Webinar Hacks to Encourage Engagement and Increase Sales

I’ve just completed a four-day marathon of awesomeness… I’m pumped… I’m excited… I feel great… or so I’ve been told.

At times, the Funnel Hacking Live 2018 conference in Orlando was nothing short of surreal.

Maybe I’m just being cynical, but I don’t usually go to a marketing conference to see a man cry on stage in complete darkness, in front of a 3,500 strong audience, only to be lifted up by the “voice of God” (i.e. backup singers).

Seriously, that happened!

Do I feel awesome? Am I excited? Probably. But it’s likely more about what I learned at the conference than the impressive theatrics. Though, I’ll admit that Tony Robbins’ session was pretty cool. He spoke for four hours about success and fulfillment and most of what he said actually resonated with me, which I was surprised at.

All joking aside though, I really enjoyed Funnel Hacking Live 2018, and I have a couple of nuggets that I am excited to share with you.

Hands down, the best presentation at the conference was Unique Webinar Funnels, given by Jason Fladlien.

Jason spoke about two types of webinar funnels:

1. A live webinar to hot traffic, selling a high-priced backend.
2. An evergreen (but made to look live) webinar to cold traffic, selling a frontend.

The Live Webinar

For his live webinars, Jason uses a brilliant hack that makes people feel like they’re in on something important that no one else knows about yet: Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).

Before someone can sign up for his webinars, they must ‘carefully’ read and accept the terms and conditions of the NDA. If they don’t sign it, they’re not in.

Of course, the idea is not to enforce the NDA. Instead, it serves the purpose of piquing someone’s curiosity and the perception of value. This is why he only uses them to sell high-priced backend products.

Note: Using NDAs might be a grey area when it comes to compliance. Check with your legal team if you’re going to use them!

Another great tip (for live or evergreen webinars) is the use of a mini-commitment chat bot on your webinar. I’ll explain why this is a double-edged strategy you need to implement right away.

During his webinars, Jason uses an automated pop-up to ask the attendee some questions, e.g. ‘are you enjoying the webinar so far?’ etc.

Why do this?

Getting someone to commit to something as small as answering a question on your webinar will make them more likely to buy from you later (for more on this read Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence).

However, you can take this one step further.

By now, you should be familiar with Messenger bots. You can use a Messenger bot (like ManyChat or ChatFuel) to ask these automated questions. By encouraging engagement via Messenger, you not only increase the likelihood of a sale later (and get some insight into what your attendees think about your webinar), but you’re also building a messenger list that you can broadcast to later.

And this list is very valuable — because it is made up of potential backend buyers.

The Evergreen Webinar

I was interested to hear that, when running to cold traffic, Jason says he always makes the webinar appear as though it is live. He does this in a few ways:

1. He uses a big countdown timer on the landing page. The next webinar is never more than 10–15 minutes away.
2. After a person signs up, they are brought to the ‘waiting room’ page. Here, Jason uses a video to introduce himself, his business, the success he’s had, and the webinar that’s about to go live.
3. Underneath the videos, there are a bunch of testimonials (to add social proof).
4. Note: After signing up, a welcome email is still sent out… It’s a two-pronged attack.
5. The waiting room page automatically reloads when the countdown timer hits zero.
6. The webinar auto-plays (unfortunately, from April onwards, Google Chrome will block videos that auto-play with sound. This date has been pushed back a couple of times, but just keep in mind that this might not be possible anymore).
7. Once the webinar starts, viewers cannot pause the webinar.

So, there you have it:

✓ A new way to get people super-excited for your live webinar.

✓ How to get people to engage on your webinar, making them more likely to buy, and all while building a messenger list.

✓ 7 easy ways to create a killer evergreen webinar to cold traffic.

But before I go, here are some other talking points that might interest you.

Spitfire Takeaways

• If you sell a physical book, you should put it on Amazon. Put it in the most niche topic you can find and make it a ‘best-seller’ in that category. This adds great social proof to your book-as-a-hook ads on other channels.
• Reach 10K followers on Instagram and you get access to the ‘swipe up’ feature on organic Instagram story posts. However, this only applies to verified business accounts.
• Use the Chrome extension, Vid IQ, to get tons of data on the best-performing videos on YouTube. Find out what keywords, and other metrics, the most popular video in your niche is ranking for and copy it.

Handy Resources

• Use www.Rev.com to quickly transcribe your audio files, which can be converted to an e-book that you could then sell on Amazon.
• To find the most shared content and headlines in your niche online, check out www.Buzzsumo.com. Use this to get ad copy ideas that you know already resonate with your audience.

If I hadn’t just attended the Traffic and Conversion in San Diego, I might have scored Funnel Hacking Live slightly higher, but for me it scores a 6 out of 10.

Funnel Hacking Live 2018 was a good conference, but there was just that little bit too much crying and intensity for a marketing conference for me.

Thanks for reading.

______________

Brian Swift

Account Manager,

Agora Integrated Marketing

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