Imagine the following scenario: 

You register for a seminar, a live, in-person event. Then, you pack your bags, you travel, you get a hotel, you wake up, you make your way over to the event, you sit down, and… you get pitched for a solid 3 hours. Event over. Does that sound like a good experience? Absolutely not. A few people might buy the product that was pitched (depending on the pitch) but the majority of the audience will be extremely pissed off.

Webinars are essentially online seminars. Sure, maybe it’s not as difficult for people to attend, which is the point. But at the end of the day, your audience is still giving up their valuable time in order to attend your event.

So if you want to create webinars that A) Make a bunch of sales — and — B) Keep your audience happy & excited for the next webinar, then you need to focus on creating great content. Shocker, right!? Webinars are the single best way to convert a group of people in a short period of time; however, if you abuse webinars solely for the sale, then you’ll quickly burn out your audience.

But believe it or not, treating a webinar as a pitch-fest is not the ONE mistake that this article is about. I think that’s more common sense, and might deserve a tweet, less an entire article. The one mistake that I’m referring to is actually teaching TOO much. A common mistake is trying to counter-act the “pitch fest” mistake by spending 95% of the webinar teaching tons of detailed content and leaving the last 5% for the offer.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE WEBINAR STRATEGY CHECKLIST BELOW  

Use this checklist  to design your very own high-converting webinar marketing strategy from scratch, then automate the process to attract high-quality leads. 

We promise to never spam or send emails about cats.
Okay, maybe some cat stuff.

There are a few problems with this technique:

1. You’ll be required to hard-sell at the end of your webinar because you didn’t setup the sale.
2. There will be a terribly awkward transition from content to sale, and you’ll lose a lot of your audience.
3. Your audience will be overwhelmed with content, and they won’t take any action.
4. There just isn’t enough time in a webinar to teach “everything.”
5. You’ll be “cool” right up until the moment you start trying to close everyone on the webinar like a used-car salesman.

“So what kind of content should I use in my sales webinar?”

Great content! Only kidding (kinda… okay, not really). Your goal should be to deliver great content that ultimately leads to the sale. Content that is perceived as valuable (and should be valuable), but isn’t included unless it has a purpose. Content that helps the audience make small transformations throughout the webinar.

So for example, if you’re selling an info product about setting up soft pretzel stands, then your goal would be to teach the audience WHY setting up soft pretzel stands is a good idea. You should be killing all possible objections before you ever even get to the offer. At the same time, your content should highlight problems that your product solves.

Every Piece of Content in a Sales Webinar Should…

Your content should lead to the sale and more importantly build up the anticipation of your audience. The content delivery will be the longest part of your sales webinar, and it’s a great opporunity to set the right frame of mind. A good excercise you can follow is to start thinking of all the possible objections that prospects may have for your product; take those objections and figure out how you can destroy them with your content.

When you get the sale, all objections will be squashed. This makes the sale feel much more natural.

Your content should also keep people engaged. Remember, a webinar is a two-way conversation, not a keynote presentation at a TEDx conference. It’s important to ask questions throughout the webinar. Why? Questions start conversations and conversations lead to conversions.

Every product solves a problem, whether that’s a problem that the prospect knows they have or one that they had no idea even existed; make sure that those problems are brought up during your content presentation. When you get to the pitch, you can easily refer back to those problems that you’ve now solved. If your product automates something that was once slow and annoying, make sure you teach that slow and annoying process. This isn’t exactly rocket science here. If you’re selling software that eliminates the need of other tools, make sure you bring up those tools, the costs, and the pain points during your content delivery.

If you’re selling an informational product, you should mix in some of your results & proof throughout the content section. Therefore, every piece of content in your sales webinar should give you the chance to show proof/results. Just remember, you can NEVER have too much proof. Case studies work like a charm too. Save (at least some of) your testimonials and student results for AFTER you’ve announced or started pitching your product.

If you’re selling a software product, you can spend more time on an actual demo of the software; again, you should focus on the problems (from the content) that your software solves and also the slow and annoying processes that your software automates — processes that your software makes easy. You can also showcase features that are unique to your software, but your audience should be able to make a connection from the content as to how these features will benefit them.

With that being said, make sure you’re not just disguising a sales pitch as content — your audience is smarter than that. Take the time to actually teach valuable information. Not only will creating a content-packed webinar generate a high conversion of sales, but it will also keep your audience hungry for more. Even if someone leaves your webinar without buying, they’ll leave with more knowledge than they started with and a good taste in their mouth, and you better believe that he/she will be back for more.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE WEBINAR STRATEGY CHECKLIST BELOW  

Use this checklist  to design your very own high-converting webinar marketing strategy from scratch, then automate the process to attract high-quality leads. 

We promise to never spam or send emails about cats.
Okay, maybe some cat stuff.