CS: Excellent. Where does the profit come from if someone holds a webinar?
FG: Okay. The profit is by building the client base. If the attendees to the webinar get enthused by whatever product or service that the presenter is presenting, then they will follow the call to action at the end of the webinar and that could just be ringing up and touching base and having a consultation, or it could be buying an entry level product. It gets people into your sales funnel. It’s really the lead generation side of it that the presenter will then turn into a salable product or an alliance with the attendee, so that they encourage them to do business with them. There’s a profit in whatever you’re promoting, whatever business you’re in, and encouraging people to take part in that offer.
CS: What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about a webinar? Do you think there are any?
FG: I haven’t had that question. I suppose that the biggest misconception is that I can’t do it, that it’s too hard, it’s beyond me, the technical aspect… I’m techno-phobic, for example. Maybe there’s that little bit of mentality, from a presenter’s point of view. I don’t believe there’s a negative aspect from the attendee’s point of view because the one thing you can do with webinars is you can have replays. If somebody can’t attend, they can actually attend a replay and they still get the benefit of listening to the presentation.
I suppose the main negative from a presenter’s point of view would be that they don’t know how to do it and they’re just nervous. It’s not their forte. They’re in the business of selling whatever service and product their business sells. They’re not into the technical side of it. I suppose that’s probably one of the big misconceptions. It is relatively easy to do once you get into it.
CS: It’s interesting that you mentioned replays because, and I do want to continue on about the technical part of this too, do you agree or disagree, a replay is recommended or not recommended?
FG: Double edged sword. It’s actually a double edged sword. What I mean by that is that there are two things about a replay. Obviously, with a replay, you’re going to pick up the people that can’t attend and really can’t attend because they’ve something else going on. The big problem with replays is that it gives people the opportunity to opt out. If you say that you’ve a webinar coming up and there’s going to be a replay, then there’s no real incentive for the person to attend the live webinar.
There aren’t any real stats on that at the moment that I’ve captured, so I can’t really quantify it. I’d certainly encourage people not to suggest that there’s a replay, even if there is going to be one. Even to the fact that I’d be going down the part of saying, “There’s probably not going to be a replay for this because,” you suggest that sometimes, technology gets in the way and
the replays don’t happen. Or perhaps even go hard and say, “There won’t be a replay on this.” That will encourage people to attend.
As I said before, it’s a double edged sword. In some cases, it can work to get more people to your offer or in some cases it can actually discourage people from attending the live event which the first is really what you want to try and do. The more people attend the live event, the better conversion you’re going to have.
CS: I agree, absolutely. Before we go on with the technical question that I have, which is just burning in my mind, I want to know if there’s, since we are talking about the power of the webinar, is there anything specific that maybe we haven’t covered as far as the basics of a webinar and its power?
FG: I suppose from my perspective, the power of the webinar is that you can actually present from one to thousands of people, from one location, at minimum cost. The only cost you’d have would be if you’re paying for a paid service. There are free services out there now to get you started, is your time. I think that’s what people have to think about. There’s no set up costs, there’s no venue costs, there’s no hiring costs for equipment.
That’s huge, because in some cases, if you wanted to put on a seminar for 500 people, that would be an enormous cost, and you’ve to find a venue that’s capable of it. You’ve the logistics, you’ve have more people there to support you because you’re not going to get 500 registrations in the door without having staff to help you. From my perspective, that’s a huge benefit of webinars. Minimum cost, lots of value.
CS: It’s the time and the reach. It sounds ideal to me.
FG: Yes. You can tell I’m passionate about webinars.
CS: I was just going to ask you. There must be some type of ESP. I was going to ask you, what was your passion? What drove you to your passion for this industry? I can hear that you really enjoy this work. What lead you to it?
FG: It was basically that I initially didn’t have the funds to put on large presentations. I engaged people with small attendees, 10 to 20 people in local venues that I could afford. I found that it really wasn’t enough in some cases because we’d have to turn people away, whereas with the webinar model, I just put on a webinar and we invite people, they attend. It’s an open ended canvas, basically.
