How to Pad Your Profits With
Teleseminar Marketing …
Plus, 4 Easy Steps to Guarantee Your Teleseminar
Goes Off Without a Hitch!
Dear Business Builder,
Wow, another week bites the dust. Happy Friday … but I have to ask “what happened to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday!?” Time seems to be zipping by faster than a tornado in a trailer park …
Today I want to talk to you about teleseminars. Now, I know what you’re thinking … “what could possibly be new with teleseminars?” And the answer is “absolutely nothing.” But that doesn’t mean teleseminars aren’t still an excellent tool you need to include in your marketing arsenal.
Now, in the Internet marketing world, you see a tremendous amount of offers for free and paid teleseminars on a regular basis. And, as a student of marketing I’m sure you’ve participated in your fair share. But, have you started marketing your own products or services with teleseminars? No matter whether your selling B to B or B to C … or providing a service or selling information or hard goods you can make this powerful marketing tool work for you!
When a marketing technique proliferates, it’s a really good indication that it works. And I’ve personally used teleseminar marketing with incredible success – including one with a mind blowing 70% of all participants converting to the $100 up-sell. And one client of mine recently generated over $1 million smackaroos in revenue from one free teleseminar they held for their active customers.
Teleseminars Are Not Just for Internet Marketers!
Free teleseminars can work for many industries. They also work extremely well when marketing higher priced products to your active customers. Your customers know you and your reputation. They’re already familiar with the level of service you provide and the quality of your products. Oftentimes, a little extra information and verbal reassurance from the owner of the company, editor of the publication or creator of the product is all the extra push they need to say yes to the sale.
Teleseminars can also work well to your potential customers. It’s an excellent way to introduce your leads to entry or mid level products, although you should expect conversion to be lower. I recommend structuring these marketing efforts on a break even basis, banking on each participants (or leads) future lifetime value. Rather than expecting to make a profit right out of the gate.
So What Exactly is Teleseminar Marketing?
A teleseminar is simply a large conference call in which the presenter offers actionable and valuable advice about a particular topic with the objective of selling a product (or service) to participants.
So let’s say your product is lawn mowers. You could invite all your existing customers to a free teleseminar about “How to Have the Most Beautiful Lawn in the Neighborhood.” You’d provide all kinds of lawn maintenance tips and techniques and then position the newest, biggest, baddest lawn mower in your product line as the solution to the lawn care problems your participants are facing. You could even offer an extra incentive or special discount for teleseminar attendees that buy the lawnmower within a specific period of time after the call.
I can’t stress enough the importance of the teleseminar content. It must offer your participants informative and actionable advice they can use immediately to improve their life – your teleseminar should not be one big sales pitch. The most successful teleseminar presenters weave their product benefits and offer into their content demonstrating how their product enhances the free information they are giving. They also repeat a strong call to action throughout the call and emphasis calling a toll-free hotline or visiting a dedicated website where the prospect can learn more and order.
So How Exactly Do You Plan and
Promote a Teleseminar?
Here are four steps to get you started immediately …
1. Plan your content and assign a moderator…
The best and most entertaining teleseminars are well organized and structured as a conversation between a moderator and the expert. One tactic that works especially well is to have the moderator ask questions the expert then answers … an interview.
It’s very important to create a step-by-step outline or progression for the call and prepare questions for the moderator ahead of time. Also include in your outline, when in the call you will introduce your product, an exact description of the product, benefits that position your product as a unique solution to a problem you’ve raised and how participants can find additional information to order.
Word to the wise: do not go into a teleseminar call blind or unprepared – participants will notice and it could hurt your credibility, reputation and ultimately your sales conversion.
2. Schedule your conference lines …
Scheduling the teleseminar conference lines is relatively easy. Do a Google search on “conference call” and you will find dozens of companies that can handle your needs.
Expect to pay for each participant by the minute. So for instance, if you’re quoted .05 per minute and you’re having a 60 minute call, expect to pay about $3.00 per participant. For 100 participants you could expect to pay approximately $300. Note: Canadian and International participants will cost more.
