Secrets to Creating High-Converting Evergreen Webinar Funnels | The Art Of Selling Online Courses

hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses we are here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from Top performers in the online course industry my name is Monica badiu I am the copy chief of data driven marketing and today I am talking to a fellow conversion copywriter Abby render Gast now I'm super excited because she's an evergreen funnel strategist and conversion copywriter and she's helped some of the biggest names in the course industry she's the creator of day one Evergreen and author of the book of the same name her signature funnel contains

an automated feedback loop for simple customer focus optimization resulting in better conversions every month she's helped one client launch a new $797 course through a webinar funnel to a list of 10,000 people and made $6,000 $600,000 so today we're going to talk about some Pro hacks to improve your webinar funnel so it converts better without alienating or fear-mongering your audience and before we dig into today's super exciting interview I wanted to remind you of how much your support means to us we're here to make your podcast experience even better and you can help us with

just a quick favor by taking a moment to rate and review our podcast you're giving us Priceless feedback that helps helps shape future episode so has this show helped you make money has it helped you grow your business or improve your courses if it has please share it in the reviews so go to rate thisp podcast.com onlinecourses and nothing would make me happier today than to hear how this show has helped you okay let's go to the show Abby welcome I'm so happy you're here and I'm so excited for what's about to come hi Monica

thank you so much for having me it's such a pleasure to be here o I'm super excited it's going to be an awesome awesome podcast episode so let's let's get the ball running what are the biggest mistakes you've seen course creators make when it comes to using webinars as a sales strategy okay great question so I think the number one mistake I see is not having a limited time offer so even when it's Evergreen you need to make an offer to your audience you need to give them a reason to act now versus six months

from now and that doesn't have to be like a fake countdown timer you know the ones where if you refresh you come back it magically restarts I'm not talking about um fake urgency but you do need to create a limited time offer where you're giving them a set window to take you up on the best deal um and equally interestingly so I wasn't going to go here but I'm going to go here you don't want to do too much urgency so I think one of the other mistakes people make is they they do like a

webinar and there's it's limited time offer but then there's fast Action discount you have 24 hours to get this and then you have early bir bonuses and there's just so much urgency it gets a bit intense and I had a client that was doing this we removed all that and we just had a liit a limited time offer where it was just like okay this is the course you've got seven days to decide here's here's the deal and conversion rates actually increase by removing some of the urgency so yes my R about where saying not

having limit time offer or having too much urgency that it's actually a bit intense for for your audience So when you say a limited time offer that isn't like super based on urgency can you give me an example of what that actually looks like yeah I mean so that there there does need to be some urgency like unfortunately urgency is just a very powerful motivator I mean in our everyday lives it motivates us you know if you've got two minutes to catch a train you're going to walk a lot faster than if you've got an

hour so you do need some urgency but it's just giving your audience a reasonable amount of time tode like if you if you've got an evergreen webinar and it's a $2,000 course you're selling I think having them giving them 30 minutes to decide on the webinar or they lose the best deal I mean I I take longer to make decisions like that you're not giving them enough time to actually weigh it up so giving them a good 7-Day window to read your emails read through the offer make a decision and then when the doors close

when when the offer ends they they lose that deal and and that has to that has to be genuine so it really truly is a is a limit one time offer and there are tools that can allow you to do that like deadline funnel for example so when they sign up for your webinar it triggers that offer and then when it expires it redirects them to the sales page at the full price or without your bonus stack whatever limited offer you're doing and then if they do resign up your webinar they they don't get it

again like it's truly one time and and you're being honest about that up front about that and yeah giving them the chance to grab that deal I'm so happy you mentioned that because I think a lot of people they focus on okay how do I get this webinar to convert while people people are watching the webinar and they don't really put that much focus on what happens after the webinar like the followup emails and that makes so much sense right because usually webinars are used for higher ticket offers and it makes perfect sense like 30

minutes to decide on something pricey isn't enough I think what we what we've seen our clients do and what we recommend them is to like try to have like at least three to seven days of following up with the audience and we do like recommend like segmenting based on where they have left in the webinar and what they have seen in the webinar and then adapt that email strategy to bring them back into the webinar or to consider the offer I I really like that nice yeah I think the followup is is super important I

