Notes on Blair Enns’ Webinar Webinar

Following are my notes a webinar about webinars by the handsome and talented Blair Enns of Win Without Pitching. Blair’s insights on many business topics are amazing and I think paying for his content is well worth it. You should check his stuff out here.

Why do webinars?

Make a public commitment to get yourself to do something
Deadline driven and therefore gets done
- Put at least four per year on your calendar
Generates reusable content quickly
Clarifies your thinking on a topic
Validates which subjects are of most interest to your audience

What shoud I talk about?

Talk about an expertise of yours, or
Talk about a problem of your clients, or
Talk to a specific prospect (without them knowing it) <- this is genius

How do I promote my webinar?

LinkedIn ads (better targeting than Facebook and Google for this)
Phone key prospects
Bring in a partner from an adjacent space who has a big list (JV)
Mandatory sign-up fields: name, email, company
Optional fields: title, “what do you hope to get out of this webinar?”

What should the content be like?

Go narrow and deep
At least 2 meaningful things that they can immediately implement
Three ideas:
1. Predict the future
  - You don’t have to be right
  - “Here’s the trend I’m seeing...”
2. Challenge convention (aka AW’s “contrarian” approach)
3. Bring in outside experts? Examples for my mobile biz:
  - Clay Shirky
  - Seth Godin
  - Horace Dediu
  - Tomi Ahonen
  - Cory Doctorow
  - Daniel Suarez
  - Wiliam Gibson
  - Neal Stephenson

How do I deliver the webinar?

Get someone to monitor the tech
Host and presenter
Try to slow down; tendency is to rush

How do I follow up after my webinar?

Auto email everyone an hour later
Post Q&A blog post the next day that answers all the meaningful questions, especially the ones you didn’t get to
Individiual phone call / email next day or so with valuable content
- “Would you like a link to recordings or Q&A?”
- “I’ve been thinking about the question you asked...”
- “Is there anything you didn’t get a chance to ask?”
- “Before I let you go, is there anything I can help you with/how might I be of assistance?”
  - They say No -> “Okay, I’ll follow up in 6 months”
  - They say something other than no -> treat opportunity appropriately

How should I leverage the webinar recording?

Clean up recording
Send direct link to attendees
Post on site behind a “name, email, company” squeeze page
Chop up into 1-4 minute segments
- Add open/close with CTA + link (”to watch the entire webcast, click here [SITE LINK]”)
- Title each with likely search terms
- Post on YouTube
- Great for SEO

What about format and technology?

Promote as 30-45 minutes (even if you know you’ll prolly go 60 with Q&A)
Questions are gold!
Set up in a way that makes the slides/videos option in case you want to deliver as audio only
GoToWebinar is (or was at the time) simplest for viewers and therefore BE’s fave

Misc

Companion article https://www.winwithoutpitching.com/quick-lead-generation/
Webinars are prolly best for lead gen and prospecting, but...
...if you’re going to charge for access, maybe about $99 per webinar is a max
Blair was making $75-80k per year selling webinar recordings in 2011
BE’s definition of a lead: “someone you haven’t spoken to before and you don’t know where they are in the buying cycle”
30-90 day lead time for actual promotion, although you can plan out content and systems a year in advance
Don’t bother with video of your face. It’s just one more thing to go wrong.
Stuff WILL go wrong - have contingency plans in place so you don’t flip out when they do.

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