Growing an email list is hard. It takes a ton of time and effort. It gets harder if you are only doing what everyone else is doing.
If you really want to grow your email list, you need to start offering something that most (or none) of your competitors are.
One such thing is webinars. While in some industries they are all you will see, in most industries, however, you will find that only a few businesses are using them to grow their email list. These businesses that do use webinars will see their email lists skyrocket.
If your competitors aren’t using webinars, it is the perfect time for you to break in, and grow your email list like wildfire. On the other hand, if all your competitors are already using webinars, then you need to get on the train before it’s too late.
Just like most of the trendy marketing tactics that once worked really well, the effect webinars have will soon die down. But if you get on the train at the right time, you might get a chance to 5x or even 100x the size of your email list really fast.
Before we dive in: If you have just started building your email list, be sure to check out these 7 actionable strategies you can use today to grow your email list. And be sure not to make any of these dangerous email list building mistakes.
What Are Webinars?
If you don’t know what webinars are, here’s a simple definition:
A seminar/workshop held over the internet.
Unlike reading an article, you get to see the tactics/tips in action during a webinar. A webinar is a great way to educate your audience and at the same time grow your email list.
This is how a webinar works:
- You pick a topic that you would like to teach your audience.
- Pick a date and promote your webinar to your audience.
- On the date of your webinar, you go live and teach your audience with a presentation and live screen sharing.
If any of these steps sound daunting, don’t worry! I will guide you through all the steps in this article.
Here’s an example of a webinar registration page from HubSpot:
1. Find The Right Topic
The topic of your webinar is what will determine whether you attract your audience like a magnet or hear the sound of crickets on the day of your webinar.
Choosing the right topic is really important but it is really easy to do.
When choosing a topic for your webinar, think of something that your audience really wants, not something that you want to teach them.
What do I mean?
- Freelancers want not only want more clients but they also want to learn how to deal with bad ones.
- Lazy internet marketers want to grow their traffic but don’t want to work too much for it.
- Parents with a newborn baby want to sleep well at night.
These are just a few examples of something that these 3 people want.
If you want your webinar to be a big hit, choose a problem that your audience really wants to be solved and would pay anything to get it solved.
2. Promote Your Webinar With Your Blog and Email List
If you want people to show up to watch your webinar, you need to let them know when it is and what it is you are offering in the webinar. This is especially true if you are doing a webinar for the first time.
A lot of companies that are having great success with webinars don’t post about their webinars on their blogs and have a dedicated page on their website with a list of all their upcoming webinars.
Unlike these companies/bloggers, your audience has no idea that you are ever going to do a webinar. You have to let them know using a blog post and an email list.
Here’s a great example of such a post on Michael Hyatt’s blog:
Now, you don’t have to put a lot of details in the blog post. Just mention when the webinar is and drop a link to the webinar registration page.
Once you have published a blog post on your blog, you also need to let your email subscribers (if you have any) know about the webinar.
Note: If your email service provider automatically sends a newsletter when you publish a blog post, then you don’t need to send an email manually.
3. Promote On Social Media
“Of course, I am going to post on Social Media. Duh!”
You might be thinking why I included this tip.
One reason is that most people still don’t do it.
Your social media followers are waiting to hear from you.
Even if you have a small social media following, you should send out a tweet and post on your Facebook profile letting your followers know about the webinar. To grow an audience on Social Networks, you need to post a lot of content, so what are you waiting for?
The second reason is that most people will only post once on their social media profiles and then forget about it.
That is so wrong!
Social Networks offer really low organic reach. That means most of your followers won’t even see your posts.
And unless you are ready to shell out some hard earned cash on Ads, you need to post on all your social media profiles at least 3-5 times.
Post not only a day before your webinar but also a week or even a month before the webinar. The more frequently you post on Social Media, the more are the chances of your followers seeing your posts.
4. Find a Webinar Partner
Finding a life partner is hard. But finding a webinar partner is easier than shopping for a vinyl wall decal of half an Asian Business Guy on Amazon. (You weirdo!)
All you have to do is make a list of all the blogs that are related to your blog/business and reach out to them.
Most of them will say no, especially, if they are a competitor.
But even if one of them says yes, two things will happen:
- Everything will get easier: When you do a webinar with a partner, you only have to take care of 50% of the work.
- You will get much better results: Two people hosting a webinar means twice the industry experience to share with the audience. Not only that, your webinar partner will also bring a lot of people from his audience to watch the webinar, which will result in double the growth of your email than if you were to do it alone.
Hosting a webinar with another business/blogger is usually a tactic used by Affiliate Marketers. One of the hosts promotes his product at the end of the webinar and the affiliate gets paid a commission on every sale the webinar drives.
If neither you nor your partner has a product/service to offer, you can use it to build both your email lists.
When doing a webinar with a partner, you both create a webinar registration page. Then, your partner promotes YOUR registration page to his email list and you share HER registration page with your email list.
Not only doing a webinar helps you grow your email list, it also helps you gain more credibility in the market if your partner is already seen an expert.
When people see you with a credible expert, they start thinking of you as an expert.
5. Record Your Webinar and Use It As a Lead Magnet
Once a webinar is over, it dies.
No one can watch it after that and that means no more email signups for your webinar.
Instead, record your webinars and then use them as a lead magnet or content upgrade (next section).
Save a webinar, save a subscriber!
Once you record your webinar, you can keep milking it for literally months to gain even more email subscribers. Not everyone lives in the same timezone as you and not everyone have the time to attend a live webinar.
Recording a webinar gives you the opportunity to promote it to this large segment of your audience that won’t attend your webinar live.
6. Use Webinar As a Content Upgrade
Offering a content upgrade to your audience is one of the easiest and the fastest ways to grow your email list.
A content upgrade is simply a bonus you offer at the end of your blog post. This bonus “upgrades” your content and offers more to your audience.
To get this bonus, your visitors need to sign up for your email list.
Now, one thing that most people get wrong about Content Upgrades is that they don’t match Content Upgrades to their blog posts.
If you are writing about getting more freelance clients, offer a content upgrade called “7 Ways To Get More Freelance Clients In The Next 7 Days.” It will be more attractive and enticing to your audience because it is related to the post they just read than, say, a content upgrade called “How To Survive Bad Clients.”
Both of them relate to your audience but the former is much more relevant to the reader who is reading an article about getting more freelance clients.
Now, there are two ways to offer your Webinars as a content upgrade. You can either offer a live webinar or a recording of the webinar.
Both will work well.
Here’s a great example of using a webinar as a Content Upgrade from Jeff Goins’ blog:
You can also use your webinar recordings as a lead magnet and offer them on an archive page in exchange for your visitor’s email address.
Here’s a great example of what I am talking about on SEMRush:
Want to learn more about Content Upgrades? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Content Upgrades.
Conclusion
If you have never done a webinar before, I won’t lie, but it will be scary. Doing a webinar is the same as public speaking but a little less scary.
The more webinars you do, the less you will come to fear it.
Remember, webinars can help you double the size of your email list overnight, so throw away all your excuses for why you don’t want to do a webinar.
Now, before you leave this page, let me know in the comments below:
Have you ever done a webinar before? If so, how did it go.
Do you plan on doing a webinar this week or even this year? Let us know the topic in the comments. 🙂
by Ahoy