mean it takes me longer than 30 minutes to decide what I'm having for dinner so it takes more than half an hour to decide if I'm going to invest in a course smart okay so when you look at the client's webinar funnel what do you go after like the first thing you're going to going to optimize what's the lowest hanging fruit Okay so so the lowest hanging fruit for specifically the webinar are we talking about or yeah yeah so I would I mean the the two metrics I would be looking at would be conversion rates

and also how much time people are spending on the webinar um so if people are dropping off in the first 10 minutes what I would do is make sure that I've got a super juicy actionable tip um that they're going to get in the first sem minutes and I would promote that on the on the um opting page for that so say like in the first 10 minutes you'll learn how to do X um something that they really want because if you can get them to stick around first 10 minutes they're more likely to to

stick around for longer um and then the pitch I mean the pitch is even though we want to give people time to to decide that if you if you do a Super Value packed web you're going to have their attention they're going to want to reciprocate by giving you their attention when you when you pitch the offer so actually making sure that you're not rushing through the pitch and you're looking at every feature of your course and you're mapping it onto what's actually going on in your audiences live so rather than just saying like oh

here's 30 Instagram templates actually saying okay so you know you're waking up every day to post on Instagram it's stressful it's eting into your client time or whatever um so here's this is this is how it's going to help you so it's very clear the dots connected for your audience how your course fits into their life how it's going to benefit them and actually yeah make their life easier better richer whatever that outcome is that you're promising so do you have a specific go-to structure for these webinars because I know a lot of people are

doing like the Russell Branson teach and Peach type of webinar and then you have longer version the the type of like three secrets and then it takes one hour and a half two hours whatever so is there like a sweet spot or is there any way to kind of say okay at this stage of the promotion or for this specific segment we're going to use teach and Peach and maybe a lower end offer and for this bigger audience or this specific I know maybe a new launch or something like that we're going to go with

a longer structure um yeah I mean for me The Sweet Spot has been 40 minutes to an hour for my clients and that will be three three lessons but rather than just doing how to the focus really being on facilitating mindset shift so mapping out the path from where they are where they want to be and then kind of putting these belief packets into the web and I say it's like okay what do they not believe now about themselves about me about the industry um that's stopping them from achieving the goal they want and then

what what do they need to believe popping that in the webinar so by the end they're kind of I guess a fundamentally different person to they are and they enter the webinar and they're leaving not only have they got value but they now believe all the things to be true that make them a perfect fit customer versus before where they might be skeptical um that what you're that the promise that you're making can even work for them nice so what what's the process for choosing the topic of the webinar you mentioned you have this shifting

belief and you have to know what kind of beliefs they have that are preventing them from making the step toward buying your course and achieving the final outcome so how do you get to that information so custo customer research um some of my favorite methods are customer interviews obviously um actually if if you're speaking to your your customers um on on a zoom call and really getting getting to know what they want what's holding them back and then also Facebook group mining I'm I'm a big fan of so going into like the forums the groups

where they complain about the problems they're having they go in moments of frustration and say what's what's what's driving them up the wall and then using that to to craft the webinar um and then what I'll tend to do is I will I'll will draft quite a few titles um and I will I'll go through and I'll be like okay is this compelling is this mouthwatering um is this what my audience wants and then I'll cross them out and then I'll try and get it to about four and then what I like to do is

actually to get the my list to to vote on it so just email them and say look thinking of diger webinar these are the four titles click the one that you you would be most interested in and then you can very easily on whatever email platforms you're using see which link got the highest click T and then there you go you've got your title that's cool and do you do any I know testing of the webinar with a smaller sample like a small segment of maybe like super high engaged um email subscribers and you just

run it and see what happens like do you do that no I kind of try and research validate as much as possible beforehand so I feel good about putting the webinar out there and then yeah then seeing how it performs with with the live or on demand and then optimizing based on that quantity feedback rather than yeah doing kind of adding that extra webinar to to the to the play because my course grad is like kind of where they're at is they've had enough of live launching really cool well that begs the question um evergreen

