Being a successful consultant or freelancer requires finding a steady stream of clients. I’ve found that online marketing can be a powerful tool in your sales arsenal. In this article, I’m going to show you how to find clients online using webinars that you create.
The process of using webinars to find clients is deceptively simple. Many consultants who haven’t tried it worry that it will be overly time-consuming or require high-level tech skills. Nothing could be further from the truth. Keep reading to learn the simple 5-step strategy for how to find clients online for your business by using webinars.
Driving Leads, Driving Sales, or Driving Both?
The first question you need to answer is what strategy you’re going to employ for using webinars to drive paying clients to your business. There are three primary strategies you can use:
Using Webinars to Drive Leads
One way to use webinars to find clients online is by offering lots of free webinars on a topic related to your consulting practice. You then require prospects who want to attend the webinar to give you their e-mail address and sign-up for your e-mail newsletter.
Thus, your webinars become a lead magnet that help you grow your e-mail list. You then communicate regularly with your list, sending them valuable content along with frequent reminders about your consulting services. When you use webinars to drive leads, your online sales funnel looks like this:
How to find clients online: Drive traffic -> sign-up for webinar -> deliver webinar -> e-mail prospects
Using Webinars to Drive Sales
Another way to use webinars to find clients is by using your webinars to actually sell your consulting services. Thus, you would offer lots of free webinars on a topic related to your consulting practice, but only half of the webinar would be content, and the other half would be a sales pitch for your consulting work.
When you use webinars to directly drive sales, your online sales funnel looks like this:
How to find clients online: Drive traffic -> sign-up for webinar -> sales pitch on webinar -> sign new clients
Using Webinars to Do Both
The third way is combining the two, by using webinars to drive leads AND sales. This is my favorite method for how to find clients online.
Using this method, you offer a free webinar and drive traffic to an online sign-up form. When people sign-up, you require that they give you their e-mail address, which also signs them up for your e-mail newsletter. You then deliver the webinar using a very specific format called “The Perfect Webinar,” which I’m going to describe below. This type of webinar weaves your sales message directly into your content. Thus, you’ll sign clients up directly from your webinar.
Then, since you have all of the attendees’ e-mail addresses, you start sending follow-up e-mails… some that are sales messages, and some that are pure content. These e-mails (including your e-mail newsletter) will help you continue to sell consulting services long after the end of your webinar.
When you use this method, your online sales funnel looks like this:
How to find clients online: Drive traffic -> sign-up for webinar -> deliver webinar -> sign new clients -> continue to e-mail prospects
A Simple Strategy for How to Find Clients Online Using Webinars
As I mentioned above, when I think about how to find clients online, my preference is to build a sales funnel that helps add leads to my e-mail list while also directly selling my services to attendees. I’ve used this strategy very successfully, as have hundreds of other consultants across dozens of industries. It’s simple, and effective.
If you want to do the same, here’s my five-step strategy for how to find clients online via webinars:
#1: Drive Traffic to Your Opt-In Page
The first step is to drive traffic to your opt-in page. This is the page on your website (or on a landing page builder like ClickFunnels) where you will offer your webinar as a lead magnet in return for people’s e-mail addresses.
There are any number of ways to drive traffic to your opt-in page, including e-mailing out a note to your current e-mail list, posting on social media, going on other people’s podcasts, and paying for social media or search engine advertising. (To learn more about how to drive people to your website / opt-in page, read Traffic Secrets by Russell Brunson).
#2: Remind Your Leads to Attend
The second step for how to find clients online using webinars is to send out multiple e-mails reminding your leads to attend. Your goal is to have as many people as possible who signed up for the webinar watch it live… that way you will be able to answer any questions they may have, rather than having them watch the recording and then walk away with their questions unanswered.
In addition to sending out multiple reminder e-mails, you can also encourage people to attend live by offering an additional free gift (such as an e-book, a resource guide, or another recorded webinar) to people who attend live and stay until the end.
#3: Hold “The Perfect Webinar”
The next step is to actually hold your webinar using “The Perfect Webinar” format that I mentioned above. The basic format is that your webinar should make a bold promise… something like, “I’m going to show you how to double your real estate sales within the next 6 months.” You then break that bold promise down into 3 key secrets that help your attendees learn what needs to be done to achieve that goal… these should all be things that YOU can do for them, if they hire you as a consultant (but don’t mention that part yet).
Then you move into the sales pitch, where you lay out everything you can do for them… you’re bundling your consulting services up into a package, and showing customers the massive value you can offer them. You then reveal the price of the package, which is much lower than the actual value of the services they will be receiving. Then, you give them a way to place an order.
(Alternately, you can talk up your consulting services and show them the value you offer, and have the pitch be to get them to sign-up for a no-obligation call, rather than getting them to immediately purchase a consulting package).
The description above only scratches the surface of the Perfect Webinar formula. If you’d like to learn more about this successful sales format, click here to check out this video.
#4: Send Out a Replay
The fourth step for how to find clients online using webinars is to send out a replay of your webinar to everyone who signed-up. You should do this soon after the end of the event, so that people who missed it don’t forget that they signed-up. Don’t advertise that you’re going to send out a replay, because you want people to attend live… but do send one out so that you can reach as many people who registered as possible.
Make sure that the e-mail you send out with the replay includes links and buttons for people to purchase your consulting services and/or contact you.
#5: Stay in Touch via E-Mail
Finally, be sure to stay in touch with the e-mail list you built through this process. Remember that your e-mail list is one of the most valuable marketing tools you have. Regardless of whether someone purchased your consulting services or not, you should continue to cultivate them via e-mail by sending them high-quality content (along with additional offers from time to time).
Many consultants I know that use webinars to find clients offer their free webinars monthly or even weekly, and not only generate a steady stream of new clients, but also add hundreds of new prospects to their e-mail lists each month.
A Quick Note on Tools to Use for this Process
As you learn how to find clients online using webinars, you may be wondering which tech tools to use for your sales process. Here are the online tools I use in my own businesses:
AWeber: I use AWeber as my e-mail marketing platform to store my list and send out my e-mail newsletter.
ClickMeeting: I use ClickMeeting to host all of my webinars.
Vimeo: I use Vimeo to host my webinar recordings once my webinars are complete.
ClickFunnels: I use ClickFunnels to build my opt-in pages where I collect e-mail addresses in return for access to the webinar.
Use these tools… and the 5-step system above for how to find clients using webinars… to build a steady stream of new clients and leads for your consulting practice.
Please note that we are proud affiliates of some of the tools listed above. This means that we will earn a commission if you click on some of the links on this page. You pay nothing extra, the commission we earn comes at no cost to you. Fear not, we only recommend products and services that we use, know, and love.
Photo Credit: bruce mars on Unsplash
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