How to Transform Your Webinars to Boost Impact and Audience Engagement - B403

Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. 

Today, my special guest is Jon Schumacher. Jon specializes in webinars and online events that convert. He primarily works with coaches and course sellers, helping them craft their best sales message to sell more of their programs and courses. He's worked with over 300 clients across 30-plus industries, and more than 1000 students have gone through his training programs. He's the host of the world's largest online sales webinar conference, the Webinar Mastery Summit, which has had more than 13,000 attendees worldwide. Jon is one of my all-time favorite coaches.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:27]:

Jon, what an absolute privilege it is to welcome you to the show. So thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Jon Schumacher [00:01:35]:

Thank you, Susan. I'm excited to be here and appreciate all of what you do and excited to chat today and hopefully share some good value with everybody.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:45]:

I'm sure you will. That's just who you are, Jon. I know. You're one of the go-to people when it comes to helping coaches and consultants Use webinars and online events to get more clients. And as you know, you and I were talking about the fact that this podcast is All about helping nonfiction authors market their books and themselves as authors more effectively. Knowing that and knowing obviously your subject matters so well, where do you see webinars fitting into an author's marketing strategy?

Jon Schumacher [00:02:20]:

Sure. Yeah. It's a good question. Let's give some context first before we dive into maybe some more specifics. But Most, you know, nonfiction authors, they have other things to sell. Sure they can sell books, But as you know, a book is often more of a a big business card, so to speak, for possibly consulting services, coaching services, other programs or services that that individual is selling, and that's where webinars can come in great. Right? You can invite your book buyers, your leads list to a webinar and then build some trust, expose them to the new opportunity, which is working with you, and then make a call to action to do that. Right? And so webinars often fit very, very well if you are selling anything, let's say, beyond the book, Consulting courses, coaching, services, you can use your webinars to sell something directly or to generate Leads or sales conversations with yourself afterwards, they would be a good fit for a lot of folks listening to this because I know a lot of folks are Not just selling books.

Jon Schumacher [00:03:30]:

Right? They're selling other things at higher price points, and that's where a webinar could fit perfectly.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:36]:

Yes. You're absolutely right because Many of the authors are already consultants or coaches, speakers. Yes. The book is A great door opener. It exposes their expertise in a certain subject matter or Topic and industry. I mean, that's always the best and especially in a niche market. I'm never assuming that our listeners have done, let's say, some webinars, but they've heard about them, but they don't know where to even know how to go about starting To do one, what would your recommendations be?

Jon Schumacher [00:04:17]:

I would start with the end in mind. A lot of people kinda start at the front of this and go, okay. Well, what's a topic I could teach on or that kind of thing? The first question is really, like, what are you focused In the context of a sales webinar. Let's say you're a consultant and you wanna generate more leads for your consulting practice. Okay. So what is the offer that we want people to take us up on. What is the thing we're focused on selling? Because we wanna start with that because then we need to back ourselves up into like okay. What material do I need to share? What does that person need to understand and believe What is the end goal here? Right? Where do we wanna take people? What are the objections, concerns, mindblocks.

Jon Schumacher [00:05:14]:

What do they need to believe to want to take you up on your service? Right? And so We don't wanna just start with, oh, well, I'll teach them this one random thing that I think would be valuable and then try to stuff your offer on the end of that Process that usually gets less than great results. And so it starts with, like, what do you wanna sell, and then really listing out, like, What do they need to know, understand, and believe about themselves, about you, and about the opportunity that you're presenting so they want to engage you on your thing. That's sort of the planning starting point for it.

Susan Friedmann [00:05:51]:

I know that the model or one of the models There's a There's a reluctance sometimes to give something away for free. There's so many webinars out there that are free. Talk to us about whether we should ask for payment or whether we should be doing it for free. Where does the free come in, and What's the advantage of that?

Jon Schumacher [00:06:23]:

Yeah. For most people, I'm gonna recommend you do a free webinar, not a paid webinar. Now there are cases where paid webinars, paid workshops make sense. Like, if you have a large email database or a large following, And you can sell a large number of tickets to a webinar or workshop, then you might make sense. If you don't have a big audience though, which is probably a lot of folks listening, then, you know, if you charge, let's say, $37 $50 or whatever for a webinar, you might only end up with a few people on that webinar. You're just not gonna be able to sell enough volume Because the purpose of a paid webinar is not just to make the whatever amount of money you pay, get for the webinar. It's to curate a group of buyers that then buy the next thing in your sequence of offers. And if you can only get 2, 3, 4, 5 sales of your webinar, yeah, you might get a client maybe, but you're just not gonna get a lot of volume on that presentation.

