Webinar Smarts - Plan, Promote and Present Webinars: Sydney 6th August

Webinars are the hot new way to deliver information and reach wider audiences, especially in this time of economic uncertainty, corporate cost-cutting, emphasis on lifestyle and global access. Business owners can use webinars to engage clients and potential clients in their community, and thought leaders and infopreneurs can use them for delivering educational material on-line.

Although webinars can be very powerful, many presenters – even experienced presenters – find them a challenge, because it's new technology, an unfamiliar environment, an "invisible audience", and lots of things that can go wrong.

That's why I am running this workshop! We'll spend a day together, and at the end of it you'll have everything you need to present a powerful webinar.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is designed for "infopreneurs" – that is, professional speakers, trainers, consultants, coaches, authors and other thought leaders.

Webinars are used by many business owners, but they are particularly useful for infopreneurs for these three reasons:

You already have high-quality content, so it’s simply a matter of switching to the webinar medium for delivery.
You're a good presenter already, which puts you way ahead of most webinar presenters.
They can be another income stream, whether you use them as stand-alone presentations or complementary presentations.

Here are just a few of the ways infopreneurs can use webinars:

If you are a conference speaker, deliver a follow-up webinar for the client, to extend the value you offer.
If you are a trainer, deliver a planning webinar before a workshop, to help the attendees do the preparation work, so they get more value from the workshop.
If you are a coach, do group coaching by webinar for selected coaching clients.
If you are a facilitator, facilitate a discussion by webinar, allowing you to connect people from different offices, businesses, cities and countries.
If you are an author, offer a bonus webinar for readers, to answer their questions and help them get value from the book.
If you are any business professional, use free webinars to position yourself as an authority in your industry

What are the benefits of webinars?

Webinars offer a number of benefits for your business, in a number of areas. Most businesses use webinars for marketing, delivery and support – and of course they increase productivity as well.

Delivery

For speakers, trainers and consultants, webinars also offer another way to deliver educational material:

Supplementary events: If you present a keynote, training workshop or public seminar, offer a follow-up webinar a few weeks later to help people put your ideas into action. It’s easy to do, and costs very little, but demonstrates your commitment to real change.
Testing ground: Use a webinar as a testing ground for new material.
On-line balance: If you’re sick and tired of all the “friction” associated with presenting face to face – travel, sleeping in hotel rooms, spending time away from family and friends – webinars can help you ease into doing fewer in-person presentations.
Down-sell option: Some clients, particularly in tough economic times, are counting every dollar. Rather than losing these clients altogether, you might be able to offer them a webinar instead of an in-person presentation, at a lower fee.
Audience interaction: Well-designed webinars can be highly interactive events – perhaps even more so than the traditional training workshop. You can run on-line polls, host a chat room, share participants’ screens, and so on – all things that increase engagement and retention.
Reporting and analysis: Most webinar software includes tools for analysing your webinar, including audience attention, interactivity, time spent in the webinar, and so on.
Make a difference: If you have an important message for the world, a webinar is an excellent way to deliver it.

Marketing

Many businesses use free webinars for marketing. The benefits include these:

Expand market reach: Webinars give you the potential to reach the world just as easily as you can reach your local community.
Generate more leads: Because they have such a low marginal cost, you can run a free webinar to attract people, deliver high value, and then follow up with them later.
Work at scale: You can run a webinar with groups of any size – small or large.
Create a marketing edge: Despite the increasing popularity of webinars, most business owners still aren’t using them. So they give you a competitive advantage.
High touch for high-tech: Webinars not only allow you to leverage your time, they also give that personal touch, compared to e-mail, Twitter, e-books and other on-line services.
Research your market: Use webinars not only to deliver material, but also to discover what material is of most interest to your market.
Vertical servicing: Use webinars to deliver additional value to your existing clients – either by presenting them yourself or by inviting guest experts to present for you.
Joint venture opportunities: Taking this a step further, if you’re currently involved in any joint venture partnerships, you can use a webinar to introduce your joint venture partners to your network, and vice versa.
Bonus/incentive: A webinar is a low-cost high-value gift to offer as a bonus or incentive for taking action.

