphone in time, but in case I don't, I'm sorry." And, I found that people were, not only were they, like "No, totally understand," people were in the middle of the webinar, giving me suggestions on how to get rid of the bronchitis. And, tweeting at me afterwards saying, "Hope you feel better," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, conversions stayed consistent with what they had been previously.

In fact, one of the webinars was the second highest revenue per attendee we've ever had, and my point in all of that like you mentioned earlier, people love doing business with people, and you don't have to be perfect. I don't care if you're trying to be the coach, or the guru, the speaker, whatever you are. People love that authenticity, but one other quick example that I think your audience will appreciate, one time, on a webinar, I'm halfway through, and I develop the worst case of hiccups I've had in my life. It was so bad, I couldn't get past four words without the most obnoxious hiccup ever, and we literally got a hashtag trending as a result of that webinar, hiccup webinar. It was hilarious. And so, I was like, "After the webinar, make sure you tweet hashtag hiccup webinar," and the whole time, I'm going through the webinar like that. And, it was awesome, and we converted, and people added me on Facebook, and be like, "Oh, I was on the hiccup webinar." I'm not saying to go fake it, and go do something stupid, but if you make a mistake, admit you made a mistake. If you gotta say something funny, say something funny.

I once called somebody on a webinar a wanker, you know, and it was a webinar for a bunch of people in England, and I didn't know that was a swear word over there, and people were like, "Oh my gosh, you can't say that. You shouldn't say that on a webinar," and I'm going, "What are you talking about? Say what?" And, they told me, and it was okay. I laughed at myself. Some people were offended, and I'm sure I lost a few people or whatever, you've got to be willing to just accept that you're a human being. You're going to make mistakes. People will relate to you more than if you're just like, "Okay, step number two, we're going to talk about this," blah, blah, blah. People don't relate to that.

Barry: Yeah, no. You gotta be genuine. You gotta be yourself. Everyone sees through that slick, polished internet marketing slimy veneer, anyway, so-

Tim: Right.

Barry: You might as well be yourself. All right, team, thank you so much for coming on and sharing, and I urge anyone, If you're not listening to ConversionCast every week, you need to. There's great information on there every week, and if someone wants to learn more about Tim, where can they reach out to you?

Tim: Yeah, if you want to reach out to me on Twitter, I'm pretty active on Twitter. It's @eCommerce. If you'd like to learn more about how you can quickly grow your email list without spending all of your time on marketing, just text LeadPagesLive, that's one word, to the phone number, 33444, and you'll get registered, and those are probably the two best ways to stay in touch.

Barry: And, I'd urge everybody to do that. Lead Pages is constantly putting out great content on how to grow your list. But, thank you so much, Tim. And, I look forward to future episodes of ConversionCast.

Tim: Great, man. Thanks for having me on.

Barry: Thanks Tim.

I'd like to thank Tim again for coming on the show, and sharing his insights with us, and I'd like to thank you, the listener, for joining us on The Active Marketer Podcast. I really do appreciate everybody tuning in every week, and all the great feedback I get on iTunes, Stitcher, email, and inside our private Facebook group over at Automation Nation. We'd love for you to join us if you're not already in that group. Head over to Facebook, search for Automation Nation, click join, let us know you heard about the podcast, join us inside, and we're sharing great tactics, tips, strategies, and techniques, solving lots of problems that people run into every day inside the Automation Nation Facebook group, so get over there and sign in.

If you want more links to anything we talked about today, head over to the show notes, which is going to be TheActiveMarketer.com/TimPaige. And, I would also like to ask you, the listener, for a little bit of help. December's the time I put my head down, and re-tool, and think about all the different products, services, educational material that I can create to better serve you, the business owner, who's trying to get their head around how to use sales funnels and marketing automation.

So, over the next six weeks, I'm going to be creating a tonne of content to get that message across, and I would love it if you could tell me what you're struggling with. Send me what you would like to see out there in the marketplace that would make your life easier when implementing all of this marketing automation for you and your business. You can send that directly to me on email barry@theactivemarket.com, or you can head over to any of the podcast episodes, and leave us a comment in the show notes. Tell us what you would like to see us create for 2016 that's going to help you and your business. All right. So, we'll see you back next week for another episode. In the meantime, get out there, and design, automate, and scale your business to the next level using sales and marketing automation.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to The Active Marketers Podcast. You can find the show notes and all the latest marketing news over at TheActiveMarketer.com.

Barry Moore

Entrepreneur, aviator and former eCommerce and technology executive, Barry Moore is the founder of TheActiveMarketer.com. When he isn't geeking out about how sales and marketing automation can help your business, you can find him in the surf or in an airplane.

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