#117: Why Webinars Work (If You Know How To Work ‘Em)

Hey, health coaches. How are you doing today? Thanks so much for joining me. I have a great episode planned for us, and I can't wait to hear from you if you're here live. So be sure to drop any of your comments or questions as we go along. So listen, for the past couple of weeks, we've been talking about succeeding in the online space, right? It's very, very important for us, all of a sudden to be present and active and engaged in the online space and working with our clients in the online space, maybe for the first time, but getting our businesses online and growing it, there has gone from being like, probably pretty important to like, Whoa, way more. And because we are all in a little bit more lockdown mode for at least the rest of 2020, right? So today I want to share about webinars, the classic, the highly effective online marketing tool.

So I'm curious, have you ever hosted your own webinar or can you even imagine hosting your own webinars that just scare the pants off of you? So if you're here live, go ahead and tell me in the chat area, what's your experience so far? Sometimes when I was just starting my business, I would be like, Oh, there's a thing I can do. All right. A webinar. I'm just going to try it. And sometimes there were things I would hear about and I was like, Oh no, I'm much too scared to do that. So I'm just kind of curious where you're all at with that. Let's go ahead and pop your answers into the chat area and I'll be looking for those. The thing is webinars work really, really well for an online business like weirdly. So, we're going to talk about why that is in just a moment, but trust me, like I have been really surprised at how important they are.

So on one hand, I want to say, if you don't want to do a webinar, don't worry about it. If you don't like webinars, don't worry about it. But like you guys, I have to tell you just through experience, they work. So I've even noticed that some health coaches have an aversion to webinars. Like maybe they're too salesy or maybe they're too long, or those pre-recorded ones, my goodness stay with me here. I did not like the idea of pitching myself or doing any sort of like sales over webinars when I started out. And what I've learned through the years and many, many iterations of my own webinars is that it's possible to design a webinar that feels fun. Like everyone is actually enjoying themselves. Something that feels personal, something that feels really like a worthwhile use of everybody's time. And that helps you sign more clients.

And we like that. So what I've done is I've broken down the entire webinar process and optimized it each step of the way. So it's something that feels good to me. Like I believe that my business should feel good. That's why I became a health coach. If I wanted a business that felt yucky, I would have stayed working in big advertising. So something that feels really good as important to me, I don't want to be a used car salesman and yet it still works right yet the webinars still works to create what is called conversions and marketing talk. But we'll just say what creates it creates new clients, right? So I have used webinars to sell private health coaching. One-On-One I have used it to sell group coaching. I have used it to sell online courses. You name it, I've used webinars to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So I'm honestly telling you from my own experience, you want to pay attention today. Okay. So let's see Samantha saying she has not held a webinar yet. Julie says she's hosted webinars with mixed success. When the topic is really specific, that's the best turnout a highlight was the one I presented for zero people, but still went ahead with it. Yes. Sometimes that happens. We're going to talk about that. And Shannon said getting ready to hopefully do my first one. Shannon. You are in the right spot today. Nice. Okay. So here's why, whether you like personally like webinars or not, they, they do work when you're online. So I have had a purely online based business now for a whole bunch of years. Oh my goodness. Like over 10 years, there is a little bit of a barrier between you and your prospective clients. Like to them, you're a face on a screen.

You're you might be airbrushed, you know, you're, you're posed in a photo eating salad or whatever it is, you are not real to them. And that is just, it's a built in obstacle, which is very different than if someone was like walking into your office, you know, your brick and mortar office. And they were meeting you face to face. So it's normal and it's to be expected, but people are going to be hesitant to trust you when you are that airbrushed perfect person, eating a salad on Instagram or whatever you're doing. So with webinars, and I want to really underline this when done well, when you do them, right? They are the closest thing until like actually meeting with somebody, actually meeting in person, right. Which we're not allowed to do. So I'm a huge advocate for in person events. You'll always hear me say that, but those are few and far between during quarantine times.

