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Prediction: How We’re DOUBLING Our Conversion Rates By Adding Hybrid Webinar/Workshops to Our Pre-Sale Marketing Mix.

By Michelle Falzon, Director of Training & Content, The ASK Method Company

One of our Core Values as a company is Customer Success. And that’s driven us to always improve our game when it comes to both our pre-sales marketing and our post-sales product delivery. 

And this year we’ve hit on something that’s a fusion of both of those worlds, which has made a massive difference to our results. We predict this hybrid webinar/workshop will be a big shift in the way expertise and information products are marketed and delivered this year and beyond.

Let’s back up a bit, so we can tell you the whole story…

We’ve made webinars our “go to” move for adding value and generating sales for everything from $200 low ticket courses, through to $2,000 Masterclasses and $20,000 high ticket offers.

And we’ve done alright with this approach 🙂 We’ve generated millions of dollars a year, for close to a decade, joining the Inc 5000 list of Fastest Growing Companies in America for 4 out of the last 5 years. 

Our 9-part Webinar Framework has not only been a cornerstone of our success, it’s also helped hundreds of our customers and coaching students to finally put in place a reliable way to convert sales and create profitable businesses.

 

Webinars helping our student Michal Labuda and his wife get their first-ever sales online.
Webinars helping our student Michal Labuda and his wife get their first-ever sales online.

 

Webinars getting Coaching student Ilyssa Bass into sales momentum.

 

Webinars helping Coaching student Morgan Gist MacDonald scale to her first million dollar year.

But for anyone who does webinars, you’ll know there’s been a downward trend across the board in recent years in terms of show up rates, with industry averages getting as low as just 25% of people who register for a webinar actually turning up to hear the presentation.

That means 75% of people who are interested enough to register for your webinar, and who need the help you can provide, are not getting the chance to benefit from what you’re sharing and are also not getting to hear your offer (and not buying from you!).

That’s huge.

In the last 12-months we’ve been experimenting with bringing more of what we’re famous for AFTER someone has paid us money (that is, our highly interactive and engaging training that delivers practical, tangible outcomes and results) and putting it more overtly into our front end marketing activities.

This led us to road test a hybrid webinar/workshop alongside our already highly successful webinars in a few of our bigger marketing campaigns for 2021… and the results were pretty mind blowing.

We saw our conversion rates DOUBLE in many cases and our show up rates EXPLODE.

This approach is still based on our proven 9-Part Webinar Framework, however, we’ve amped up the levels of engagement and interaction and placed more focus on the Workshop component.

This means we’re using more of the Training Design methods we’ve previously focused on in our back-end paid programs, in our front-end sales activities, including:

  • Naming the event a Workshop
  • Providing resources and interactive exercises, like pop quizzes, fill in the blanks, guessing games and more
  • Focusing on more two-way engagement in the Workshop part of the presentation (while keeping the Webinar part more one-way communication).
  • Delivering on a specific learning outcome relevant to the offer 
  • Charging a nominal fee for attendance

And it’s translating into results.

 

Example 1 – Copy Bootcamp 

In Q4 of 2021 we hosted a high ticket 3-day Copy Bootcamp.

Our normal approach to promote this type of program is to host a free webinar, which we did.

PLUS we also added into the mix a webinar/workshop hybrid event, which we charged $25 for (with all proceeds going to charity).

And here are the results:

A) Free Webinar Only B) Paid Webinar / Workshop Hybrid
Registered 1150 501
Webinar Attendees  316 464
% Show Up Rate 27.48% 92.61% 
% Who Stayed Until the Offer 74.68% 99.18%

This the exact SAME offer, presented in a free live webinar in Scenario A versus being presented in a low dollar paid hybrid webinar/workshop in Scenario B.

That’s a 237% increase in Show Up Rate (hello!! – we more than TRIPLED our show rate!), which means that even though fewer people registered for the paid webinar/workshop, MORE of them attended and participated than those who showed up for the free webinar, in net terms.

 

PLUS we had a 32.8% increase in people staying on the webinar until the offer (if you’re not tracking that metric, start doing that asap – it’s a key webinar metric you want to measure). We put this massive spike in people staying on longer down to the increased interactivity / workshop elements and the fact they’d paid a small amount, so had more skin in the game. 

And here’s the KICKER… our conversion rate on the hybrid webinar/workshop was more than 2.5 times that of the free webinar!

 

Example 2 – Quiz Funnel Masterclass 

Here’s another example…

We saw increases in our metrics earlier in 2021 when we were promoting the Quiz Funnel Masterclass.

Here are those results:

A) Free Webinar Only B) Paid Webinar / Workshop Hybrid
% Show Up Rate 35.83% 79.77% 
% Who Stayed Until the Offer 76.67% 93.77%

 

That’s a 122% improvement in (more than double) our Show Up Rate and a 22.3% increase in people staying until the offer; 

And, again, not only did the new model increase the show up rate, it also increased the conversions by 68%, going from 11.66% on the free webinar to 19.62% on the paid webinar/workshop hybrid.

 

What That Means For You in 2022 and Beyond:

  • Hybrid Webinar / Workshop Trial – Consider trialing a hybrid low dollar webinar / workshop where you amp up the workshop component without losing the key attributes of a sales webinar.
  • Take Action or Continue to See Show Rates Decline – Webinar show rates are continuing to decline, so you need to do “something else” to get people turning up to your pre-sales marketing activities.
  • Your Audience Expects More Engagement – Your audience is going to continue to expect more from you in terms of what you deliver and how well you can ENGAGE them in your webinar, virtual event, live training, coaching program etc. So find ways to build that into more of your pre and post-sale content in 2022!
  • Keep Your Webinars! – Our hypothesis is that having BOTH webinars plus hybrid webinar/workshops is the way to get the best results from your marketing in 2022.

Stay OBSESSED with Customer Success – While trends and shifts happen, it’s our belief that keeping your Customer Success as your North Star is the key to successful marketing and business this year… and ANYTIME. 

 

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