Jon Schumacher [00:07:23]:

And so you're putting up a barrier for those people to experience you. For most people, I recommend a free webinar because you'll get more people there and you'll allow people to experience you, to gather trust to you Without putting up a wall or a barrier. There's cases where it makes sense, but for most people, including myself, I mean, I don't do paid webinars. I've done paid workshops in the past. I have a fairly good sized audience. I might get 25, 30, 40 people there, which is not bad, and get a few clients out of it, but I get a lot more business and a lot more clients by offering the free thing. So I recommend for most people, They do the free webinar to, again, lower the barrier to entry, generate more demand for what they're doing, and build more trust with the people in their audience.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:15]:

One of the things, and I know you and I have talked a little bit about this, is that I'm a high content presenter. And for me to do a free webinar, it's like, how much content would be right for me to offer in that time without sort of giving the farm away and everything in the farm.

Jon Schumacher [00:08:37]:

Yeah. It's a good question, and it's a common question. But it's not necessarily how much content, but what type of content that makes the bigger difference. And let's say it's a live presentation. So let's say you fire up your Zoom account, you invite your LinkedIn or your email network to that webinar and you're planning on giving, let's say, a 60 minute overall discussion, 60 minutes with maybe some questions and answers. And a lot of people say, well, how much should I give away or what should I talk about and those kind of things. It's not how much content, but it's what type of content. Again, it needs to be centered around what they need to know, understand, and believe in order to want to buy from you.

Jon Schumacher [00:09:18]:

And you can delight your audience Without spraying them in the face with a bunch of nice to know information. In fact, the biggest mistake people will make with putting together A sales webinar or elite webinar is they'll just turn on the fire hose and they'll spray people in the face with a bunch of nice to know information that they might share with a client that doesn't really lead that attendee anywhere. It doesn't lead them to a new opportunity. It doesn't lead them to a decision point. People usually leave in 1 of 2 mindsets. They either leave with more questions than they had when they came, not so good, or they clap their hands, they give you a 5 star review, and they say, awesome webinar. You're great. Let me go try that myself, and I'll quote unquote come back to you, and they never do.

Jon Schumacher [00:10:06]:

It's really not about how much content. In fact, you'd rather have less content then more. In fact, your presentation should be 80% context, why something's important, why they should be interested in this, And concepts, which are high level ideas and maybe 20% content, which is reinforcing the other 2. So I'm happy to go deeper on that if you'd like, if people are interested in that. But it's a common mistake, like people try to jam all this random content into a presentation, what might be good for us to talk about is maybe what to do instead. Right, Susan?

Susan Friedmann [00:10:42]:

Yes. Absolutely. I mean, I'm guilty as charged With that one. I mean, I've done you know, this is great information. You need to know this, and Mhmm. Mine tends to be The opposite. It tends to be more of the 80% content and maybe the 20% context. So, yes, Let's talk more about that because now that you've brought it up, yeah, we don't want to leave that loop open, so let's go down that road.

Jon Schumacher [00:11:11]:

Yeah. If the thing we should be careful doing is overteaching a bunch of how to content that we might just share with a client, Instead, what we wanna focus on are a few key things, and I we don't have time to go through everything, but let me just give you a few of the most it. Important elements of a good sales presentation. The first one is let's just say they're on the webinar. What are you teaching? Right? The first one is what I like to call a new opportunity. Are you positioning or presenting a new opportunity for them. Are you presenting a better, newer, unique path forward for your a potential buyer. They're stuck with their problems.

Jon Schumacher [00:11:58]:

They're trying to solve them. They've tried a bunch of other methods. Are you positioning what you're teaching or sharing on that webinar as a new opportunity for them? There's lots of examples we could talk about. One of mine was, like, how to use AI for webinars, or I had a client in the health care space that discovered this root that helped people lose weight. Maybe you're saying, well, that's not me. You know, I don't have any new discoveries. The new opportunity then for most of you listening is the unique way that you get your clients' results. Right.