or live which is better o i mean both hybrid I think I mean like I can't deny that there are course graders getting amazing results with live launching personally I think it's a lot of pressure to put on yourself so if you're a course grader and you're launching once a year and you want to make your annual income in that one launch I mean that's very stressful and I think what what I'm saying is called course creators will do that sometimes they hit their goals but they're going to be really burnt out after from getting

that live launch together or maybe they don't hit their goals and then they actually have to wait another six months a year to optimize and to try again by which time all the feedback they collected might no longer be relevant or valuable because the world as we know is constantly changing um so that's that's why I love Evergreen because it's not it's not just about the passive income obviously although you know we all we all like the idea of like waking up to to money but actually having the opportunity to basically be testing your webinar

every single day um and testing your emails and testing your funnel and then you've got this upto-date freshh feedback and data that you can use to optimize your funnel so you can continue to get better conversions and make sales every day you mentioned like the Holy Grail of marketing split testing and optim in so what are specific benchmarks you're following like how do you know which part are you going to optimize is it maybe how many people register to the webinar on a daily basis weekly basis how many people do actually show up like how

do you decide which bottleneck you're going to focus on first yeah that's a good question so I mean the key metrics to look at are cost per lead if you're running ads and then they optim rates for the webinar then yet watch rate um sales page conversion rate and then your email open rates and click-throughs um so in terms of what to what to optimize I mean I have have an idea of what the industry benchmarks are but I thing is you know what what's most helpful is the control so rather than optimizing because someone

so gets 60% opting rates it's like okay what did we get last month and how can we beat that so for the first couple of months I will look at if there's something that's obviously low like if we're only getting like 23% opting rates then I would start there but then from that point I would go by the control rather than a benchmark well that reduces some of the pressure yeah I mean you know I think people people compare they feel really bad because they're not making all these sales like Amy Porterfield or Pat Flynn

or whoever and it's like well these people have been you know been doing it for years they built this big audience they have entire marketing team supporting them so yeah just just focus on being better than your last month that that actually makes me wonder about this and I've seen this with lots of course creators so you say Okay lots of people like Amy Porterfield Mari forleo and all these people have huge social reputation visibility social proof everything you want so I assume when they do run a webinar and they do sell whether it's evergreen

or live the friction and the resistance of the viewer is a lot less than someone new coming through them to like with a paid ad or something like that and they see them on Facebook or on Instagram they click it's the first time maybe they're actually interacting with that um with that Creator do you have any word of advice for someone who's thinking about doing this and you don't have the huge visibility of someone like Amy Porterfield yeah okay so I think I think in that situation CU I I think the common advice I hear

is like you got to live launch you got to live launch x amount of times before you go on demand but actually um I'm going to be a bit controversial here and I think when you're a newer course creator it's actually really handy to go on demand because when Amy portfield does a live webinar like everyone shows up like all the like course marketing experts show up as well um it's it's this big event whereas for most people like most of the time I don't when I've signed up for a live webinar like I I

forget something else comes up and that's the experience for a lot of the people I speak to as well um so by by going live by having that set date you're kind of adding actually a bit of friction whereas if it's under why and people can watch it straight away they're actually going to engage with you and I mean with the webinars they're actually seeing you they're building that no you're you're building that no like and Trust Factor um when people can see your face yeah they're going to you're no longer just a stranger online

and they can get more of a filth for you what you're about um so what was the original question again I've got off on a tent mon so sorry so what can I do as a course Creer who doesn't have the visibility and the reputation of someone like Amy Porterfield what can I do in that webinar to reduce friction and to get the viewer to click and eventually enroll in my course okay there we go yeah so show up and video and be yourself and then testimonials you do need social proof If you don't have

loaves do a beta test just get that social proof reduce that friction um and get people into your webinar other ways like speak on podcasts and write blog posts for other people's audiences because then you it doesn't matter if you don't have that trust yet you're kind of borrowing someone the trust that someone else has built um and again that's why another reason for going Evergreen because you someone could listen to your podcast episode from two years ago and enroll in your webinar from it and then convert because they liked what you said in the

episode which is actually how I sell most of my own courses so how like should I be upfront about my webinar being Evergreen like in demand or should I promote it as like life yeah definitely be up front about on demand so this is one of my my big pet peeves as anyone who follows me on LinkedIn will know is when people pretend that their webinar is live just think what a bad way to start a relationship with someone like when someone joined your world and they're about to get sales emails from you potentially buy

