Tom Poland, How to Create, Market, and Deliver Engaging Webinars – InnovaBuzz 446
Tom Poland, Leadsology
In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Tom Poland, the best-selling author of Marketing With Webinars and over 37 years of experience in sales and marketing. He has also started, managed, and sold multiple businesses including teams of over 100, and revenue of more than twenty million dollars.
Tom is currently working with clients in 27 cities and 15 time zones around the world and describes himself as ‘voluntarily married’, living in a house on the sand, next to the blue waves at little Castaways Beach in Queensland Australia.
In our discussion, Tom talked to me about:
- Webinars as the core of a system to speak to people at scale
- How to get engagement in webinars and presentations
- Calls to Action that are authentic and congruent with your values (and that of your audience)
Steve Hoffman in episode 435 introduced us to Tom.
Listen to the podcast to find out more.
Listen to the Podcast
A webinar is one of the best ways to vaccinate your business against another outbreak because no one has to leave home. @TomPoland on #InnovaBuzz podcast Click To Tweet
Show Notes from this episode with Tom Poland of Leadsology
Key points and takeaways from this episode include:
- Lead generation is a predictable part of a business.
- By creating better businesses, we help people create better lives.
- Helping other businesses get more clients does not only make our client’s life and business better, it also empowers them to help more people with whatever it is that they are offering.
- Give people the opportunity to know, like, and trust you as well as respect your professional ability before even proposing about working together.
- You can have all the types of advertisements and PR out there but no one is going to knock at your door wanting to buy your services unless they’ve first met you before you made the proposal.
- It’s important to create an opportunity within your marketing system for people to get to know you.
- When buying physical products, customers enter into a relationship with the product they’re buying, not with the salesperson. But if you’re a coach or consultant, it is almost always that the person would want to validate you first before they validate your services. They need to validate you as a person they would be comfortable to be in a relationship with before they would ask you to tell them how your service works.
- Speaking to groups of people is the world’s oldest and proven marketing method. Webinars, on the other hand, are the newest marketing medium across the world of the internet. Putting these two together, gives you the scalability, power, and speed to market on the internet combined with a very proven marketing method.
- A webinar is one of the best ways to vaccinate your business against another outbreak because no one has to leave home.
- Having your audience book a time to explore working together is a great call to action.
- Consultations shouldn’t be a free strategy or idea session and neither should it be a sales ambush.
- You want your audience to be well-educated, well-qualified, and well-motivated. You can do all of that as group in the webinar as opposed to doing it one on one after the webinar.
- A consultation is a simple conversation where you confirm with the prospect that it’s a good idea to work together.
- Marketing with Webinars is putting your offer in front of people that are already looking for that offer.
- Having a client book a consultation time with you means that you are trying to confirm if working together is the right thing to do, whilst a sales strategy is more about convincing.
- Life is too short to spend your time convincing people. You’d rather find people who already know that your service is good but perhaps they just need to validate it.
- Stacking up on bonuses compensates for a poor value proposition. What people need is a core value proposition. They don’t need bonuses to buy.
- Listen to yourself when you are moving through someone else’s marketing. Listen very carefully to your own reactions and feeling because it will give you clues as to how you should be doing it yourself.
- You attract people with a similar set of values that can relate to your personality, beliefs, ethics, and all of those things that make you unique.
- You’ll always revert back to who you are. You’ll always come back to the purpose you were born for which is to express yourself in your marketing. So whatever template you use, make sure that it supports your personality.
- None of your presentations count if you don’t have an audience. You can have the best presentations, the best sequence, and call to actions, but all of them don’t matter if you don’t have an audience.
- Audience should always come first.
- The simplest, easiest, and most effective way to generate high quality audiences is through other people’s network.
- Do at least one webinar a month with at least four partners booked to support it, that are willing to send two emails each to their subscriber list inviting them to attend your webinar.