So I am so grateful that we have tools like webinars. Now, when you meet someone in person versus just seeing them on social media or whatever, isn't it just like easier to catch their energy. You know, you might, sometimes this has happened to me. I have quote, unquote, known somebody online. And then I met them in real life. And I was like, Ooh, I do not like that person. Their energy just kind of like repelled me somehow. So when you actually get to meet someone, it's different, you get to catch that person's energy. You get to witness them as a human being like in the world. It builds that trust. And it gives people a way to know you, even if they just meet you one time. So when we're doing webinars, like we don't have that. We are in this online space, but it is the closest that we can get to meeting face to face.

And again, when done well, when you do them in a way like I'm going to teach you about today, they are excellent at building rapport with your audience. People get to see you. They get to hear you. They get to interact with you. And that leads to many more raving fans than any downloadable PDF that you can offer. Right. It makes sense. It also will lead to more paying clients, which we will talk about in just a moment beyond the sales, right beyond that webinars are a great way to build your mailing list, right? People are signing up for it. Boom, they're on your mailing list. We love that. It's a great way to hone your speaking as I flubbed the word. That was great. How on your speaking skills build your confidence, just like any public event that you might do. I really feel like when I come down into my little studio to do this type of event for you guys or to do a more formal webinar, I really feel like this is a public event.

This is a live public event. And I like to have my face on camera and flub my words and have my hair be a little too frizzy today. Because like, this is what it's about. It's like, I, I want to bridge that online gap. And that is the opportunity that webinars have for us. So you can do all of this by the way in your pajama pants. As you know, we've all been doing that on zoom for the past several months now, but let's not forget at the end of the day, webinars can also be super profitable. So today I want to share three of the top misconceptions that health coaches seem to have about webinars. And I know because I asked you guys the other day and I want to set the record straight so that you can start to use this amazing online tool, feeling confident, feeling good about your choice, not feeling like a used car salesman.

And then if you really want to learn how to do this for your business, like step by step. Cause there's a couple of moving parts. When you're holding a webinar, I want you to join my free five day challenge coming up in a few weeks. This is the first time I'm announcing it. It's called grow your health coaching practice online with webinars in just five days. And you can sign up for free at healthcoachpower.com/challenge. It's going to be a five day challenge where I teach you everything that I know from the tech stuff, you know, the lighting kind of thing, to the more nuanced, how to make it not feel icky. It's kind of hard to quantify that, but I am going to do my very best to teach you how to structure these things, how to create the idea for your webinar so that you are coming from a place of service for your audience.

And by the end, you're going to have your very own webinar and 100% of what you need to make it happen. So again, you can sign up to join us at healthcoachpower.com/challenge. So here's misconception number one. And what I definitely do not want you to do, which is I don't want you to decide, you know what? I'm going to do a webinar and then sit down and spend hours and hours putting together content. And this will take you hours and hours, especially because you do not yet have my webinar outline that is going to help you. And I guess I'm going to give that away during the challenge. But anyway, you're going to put in all this time to creating the content and then you're going to hold your webinar. And hello? Like Julie said earlier, where are all the people, how come nobody's here? Or you have like two people, right?

Sometimes it can feel awkward. So the misconception is as always, this comes up a lot in our businesses. If you build it, they will come, right? That's what we think. And I assure you, they will not, not on their own, not without some planning and some strategy to really get them there. So you actually, as weird as this sounds, you want to spend less of your time and energy on the presentation itself and the bulk of your time and energy on the promotion of the webinar. I know, I know it feels all kinds of backwards, but if nobody shows up, then you all the work that you did on the webinar itself. I mean, people may watch the replay. So I'm not going to say it doesn't matter. I'm not going to say that that work is a waste, but you know, we're always, there's always learning experiences.

