In today’s episode, I’m going to be answering the question: Are webinars dead?
I’ve got some surprising stats that will tell a different story.
Let’s dive in!
It’s no secret that I love and adore webinars.
In the last episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, I answered Mel Gorry’s questions about how I deal with webinar gremlins and mindset blocks, and I professed my undying love for them.
I also have another podcast episode where I talk about why I love webinars so much.
Before we jump into whether webinars are dead or not (they’re totally not), I want to make sure that we’re clear on what a webinar actually is.
A webinar is a web-based seminar. I want to be 100% clear that I don’t care what you call it. You might call it a masterclass, seminar, online training, workshop or a webinar – whatever you like to call it is totally up to you.
The key things that make a webinar a webinar (in my opinion), are that it’s free and it’s live. Whether you present over slides or face-to-camera, or you do it Q&A style, I don’t care. But it’s live and people register beforehand with their email.
In the context of talking about whether webinars are dead or not, those are the things that make a webinar a webinar.
Hopefully, we’re on the same page there. If you’ve got any questions about that, go into the Heart-Centred group, use #podcastaha, and say “Episode 224. What about this? Is that a webinar? What about if I do it this way? Is that still a webinar?”
Ask me your questions and I will keep an eye out for them.
Regardless of what you call them, webinars are brilliant.
They have many far-reaching impacts in your business, such as:
Business start-up online training about whether webinars are dead
- Helping you to grow your presence online and create momentum due to promoting them online
- Helping you grow your list because people are giving their email in order to register for the webinar
- It’s a high connection strategy and they’re very high conversion
I wanted to talk through some specific statistics that helped me to realise and understand that even though there are lots of very facetious people out there saying that webinars are totally dead, webinars are NOT dead.
If you buy into that belief that webinars are dead without giving them a go for your own business, then you may just be missing out on one of the most effective tools to grow your audience, your list and your income in your business.
1. Highest converting lead magnet
According to the Digital Marketing Organisation, a recent survey in March 2020 found that over 73% of marketers still rate webinars as the highest converting lead magnet. They rate it as one of the most powerful lead magnets for generating sales – whether that be VIP one-to-one sales or course-related sales.
Furthermore, when it comes to launching a course, membership, mastermind or group program, over 90% of people who launch still use webinars as one of their lead magnets in that launch process.
The fact that 90% of people are still using them doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to and that it’s the best strategy for you. But I think it does give an indication of the power of the webinar and how effective it is as a launch tool, lead magnet and way of getting in front of a large portion of your audience, helping them move forward and presenting the next logical step of working with you – whatever that may be.
This seems like a pretty good clue that webinars are not dead.
2. Conversion
The second statistic I want to share is the conversion statistic.
These numbers come from a range of sources, including:
- Podcasters, ie. Amy Porterfield
- Rick Mulready who is a Facebook ads specialist
- Jenna Cuccia
- Social media examiners
I’ve put some ranges because different places quote different conversion rates for different lead magnets and things like that. This will allow me to give you some ranges of conversion.
The conversion rate from a static lead magnet (ie. eBook, checklist, pre-recorded video), into people buying a group program, course, membership, or mastermind, the average industry conversion rate for a static lead magnet is between 0.5% and 1%.
To get one sale, you’re going to need 100 to 200 people signing up for that lead magnet.
The second group or cluster that I found was challenges. Whether it’s a 5-day challenge, 7-day challenge or a 30-day challenge, the average conversion rate from a challenge into a paid product or service, with no ads supporting the conversion was 1% to 2%, and with ads was 2% to 3%.
The ads that I’m talking about there are when you use ads to make sure the people who signed up for your challenge are actually watching the challenge videos. When you’re using those ads with that type of strategy, you can increase the conversion from a challenge into buying a group course, membership, mastermind, or any of those sorts of things.
The interesting information on all the challenge-based launching training that I’ve seen, is that most marketers and people who teach launching, recommend that if you run a challenge, you also run a webinar. Because a lot of people don’t complete challenges.
The average completion rate of 5-day challenges is under 5% (even lower for longer challenges).
That means under 5% of people who sign up for the challenge actually do all of the days.
This is why a lot of marketers recommend that you want to capture in all the people who signed up for the challenge and run a webinar so that they’re at least moving forward in some way, shape or form – even if they don’t finish that challenge.
People will readily sign up for a challenge, but they don’t actually complete it to the extent that they complete a webinar.
This is where it gets really juicy, because if the completion rate of a challenge is less than 5%, what do you think the completion rate of a webinar is?
If we include people who come live as well as people who watch the recording, completion rates of webinars are still around 50%.
25% of people who sign up for a webinar show up live, and 25% of people who sign up for a webinar, watch the recording.
That’s 50% of the people who sign up for that lead magnet actually watching and completing it.
That is really powerful connection time.
It also really shows when it comes to conversion rates.
I’ve seen industry averages for webinars be between 3% to 7% being quoted in different spaces by different marketing gurus.
For myself, I’ve had webinars that have converted between 3% and I think my highest was about 14.5% conversion. That means that up to 14.5% of people who signed up for the webinar ended up buying the thing that I was promoting.
My 14% conversion rates have mostly been on products and services that are under $1,000. My best conversion rate for the Take Off program (which is $1,995) was 11%.
I’m still very pleased with an 11% conversion on a webinar. It says to me that webinars are still a really amazing strategy for bringing people in, educating them on what it’s like to work with you and presenting an offer that may be the right fit for them.