Support

Another common use of webinars is to support existing clients and customers:

Reward loyal clients: Webinars are a low-cost high-value way to keep in touch. You provide a valuable service (not just a “just keeping in touch” phone call, which can be an annoying intrusion more than a useful gesture) and demonstrate your on-going value to them.
Leverage access to you: Webinars allow you to reach many people at the same time, rather than having to deal with them individually.
Offer on-demand learning: Because webinars are easy and cheap to schedule and run, you can run them whenever they are needed, rather than waiting until the material can be covered in a formal training workshop.
Create a training library: Run regular webinars to train your staff and support network, and make the recordings available on your intranet for people who missed the live training sessions.

Productivity

Finally, in addition to whatever other purpose they have, webinars can improve productivity:

No wasted time: There’s no extra time getting to the venue, allowing extra time for traffic delays, including coffee breaks, and getting back to your home or office at the end of the presentation.
Lower cost: Even leaving aside the actual out-of-pocket costs, webinars also save the hidden cost of the participants’ time.
Create products in time: Record a webinar and you’ve got yourself an instant video product. Even if it’s not perfect in its raw form, this is easy to pass on to a technical expert for editing and polishing.
Short lead time: Because you don’t have to worry about booking venues, travel, accommodation and other such logistics – and neither does your audience – you don’t require as much lead time to announce a webinar. You can get by with a month’s notice, and even less if you’re promoting it to people who already know and trust you.

What will you learn?

In this full-day workshop, I will show you how to:

Structure your material for maximum impact and learning
Design effective and engaging PowerPoint/Keynote slides
Keep your audience engaged during the webinar
Set a price, promote and take payments for webinars
Record your webinars to create instant products
Survey your audience members before, during and after the webinar
Become comfortable with the webinar technology

Imagine having a simple checklist of all the things you have to do … how to prepare, how to set a price, how to take payments, what to send to participants before the webinar, what to put in your PowerPoint slides, what not to put in your PowerPoint slides, how to present the live webinar, how to conduct live polls during the webinar, how to record it to create an instant product, how to follow up after the webinar, and more …

This is a practical workshop. I won't just teach you how to create a webinar; I want you to actually do all the work for it yourself. You'll walk out with the slides ready, a sales letter written, the webinar ready for registration, and you'll feel confident using the technology. We'll do everything except run the live webinar itself!

Here's a broad outline of the day:

9-10.30am		Your webinar content – structure, slide design, layout
11am-12.30pm		Using the webinar technology
1.30-3pm		Increasing audience engagement
3.30-5pm		Promotion, payment and registration

What People Say …

Here are some of the things people have said about my workshops:

"Your availability both before the event as well as after it was second to none. I really value that level of service, which is a rarity in today’s environment." – Elias Kanaris

"His enormous wealth of expertise and seemingly endless patience for the technologically challenged makes it do-able. What a great investment for anyone working as a solopreneur. Saves time. Saves money. Make you feel good." – Lynne Schinella

"A trademark characteristic of Gihan's workshops is the calm & patience he manages to maintain and generate. There is integrity in all he does." – Jacquie Molloy

"Gihan has an easy to follow teaching style and the patience of a saint! … Thanks Gihan, it was awesome!" – Nicki Robilliard

"Absolutely the most effective training course I have done." – Leonie Stanfield

"It's your abilities to make the complex simple and accessible, to structure learning so it's engaging, fun and practical and to relate so warmly and genuinely to people that are your true gifts. Thanks so much – it was liberating!!!!" – Paul and Sallie-Ann Macklin

"I can't stop singing the praises of this workshop and your clear, precise and friendly manner in sharing complex information." – Sharonne Phillips