- LinkedIn is a great source if your target audience are very busy and high stakes entrepreneurs. For this sort of high-end premium price market, position your webinar as an “online boardroom meeting” rather than simply a webinar.
- Registrants that come from other people’s networks are 21x more likely to buy than registrants that came from a Facebook ad.
- Articulate your webinar’s subject in a way that is compelling to people. Make sure that the title represents your value proposition and articulate it in a way that is compelling and benefit rich to your ideal client.
- Reminders are nice but don’t overdo them. They won’t make any difference to people who’ve decided not to show up.
- Promote your webinar heavily.
- Send invitations that clearly state there will be no replays. Whilst you can generate more consultations or sales via replays, it also also pulls your attendance rate down.
- Set up a waiting list instead of replays or offer a PDF summary of the webinar. It’s not a replay but it covers all key points.
- Create a follow-up sequence after a webinar where attendees receive content that’s been extracted from the webinar.
- Ask questions and get people typing answers to power up the engagement right at the beginning of your webinar. Having them physically respond to your questions gets them off looking at their emails or a different part of their screen into your webinar.
- Pace is important as well as images and bullet points. Make sure to read the words that are appearing on the screen at the same time that the audience is seeing them.
- Polls are also a great way to power up engagement.
- Study your favourite TV show and set little timers to see how often the screen changes perspective from the camera angle. Changing screen angles from to time stimulates engagement and keeps people’s eyes tracking what’s happening.
- The more people are engaged, the more they will understand and stimulate the information that you are demonstrating, and the more likely they will take action.
- Social media is great in keeping your brand in people’s minds until they are ready but it’s not a good medium for call to actions because people don’t respond well to call to actions in social media.
- If you’ve given people value and they are engaged and interested, you have earned the right to give them a next step.
- Make sure that your call to action is incredibly clear and easy for people to take that action. Set up a URL that’s easy to remember and be explicit about the benefit that they will receive when they respond to it.
Marketing with Webinars is putting your offer in front of people that are already looking for that offer. @TomPoland on #InnovaBuzz podcast Click To Tweet
The Buzz – Our Innovation Round
Here are Tom’s answers to the questions of our innovation round. Listen to the conversation to get the full scoop.
- #1 thing to be more innovative – Take breaks. Give your mind a rest. The most creative moments come when your mind is well rested.
- Best thing for new ideas – Go away somewhere and schedule a dream day before going back to work. Start that dream day with a question about your business.
- Favourite tool for innovation – Yellow legal pad and a blue pen.
- Keep project/client on track – Time, Date, Place, Person, Money. Have a regular time, date, and place to meet someone who’s willing to pay you.
- Differentiate – Listen to yourself. We are all unique and each of us has unique thoughts. Listen to the first thought that comes to your mind. Notice it, practice it, and act on it. Your thoughts are as unique as everything else about you. Listen to your thoughts and be yourself because that is your purpose. You are here because you are you.
To Be a Leader
Listen to yourself and take action. Having a thought and hearing an answer to it, is an intuitive clue as to how you should be taking action. Anytime you commit to a thing, schedule it in your calendar. The world is already full of people who intend to do something but failed to do it. Make a meeting with yourself and schedule everything that you intend to act on.
Reach Out
You can reach out and thank Tom through their website.
Suggested Guest
Tom suggested we have a conversation with Mike Leven, his business manager. So Mike, keep an eye on your inbox for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz Podcast, courtesy of Tom Poland.
Links
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Cool Things About Tom
- He’s a kiwi who moved to the Sunshine Coast many years ago which is also where he met his German wife – locally they’re known as “the Kiwi and the Kraut”.
- He started his first business at age 24 and has gone on to start and sell four others, taking two of them international
- He and his wife have seven children and seven grandchildren.
The more people are engaged, the more they will understand and stimulate the information that you are demonstrating, and the more likely they will take action. @TomPoland on #InnovaBuzz podcast Click To Tweet