How Eric and Neil Run Webinars - Choosing Topics, Promotional Tactics, and Follow-Up Strategies

0:00So let's start all the way with how we promote to platforms we use to get people on the webinar to how we follow up. um let's break it down so do you want to start with how you promote your webinars yeah i'll start first and i'll give a caveat um neil has a couple people a couple million i think two million people on your email list three million okay yeah so i had you start first because my way is just the email was exactly neil's now that might seem easier oh it's so easy for neil but like he had to build that from zero right so let's not take that away um and the way neil did that i'll let neil explain that but um for us because we don't have a mega email list like that.

0:38We do rely pretty heavily on our email list, which is fine. Let's say it has, you know, I don't know, 30, 40 ,000 people on it or something like that. But we do, I leverage the relationships I have. So for example, if I do a webinar with Adam Robinson from our B2B, I know the webinar we did brought 500 people on it, like concurrent attendees. So that's pretty good, right? And it's a B2B audience. And so we'll try to find the right people that fit our audience, which is mostly B2B or people that are interested in SEO or people that are interested in like a tool like Carrot, for example. So first and foremost, we're going to do a lot of outreach to these people and try to do at least two of these per month, right?

1:15So biweekly. And then they promoted to their email list. We promoted to ours. And then the way, and then I'll turn it over to you in a second, but the way we promoted to our email list is we send an email the week before the webinar. And then we send an email the day before. And then the day of we send, I think we send it two hours before an hour before and starting now. So there's basically five emails there that go out, because people are busy, people lose track really quickly. And then we try to text them to where it's applicable. So yes, the texting really does help. So similar to get people onto the list.

1:54What we do is we create content, drive people to ebooks, landing pages, quizzes, where you're collecting emails. From there, you can end up using those to blast out. You can do cross promotions like Eric's saying, like joint webinars. That helps to getting people on the actual webinar. Another strategy that we do is every time we're going to do a webinar, we push it out a few weeks in advance on our social platforms to letting people know that, hey, we're hosting a webinar. Click here to sign up. You can also create videos on, let's say, Instagram or any of these social channels promoting your webinar.

2:30Like if I'm doing one on SEO is dead, I'm just making it up. And I'm like, SEO is dying. You know, Google's losing. Look at their market share over time, but they're still getting videos or being still getting searches on a daily basis. There are three things to change. And I'm actually covering a webinar that's discussing these three things. If you want to join the webinar, just leave a comment with join. and then through tools like ManyChat, I can send them a link through direct message on how they can register for it. So those are the channels that we use to get people to a webinar. We've tried ads as well.

3:05It becomes expensive and we try to avoid that, but the other channels work out quite nicely. I thought you still spend on the ads though. Not ads for webinars. Got it. Should I get a chicken soup or a tortilla soup? chicken noodle soup or chicken soup? It's just a regular chicken soup. I would go for the chicken soup because you have gluten allergy, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, great. So I'm just, as we're talking about this, I'm ordering food, guys. So, okay. Now we should talk about, in general, how we come up with topics for webinars. You guys do a good job of this. And the other thing I'll call out to is, not only do you run the webinar live, but you keep it evergreen too, correct?

3:51Uh-huh. How do you guys come up with topics for webinars? Yeah. So that's the first question. How do you come up with topics for webinars? Oh, you're turning it back on me? Yeah, I was asking you. Oh, the way we come up with topics from webinars is we just run polls. So we go on social media. We run polls. If you don't have tons of social followers, you can do surveys on your website, you know, like SurveyMonkey or WooFarm, not WooFarm, SurveyMonkey, Hotjar, any of them, and just run a survey to find out what topics people are interested in. we usually pick the ones with the most amount of votes.

4:24Yep. Yeah. So on our end, we send an email survey and that's the best way we do it. And if you can, sometimes you can survey people on the call as well to see what they're interested in. That works too, just depending on how many people you have coming. The other thing we do to cheat is we also look at what other people are doing in the B2B space. Sometimes we'll even look at what Neil's webinars are running and we just work off of that. And then we try to modify it that way, right? So you don't necessarily have to try to come up with all the ideas from scratch yourself. And so I'll give a little bonus here.

4:56When we think about our YouTube ideas, we'll use a view stats, for example. We'll look at outliers that perform well, and then we'll come up with ideas that way. We'll find thumbnails that we like. We'll save them into a collection. And even when I come up with social ideas, like what I want to post, I'll look for formats that I like, and then I'll save it into a bookmarks folder. And that's how we come up with ideas. But you draw inspiration from different places, and then the key is you just keep iterating off of that. Yes. Uh, and then what's next, uh, webinar platforms. I think we both use Restream, right?