from you be in your course learn from you why start that relationship with a lie it it makes no sense to me so 100% be up front and people appreciate it I mean I yeah I ran a poll on LinkedIn this week and I think we maybe 60 responses and of those 80% of people said I prefer to watch webinars On Demand we're in this instant gratification era where we don't wait till the weekend for to watch films when they're showing at 9:00 we've got Netflix we've got Amazon Prime so I think this is this

is the way that people like to consume so yeah there's no need to pretend it's live you don't need to add that extra kind of urgency that extra pressure just be upfront about it you're giving them what they want when they want it and your watch rate should be higher I think e web and I did a case study it was something like 65% shot rates for under demand 40% for life so yeah yeah there's no need to start that relationship with a lie and I I very strongly recommend against it this is good because

I think there's a lot of false beliefs about what you have to do when you're using a webinar to sell your course and one of them it's like this you have to present it as live because if it's live then the people are going to show up for the opportunity to you know engage live with you and you have the chat tactic so hey drop a yes in the chat if you agree to this you know and then you see the recorded chat comments it kind of creates the idea that well I can engage with

this yeah and I think there are other ways to build that engagement into the Evergreen webinar funnel and I think a big one is just really knowing your audience like collecting all that voice of customers so when you're speaking to them on this onir webinar they actually feel like you are sat at a bar with them sat across on them sharing this CU you're speaking their language or referencing the shows that they watch you're talking about exactly like what's going on in their life and they they they feel like it's this onetoone conversation they forget

that it's on demand well um to an extent and then building opportunities for them to engage actually in your Evergreen webinar F know I think especially like before you get to $110,000 a month in core sales having instead of just you know the generic FAQ email actually having a Q&A session where you say look I'm I'm around to answer your questions hit me up with them I'm giving your audience the opportunity to engage with you so yeah they're still they're still getting that that chance they're still getting access to you um it's just you don't

have to constantly burn yourself out by going live so when would someone see that Evergreen webinar is like I'm I'm a new lead and I go to your website I or I see that ad and I click and I see it that's for New Leads how about people who are on the list for some time and they haven't bought that specific course do you have a recommended you know time frame yeah this is a good question so I would say give it at least 6 months before you reinvite them to the webinar final my reason

being I mean I'm signed up to there's a specific course creator that does every webinars and I just get the exact same emails like from her every three months and I'm like not this again um so I would just say like every six months reinvite them and just switch up your subject line switch up the gifts in your emails optimize it like do do a seasonal update you know if you if you launch um say launched but um it started promoting your every webinar in January and you've got language like you know snuggle up with

a cup of cocoa and watch this webinar switch that out in summer so you're saying you know grab an iced cold cucha or whatever people are drinking in summer um because then it it's showing your audience as well that it's up to date because even though Evergreen is awesome you don't want it to feel stale so you want them to know it's on demand it's every you don't want them to feel like okay this is content from two years ago therefore the course is going to be from two two years ago and especially if it's

a marketing course it was for Entre entrepreneurs then that's critical because no wants to know Instagram tactics from like 2022 um so yes to luk backround your question gosh I am going off on tangents today um yeah every six months reinvite them in and just do a refresh of your final doesn't need to be a lengthy one just you know spending afternoon just going in tweaking those making those seasonal changes and then also be re-engage your audience within those six months so one thing I I talk about in my book is having a ninew email

where every 30 days you basically just ask use the N my I can't remember who coined the tactic but it's pretty popular but just saying like are you still interested in X or are you still struggling with this just to get that conversation going um because they that's an opportunity then to to potentially just like have a candy conversation and get them back giv them the opportunity again go your course yeah uh I I've tested that ninew uh email uh what we do is usually a longer series of re-engagement emails so we have like four

um for some of our clients we do it twice a year like a full re-engagement campaign we definitely do one like one month or two months before Black Friday cuz that's like the biggest time of the year to well you want to make sure that you actually land in the inbox rather than the spam um and we have those four emails and then uh nurture sequence that goes to the people who re-engaged from those emails so another four emails and then uh delay until they actually see some cells sequence or whatever so like every six

