I offer a free webinar every month related to a different marketing-related topic.  I’ve done a few of them now, and I found the best way to do it is to promote it first to see if there’s interest in the topic.  If so, then I create the materials and go ahead with it.  This sounds kind of like putting the cart before the horse, I know.  But it works.

I’ll go through the logic, step by step.

1.  Take a stab at a good topic.

As most good marketers know, you never know how your audience will respond to something.  You can’t guess what they want because you don’t know what it’s like to be them (usually this is true, I know there are some exceptions).  If you do find out (presumably by asking them or doing some kind of research), you still can’t assume they will like the way you deliver it.

A story to illustrate:  You own a landscaping company and you’ve heard that more people want to know the correct way to plant a shrub.  Sounds like a great topic for a how-to article, right?  So you diligently write the article and put in very careful instructions and diagrams and illustrations and exact amounts of soil and fertilizer for each different family of shrubs.  Then you send it out in your newsletter and what happens?  Nobody reads it.  Nobody clicks through to your site, nobody comments.

What happened?  Who knows?!  Maybe it was boring, or it was too long, or your subject line wasn’t catchy enough.  Maybe what they really want is to watch a video about it.  On their iPhone.  While they’re at the nursery deciding what other materials they need.

So you have to just take your best educated guess, based on market research and your industry knowledge.

2.  Create a landing page for your webinar.

Now that you have your best-guess topic, create a web page about your webinar.  Put it on your website under a special name or folder, like www.mycompany.com/planting-shrubs-webinar.  Describe what you are going to show, tell, or teach your audience.  Tell them how they will benefit from learning this information.  And tell them how to sign up.

3.  Promote your webinar.

Now tell everyone about it.  Send an email to your list, post it to your Facebook page, and put it on your LinkedIn groups.  Put it out on Twitter a few times.  Post it everywhere you have a presence and tell everyone you know.

Start promoting it at least three weeks in advance.  Keep promoting it for a whole week.

4.  Make a decision about whether to hold your webinar.

After a week, look at the number of signups you got.  Here’s where it gets very subjective.

I’ll usually go ahead and hold mine if I get at least 10 that first week.  That seems low, but to me that’s an indicator that I will be able to get at least 25-30 by the date of the webinar.  If 25-30 people isn’t enough for you, then you need to set your limit higher.

If you’ve never done a webinar before you might not know what a good number is for you.  If you’re offering a simple educational webinar to help out your clients, then the number can be relatively low, like 4-6.  If you are using it as a sales tool and you want to get business out of it, you’ll have to decide based on the percentage of people you can expect to take you up on the offer you present during the webinar.  Calculate how much revenue that represents, and whether it’s worth your time or not.

5.  Cancel the webinar or keep it on the calendar.

If the number is too low, simply send out a message saying you decided to cancel and you’ll be offering a different one the following month (or week, or whatever works for you).

If you haven’t done a webinar before, you should consider holding it anyway, even if you only have a couple of people signed up.  You might even get 8-10 additional signups over the next two weeks.  It will be good practice for you, and you won’t be as nervous about it with only a handful of people.

If you do decide to go ahead and hold it, now you have two weeks to develop the materials.  Plenty of time!

I’m feeling rather guilty that I haven’t posted in over a week.  But I have a good excuse, I promise!

Last week I went on hiatus in order to put the finishing touches on my recently released E-Marketing 101 Video Training Course.  Basically the technology needed to be fixed in order to deliver the lessons automatically to each subscriber every week.

And I did it!

Yup, I finished the job, and in celebration, I have posted an amazing offer on the web site.  Until the end of this month, you can get the program for just $47 per month for five months.  It’s a 21-week program that teaches you step by step how to plan and implement a complete e-marketing program for your small business.

The best part is it’s totally risk-free!  If you cancel within 60-days you will get your money back.  You can watch every single video and implement everything you learn and even keep all the handouts that come with it, and we’ll still give you your money back.  You don’t even have to tell us why.  Just cancel your account and ask for a refund and you’ll get it.  It’s that simple.

You can’t lose!

How can we offer you this?  Because we’re convinced that you will see the same amazing results that our other participants have seen who have gone through the program.

Check out the web site at www.LearnEmarketingNow.com.

If you have any questions, post them here and I’ll answer them as quickly as possible.  Or email me directly at lpecunia[at]avarrasolutions[dot]com and I’ll answer them privately.

In my workshops I talk about “channels” a lot.  A channel is simply a method of communicating with your target audience, a conduit so to speak.  It’s a way of reaching out and creating a connection, building a relationship, or exposing your brand.

All advertising mechanisms are channels, so are social media, e-newsletters, blogging, video marketing, and lots of others.

Well, I found a new one that works amazingly well.  Free webinars.

I have a free trial to a site called iLinc, which is a webinar/online training service.  I’ve been using it for an online version of my E-Marketing 101 Workshop, and decided to try it out for my free webinar, which I’ve been promising people for a while.

I set it up the webinar event on the iLinc site which was pretty easy.  I created my PowerPoint presentation, and then started promoting the webinar via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Merchant Circle.  I started promoting it about a month ahead of time and then made a big push the last week, and ended up with 60 registrations.

After talking about the presentation format with a colleague, I decided to use the following approach:

• 60% of the presentation was educational material
• 15% was promotional, with a special offer
• 15% was “bonus” material
• 10% Recap + Q&A

One important factor I think was the bonus material.  The participants were told they would get the bonus material at the end.  They were also told I had a special offer for them.  I think this was an important point because it helped create anticipation as well as encourage people to stay to the end to make sure they got everything out of it that they could.

The promotional portion was for a new program I am starting that I wanted to promote, to get pre-orders for.  In included a special offer with some very juicy free bonuses that came with the purchase, including a huge price reduction.  So it was a very compelling offer, and out of the 35 people who attended, 6 people signed up for the promotion.  I got one more signup afterward from someone who watched the replay based on a link I sent out in my newsletter the following week.

I also sent another follow-up email to all the participants telling them that the replay was available.  I’m hoping for one, maybe two, additional orders from that.

Not including the building of the presentation materials (which I can fully leverage by promoting the replay of the webinar over and over again), I spent about four hours in total promoting, testing, and delivering the webinar.  The seven (so far) orders represent about $1,300, and on top of that I’ve added about 40 new people to my mailing list.  Not too shabby for four hours of work.  Everything else is just gravy.

I think I’ll do this every month.