5:25Yeah, we use, yeah, we use Restream, but I got that from you. And then why do you like Restream so much? Uh, one, it can, I can go live on all my social platforms at the same time on Restream. So that's really useful. They also have the feature in there where you can create QR codes and people, you know, can just scan the QR code during a webinar and you can drive them to the landing page and collect a lead from it. so we'll announce that we're like hey if you want to work with us scan the qr code and it tracks the qr code and how many people are scanning them and it displays a message of how many people have scanned them which is really cool because it creates a little uh counter and that encourages more people to actually bust out their phone and use or scan the qr code um the other thing that we like about restream and this is a new feature they'll take your webinar and they can create short form clips with it i don't know if you saw that feature it was more recent do you but do you actually do that no i just i don't find them that good yeah yes that's a problem i have too but for i think a lot of people who don't do any content i think something's better than nothing yeah you and i spend a lot of money on content production versus what most people are willing to spend well let's also talk about the fact that the type of content that at least performs well for me and I think this is the same for you too.

6:45When it comes to short form or long form video, especially short form is when we have stories or when we have specific data to share. When we don't tell a story, if we're just clipping from our podcast or even this webinar that we're doing, it's hard for people to pick up because they're just jumping into a conversation. There's no story. There's no background. So it's easy for them to just bounce away. So just keep that in mind if you're going to do that. Yes, but Eric and I, we spend a lot of time brainstorming, scripting, content editing, filming, and that's what helps us create decent quality content and helps us get the views, engagement, and brand awareness.

7:23Funny enough, we have one of Eric's old colleagues coming back and working with us again to help us film content, Noah, which I'm actually really happy about. Noah has a really good personality. Yeah. And by the way, see, this is a good, this is a good lesson for you all. Neil and I, we have people that we've worked with for a very, very long time. Noah, I've worked with for seven, eight years or so. And so my thing, and I think you're probably the same way, Neil, once you're in with me, you're in, I'm going to do whatever I can to help you. but if you don't like someone said this the other day i don't know if i told you this but um basically i'm a 10 out of 10 empathy if if you've provided value in some way shape or form i'm a one out of 10 empathy if all you've done is is not add value and take um so i'm sure you're the same way too yeah like eric and i were on the phone the other day and we have a mutual friend named uh aj i've been using aj for years for my social media content eric mentioned how they're not as good and he's being neutral on this like just general viewpoint and i've already told aj this months ago uh they're not as good as the new people i'm using for editing i totally agree with eric i even mentioned this to aj i don't think aj will get there in editing quality he just won't i've tried multiple times over the years to get him to where i need him he's just not going to i haven't fired aj why because he makes my life convenient from recording showing up on time I'm bringing teleprompters when I need and just things flow without me wasting time.

8:54Like the last time I was in studio, I came, it was perfectly set up. I just go and record. And even with the scripts, they're just like, Oh, yeah, we moved all these filler lines, it'll just take your time. We know you're impatient, and it's not necessary. And I was like, great, they just know me. So we tend to keep them. Noah's been really loyal. Once Eric didn't need him. Yes, you know, you let him go over time, but you still kept giving him business and we're going back to him and continue using him. His personality gels really well with you and I versus the last solution we use, the person did not have the personality that Noah did.

9:30Yeah, they're just very different people. And then, you know, obviously, we we love we love both people that we worked with. But it's also a different perspective, too. Because when I told Noah, I said, Hey, I'm like, so we're going to, how does this price sound? He's like, dude, that price to hang out with you and Neil, like, hell yeah. I was like, that's what I need, right? That's what we're talking about. And so he looks at it from, we're going to get to hang out and he's going to get to learn again. And so, you know, it's cool. Anything else on the webinar piece before we wrap it? Well, one last thing, and this is a business lesson.

10:02This isn't even on the webinar piece, but to stick with the same topic. So Eric and I had someone who'd record all our podcasts. they came back to us and said hey things are picking up for me we or things are picking up for me i have other clients who are paying me much more uh can you guys pay me my new price i can't keep digging for the old price and i don't know what eric and i were paying what were we paying before um we were at 500 per recording so we're spending at least two thousand dollars a month all right correct when you look at that that means twenty four thousand dollars a year for something that takes call it uh no more than 16 hours would you agree with that statement eric uh per month it wasn't even 16 hours yeah well hold on because each each recording session let's say it's it's 90 minutes plus he he plus it's another 30 minutes to get ready so yeah you can call each recording session too so eight hours hour so 2.5 okay times four 10 hours so the guy's pretty much making$200 an hour.

11:06And then he wanted to, what do you want to increase it to roughly double? Uh, 1250. So more than double. And Eric and I didn't do it. And I don't know if you recall, Eric, well, time will tell. I said right away after the guy tried to increase him, I'm like, he'll regret not getting the consistent$24 ,000 in income every single year. And I hope he does well, you know, overall. But if someone's paying you$200 an hour, and they're mentioning your name and trying to get you business, the key lesson here is don't get greedy. Sometimes you may not make as much per hour, but if something's consistent, it's better to have that than choppy clients that may pay you a little bit more per hour, every once in a while versus something that's just consistent and you can rely on.