months how do you feel about using webinars in like at the end of a welcome sequence I felt great about it I mean I I think if you've got a course for less than 1,500 just run your ads run lead straight to the webinar and your welcome sequence is then a sales sequence I mean you you would have seen this like the the open rates for your welcome sequence are going to be higher than anything else you'll see at any other point because people are neut your world they're curious you've just given them something it's

a seducible moment so take advantage of that and sell um not everything not everyone needs a big a big warmup especially if it is like a $500 course and if you do have other lead magnets and bringing people into your world just get get people into your your webinar sequence invite them um don't delay giving them the opportunity to buy from you interesting um have you noticed any Affinity by industry like is there a specific kind of niche in the online course industry that prefers to consume webinars and then buy through those webinars no I

haven't I so I I know that entrepreneurs watch webinars because I'm surrounded by them and we all do but I mean I think once you get to a certain level people get are a little bit more protective of their time perhaps so that's it has to be a good webinar um but I've also I've been reading the I can't remember the exact stat I don't want to get it wrong I think it was like 35% or something like that or people would actually rather watch a webinar about a hobby um which really surprised me because

I I tend to work with course creators that teach people how to make money um because it makes sense right you're investing in a course you're gonna to to see Roi from it but actually yeah people people are enrolling in all sorts people signing up for all kinds of webinars do you have any data or like maybe a case study from one of these um webinar projects you've been working on because I'm really curious to kind of hear about you know size of an email list uh like how big my should my email list or

if I'm investing in ads what should I expect in terms of how many people land on that page and then how many people register because I think there are so many misconceptions about when I am ready to use a webinar as a sales strategy like do I have to have I know 1 million people on YouTube do I have to invest this amount of money and have leads coming from ads what's what's the there yeah no it's never it's never too early to have a webinar I mean it's it's your the second best thing after

actually having a onetoone conversation with someone like actually letting people see you and get that feel for you um so case studies I mean so the the client you mentioned at the beginning so we did it was a brand new product um and we launched at $800 we had a $600,000 launch when they had less than 10,000 people on the email list so that was awesome that was with the webinar um and then I straight away took it Evergreen so he launched literally once took at Evergreen and they make 50 to $770,000 a month now

we put the price up to 1,200 um they're run yes they are running ads because traffic needs to come from somewhere but at one point it was $27 per $1,400 purchase and we were getting a crazy like row ass and then my my webinar I I didn't I didn't live launch I just was like okay I'm just going to try it on demand um and I was seeing 6% conversion rates like from pretty early on and this is the first time like putting putting that course out there and I experimented with running ads um broke

even the first month and paused them for a bit and now I'm looking at how to bring down my cost for League I know if I can just bring it down by 50% or 25% then everything I make on top of that is going to be profit plus I'm growing my email list yeah that's a very good strategy to grow an email list and like be profitable from an ad funnel yeah so we talked about results what are some of the tactics you use to you know move people from hey I'm teaching you something or

I'm sharing something insightful about what you're currently struggling with to transitioning into well here's the next step and here's the offer and a lot of people they use fomo and and fear-mongering to move that person from like just watching to engaging so I'm curious to hear about some of your tactics because a lots of course creators they're very uncomfortable whenever it comes to pitching Their audience and you're working primarily with people who are teaching people how to make money so they are a lot more comfortable with that but with the course creators we've worked like

um language uh course creators um dog training personal development the audiences are very um very sensitive to a self speech so I really I'm curious to hear what are some of the tactics you're using sure I mean yeah I feel like tactics is almost the wrong word cuz when I had tactics I think I think like saly um so yeah I think rather than f it's it's the joy of taking that action um and you know they're not they're not buying something that you're kind of pushing them into set into buying it's more your your

communicating the value of what you've got and you're you're saying like hey look you you you struggle with this or or you want this you told me that when you signed up for your webinar and because of that I created this for people like you and look at all these people that are doing that and getting great results and this is the love and the care that I put into this program to make sure that you actually are are going to finish it and you are going to get the results um so yeah not really

a tactic just you know respecting the fact that you put you did you put you poured your heart and soul into creating this course and letting people know that communicating that to them like not doing it in Injustice by just glossing over it and just remembering yeah you you created this to to help people and they can't you can't help them if they if they don't know how awesome it is and how it's going to help them so instead of blasting urgency like on every slide and the last I don't know 30 minutes of a