Jon Schumacher [00:12:36]:

And so you should have that mapped out. I call it a road map to results. It should be a series of steps, phases, elements that is unique to how you get your clients' results. So we wanna position that framework, that road map as a new Xtinity. So the first thing we need to do is we need to think through the lens of, like, am I presenting this as a new opportunity, Or is this just kinda blah, something they've already heard of or tried or whatever. And sometimes you'd have something truly unique. Sometimes you have to manufacture that in the form of how you get your clients results. Does that make sense, Susan?

Susan Friedmann [00:13:12]:

It certainly does. It's because, yes, that looking at it differently. And then this is what the book primarily usually is about, is something unique. So a different approach To solving a problem, be it, let's say, stress management or having an autistic child and how To work with that child, so it's that uniqueness that they've already written about in the book

Jon Schumacher [00:13:41]:

That Right.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:42]:

Be something that they would bring to the forefront then in a webinar?

Jon Schumacher [00:13:46]:

Yeah. That would be like the first part of the webinar would be building up the big idea around that new opportunity. If you're listening to this, you've written a book, you're an expert on that topic in all likelihood. Right? We need to kinda build up that new opportunity, a new discovery, a new way of doing something that ideally is unique. As The saying goes, it's often better to be different than better in the eyes of the consumer, the eyes of the potential a buyer. It's like, well, I haven't tried that. That sounds intriguing. That sounds interesting.

Jon Schumacher [00:14:17]:

I can see how that might help me. That's the kind of what we wanna build up. What we don't wanna do is just start our webinar and start teaching step by step by step by step a bunch of random stuff on, like, very granular how to do something. Again, people might like you, But it's not gonna give them a reason to hire you, right, or to work with you. And so there needs to be a bit of a gap there Between where they are and the new opportunity that you're presenting. That's kind of the one of the key elements at a high level. Every time I'm looking at a webinar, Auditing 1 today as we speak, actually, for a client, I'm looking at it through that lens. Like, what's the new opportunity they're truly presenting here? You've shown them the new opportunity.

Jon Schumacher [00:14:56]:

Now the next question would be like, okay. Well, how does that work, or what's involved? And, again, we're not gonna teach them everything on this presentation. They would be doing them a disservice to do that. But what what we do wanna do is show them high level concepts of how to get there. Right? You've shown them this new opportunity. K. How does it work to get there? What's the high level ideas? And I'll usually break that into 3 steps or 3 elements. People will often fight me on this.

Jon Schumacher [00:15:24]:

Most of you can get what you do at a high level down to 3 elements. It's a lot more consumable to the human brain in threes versus fives or sevens or sixes or whatever you how many steps you have in your framework or your coaching or consulting process. So we wanna break that down for them. How does this look at a high level? But we wanna do it in a way, it. Ideally, this is where the art comes in a little bit of of doing this, as a what I call a wow demonstration. Like, all good presentations have that wow demonstration factor. And it could be again, if you sell something visual, it could be you visually walking people through a piece of your software or something you do on the screen. It could be you telling an incredible story or delivering a case study that really wows them, it's really about, like, how can you ramp up that wow factor a little bit Which is your process or your discovery looks like, you know, how can you wow them? So, like, for me, I have a software on AI.

Jon Schumacher [00:16:35]:

I'll actually just strategically screen share How the software can build content in front of them literally in in, like, less than 10 seconds. And people go, wow. Okay. Like, that's interesting. I want that thing. It's a little different for you depending on what you're selling and what you're presenting, but the big takeaway here is just kind of look at your presentation through the lens of, like, how Can I increase the wow factor a little bit so that people are emotionally excited to want that opportunity? So, hopefully, that makes sense.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:06]:

It certainly does. We got the 2 so far, the uniqueness, the new opportunity, and then presenting it as 3 different components. And I wanted to talk about those because I'm pleased that you touched on that because I know, having attended several of your free webinars that you do so brilliantly, look at 1, 2, and 3 different opportunities.

Jon Schumacher [00:17:33]:

Yeah. I know this can be a struggle for some people. They need a lot of help coming up with these. I'm pretty good at, like, boiling things down that way because I've just been doing it for so long. But, yeah, Ideally, it's 3 things. You'd rather teach less steps or less elements even if it doesn't include everything. You don't need to teach them everything or show them everything. They just need to see enough of what it looks like to understand and feel Like, they've had that, well, how does it work itch scratched.

