My take on automated webinars

The topic of automated webinars has come up in the last few days. Once from a subscriber who hates them. Another from a subscriber asking if they work.

An automated webinar is a webinar that runs automatically, without you having to be there. Which for obvious reasons makes them a popular tactic.

I do have an EverWebinar account, which is one of the platforms. I don’t use it much, but I’ve dabbled. The problem really is you should only automate a webinar that has proven to work with a live audience.

What I hate, hate hate, perhaps more than anything else in marketing, is when you join a webinar that is obviously automated, where the content is presented like it’s live. The presenter will say dumb things, like “I can see Jane is asking a question,” or “ask your questions in the chat, and if we don’t get to it, we’ll get back to you after the session.” Usually there’s some roster of ‘attendees’ all with exotic names, who all seem to ask mysteriously leading sales questions.

Literally, I’m not stupid. Don’t mug me off.

There’s a deeper issue. If you’re willing to deceive me up front, what does that say about the relationship later on?

With that presentation caveat aside, I don’t have a problem with automated webinars. The alternative would be to put a video on a web page, which in my opinion is too distracting, and too easy to pause or exit.

Doing a live webinar is like theatre. Or more specifically like pantomime, where you get live feedback from the audience. Although despite the interaction, a good webinar will stay mostly on script.

An automated webinar is like cinema. A show may run four times a day over a four week period, until it disappears. Eventually, you can probably buy the DVD. The cinema experience encourages you to pay attention, and not look too much at your phone. You can’t pause the movie for a while to respond to an email.

Of course, at the cinema the actors never try to call you out. Because that would be stupid, right?

I’ve seen automated webinars work very well for clients. If you need somebody to watch a 45 minute presentation before they’ll buy, I’d consider it. Just don’t do any of the misleading nonsense I’ve described above.

Convert your expertise into leads

Online Training Next Week
Tuesday 16th October
Register here

On the face of it, my work is about converting your expertise into emails, Facebook ads, video scripts, and other written output…

Of course, nobody really wants all of those things. What people really want is leads. Leads who trust you, and are serious about buying. We all need more of those.

Consider the following expertly drawn diagram:

As I see it, the challenge is getting your expertise out of your head and into your marketing, in a way that systematically generates leads over a sustained period of time.

There are big problems in doing this…

• Not all of your expertise is actually very interesting (gasps!)
• Marketing is overwhelming (seriously, it is)
• You’re ridiculously busy, and don’t have time. Until you really need the leads that is. At which point you panic and throw money at Facebook or Google…

For a few months I’ve been looking at this scratching my head, thinking “there must be a better way!”…

… A way that positions you as an expert, without you becoming a full time marketer.

… A way that builds up a decent pipeline of work.

Next Tuesday, I’ll be presenting a free webinar, called Convert Your Expertise Into Leads. This is a live-only session, but I’m holding two sessions.

Read more and book here.

This will be a webinar for experts who need to communicate their expertise. For people who are ready to have a serious conversation about marketing, rather than chase some magical push-button formula.

If you sell based on your expertise, you should make time to join me.

You need to attend live to join this training for free. I’ll only be making a recording available to paying subscribers.

Once again the registration link is here.

The problem with writing daily emails

Email marketing advice 101 at the moment seems to be ‘write a daily email’. Many people seem to have taken this advice at face value.

Writing a daily email is good advice, under the right circumstances. If your message is valuable enough there will be people who want to hear from you every day. Maybe multiple times per day, if you have the time.

The problem is that thinking of interesting things to write every day can be terrifying. 9AM becomes 10AM. 10AM becomes… 4PM. In a panic you end up writing about the goofy thing your dog did this morning, or what you had for breakfast.

Nobody cares about these things except you.

The danger is we end up communicating for the sake of communicating. The world is already full of marketing people trying to make noise. If you want to write daily emails you should do so as a strategy, not a tactic.

In this month’s Confusion Clinic webinar we’re looking at story selection: how to select what to write about in your marketing emails.

Story selection is the only part of the email production process that comes close to being a ‘dark art’. We’ll explore how to select stories your customers actually want to hear.

Time: 6-7PM UK, 1-2PM US Eastern
Date: Wednesday 27th July
Register for the webinar here

No charge to attend live, and a recording will be available for 48 hours after the call. After that it will only be available to Introvert’s Corner members.

We’ll have time for QnA. If you’re a writer I strongly recommend making time to be on the call.

Why definitions matter

Two and a half thousand years ago the Chinese philosopher Confucius is rumoured to have said:

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.

If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.

The salient point is the way you define what you do ultimately determines what you do. A few years ago I remember asking two educated marketing colleagues to define marketing for me. These were people I respected with degrees in marketing.

“Well, it’s sort of everything, isn’t it?” was the best response they managed.

If you define marketing as everything you will end up doing everything (Snapchat, anyone?) with no clear image of the objectives.

Personally I like Peter Drucker’s definition: marketing is everything to do with making and keeping a customer. Many companies forget about the second part because they define themselves by what they do, and what they do is often a one-time sale.

I have a number of friends getting married at the moment. I am constantly amazed at the stupidity of wedding dress shops who avoid continuing a relationship with people they sold a dress to for thousands and thousands of pounds.

They don’t continue the customer relationship because they have not correctly defined what it is they do.

“But we’re a dress shop!” they say.

“No you’re not!” I say.

I’m running a webinar this Wednesday on the full marketing nurture process, as I see it. The first thing we’ll do is nail down the definitions on what we are doing.

If you still think definitions are unimportant then by all means don’t attend.

Register here for no cost

Google and Microsoft email rule changes

Apparently, shock of shocks, Google and Microsoft are changing the rules.

If you use an email service provider (like Infusionsoft or Mailchimp) to send emails and set your sender name as a @gmail, @hotmail, @yahoo, @aol, @outlook, @live, or @msn domain your emails are no longer going to get through.

If you have a serious business I don’t know why you would set your sender name as any of these things, but apparently people do.

Reading between the lines I think there is an important trend going on. People in general use Gmail, Outlook or some equivalent system to read emails. These systems are increasingly focusing on relevancy, not recency.

How recently you received an email is less important to these email systems than the historical interaction you have with the sender.

If you have a good track record of opening emails from a particular sender and even replying to the occasional email, Google will flag emails from that person as important.

If Google think you’re a scumbag they’ll relegate your emails to the promotions tab. You don’t want to be showing up under the promotions tab. You want to be showing up under the inbox tab, with a yellow ‘important’ shield next to your name.

A lot of what I do falls under the category of marketing nurture. Marketing nurture means taking cold enquiries and generating sales. To achieve that you need interaction. You need to be showing up in the inbox. You need high open and engagement rates.

The problem is the whole nurture model has been a little… vague. A contact opts in. We ‘nurture’ them for an indeterminate period of time. Eventually they see the light and pull out their credit card.

I’m running a webinar next week talking about a marketing nurture model I have been working on. If you are fed up of endless nurturing and want to generate sales you should listen in. We’ll be breaking the marketing nurture process down into specific actionable steps that generate revenue.

Join us to learn:

• The four nurture phases, and what to do at each phase
• How to dramatically shorten the nurture cycle
• When to make an offer, and at what point
• The step in the nurture process that most companies miss

Wednesday 29th June, 6-7PM UK, 1PM US Eastern.

Click here to book your place

There is no charge to attend live. A recording will be available for 48 hours after the call.