Tips, Stats, & Lessons from my first webinar…!
So. WHEW! As you may know, I hosted my first webinar this week. And you know what? I could have been all along, bombed it with tech difficulties, or seen ZERO sign-ups.
None of my worst fears were real. It turned out well enough, even if I did learn some lessons along the way.
LET’S START WITH GRATITUDE!
Completing my first webinar means that I know now the things I want to do differently for the next one. And, it’s done. How about one more “WHEW”?! haha! Seriously tho. At the end, I was giddy but exhausted that it was done.
WEBINAR TOPIC
✦ Triple Your SOUL Business, Even While Working Part-Time Hours
MY GOALS
Sell spots in my ongoing mastermind, the Soul Business Circle
Grow my email list
Share something of value, even for those who don’t join the Circle
See what worked well + I could do better for next time
MY ATTITUDE GOING IN - THIS WAS SO HELPFUL
In pretty much every program I offer on food, wellness, and business, I present the idea of being the “detective not the judge”. Being here to learn, means that there is no “wrong”.
I committed to be the detective attitude going in, and it was a lifesaver. Every challenge, I was there taking notes rather than shaming myself.
TOOLS/SOFTWARE + RELATED BUSINESS EXPENSES:
✦ TickCounter.com for countdown until time of webinar (FREE)
✦ MailChimp for email confirmation (FREE for up to 2,000 subscribers)
✦ PayPal for payment processing ($30/month for the pro plan and about 3% for credit card fees)
✦ Teachable to host the Soul Business Vault and Soul Business Circle ($39/month for the basic plan, although there are also options for a free plan and a $99/month plan that could work for what I’m doing…!)
✦ Squarespace for the opt-in page, webinar details, and thank-you page ($31.88/month, which I already pay for my main website at http://evaraposa.com)
✦ Zoom to host the webinar ($15.93/month, and I already use this with client Q&A sessions.)
✦ MindMeister used for the MindMap I created to share the ideas. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH! ($3.99/month, which is paid 2x/year. FYI - the cost varies by country + it’s definitely cheaper in Brazil than in the USA!)
TOTAL RELATED MONTHLY BUSINESS EXPENSES: $125.80
(Note: this includes what I pay already that was helpful for the webinar but not the webinar-specific extra costs.)
WEBINAR-SPECIFIC EXTRA COSTS: $48.47
✦ GoDaddy vanity domain for http://tripleyoursoulbusiness.com - ($8.47/year)
✦ $40 on two Facebook boosts, which didn’t seem to result in sign-ups from what I can tell in the stats (so interesting…!)
HOW I PROMOTED IT
✦ By email to existing subscribers interested in business
✦ Facebook event + inviting almost 500 people I know who I genuinely thought would be interested
✦ 2 posts on my Facebook business page
✦ I wouldn’t call this promotion because it wasn’t intended as “promotion”, but I did share about the webinar in two business groups I’m in (celebrating it + asking for feedback). I’m mentioning it here because a few people signed up as a direct result, which was a fun surprise. :-)
✦ And that was mostly it… [Note: In the “what I’ll do differently next time” section, I’ll share what will be different for the next time!!]
OVERALL STATS (SO FAR)
✦ My list size went from 23 to 122(!)
——> NOTE: I have two very different lists right now because I started a new business last month. One has thousands of subscribers but is focused on raw foods and building a wellness-based business. The other list is the new one and totally separate (Soul Business Weekly); that was the one at 23 subscribers. Mind you, with only 23 subscribers I managed to have a waiting list for 1-on-1 client work(!) in my new business. This is the power of focus on what will BUILD your business! But I know that it’s simply not sustainable to grow LONG-TERM without an engaged email list.
✦ About 11 people were on live (less than I expected; my fault because I missed sending reminder emails!!), and not all of those stayed for the whole time
✦ 1 person signed up directly on the webinar (someone I particularly hoped would sign up, so that was special and exciting!)
✦ As of today (2 days after the webinar) we have 7 total Circle members, but I know that not all of them are directly a result of the webinar.
✦ I haven’t sent a single follow-up email, so I’m sure there will be more folks signed up in the next couple days!!
MY BIGGEST CHALLENGES
✦ I prefer to work part-time hours, and I already have client work and things outside of this webinar, so it was a lot to do every single thing in a week… from idea to build to promotion to planning to hosting to follow-up.
✦ Challenge + Confession: I ended up getting extra child care to get it all done, and I’m pretty sure this was my first full-time work week in years (WHOAH!). If I had it to do over, I actually would have given myself 14 or 21 days rather than 7 days for the first webinar.
✦ I dropped the ball on follow-up and have been slow to share the replay.
✦ I didn’t plan ahead to have the “tomorrow’s the day!”, “we start in an hour” AND “starting now!” emails sending out. This would have increased the number of people on live, I’m sure!