Jon Schumacher [00:18:01]:

Again, you're not teaching them everything. In fact, Going beyond what's necessary to get them to understand that opportunity risks confusing them, risks having them have more questions come up in their brains, if you do it that way.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:17]:

I want to switch this just a little because I know, again, Having worked with you that when it comes to looking, you know, you've presented your 3 different pieces of content, then it comes to now looking at presenting the offer. Mhmm. Something that's very big with you is that the bonuses that you present with the offer Often are what sparks the sale rather than the actual offer itself. Can you address that, why that is?

Jon Schumacher [00:18:55]:

Yeah. So there's really 2 main types of offers for a webinar. 1 is a call to action to book a call or a conversation with you or your team. The other one I call direct selling is just making a direct offer. You know, hey. Here's the page. Go buy the thing. But regardless of which a call to action you wanna make.

Jon Schumacher [00:19:14]:

If you're a consulting firm or a service based company, maybe it's just to book a call with your team. If you're a coach or something or excelled. A course, then it might be direct sale. Regardless though, you wanna think about, like, how can you make the call to action or the offering more valuable. How can you make it have a higher perceived value so more people take it? And, again, If you're booking calls for your firm, the initial offering is that call with you. Right? We wanna position that a call as a valuable complimentary service in and of itself. And part of that is how we describe the call And all that the beneficial things they'll get on that conversation or that call. But also it can be highlighting other elements or bonuses around the call.

Jon Schumacher [00:20:02]:

So for example, I was working with an SEO company, they're called the SEO growth audit. And we said, you know, during the call, we're gonna give you a free report of all your website's current inefficiencies. We're gonna give you a list of your competitors' keywords so you know what traffic sources you could be tapping into, and we're gonna give you a full recommendations report Whether you decide to work with our firm or not, which call would you rather take? Just a no obligation call or a an SEO growth audit with all of those kind of things. Right? And so we've ramped up the desirability of that call with them and that increased their take rate. You can do the same thing if you're selling something directly. Like, you wanna strategically think about offering a series of bonuses and things like that. And to your point, they often are more important than the core offer that you're selling. Your bonuses and things like that should be strategically created or positioned.

Jon Schumacher [00:20:57]:

They should be created or positioned to solve problems, perceived problems, objections, mental blocks, All the reasons why they think they can't get the result that your program offers. So we can go down a deep rabbit hole on bonuses, But, yeah, that's just kind of a high level. So takeaway here, you know, don't just slap your offer up there whether it's a call or whether it's a program directly And talk all about the features and blah blah blah blah blah, you wanna actually strategically position bonuses that give value and solve problems that make your offer more valuable and perceived that way.

Susan Friedmann [00:21:35]:

So it very much it complements what your core offer, as you said, is. Mhmm. So there's a lot of thought because I know putting together bonuses for webinar that I'm looking to do next year is it takes a lot of thought just to decide what would be valuable enough that people We're like, oh, I've gotta have that.

Jon Schumacher [00:21:58]:

Yeah. And it'll evolve, Susan. Well, I've done the same AI webinar now. This will be going into next year. This will be the 3rd time. I've changed my bonuses here and there. Some of them are the same because it works. You know, I always maybe at or look at a bonus or you know, like, I'm adding an offer bonus next time because I know that's a an objection for people.

Jon Schumacher [00:22:20]:

Like, well, I would do a webinar, but I don't have my offer ready yet, so I don't wanna put the cart before the horse. Because people will give you feedback, like, on why they're not buying. Right? You think through that and go, okay. What do I need to have in place to help them solve that problem or not feel that way?

Susan Friedmann [00:22:35]:

So it's listening to your audience as well. And that's a really good pointed they're not buying. Why is it that they're not buying? Because you haven't given them enough information that they can do it on their own. Because often, As he said earlier, talking about the fact that if I give so much away, it's like, well, I don't really need to buy anything because you've already told me how to do with this.

Jon Schumacher [00:22:58]:

Right. A good question to ask is always, like, for the people that buy from you, why did you buy from me? And then for the people that didn't, why didn't you? I mean, that's pretty simple. You could do that through interviews. Like, all your buyers, you can reach out to them, especially in the beginning. Why did you decide to buy it from me? Or, like, If you have a subscription product, like, I know we have a gentleman who has a software product in our group. I told him, like, survey your customers. Find out. Like, why did they buy it? Why did they continue to pay you? That way you know what to double down on in your marketing messages, your webinars,, sales pages, websites, whatever.

