Webinar Marketing: How To Use Free Webinar To Grow Your Business

webinar marketing

As you’re perusing online and learning to build your business with the internet, you may have noticed a lot of businesses doing something called webinar marketing. You may have also found yourself wondering why, sometimes, they are even doing this for free. This is a part of the sales funnel.

They use this free webinar marketing as bait to gather leads on their (email) list in the hopes of selling them something later (sometimes from within the free webinar itself). As with most things, there’s a wrong way and a right way to use webinar marketing to build your business. In my time running an online business I’ve seen plenty of both.

There have been webinars I attended where I wanted to cringe and others where I couldn’t wait to give the presenter my money. Before we get into how to do webinar marketing properly—and by extension how to use a free webinar—let’s first discuss a current debate as to whether these offerings should even be free at all.

The Debate Regarding Free Webinars

Some businesses have opted out of doing a webinar for free because they begin to see the webinars themselves as a revenue source. I am actually one of those business owners. I still do webinar marketing, but these days I prefer to charge an entry fee. This is especially true since we now have free broadcasting services like Periscope where you can give value and teach people for free.

Some people also don’t like attending a free webinar because the information is sometimes very basic or watered down. It goes back to that whole idea of perceived value. If you do too many things for free in your webinar marketing, you run the risk of people not taking it seriously and the participants run the risk of getting watered-down information.

Webinar software can also get pricey so this is also something to keep in mind in setting up your webinar marketing efforts. You would need to make sure you’re making enough money from leads to actually make a profit. While all of these reasons are valid for opting out of conducting a free webinar, the truth remains that they are still an awesome tool for building your list and making sales—if they are done correctly. Not only can your webinar marketing pay for itself, it can—and should—generate a profit for you. Even when you run them for free.

Tips to use webinar marketing effectively

Plenty of times throughout the years I’ve done a free webinar or a free teleseminar to sell courses, launch my book and build my list—and they were quite successful. Now that we’ve laid this out, we can get into how to use a free webinar properly—if you choose to keep them free. This information also applies to teleseminars and broadcasts.

1. Link your email list

In webinar marketing, there’s no point in doing something for free, if the registrants aren’t being added to your email list. The entire point is to make sure they are added to your list and that they’ve opted into your email marketing campaigns, even if they don’t actually end up purchasing anything from you during the presentation.

2. Give the people what they want

This applies to everything you do in business. If you want to pack the house with a free class you have to give the people what they want. Your audience will not care if something is free if they don’t actually need the information they will be receiving.

3. Provide a lot of value

One of the reasons free webinars get a lot of flack is because the event coordinators are watering down the information in hopes that participants will purchase a paid product or service. People are not stupid. Registrants know when webinar coordinators are doing this and it really turns them off. They expect for you to give them value and that is what you must do.

While free classes can serve as preview calls for your paid offering, you still have to provide immense value in all phases of your webinar marketing. If you do that on the free call, for example, then participants will be more likely to think that the paid product must also provide immense value.

4. Don’t turn it into a sales call

It’s a massive pet-peeve of mine when a free webinar turns into sales calls. There is nothing more irritating than signing up for a free class only to be on it for 5 minutes and have the presenter starting off the call with a sale. There is a wrong way and a right way to do sales during presentations. The concept is called “selling from the stage” and once again it requires some basic knowledge in marketing, sales and psychology.

One tip is to naturally weave in product or service mentions throughout your free webinar. You can also naturally weave in client stories. This starts letting your audience know that you are open for business and can provide value without being intrusive. You also leave the selling for the end with a natural transition. No one wants to come on to a free class to be sold to.

For more on how to properly sell from the stage check out David Valentine and Callan Rush. Through their books they teach people the psychology of sales and how to give killer presentations regardless of whether you’re live on stage or presenting via a free webinar. Like anything else in your business, you wouldn’t want to cheapen your webinar marketing either.

Final thoughts

While I have personally opted out of conducting a free webinar—well, at least doing less of them, anyway—I can still acknowledge how beneficial webinar marketing is for businesses who use them properly. If you’re at a stage where you need to build your list quickly, a free webinar is definitely the way to go. Additionally, if you learn how to sell properly, your webinar marketing efforts will begin to make sales for you as well.

Avatar

About the Author

Amanda Abella is an online business coach, speaker and author of the Amazon bestselling book - Make Money Your Honey. She is committed to helping individuals have a better relationship with work and money through entrepreneurship, online marketing and money mindset. Her work has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post, and more.

Leave a Reply