You guys, of course, but please hear me on this put twice as much effort into the promotion and worry less about getting every little detail right in your presentation. And I'll tell you why that's important and just a little bit. So when you're promoting something like a webinar that does not mean post the same link to Facebook and Instagram every day, that is not what I mean by ample promotion. I mean, that's something that you can do, but if you just post the same thing over and over and over, everyone just tunes it out anyway. So I would actually start long before that this is strategy. People listen by first of all, making sure that you're creating something, not that you want to talk about, not that you think is important, but that your audience wants something that they think is important. Something that they are asking for.

Right? So you want to talk to your audience, you want to pull your audience, what do they need help with? What are they complaining about? What are they struggling with? Let them tell you, don't ask the question. What kind of webinar do you want me to hold? That's not the question you want to ask. Do you want to ask questions? Like, what are you struggling with? What's your biggest problem right now? When it comes to XYZ, start engaging with them around that topic. And then when you do come around to announcing your webinar, they are primed to sign up for it and learn more from you. So this all happens. It's like, pre-selling, it's like kind of getting everybody in the right mindset before you even announced anything. And I cannot tell you how much of a difference that makes versus just one day showing up out of the blue and being like, Hey, I'm running a webinar about apples.

You know, meanwhile, you've never talked about apples before. No one has ever asked you about apples. You know what I mean? So it's actually much easier if you just let your audience talk to you and then you know what, you're coming from a place of service. You're not coming from a place of like, I'm going to talk about apples. Cause I think apples are cool and I'm going to sell you apples. Like that's very self serving, but in this way, like they are telling you what they need. And if you plan a topic that they care about, well, let's say you plan on a topic that nobody cares about. Literally nobody cares, but nobody cares about apples. You just decided you were going to do a webinar about apples. Nobody gives a damn about apples. They won't sign up, duh. Right? So, no one's signing up for your webinar.

That's like the first thing it's not like, Oh, did I make the button big enough on my sign up page? It's probably not that it's probably am I hosting something that people actually want to attend that they're interested in period. So again, it's how can I help you? How can I give something that my audience needs and wants? You have to flip? I know we're in our own heads building our business. And it's like, what do I need? How do I get clients? I need clients. It's not about you though. If it's about you, it's never going to work or it's going to always going to feel icky. So we want to flip that. I also recommend that you plan your promotions before you're there. Like before you're in that week before your webinar, you should already know how you're going to be promoting it.

So kind of plan that part upfront. Who can you ask in advance to help you promote your webinar? Get those people onboard. What can you do on social media to generate interest in this topic ahead of time, again, that idea of like a presale and get creative with it. Do not just post the same darn thing every day, make all of these ideas like a priority. Think about this all up front. Not as an afterthought, not in those last five days before your live webinar. Because again, the biggest mistake is not promoting well and not getting an audience signed up for your webinar. All right. Okay. Here's the next big misconception about webinars? We think when we hold a webinar and we think it because we see it happen all the time and this is what we hate about webinars. And while we roll our eyes and we want to fast forward through it, we think that we have to talk about ourselves and like give a dissertation in order to be taken seriously. And what happens is we bore the living daylights out of our audience and they don't want to be there. And they leave.

So, for starters, during your webinar, yes, you do need to introduce yourself at the beginning of the webinar, you are meeting some people for the very first time. So that's good to do, but oh my goodness. You ever go to a webinar and like 15 minutes later, they're still talking about themselves and what happened when they were a child. And then this thing that happened to them 10 years ago, and you're like, why did I sign up for this? It was a total waste of time. So you can keep it brief when you're talking about yourself and you can make it interesting. Like do not read me your 11 paragraph autobiography. I don't want that. I don't want you to list off all of your credentials. How many, what schools you went to, all this kind of nonsense, all the letters after your name and what they stand for.

