What would happen if 96% of the people who registered for a webinar…actually showed up for it?
That number in today’s world is practically unheard of. Yet it’s NOT a typo. It’s what happened when we made one small tweak to how we run our webinars.
We started charging money to attend. That’s right. A small fee – $20, 25, or $30, with the money donated to charity. Here’s the true story of how it happened.
“Moving the Free Line”
The concept of “Moving the Free Line” comes from my friend Eben Pagan, and it states that when you give something away for free that you would normally charge for, you make people think, “Wow, if that’s what they’re giving away for free, how AMAZING must be the stuff you have to pay for?!?!”
It also works on the principle of Reciprocation that Robert Cialdini talks about in his well-known book Influence.
We as humans feel the need to reciprocate when someone gives us something. So, when you give away something for free, you’re creating a “debt” that your prospect will feel the need to give something in return.
We’ve used this principle successfully for many of our marketing activities. Nearly all of our campaigns will have free content or training that is available for anyone to access (like this blog post right here!)
However, in recent years we started to see diminishing returns from this strategy when it came to our WEBINARS.
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 15% of people who register for a webinar actually turning up to hear the presentation. And we started to see that in our business as well, with showup rates dropping lower and lower.
So we decided to try something DIFFERENT.
“Those Who Pay, Pay Attention”
That quote is from my good friend Michael Hyatt, yet it’s long been conventional wisdom that people who invest money in something are more likely to show up, take action, and get results.
So we thought, what if we were to charge a small fee to attend our webinars – and turned them into longer WORKSHOPS where attendees would get immense value?
When we tried this out, we charged $25 to attend a 3-hour workshop and donated ALL the proceeds to charity. The offer on that Workshop was one of our signature Bootcamps for $2,499.
You can probably guess what happened next – people PAID, and PAID attention. We went from 36% attendance and 26% of people who registered saw the offer, to 96% attendance and 92% of people saw the offer – simply by adding a $25 fee to attend the webinar!
And of course we donated the money to a specific charity, so that we can make people feel good about attending and supporting a great cause at the same time.
Now there are a couple of nuances to this, but the main idea is that charging for your webinar gives people a really compelling reason to show up live and pay attention. And that has been an absolute game changer for us too.
We are making over a MILLION dollars a MONTH using webinars by shaking up the “regular” webinar model and implementing a few tweaks that have allowed us to glue eyeballs to the screen, keep the chat on FIRE, and the sales rushing in!
The 3 “Monumental Moves” to Million Dollar Months
Moving the Paid Line and charging a small fee for our Workshops is just ONE of those moves. Now, we will have fewer attendees register than for one of our free webinars. But remember, these are people who have paid money to attend.
Which means our SHOW UP RATE for a workshop is between 92-96%. Compare that to 15% or less on a regular webinar, and you can see that you need far fewer attendees to hit your sales numbers.
Plus, your attendees are getting so much value from your workshop that they are even MORE likely to convert. Our conversion rates nearly doubled when we moved to this model.
Use this formula to transform ANY webinar into
a high-converting workshop!
Now, once you’ve got this formula, you might have some questions about how to build, promote and deliver your workshop.
We cover some of these aspects, and more, in our KickASK Podcast. Subscribe below to learn how our ASK Community Members and Partners are thriving right now!