Yesterday we held our monthly free webinar, which was on using LinkedIn and Biznik to promote yourself and your business.  It was a good webinar and the attendees said they got a lot of great tips from it.

An important part of these webinars is that we use it to offer something very special — something we don’t offer to the general public.

This time it was a four-pack of advanced level e-marketing classes for this ridiculous price – only $137 for four classes. This would normally cost between $268 and $348, depending on which classes you choose.  Regardless, it’s still a phenomenal bargain.

So now that the webinar participants have had a chance to sign up for theirs, it’s ok for me to tell the rest of the world.  You have until midnight tonight to take advantage of this offer.  However, it could end sooner because we are only selling 50 of these.

After tonight (or after we sell 50) the offer will revert to $137 for a three pack.  Normally this is priced at $167 so you’ll get a $30 discount until the end of May.

After the end of May, we are no longer offering the package deal, you have buy them one at a time.

Anyway, just wanted to let y’all know.  So take advantage of this before it ends.  We’ll offer something different next month.

Until then, happy e-marketing!

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.