How to Run Webinars That Convert

🌲 Welcome to Passive Profits! The mission here is to help current & aspiring founders win back time & freedom by productizing your expertise into offers you build once and sell forever.

Read Time: 5 mins (or listen to this issue)

Hey founder,

Last Sunday, we talked about webinars that suck. Today, we’re getting to the good stuff. We’ll cover specific tactics for running successful webinars where attendees:

• feel informed, entertained, or both

• feel heard and seen

• engage

• convert

To do that, there are five elements to weave into your webinars:

1. Set the table

2. Tell one story

3. Teach one thing

4. Make it interactive

5. Help with the next step

Let’s review each one so that you leave feeling informed, entertained, or both. (see what I did there?)

Before we dig in, 2 related things:

1️⃣ I got to sharpen my webinar chops during this past Friday’s free newsletter growth training. I’m offering it again on April 19. Can you make it?

2️⃣ Everyone attending Friday’s webinar found out about the next cohort of the Passive Income Bootcamp. They also got 50% off.
I may offer a similar discount during the Apr 19 encore. (wink wink)

1. Set the table

Think about the meetings you join. What’s on your mind during the opening 5 minutes?

• What is this meeting about?

• Why am I here?

• What am I eating for lunch?

• How long will I be here?

• What if I need to pee?

In other words, the people showing up to your webinar have a lot of other things on their minds than you and your event. Ignore that by diving straight into your agenda and watch them check out.

I’ve run strategy sessions with executives of Fortune 100 companies where I started by asking everyone to share one thing on their mind other than this meeting.

The first thing you want do in your webinar is help people feel at ease.

One simple technique is asking joining attendees to: “Share your name and where you’re joining from in the chat.” Fine. Great.

I also add one specific question related to the session topic. Something fun and simple to answer — a project they’re working on, goal they have, or challenge they’re facing.

By answering, they’re now more committed to sticking around. They’re also assured they’re in the right place, as they watch others share related responses. With one question, you’ve hatched accountability and belonging.

Then, and only then, do I kick off by reminding everyone what we’re talking about, how this will work, when we’ll pee, and why they should stay till the end.

Everyone settled? Cool, let’s begin.

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By the way, none of these elements I’m sharing today come natural to me.

I feel more introverted than extroverted. And I get anxious performing for a crowd. But I’ve also long admired people with poise and presence. So I’ve been practicing to move from the back and edges of the room, to the front and center. What I can assure you is that it gets easier with each one.

2. Tell one story

A live webinar invites your audience to get to know, like, and trust you.

They may follow you on social. They may subscribe to your newsletter. But there’s no replacement to hearing and seeing you in action. And it’s your stories that will first draw people in and bring their walls down.

As you figure out the right stories to tell and the right way to tell them, you’ll gain their connection and trust.

The story format I typically follow is to share:

• A goal I worked on — one your attendees have, and what drew them to join your webinar

• A challenge I faced

• How I solved that challenge

• My new reality afterward

The audience listens to your story, imagining what it will feel like for them to accomplish the same. And if you solved it for yourself, maybe you can do the same for them, too.

💡Pro tip: Keep the associated story visuals to a bare minimum. People want to engage with you and your story, not your slides.

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Yes, I grew up in an Italian-American home in New Jersey. And while you may be picturing Tony Soprano and all his charm, I didn’t grow up surrounded by profound storytellers. Instead, I spent time learning and emulating. And sure, I may have also picked up a few tips while watching Goodfellas 400 times.

3. Teach one thing

Your story primed your audience. Now it’s time to teach. But there’s one pitfall to consider…

I’ve run countless webinars where I tried to cram in way too much. Too many methods with too many steps.

I was afraid that if I kept things too simple, I wouldn’t provide enough value. But as I layered on more, the topic became difficult to follow. I created a sense of overwhelm for the attendees. No faster way to lose a person (and sale) than to make the thing you’re teaching feel out of reach.

Instead, treat your webinar like a product. Solve one problem really well in a simple way.

• Pick one narrow topic to teach

• Teach one method with 10 steps or less

• Use one case study / example (people need the context and want to know what good looks like)

• Provide a template or guide to enable their success (promise it at the start, share at the end)

💡 Pro tip: Once you’ve laid out your webinar, eliminate 25% of it. Less is more.

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I don’t picture myself to be a teacher, guide, or coach. And yet, helping others is my favorite part about being a creator.

4. Make it interactive

No audience likes sitting through a one-way dissertation from a sage on the stage.

They want to connect with you. They want to feel seen and heard. That want to feel like they’re a part of it — to interact.

Luckily, my background in workshop facilitation taught me how to design in various forms (and levels) of interaction:

• Prompts to draw out questions, concerns, doubts, aha moments

• Invitations to use the chat and gestures

• (more advanced) Light activities to complete

• (more advanced) Pods to meet & share ideas

💡Pro tip: As your skills build, move your webinars from Zoom rooms to interactive Miro and Mural boards.

By building in moments for the group to interact, you deepen their learning, which builds their commitment to take the next step.

5. Help with the next step

The entire point of your webinar is to rally a captive audience to buy the solution you created to their gnarly, nagging problem.

Everything else is reverse engineered from there…

• The webinar topic — the problem they’re stuck on before attempting to tackle the gnarly one

• The content you create to fill the webinar

• The story you share during the webinar

• The solution you teach & give away

My Passive Income Bootcamp provides the next step people want to take when attending my newsletter growth webinar.

Everything builds to that next logical step — the gnarly problem that your unveiled solution solves.

But only…

After you’ve made everyone feel at ease.
After you’ve demonstrated your expertise.
After you’ve given away tons of free value.

Now you’re in prime position to sell. Now you’re capable of reaching that unfathomable 55% conversion metric I reported last Sunday. The kind of metric few things other than a webinar can generate.

Wrapping up

Webinars are polarizing. People hate them before they love them.

But as you hone your ability to set the table, tell stories, teach, and make things interactive, you position yourself as a frontrunner to sell the next step.

Webinars aren’t the only path to selling your stuff. But few other marketing and sales tactics will match their conversion potential.

I hope you picked up lots of ideas and tips for your next webinar. And if you’d like to see me model what I shared today, join me for an upcoming webinar.

P.S. If you build a webinar and want me to take a peek, reply. Happy to.

Founder-Creator Corner

📈 From $350k to $1M with his newsletter

🤖 As more dummies flock to AI without using common sense, the opportunity to be a trustworthy human has never been greater

📈 I just hit 400 newsletter subscribers, but it was far from an overnight success

🪴 Passive Profits Community

Welcome Ayumi, Oscar, Nathan, Edyta, and 18 more who joined this week.
Our little community has grown to 400 Founder-Creators. 🎉