I’ve seen women in the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook community (particularly women that I’ve been working with through the Take Off program and VIP) who talk about webinar conversion rates up to 21%.
21% is the highest I’ve seen, and I’d love to hear from you if you’ve had a better conversion rate on a webinar. But for me, this is really powerful because what it says is that you don’t need to get thousands of people registered for something in order for it to actually work and create a really big return on investment for your business.
That is some really juicy stats for you to think about when it comes to growing your audience, getting those sales in the door, and also the level of lead generation you need to do in order to get the sales that you want to get in your business.
3. Webinars are the most expensive leads
This final stat is a little bit outside of the box. Maybe you think that it’s a counterpoint to the fact that webinars aren’t dead. This stat actually comes from Facebook ads, and that is that out of all of the gated styles of ads that you could run (where people click on a link and then they go and sign up for something), webinars are the most expensive leads.
It’s cheaper to get a lead for a challenge, it’s cheaper to get a lead for a static freebie, and it’s cheaper to get a lead for someone to sign up for a free video series.
Webinar leads are the most expensive out of all of the freebie lead magnet type ads that you can do.
Yet, if we link back to the first step that I shared, 73% of digital marketers still use webinars, and 90% of launches still use them as well.
Even though they are the most expensive type of lead you can generate through ads, they are still being used by 90% of people launching.
To me, all of that math adds up to say that there is no way that webinars are dead.
I would really encourage you to experiment and play with webinars as part of your strategy before you decide you don’t want to do them.
I say to the ladies in the Take Off program, that they are absolutely free to have a business model that doesn’t include webinars… ONCE they’ve done a webinar.
The fear of doing webinars, the imposter syndrome and all of the mindset wobbles that come up, is often worse than the process of actually just doing the webinar.
I really do encourage you to give it a go, then you can decide if webinars are dead or not.
Remember, everything’s a practise.
The final thought that I want to leave you with, is actually a thought that I discovered from a very well known (but I will leave unnamed) launch specialist.
Previously in his launch training, he has been very clear that running a three or four-part video series is what he thinks is the best way of launching courses, memberships and digital products.
Last year for the first time ever, I heard him say people really value connection, and that running your webinars live and having that as a lead magnet is probably something that’s a bit non-negotiable these days because people need to feel a sense of connection to you.
This guy had previously been flogging software and launch strategies that said to just pre-record your webinar and pretend that it’s live (I totally hate that strategy). Now even he is saying that it’s worth it to show up live because if people are asking questions on your fake live webinar, and you’re not answering their questions, then that’s going to be a disconnecting thing for them and they may actually be convinced NOT to buy from you because they’re not being seen by you. Whereas you’re better off to just run it live, answer people’s questions, help people to feel seen and create that connection with them.
To which I say hallelujah, welcome to the world of the ladyposse because that is what we do in the Heart-Centred Soul Diven Entrepreneurs community, and we know that connection maximises conversion.
I have a really juicy resource for you.
It’s a bit of an invitation for you to be a nosey parker and unpick my webinar strategy.
If you’ve been reading this and thinking that it’s time for you to run a webinar and that you’re going to really look into how to do it effectively, then at any time, you can go to tashcorbin.com/webinar and my next webinar will be on that page for you to register for.
What I want to invite you to do is not to register for it to get the content (although if it’s interesting for you then that’s a bonus), but to go and register for it so that you can look at the process.
Pay attention to the:
- Webinar signup page, and the type of language and messaging that I use
- Emails that you get before the webinar goes live
- Structure of the webinar
- Follow-up process that I use for the webinar
I love signing up to other people’s webinars to see how they do it, how I’m treated through the sales process and how they make me feel.
I want to invite you to do that as well.
Just take a little bit of a nosey parker, look around at the way that I facilitate webinars because you might be surprised.
If you’ve only ever been to those really salesy, aggressive webinars, you might be surprised at how amazingly connecting and effective webinars can be, and how little you need to resort to the trickery, spammy tactics, fear and the pressure and the “You have to buy before the end of the webinar” stuff.
I don’t do any of that in my webinars.
Yet, I often exceed industry averages of conversion, and sometimes get 3-4 times the conversion rates that industry-standards say that you should get for webinars.
I really want to role model for you that you don’t need to use those fear-based marketing strategies, and to tell and show you that you can absolutely run a really connecting, empowering, heart-centred webinar.
You don’t have to dial up the fear and the pain points. You don’t have to do any of those things for webinars to work as a strategy in your business. In fact, I’m finding by using empowering strategies, really heart-based strategies, and not using any of those fear and gross tactics, that my webinars are converting even better.
Go and check it out if you want to.
I would love for you to check out my webinar through the lens of:
- How does she do it?
- What types of things does she say?
- What’s the structure that she uses?
- How can that help me with my webinar strategy?
As always, come on over to the Heart-Centred Soul-Driven Entrepreneurs Facebook group, use #podcastaha, and share if you’ve had a lightbulb moment, if you want to make a commitment to doing a webinar or if you’ve got any follow-up questions. Let me know you’ve been reading episode number 224, post your question or your comment and we will continue the conversation over in the group.
If you’re ready to “fast track” your business, get it off the ground, and build a business model around your strengths, I have a great free resource for you!
It’s called Fast-Track Your Start-Up.
It’s all about building your business and getting money in the door quickly by building it to your innate strengths.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