Very important: the above guesstimate is based on a reservationless and non-operator assisted call. Reservationless simply means that you can use the number of lines you’ve been assigned at anytime and anyone that has the call in phone number and pin code can join the call. Non-operator assisted means the call will not be answered by an operator or live person. This is one of the least expensive ways to hold a teleseminar.
Operator assisted calls can cost upwards of $15 per participant and the main job of an operator is to greet participants and transfer them to the appropriate conference line. Not worth an extra $12 in my opinion.
Your conferencing company will assign you phone numbers, a leader pin-code and a participant pin-code. The leader pin-code gives the leader the ability to control the call volume, mute the participants (so they are not heard on the call) and record the call. Both the moderator and the expert should call in as a leader. The participant pin-code gives all your participants access to the correct conference line.
Once you have an account set-up, give your conferencing company a final count of your call participants approximately 24 hours in advance so that they can secure the number of lines that you need.
3. Invite your customers …
In my opinion, marketing the call to your customers should be the fun part. The easiest way to invite customers to attend is via e-mail. And if the call is free, you don’t need reams of benefit oriented sales copy to convince them to join.
It’s important though to let them know the topic of the call, a little bit about the participants and their qualifications, bullet points or fascinations of what they can expect to learn on the call as well as the date and time. Whatever you do, don’t forget the time zone!
You can also include a short pitch in the e-mail about the product you’re planning to introduce, but don’t let it dominate the copy. What is important at this point is to get your customers excited about the topic, what they can expect to learn and convince them to devote an hour of their time to join.
Also, plan to limit the number of attendees to create a sense of urgency. Plan to start your invitation marketing at least a week prior to your teleseminar date. You’ll also want to send several e-mails a day or two ahead of the teleseminar date and know, the majority of your participants will sign-up at the last minute.
You should expect at least half of the number of registered attendees to actually attend the live call. Take this into consideration when reserving your conference lines. You don’t want to have to pay for more lines than you need.
Plus, knowing only half of your registered participants will actually attend the live call, plan to e-mail an audio recording out as soon after the call as possible so you don’t miss the opportunity to market your product to the prospects that couldn’t attend.
A couple of days before your call, you’ll want to start reminding your registered attendees to attend your call. In your e-mails, include clear and concise instructions for joining the call. This is also a great time to re-sell your participants on attending the live call by recapping the call topic, benefits for attending and credibility of the presenters. Consider this another opportunity to create excitement and set the stage for your up-sell.
4. The day of the call …
Prior to the beginning of the live call, plan to have a dry run with your speakers. This will help insure nothing embarrassing happens on the live call. I’ve held many live teleseminars and you can’t always anticipate everything that might go wrong. For instance, I’ve experienced everything from having a speaker locked out of the line, to choking to dogs barking in the background.
Your best bet is to have everyone call into the conference line from a land line (no cell phones or VOIP phones) and run through your script. Do everything in your test run that you plan to do on the live call such as recording the call and muting the lines. Take a little extra time on this step … it can save a huge headache when you’re in front of a live audience.
About 15 minutes before the live call, plan to have all speakers call into the conference bridge. I like to keep the lines open as participants join the call and give them an opportunity to chat with the speakers. That is often the liveliest part of the call. But as more people come on the line, you’ll want to watch for feedback and background noise on the lines and mute the participants (or put the call into lecture mode) before it gets too loud.
About a minute before your agreed upon start time, you’ll need to start recording the call. Then introduce your speakers and get started. Work your way through you script and introduce your product. One very important thing to remember … have fun and be enthusiastic. Speak slowly and clearly and be sure to repeat any phone numbers or website addresses several times throughout the call. You might even suggest that participants have a pen and paper ready to take notes before you start.
At the end of your call, repeat your offer and call to action. Make sure to repeat the toll-free phone number or website address where your participants can find more information and order your product. Thank everyone for attending and remind them to check their e-mail box for the audio recording of the call.
Congratulations – you’ve just finished your first marketing teleseminar!
Hope that helped and stay tuned …
Because next week, I’ll discuss the “Negatives of Negative Offers.”
Until next week,
Julie McManus
Editor, In the ‘Net Trenches
THE TOTAL PACKAGE™
And Web Media Goddess
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