webinar saying yeah act now or miss out on thousands of dollars in bonuses and your massive discount um we should focus more on like act now because this is what it would mean for your future is how it's going to transform so lot more future pacing rather than you know well your present day sucks yeah let's not make it suck anymore and just grab all this stuff and tomorrow you'll feel better because you have all this stuff yeah exactly like just having a bit of like empathy and I guess respect for for your audience and

you know just being like look this is where you are like that's cool well done you've done this this and this and you know those are the things that actually make you an awesome fit for the program anyway um I think right R Schwarz used the term exclusive empowerment which I love so exclusively empowering people to take action because because of the things that they've already done um and then but then yeah just being like you're still struggling with this like that's okay it's not a big deal like you're not trying to make them feel

rubbish about it um and then just connecting the dots for them like his how it's going to help you and yeah here here's what life could look like six months from now um you know it doesn't need to be you know 6 months from now your entire business is going to fall apart and be terrible or you're going to like be a millionaire cuz you got my program just being like do you know do you want to do you want to keep struggling with this and or like you know it's just giving them the choice

autonomy and you can only really give people that autonomy if you're like if they really understand what you're offering because people need to understand in order to make a choice so this also goes back to that whole idea of you need testimonials you need that social proof to make sure that you know first of all the outcome you're promising is something that is achievable for your audience and it's actually achievable with what you're teaching and I assume there's a lot of using the testimonials throughout the last part of the webinar as well yeah yeah so

every time you make a claim you want to back it up with some kind of proof so if you're saying I can help you land five podcasts like guest slots or whatever then have someone who's actually done that otherwise yeah people people are cynical people are going to assume assume that the worst rather than the best I think these days how long would you say um the self speech should be to not annoy people even if it's really good right cuz at some point you just like after I know one hour of peaching and testimonials

and whatever answering uh objections eventually it's going to get annoying so is there like a sweet spot for how long that sales pitch should be so I am a fan of a longer sales pitch um I for an hour webinar I would say spend 20 minutes teaching um 20 minutes sorry pitching I mean you if you if you've truly delivered value which should really be your goal you shouldn't be gatekeeping thinking oh I don't want to give too much away like you know blow their socks off give give them value then they are going to

stick around they they're they're going to reciprocate that um and I think while you're while you're showing your modules and your bonuses you you can still be coaching them um talking about how this is going to help them why it's important um so they're still continuing to get that value and yeah I just think people worry so much about Annoying Their audience that they don't give their offer enough time and I think going back to original question that's also one of the big mistakes that course creators make this was an awesome episode Abby I'm so

happy we're doing this is there any last word of advice um you'd like to share with creators who are already selling with webinars or thinking about it yeah I just say like you know you're doing awesome um just don't don't forget that like good for you you've created something or you've committed to creating something um to help people and that's you know I think we can get so caught up in benchmarks and what everyone else is doing we don't take enough time to actually be like yeah no we we did a good thing and yeah

just again like be be willing to test and optimize and rather than thinking of that as this huge like oh optimization just keep it really simple and like you know just like little fun experiments like oh I wonder which which optim page will perform better and then just make sure you're tracking you're tracking that and taking note of that because there's no point doing a test if you don't um if yeah if you don't then then do something with it or or then keep track of that so yeah two things you're doing great and second

you be willing to experiment be curious have fun with it and yeah just keep keep testing awesome so if people heard this episode or watched it on YouTube and want some more of your wisdom where should they go to find you or to I know consume some of your content yeah so I'm I'm active on LinkedIn I'm always happy to like have a little chat or if you drop me a message let me know what's going on um you can find me on Instagram as well I am I'm trying to go my Instagram um at

APD content and then yeah head to my website if you I've got a webinar on how to set up my day Evergreen funnel so that you can build all the customer feedback into it and improve your conversions and I've also got a book which you can grab on Amazon day when Evergreen by Abby prast so any of those places this is great thank you Abby for joining our podcast and for sharing some of your Insight and to the person who has watched this episode or has listened to this interview if you found it useful and

want to get future episodes then please subscribe cribe wherever you listened