These days, webinars are so widely used that you can pretty much pair them up with, well, anything.
Really -- from teaching and selling to surveying and engaging.
While your numerous webinar options may leave you confused, there’s one clear match-up that works wonders for your bottom line:
Your digital products and webinars go together like peanut butter and jelly.
If you’re wondering how to best sell your digital products, we bring you five surefire ways to sell them with webinars.
Since you already have too many choices when it comes to deciding how to best use webinars, let’s cut straight to the chase.
5 ways to sell your digital product with a webinar
#1. Use your webinar as a lead magnet
Our first tip today for selling your digital product with a webinar is to treat your webinar as a lead magnet to build a list of leads.
20-40% of webinar attendees become qualified leads. Your webinar is a prime opportunity for converting registrants into customers.
Once you have your registrants’ contact info, you can sell an array of digital products to your webinar audience.
The key is to make sure your webinar is related to your paid product so that it attracts the right audience. Then, you can send emails or automated campaigns to webinar participants (and tell them about related products they might like!) after the webinar is finished.
For instance, let’s say you offer two webinars on the topic of Facebook advertising, one for beginners and one for more advanced advertisers.
You can segment your beginner webinar attendees into one group and the advanced attendees into another and sell them different digital products related to their expertise level.
The point is to use your webinar to attract and grow an audience, of which you can later sell relevant digital products.
Once you have your leads (a.k.a., your audience’s emails), it’s time to sell to them in a series of sales emails, our next tip today.
#2. Send your webinar attendees a sequence of follow-up sales emails
A reliable way to sell your digital products is to send a series of sales emails to your webinar attendees offering your digital products again.
We recommend two major ways to do this right, which are getting your subject line right and using personalization in your messaging.
Firstly, as for your subject line, there’s a lot riding on it with 35% of recipients deciding whether or not to open your email based on the subject alone.
When writing your subject lines, follow best email subject line formulas, like:
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Ask an intriguing question
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Teach through a “how-to”
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Use scarcity and a sense of urgency
If you’re wondering how long your subject line should be, the average is about 44 characters.
I wouldn’t go more than 60 characters, though, since most email clients cut off your subject line beyond that.
Once you get your recipients to click your open-worth subject line, it’s time for personalization to shine.
Just like your subject, personalizing is also a pretty big deal.
So much so that 72% of consumers claim to only engage with personalized content. And on top of that, 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers.
So, try your best to tailor your message as closely as possible to your audience’s awareness level.
For instance, when your webinar attendees think about their related problem, they have different awareness levels around solving it, ranging across these five stages of awareness:
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Really unaware
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Problem-aware
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Solution-aware
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Product-aware
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Most aware
It’s hugely important to address your audience’s awareness level and tailor your email messaging to fit their position. Otherwise, you risk selling a digital product to someone who has no idea they need it, let alone want it.
That being said, you can use sales email templates as a baseline for your email content and then personalize your copy. If you’re looking for some templates to start with, check out these eight sales email templates.
The gist of it is to sell relevant digital products to your webinar registrants using a series of follow-up sales emails that have an open-worthy subject and lots of personalization.
Waiting for a sale transaction in follow-up emails isn’t your only option, though. You can make sales during your webinar. Read on for the juicy details.
#3. Sell your digital product during your (non-salesy) webinar
A third way to sell your digital products through webinars is to offer your digital products during the webinar presentation itself.
This is typically offered at the end after you’ve unloaded a lot of value onto your attendees.
Why all the value?
To position yourself as a leading expert in your field and build rapport and trust among your audience.
If you’re wondering how vital credibility and trust are to your audience, the answer is very -- especially when it comes to winning that sale.
In fact, 67% of Edelman Trust Barometer respondents agree that without trust in a brand, they won’t purchase from it.
To make sure you’re building trust and credibility among your audience to earn your sales, the logic runs a little backward.
Here’s what I mean: rather than focusing on selling your digital product, the bulk of your webinar focus should be on providing your attendees with value.
More specifically, help them solve one of their biggest problems and achieve a desired result during your webinar.
After all, that should be the point of offering any of your digital products for sale (not to mention, the point of your business in general).
The philosophy behind this goes something like, “If I’m receiving this much value for free, I can only imagine how good the paid stuff must be.”
That’s ideally what your attendees will think after watching your webinar, anyway.
#4. Leverage a Q&A session in your webinar
Another effective way to sell your digital products using a webinar is to include a Q&A session at the end of your webinar.
Why include a Q&A in your webinar?
Not only do 92% of attendees want a Q&A session at the end of the webinar, but it’s also an opportune time to overcome any objections to purchasing your digital product.