No one cares like literally nobody cares. And again, nobody cares about your sob story. That takes 15 minutes to tell all the details of, because by then you've lost their attention and you need to keep their attention during a webinar. That's first and foremost, because if they leave, poof, doesn't matter what happens after that. So if you keep in mind that the purpose of your webinar again is to serve your audience, how much do they need to know about you really? And then tell them that much. They don't know, you know, again, where you went to school. Like they don't need to know that you're already the expert. You're the person hosting the webinar. So just by virtue of being that person, like they already are looking to you as the expert, they signed up for this, right? So, you don't have to prove anything to them, but you do want to bridge that online gap that we talked about so that your audience feels like they're getting to know you as a real person.

So it can be a really great time to share photos. Think about like, not your retouched headshot though. Think about sharing that photo that you snap last weekend. Like when you were at the pool or a picture from when you were 11 years old and looking really awkward or whatever, just every day photos share who you are and what you do. You might tell a quick, funny story about one of the photos, try to relate it to the topic of the webinar and keep it moving. Keep it moving. The principle really applies to the whole presentation. Like keep it fun, keep it moving. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. People's attention spans are like, well, you know, I don't know if you've ever noticed this for those of you that have kids. If you watch like Mr. Rogers, like an old Mr. Rogers episode today, it goes so slowly. You fall asleep watching it. And I'm like, I don't know how we watch this. When we were kids, my kids, when they were that age, they would watch Yo Gabba, Gabba, anybody know that show. And Yo Gabba Gabba is like, whiz, bang, color's boom, this music. And it's fast. The cuts are very fast. And I want to say like, you want a Yo Gabba Gabba webinar - costumes at all. No, but it's just, it's the pace. It keeps it interesting. When you keep things moving, this is not a college lecture. You're going to give people a couple of useful nuggets and you do want to give away like your best content for free. So don't ever be afraid to do that. You want to give people that big like aha moment, like one or two of those, that's all they need during a webinar. They will be your fan until the end of time.

What you don't want to do is try to deliver page after page of in depth information, that's going to bore the pants off of them. Again, I'm going to be sharing an entire webinar structure, like what to do first, what to do second, like an outline to help you do this during the challenge. So if you haven't already, what are you waiting for? Go sign up, go now health coach power.com/challenge. And then we're going to move on to the third misconception. This is the biggie. This is probably the biggest sticking point. It's huge. It's a difference also between having a hobby and having a business. Ouch, hate that. So the misconception is we think that if we're going to have a webinar, we are going to have to be salesy. We think if we make an offer, then we are going to be seen as slimy, right?

We will be that used car salesman. But the truth is, people signed up for this thing because they want your help with something, with whatever the topic, it was solving a problem that they have. Like they actively want this help if they even took the 30 seconds to sign up. And if they even took an hour to show up, Oh my goodness, they are there because they want help from you. And they know as well as you do that, they're only going to get so much out of a one-hour webinar. Obviously, even if it's like the best webinar on the planet, you cannot solve. Someone's like health issue in an hour. Okay. So you would be doing them a disservice to leave them high and dry and offering your services is exactly what some of them, not everybody. And that's okay, but what some of them want and need and your buyers.

They're the ones I want to say that again, your buyers. So, if anyone ever complains, you sent too many emails about this or you know, you like your webinar was to whatever, like, you know, people who complain about what you're sharing. Like they're not your buyers. So you can just cut up, blow them a kiss, wish them, well, the people who are there and paying attention, the ones who actually want to buy from you, like they, they want to know how you work with your clients because they need help. They want to hear some client success stories because they need hope. Think about when you've wanted to buy something. You know, like I remember needing a car last summer. I bought a car. I wanted to buy a car. I mean, like literally I was like ready to just walk in there and be like, please just here's my money. Take it, take it. And give me a car. I wasn't annoyed. When the salesperson offered to show me around the sales room or show me all the different models. I wasn't annoyed by that because I was a buyer. Like I definitely was buying a car that day. Now you might get annoyed later when they start playing games and haggling on prices, but we are not going to do that. Never. So, what I see is that simply, as health coaches, we don't know how to talk about our services, right? Anyone feel weird about talking about your services. And we definitely don't know how to make an offer during a webinar that feels like we are coming from a place of service. In fact, we often forget that we are.