Jon Schumacher [00:23:32]:

Right? Like, we need to know why people buy and why they don't buy. And if we can figure that out, we'll do a lot better. and so it's important to do.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:41]:

Yeah. The $64,000 question, that's easy. We'll solve it. No problem.

Jon Schumacher [00:23:46]:

Right.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:47]:

Jon, I know that our listeners are probably chomping at the bit saying, how do we get a hold of this person? How do we find out more? So take it away. Tell us What would be the best way for our listeners to get hold of you? And I believe you have a little gift for them. So What is your bonus now for getting in touch and working with you?

Jon Schumacher [00:24:10]:

Sure. I do have a Guide that I've put together that should be linked, I think, on this page or somewhere around this interview that is "27 Webinar Conversion Points that Will Help You Book More Leads on Your Calendar." Everything from,  when to host, how to host, how to remind people, how to get people there, how to follow-up, some of those tips. It's a short read, but you can just download it And reference it for any time you plan on doing a webinar or if you're doing webinars. It's going to help you optimize your campaign so that you get more Leads, more calls booked, and more conversations from each campaign that you host. And so it's called, "27 Webinar Conversion Points That Will Help You Book More Leads on Your Calendar."  And I think that should be linked somewhere around this page. If you're on the show notes page or whatever, that's, you know, Susan's thing.

Jon Schumacher [00:25:01]:

If you wanna reach out to me, you can just simply Google my name or just Google webinar consultant. If you Google webinar consultant, I rank number 1, I believe, as of this recording on Google for that. So you could just simply find my website. go type in webinar consultant, find my website. There's plenty of information there, or you can Google my name as well, but people misspell that usually. It's, Jon Schumacher like the race car driver, Although no relation to my knowledge. Anyway, that's how you get a hold of me.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:36]:

That's great. And, yes, you're right. We'll put everything in the show notes. I'll put a link to that conversion guide, and then people can get in touch with you. Listeners, Go back and listen to how Jon presented that, gift that he offered because that was perfect because He gave it so much value, which, yes, it does have, but the way he positioned it, it was brilliant. So, again, picking up on the way You structured that is something that, listeners, you can learn from. Jon, we always end off the episode with, guests giving a golden nugget. So what would you like to leave our listeners with?

Jon Schumacher [00:26:25]:

There's a lot I could share here, but I think the biggest thing if you want to grow yourself, your business, and all those kinds of things, you need to increase your visibility. Right? And you need to build more trust with more people and make more offers. And if you do that, you'll grow. I had a mentor tell me, Jon if you wanna double your business, double the number of offers you make. And so what's the element of an offer? Well, there's something to sell and there's a person to sell it to. Right? And so what's required to make that work? Well, Getting in front of more of the right people is one of them, and webinars can help you do that. You don't need expensive technology. Just use it even like a Zoom meeting account to start with.

Jon Schumacher [00:27:08]:

I've had a number of clients start getting clients themselves just using Zoom, and maybe they have 6, 7, 8, or 9 people on there the first time, they were able to land clients and they started growing from there. So the key is, like, do more of what works. You need to get more visibility, And webinars can help you do that. The most successful people that I'm around, they're really good at compressing time. Meaning, they can do what most people do in 6 months or 6 weeks. And part of that comes down, which we didn't talk about today to having a plan, to having some systems. And once you create your webinar, you get some simple systems in place. Keep it simple.

Jon Schumacher [00:27:45]:

You can really start to systematically get more visible, build more trust, get more leads, and make more offers. And so I'll just Somewhere in there is something good. Hopefully, that'll be a good point to end on, and thanks for having me, Susan. I appreciate it.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:59]:

Yes. Well, there are so many beautiful things that you'd be able to come back and hopefully be willing to talk to us about that, your plans, your systems, The bonuses, I mean, we could go down, many different avenues with this, but really appreciate you sharing all this great wisdom. And listeners, again, as I said, go back and listen to this several times because there are so many golden nuggets in everything that Jon Has shared with us today. 

And by the way, you know the drill. If your book isn't selling the way you want it or expect it to, Let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, energy, and money, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. So go to BrainstormWithSusan.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.