#231: How to Promote Your Next Webinar Without Ads

Welcome back to another edition of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, year here to get you excited about whatever you’re putting together, whether it’s, of course, a live cohort, a group coaching program, and you’re putting yourself out there in a new way. Hopefully I’m providing some insights and coaching a little bit of tough love to get you to move and to get you to your next step.

And today we’re talking about webinars and in terms of how they can still be effective for audience building, for selling your course, because I get a lot of questions these days. Gina, Are webinars still worth doing? And the answer is yes. And you got to do them the right way. You got to promote. And the next question I get is, do I have to do it with ads?

Because sometimes we’re just starting out. Maybe you want to start with a limited budget. Maybe you don’t want to test the waters with ads yet. Whatever the reason. I want to talk today about how to put yourself out there with webinars without using ads. So whatever your reason, let’s go for it and let’s talk about it now. This episode is brought to you today from our course Creation Boutique done for you services.

And we do Custom high touch services for course, creation, for marketing, for customer journeys, whatever you’re looking for in terms of online marketing, we can help you get there. Go to of course creation boutique dot com slash course. To find out more, we only take a few clients per quarter because we are truly boutique and high touch. All right.

So let’s talk a little bit about webinars, because I’m getting that question like I mentioned at the beginning, Are they still relevant? And yes, webinars are still relevant. Very much so. Now, webinars are an awesome way to show off your expertise to go live with your audience, to work out new material, to build a relationship, to show people how you coach and your approach in the moment, especially if you’re building your brand.

I especially like a webinar for people building brands because you’re putting yourself out there. You’re doing all those things I just mentioned. You’re showing your approach how you coach, how you teach. Do you joke around like, do you make dad jokes, whatever? It looks like I’m a fan of it because they get a sense of you. And by the way, don’t think that you have to do a 60 minute webinar or a 90 minute webinar.

I’m seeing more 45 minute webinars, 30 minute live classes. Do what’s right for you. I’m also seeing people go 90 minutes, especially if you’re going out to segmented audience like a specific group and they really want to go deeper with you. They want a longer Q&A, so don’t feel like you’re pigeonholed to the 60 minute webinar. Do what’s right for you.

Now, this is very relevant for us because we’re working on a webinar right now for one of our authors, and he’s a psychologist and he’s building up his brand, I think, in an excellent way for anticipation of his book coming out in about a month. And with this webinar, he’s going out to his audience as well as new audiences.

So, so important when it comes to a webinar to activate your own internal audience, but also activate new external audiences. Part of the end game of webinars oftentimes is to list build. Now we’re going to have a call to action, of course, to buy the book at the end of this webinar. However, we also want people to get a sense of him his expertise.

Join the list. Continue to get nurtured. So I thought we could talk about three ways on this podcast, how to promote your webinar without ads, whatever reason you’re doing it without ads and because you don’t have to spend a lot of money. First is to partner with someone, look for an expert with a built in audience. Now what does that look like?

It looks like somebody who’s aligned with you, right? You don’t want somebody. I mean, you could have somebody who’s completely contrasted to you, who may have completely different views and maybe you have kind of like a healthy debate webinar that’s saying you can’t do that either. But in general, we typically will look for experts who are aligned with your way of thinking, but bring something else to the table.

So, for example, I’ve had Perry Mortimer on the podcast, and Perry Mortimer is a leadership expert, a philosopher, like a really great thought leader. He often talks in stories and he doesn’t talk in concrete steps. So maybe we bring on an expert who is more a little more structure, has some framework talks to kind of work and play off of Perry on a on a webinar.

So that might be a good fit for him. But he’s also in the leadership. He or she may also be in the leadership industry. So they have a complementary audience. So you want an audience that is your audience. That’s number one. You want somebody who can complement you. That’s number two. And like I said before, think about somebody with an existing audience like has a little bit of a social media following, has an email list if possible, so they can bolster your audience.

And it could be a share. By the way, if it’s your webinar, I do want you to be the star. Keep that in mind. I want you to be the talent. And this person that you’re bringing on, you’re partnering with them, you’re the star, and they’re really the support and you just want to position yourself that way in terms of your marketing, your landing page, your emails, etc..

So that’s number one, partnering with someone is a really great way to get yourself out there to expose your work to new eyeballs. The second piece is to maximize your best channels, and we talk all the time about multichannel marketing efforts. We are big believer in that and making sure that when you have a webinar, when you have a masterclass, by the way, they’re interchangeable, right?

Masterclass, webinar, whatever you want to call it, you want to shout it from the rooftops. It is a nice bit of effort to put out a webinar. As you can imagine, it’s the marketing, it’s the run up. Then you’re also putting together a presentation, a Q&A. It’s the follow up. You want to make it worth your while. You want to make sure you are running a campaign against your webinar.

So part of that campaign is maximizing your best channels. So for example, email, you might have a small email list to start from. Can you segment that email list in any way buyers versus people who have opted in? You could speak very differently to people have bought, say, a group program with you than somebody who has just heard from you month to month or week to week.

Organic social not dead. Add to your profiles. Run stories. Run feed post run carousels like try different pieces, run reels, run a lot of video, video of you talking about the webinar doesn’t have to be polished in a studio, right? Raw and real. People love raw and real SEO. Check out your keywords. How can you put out content as a run up that appeals to people looking for that webinar?

If you have a podcast, if you have videos or whatever your content is, maximize that content as a run up to your webinar, your website, add a banner ad, mentions all over your website, make it an ad like it’s sponsored by this webinar. The bigger run up you have, the better you want to maximize what you have at your fingertips in terms of your marketing channels.

And then the third piece that I want you to think about is to invite affiliates. Now, I’ll link to the episodes I’ve done about partnerships and affiliates. I want you to create a webinar toolkit. So in this webinar toolkit, you will have some social posts. Social graphics. You will have one or two pieces of email that somebody can send out.

So email copy for them just to cut and paste. You want to make it really easy for somebody to get the word out or so your affiliate list is going to be people with a like minded audience that you respect similar expertise or kind of different expertise. I’ve talked about this before in partnership podcasts. I’ll link to those in the show notes.

You want people who can help you get the word out and you want to make it easy for them. So another idea is to just do a collaborative post and let them know, Hey, if I do a collaborative post and tag you, will you share that? A lot of times that’s the easiest way to help get the word out in terms of sharing your webinar.

But don’t be shy. Put yourself out there. Ask people, you know, Hey, I’m doing this webinar, it’s free. We’re talking about a free webinar, and most of the time people want to share that added value. They want to just that’s really easy for them just to click over and say, Hey guys, I love Gina, I love this expert.

She’s great. You should check this out. This is going to be fun. Don’t be afraid to ask for a list of affiliates if you want to start small. And when I say affiliates, they’re not necessarily getting paid for this. I’ll link to an episode I’ve done about folks getting paid, like doing it. Actual affiliate launch, but they’re just helping you get the word out.

So, so, so important. I feel like sometimes when we don’t have something paid to put out there, we get shy. But really it’s much easier to share something that’s free. So put yourself out there. If you’re doing a webinar, go out there in a bigger way. Make sure it’s a campaign, make sure it’s not a whisper like I’ve talked about before on this podcast and that you’re going for it.

All right. Hopefully this has been helpful. You’re thinking about doing a webinar for this building or selling your course at the end. Always great for selling courses at the end. Until next week, go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.