In other words, it’s a chance for you to get rid of any hang-ups that your attendees might have by answering their questions and clearing out any hesitations.
Which is a big deal considering your success rate is 64% when you understand and overcome objections.
So, it’s worth leaving enough time at the end of your webinar to answer all of your attendees’ questions.
When you do this, go beyond simply answering your audience’s questions. Keep in mind the top objections that you come across when selling your digital products and work those angles and explanations into your answers.
It’s also worth noting that planning enough time for a Q&A after your presentation, without spilling over your allotted webinar time, is vital.
The reason is one of the biggest webinar mistakes to avoid is not respecting your audience’s time. If you want to build credibility, start and stop your webinar on time (including your Q&A), so your attendees can go about their day.
To refrain from disrespecting your audience’s time -- and killing your credibility -- rehearse your presentation enough times, so you know how long it is. Then add on time for the Q&A session.
If you’re wondering how long your webinar should be, shoot for somewhere between 45 and 60 minutes. BrightTALK, a webinar platform used by big names in marketing, records an average webinar length of 39 minutes.
Regardless of how long your webinar ends up being, the main takeaway is to reserve a Q&A session at the end, as a space for handling sales objections by answering your audience’s questions.
On the topic of overcoming objections, there’s one surefire way to remove friction from purchasing your digital product -- and that’s a good success story.
#5. Feature success stories in your webinar
Our final tip today for selling your digital products with webinars is to highlight an all-star customer in your webinar who’s achieved the desired result your audience wants.
Put another way, include impressive success stories as testimonials.
Testimonials are an ideal way to show off the results that your digital product delivers without you having to brag about -- or make a hard sale for -- your product. Just let your success story do the selling for you.
7 webinar mistakes to avoid
Now that we've covered what you should do during your webinar, let's take a quick look at 7 webinar mistakes to avoid. Stay away from these to keep your webinar running smoothly.
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Your webinar isn’t interactive: A big mistake presenters make is not making their webinar experience interactive enough, running the risk of deserted webinars and sales. You can capitalize on making your attendees’ experience as engaging as possible with live chat and Q&A sessions.
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Your webinar is too salesy: If you think you’re being too pushy with your sales pitch, it’s likely your attendees will think so as well. You can avoid this mistake by focusing on providing educational, valuable information. And if you can make your tips actionable, even better. Good business is about solving your audience’s problems, so make it a priority instead of spending too much time pitching your product or service.
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You don’t have a well-designed presentation: Keep copy brief on your slides and use a lot of images, and above all, avoid using your slidedeck as a teleprompter. To make an even greater impact, lean on storytelling throughout your webinar.
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Your webinar is scheduled at the wrong time: If you're hosting a series of webinars, schedule them at the same time each week, preferably on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. As for the best time to present, WebinarNinja recommends hosting your webinar between 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in your audience’s primary time zone to capture the most attendees. (Every audience is different, so experiment to see what works best for yours)
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You didn’t respect your audience’s time: Practice your webinar so you know exactly how long your presentation lasts and how much time you have for a closing Q&A section (which you’ve learned is a must-have). This will help you avoid starting and ending late so your attendees can go about their day.
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You didn’t promote your webinar enough: Another mistake presenters make is they don’t get the word out about their webinar enough, which leads to less than desirable registration and attendee results. It’s recommended you promote your webinar as early as four weeks leading up to your presentation -- email your list, blog about your webinar, share on social media, mention it on your website, just make sure you're telling people!
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You didn’t give your audience a gift: Similar to a lead magnet, offering your attendees a free gift is especially useful for those who are new to your brand. It gives newbies a chance to get acquainted with your business and test out the quality of your product or service. Whether a free educational ebook, cheat sheet, template, or another digital download, many webinar hosts have caught on to this benefit of offering a gift to their attendees.
Leverage webinars to sell your digital products and grow your business
With countless options for using webinars in your business, we help you sift through the noise by bringing you five proven ways to use webinars to sell your digital products.
To sum it up for you:
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#1. Use a webinar as a lead magnet, where you attract an audience that you can later sell related digital products to.
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#2. Sell relevant digital products to your webinar attendees and registrants in follow-up sales emails. Leverage personalization and great subject lines in your campaigns.
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#3. Sell a relevant digital product to your live webinar attendees during your presentation by focusing on providing value rather than selling.
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#4. Use a Q&A session at the end of your live webinars as a way to overcome sales objections for purchasing your digital product.
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#5. Include authentic success stories in your webinar presentations as a testimony to the results your digital product delivers.
Happy webinar selling.
(If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool for selling your digital products and running great webinars, we’d love to have you at Podia. You can sell unlimited webinars, digital products, and courses starting at just $33/month. Get started today with a free 30-day trial.)
