A Brief History of the Webinar
If you’ve been around the digital marketing industry for a while, you might remember when the live virtual conversion event was an innovation.
Before that, people sold from the stage. They sold via clunky sales pages with huge yellow buttons that said ORDER NOW. They sold with direct response “lumpy mail” packages.
And then came the teleseminar. Participants could “call in” to a live or pre-recorded call on a specific topic, and they quickly became a vehicle to “teach and sell.”
As more and more people connected to the internet, and the connections got faster and faster, teleseminars were replaced by the webinar.
Webinars had a visual element, not just audio, which made them an even more compelling sales medium.
Over the course of two decades, new webinar and video meeting platforms emerged: GoToWebinar, Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, each adding new and different functionality.
Webinars quickly became one of the BEST ways to sell online. 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 pretty good 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.
Why Webinars are Growing Stale in the Post-Covid World
Let’s face it, many of us have spent most of the past two years staring at the little Zoom boxes on our screens. Whether it’s a normal team meeting, a live event, or a high-end mastermind, the screen looks the same, the software is the same, and you’re sitting in the same chair.
It’s HARD to create a feeling of excitement around another webinar on Zoom, where we’re a passive consumer of information.
If you use webinars in your business in any way, shape, or form, 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 15% of people who register for a webinar actually turning up to hear the presentation.
That means 85% 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.
So how are we making over a MILLION dollars a MONTH using webinars? Well, we’ve shaken up the “regular” webinar model and implemented a few tweaks that have allowed us to glue eyeballs to the screen, keep the chat on FIRE, and the sales rushing in! You’re about to discover one of them, which is the “Switch & Cycle” Formula.
Let’s dive in!
The Format Tweak To Help You Radically Change Your Webinar Conversion Rate
The key to increasing conversions on your webinar is to create a more INTERACTIVE experience. Because people are staring at screens all day long, it’s hard to get and keep their attention for another “passive learning experience.”
When you were in school, which was more interesting and engaging? A teacher delivering a boring, dry, lecture to a half-sleeping classroom, or an interactive activity, with a live demonstration, maybe some small group work and then an opportunity to present and share what you learned?
Well, the same principles of learning apply to your live conversion events, too.
The world is shifting from a one-way, professorial, transactional, meant to close model to an educational, interactive, conversational model that actually improves your close rate.
The Key is to Capture Attention By Changing the Visual Orientation of the Presentation
We call this “Switch & Cycle.”
We go from Smile, Sketch, Slide, to ASK, where we change the visual orientation of the presentation every few minutes.
SMILE: This is your face on camera. You can also bring in guests or co-hosts, so people see that there are real human beings delivering this presentation, and not a pre-recorded voice over.
SKETCH: This is where you use a “whiteboard” style app to illustrate your points. This engages the visual learners who need to see things written on the board or drawn out in real time, as opposed to looking at static slides.
SLIDE: Slides have a place in this model too – this is your more “traditional” presentation and allows you to show your offer, images, testimonials, etc.
ASK: This is where people can interact and respond to your workshop with questions, comments, and takeaways to reinforce what they’ve just learned.
Not only does this allow your audience to see something new every few minutes, it also reaches different types of learners and allows for interactive participation.
Instead of a one-way webinar, you’re actually delivering a WORKSHOP.
And making just this ONE change in the way we present has increased ENGAGEMENT in a big way, often getting two thousand comments or more on just one workshop…and get this, our conversion rate has DOUBLED.
Use this formula to transform ANY webinar into a high-converting workshop!
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