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14:04And if he's truly getting that much inbound, I think he should take it. And Neil and I aren't saying he shouldn't take it. but I do think if I were him, I would have tried to figure out a way, some type of way to keep that going because it was consistent. It was easy for us, um, for both sides where you wouldn't just dump the thing completely. So either business must be like really amazing right now, which if it is good for him, um, but the economy is not that good. Yeah. And so I, that's what I would say, right? Like I respect the hustle. Um, but at the end of the day, when it comes to like working with two, not just content creators, but mostly business owners first, like you and me, um, I generally think we're pretty easy to work with.

14:40So yeah, but it is what it is. But I think we both respect him and his decision and we wish the best. We have no hard feelings and we love him to death. He's been great and we worked with him for many years and he's really been kind to us. So I love him and I wish him the best of success. I'm just more so disappointed that he didn't look at it from a business aspect because I believe he's actually gonna make less money from our perspective. you know you got to opt you got to be logical to and be think long term versus just short-sighted because you can be getting all these inquiries but when people are doing one-offs here and there that's not the same as consistent income the way i look at it too is let's say um if i get to you know if i get paid for this i get to hang out with um let's say you know two business people right um i might try to sneak in a question or two selfishly every single time for free coaching.

15:34That's how I look at it. And then coaching is like, Neil, you and I don't do coaching. But if I were paying for that coaching, it would cost maybe thousands of dollars to get those questions answered. That's how I look at it. I'm trying to figure out how else I can arbitrage or I might ask, hey, Neil, do you know this person? Hey, Eric, do you know this person? So there's multiple ways to play aside from just the money aspect. Dude, there was, speaking of coaching, my co-founder Mike is on this website where people can pay you for a call i don't know what it's called and yeah intro i'm pretty sure that's it and he's had a call with some agency i think six times now for a while and when he started with them they were generating around a million dollars and uh revenue um a year million million and changes less than two now they're at nine million bucks and it's not all him and he even admits that but coaching is very valuable the mistake that people take like the last person is recording our podcast with us they never ask you and i for questions or help on figuring out ways they can grow they just sat there and that's the key when eric and i do stuff seize the opportunity don't have an ego ask and it doesn't matter if someone's wealthier than you or has less money than you you can get advice from multiple people and a lot of different people have different perspectives that can help you grow.

16:56Yeah. To be fair, he did ask, he did ask me, um, cause sometimes I would come a little earlier. And then, so he would ask stuff. I think he was a little more hesitant to ask you. Um, I don't think he had any particular reason for that. Um, but he, he, he did try to ask. So that's what it is. There's a multiple angle. Should we close it on the webinar piece? And what else are we missing? The after webinar piece, uh, follow ups. Yeah. Follow up text message. although a lot of people opt out of that, emails and phone calls. And you gotta be consistent. What we find is a lot of people who join our webinars, they may not be ready right now, but they were on a few webinars and a year later they may hit us up and be like, hey, we're interested in working with you guys.

17:36Yeah, and by the way, that email piece is so huge. So if you can keep them on your list, a lot of people will just come out of the woodworks later. Sometimes people might be 90 % close to needing an agency and then all of a sudden needs change. but then six months later they need an agency and you're top of mind because you're always sending stuff and you're dropping them into webinars um so i think the agency game a lot of it is just staying top of mind um what we do after the webinar in addition to what neil said and i think you guys do this too is we'll send them the slides especially if i spoke somewhere we'll send them the slides afterwards say hey we spoke over here you might have missed the talk but if you want to talk about marketing you can just book a call with us over here and you know things will just you're kind of just shaking it to see what will fall out so yes on a random note how's the agency world going for you because we're almost done with two months now compared to last year i would say uh pipeline's pretty good um and so i don't i don't feel like the i feel i'm still cautiously optimistic about the economy that's what i'll say how about you yes uh we're seeing pipeline being much stronger than last year so for example if i just take us only january of last year we had one rfp january of this year we have four rfps february last year we had three uh no yeah was it three i think three what was it yeah february last year was three this year february we also had three um q1 of last year was a slow start we had six total we're already at seven total for you know being two minutes in so we're ahead of last year but again cautiously cautiously optimistic data is too early because there's ups and downs so someone's gonna be stronger this year versus last year and vice versa but we are seeing it still take companies a long time to decide if they're gonna actually sign a contract and close and they're still hesitant because there's just a lot of things that they don't know tariffs impact a lot of businesses no one knows what's happening with the tax things like bonus depreciation impact a lot of businesses rates impact businesses when they're borrowing right all these factors are up in the air which makes a lot of businesses hesitant yep yeah we'll see what happens i mean i'm hoping all this cutting you know it's not going to just all be doge but if we can cut you know a trillion or two trillion from the deficit um we're going to be good again because that means we can bring interest rates down that that's not the end all be all but at least interest rates are going to come down inflation is going to come down i think people will be more confident um but we need to get the you know at least we're speaking from the u.s we're trying to get things healthy again overall um and we'll see what happens so not trying to be political here but um you know cautiously optimistic that's where we're at cool all right so that is it for today guys please don't forget to rate review subscribe um and there will be no more agency owners association um we'll save that for another marketing school episode and uh that being said you know we'll have some other thing to throw your way in the near future.

20:33So catch you later.

21:01Thank you.