So, what will happen is, and I'm sure you've seen this in webinars is that there's this weird, awkward break, like up until a certain point, the presentation has been information, information. Some of it good, some of it bad, whatever. And then there's like this weird, like and then you go into a sales pitch. If you've ever been there, you might know how awkward that feels in your body. And I know, cause I have absolutely tried it that way. And I hated it kind of like made me sweat and feel weird. Nobody wants to watch the sales pitch. Like everyone knows it's calming. Nobody's like, Oh, I can't wait to, you know, be sold to, that's not why they're there. So a lot of people will just kind of drop off at that point. So what you want to do is not set up your webinar like a bait and switch where people signed up to get information from you. Oh, and now you're going to sell them something. Oh, and now you're actually going to spend three quarters of the webinar talking about your product, right? That's not why they came. You're going to lose those people as fans. You can, and you should sell on your webinars.

Yes. But you can also be completely upfront with your audience and be of service as you sell. And I've tried this umpteen different ways. I cannot even tell you. And ultimately I found this, isn't going to surprise you. I've found that transparency is the best just, Hey, this is what it is.

Telling your audience exactly what you're selling and why asking them if it's okay with them, would they like to hear about it? For example, it makes all the difference and making an offer that is 100% aligned with the content of your webinar. Like if it all works together really seamlessly and really with transparency, there's no bait and switch. There's no weird, awkward pivot. And in our five day challenge, I'm going to go more into this. I'm going to give you my like time tested. I don't want to call it a formula, but it kind of is because I kind of always do it the same way. Now that I've figured out how, for how to talk about your services, how to make it feel transparent. So it's not a big reveal at the end that makes everybody roll their eyes. Nobody wants that.

Here's the other thing that I want to tell you about making your offer. This is just like a PS. PS, making your offer actually goes like way beyond the webinar. So like yes, in the moment you're going to be like in front of the camera, like I am now, or you're going to have maybe some lights on you. Like I have now you're going to be sweating a little bit. Yes, you will be making an offer. And it's going to feel okay if you follow my formula. But afterwards that's where a lot of health coaches drop off. We don't do the ups and we always want to follow up with your audience. You want to send a series of emails that help everyone understand if your services are right for them or not. Again, it's not like pushing your services, selling your services, manipulating someone into buying your coaching package.

We don't want that. But we do want to answer questions. We do want to highlight case studies that somebody will either resonate with or not. And we want to give them a peek into what working with you is all about. Cause otherwise, how are they going to know whether they want to do it or not? So when you hold a webinar, first, you're going to craft a topic and an offer that are fully in alignment. You're going to be transparent about what you're selling and why. And most of all, you want to come from a place of service and follow up, follow up, follow up. Oh, that was a lot you guys.

I want to give a big shout out to Morgan who left this five star review on iTunes. Morgan said great resource for coaches. I have binged almost all of Michelle's episodes. I love how she doesn't just tell you what to do as if it's a secret recipe and said, she encourages us to answer questions ourselves about how to be a successful health coach and make it work for our unique business. This podcast is just one of the many great resources she provides to health coaches. So, take advantage.

Thank you so much, Morgan. Can you do us a favor and send your mailing address to support@healthcoachpower.com and just reference episode number 117. Cause we had a little thank you gift and to everybody who's listening. Thank you so much for leaving reviews, leaving ratings. I appreciate it so very much. And who knows? I might read yours next time. Don't forget. If you want to learn to grow your health coaching practice online with webinars. Join the five day challenge happening this fall. You can sign up for free at healthcoachpower.com/challenge. And that is a great URL to share with any of your health coach friends, networks, cohorts groups, and get everyone involved because it's going to be a big old community event. We're going to have some fun, take care, everybody. And thank you so much for being here. I'll see you next week.