8 Fascinating Studies Every Entrepreneur Should Know

There’s one thing that every entrepreneur must understand to truly grow a successful business.

That one thing is human behavior.

Understanding human behavior will help you become more effective at marketing, sales, productivity, copywriting, and even product development.

And there’s no better way to develop an understanding of human behavior than through research.

Researchers have been conducting studies to understand why we behave the way we do for decades, which is great news for entrepreneurs. Research studies can help us understand our markets to better position and price our products, increase our sales, and communicate to consumers.

Here are eight studies every entrepreneur should know to become far more effective in your business.

1. The Illogical Reasoning Study

You know that saying “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it?”

It turns out that this isn’t just an over-used quote; it’s actually true.
A study done by Ellen Langer from Harvard University had subjects ask people lined up at a photocopier whether they could cut in front of them in a line to make their own copies.

That’s where the “how you say it” part comes in: the message with all three test groups was the same. The subject wanted to cut ahead of them.

However, in one group, the subject asked to cut ahead without a reason, simply asking if they could make copies by saying “may I use the Xerox machine?” They were only given permission to cut ahead in 60% of these cases.

In the second group, the subject said: “May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?” This was far more successful than the first group with 94% allowance.

The third group, however, also gave a “reason”, although the reason made no sense. They said, “may I use the Xerox machine, because I have to make copies?” Even though everybody standing in line also had to make copies, 93% of people let the researcher jump ahead.

This demonstrates that people are far more likely to follow through with a request if there seems to be a reason for the requester to make it – even if the reason makes no sense. This study proved that we have blind spots when somebody uses the word “because” to make a case for something they want us to do.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur, the results of this study will help you craft more effective sales copy, marketing content and messaging around your brand. Don’t underestimate the power of a simple word!

2. The Reciprocity Study

Over the past couple of years “content marketing” has become a buzzword.

That’s because content marketing works so well in today’s information era, where advertisements are being replaced with giving away valuable information for free.

But have you ever wondered why content marketing is so effective?

It’s because content marketing – or adding real value to people’s lives, even for free, through publishing audio, visual, video, or written content – activates our reciprocity gene.

As humans, we are strongly driven to reciprocate favors or gifts. This is demonstrated in Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Cialdini describes a study done by Phillip Kunz from Brigham Young University. Kunz sent out 600 handwritten Christmas cards to complete strangers to see what would happen, and over the next few weeks received over 200 back.

This is astonishing, considering Kunz was a stranger to the recipients of his cards; they were acting upon the societal norm of reciprocating when somebody gives us something – even somebody we don’t know giving us something as small as a Christmas card.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur, you may be wondering how this study will help you. But maybe you should be wondering how you can help your target market. After all, if you give them something, they’re likely to reciprocate – and sometimes, they’ll do so by buying from you.

3. The Mimicry Study

Have you ever heard the advice to use the exact words that your market uses in your sales copy?

That’s because when we hear words we use (or think), it resonates with us. If we can create sales messages in the language our target market uses, they assume we know the problem better than they do.

Jay Abraham said: “If you can define the problem better than your target customer, they will automatically assume you have the solution.”

A study done by Rick Van Baaren in the Netherlands demonstrates this in action. He had servers in a restaurant take two approaches to confirming an order.

Some servers would indicate that they’d heard the customer’s orders with a simple acknowledgement, and some would repeat the order in the customer’s exact words back to them. Those who mimicked the exact words of the customer saw a 20+% increase in those who tipped, from 52% to 78%.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur, you should be aware of this study because it will help you resonate with their target market. If you can use the exact words and phrasing that your market is thinking or using in your copy, the odds will be tipped in your favor.

4. The Mere Exposure Effect Study

As much as we prefer to think that we like new and novel things, the truth is we have a strong preference for the familiar.

Studies have shown that people look favorably upon something they’re familiar with. In one study, psychologist Robert Zajonc showed participants a character that appeared to be Chinese (but was actually just an arbitrary design). Those who were frequently shown specific characters reacted more positively to the character; the higher the frequency of the people seeing the same symbol, the more the person liked them.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

As an entrepreneur, the mere exposure effect study can help you with your marketing plan as it helps you understand the buying patterns of the market.

You may have heard that people need to see an advertisement on average seven times before buying; while this would depend on your industry and product, this study goes to show that once is not enough exposure for your market.

5. The Foot in the Door Study

Did you know that if you can get somebody to say “yes” to a small request, you have a far better chance of getting them to comply with a bigger request later on?

This is why sales funnels work.

Stanford researchers Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser prove this in a study done in the 1960s. They contacted housewives who were divided into groups. One group was contacted with a small request and then later contacted with a much larger request. The second group was contacted with just the large request.

The first group was 30% more likely than the second to say “yes” to the larger request, as they’d already complied with the smaller request.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

Many marketers believe that this is one way to program behavior of consumers to get used to taking one specific action with your brand. Create small opportunities for your customers to say “yes” to lead to larger requests later.

6. The Choice Study

Variety is the spice of life, right?

While that is certainly true in some cases, too much variety may be hurting sales.

An infamous study done by two researchers from Stanford and Columbia Universities respectively demonstrates that while consumers are more interested by having many choices, they’re less decisive and likely to purchase when given many choices.

The two researchers set off to a food store to create a sample display of jams. Coupons were offered to the customers who stopped to sample the jam.

In one part of the study, six flavors of jam were displayed. In another part, twenty-four flavors of jam were displayed.

What they found was that no matter how many jams were on display, the same number of jams were sampled, but 27% more customers actually purchased some jam if they only had to choose between six flavors rather than twenty-four.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

You can use this information in your business to increase your sales. Take a look at your product offerings; are you offering too many choices? Remember, offering too many seems interesting to customers but it doesn’t convert to sales.

7. The Decoy Effect Study

Let’s say your business offered two products, and your preference is to sell more of one of them. How could you increase the sales for that one product?

Maybe you’d advertise it more, lower the price or offer a bonus for those who purchase it. But have you ever considered introducing a third, less desirable product to increase your sales of the one?

As outlandish as it seems, this can work, and is called the decoy effect.

This study was conducted by Itamar Simonson, a popular researcher in this field.

95 shoppers were initially asked to choose between two paper shredders. The first shredder (A) was the cheaper and less efficient model. The second shredder (B) was both more expensive and efficient. In this case, 79% of the shoppers selected the first shredder (the cheaper, less efficient).

However, the researchers then added a third option (C). This option was the middle of the line for efficiency but the top of the line for price; it was more expensive than A and B but more efficient than A and less efficient than B.

Though the introduction of option C didn’t change the other two options, 74% more participants chose option B.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

This study demonstrates how our decisions change depending on the options we have available. You can use this in your business to offer “decoys” if you want to increase your sales of a specific product.

8. The Virality Study

How amazing would it be for a flood of traffic, followers, and sales to all of a sudden hit your business?

If you’ve ever wanted a piece of your content to go viral, this study will be useful.

Jonah Berger, best selling author, conducted a study that proved that things that elicit certain emotions are far more likely to be shared.

The study elicited both “high arousal” and “low arousal” from participants by having them jog on the spot (a high arousal activity) and watching emotional videos (a high arousal activity), and then asked if they were more or less likely to share the video or content with their friends.

It turns out that high-arousal activities (emotion, physical activity) increased the likelihood that the individuals would share the content by over 50%.

Lessons for Entrepreneurs

When crafting content for your business, ensure it elicits emotion from your audience (or that they’re at the gym when they consume it!).

Conclusion

If you understand the implications of these studies on your business, you’re farther ahead than most people in understanding human behavior – and therefore, the behavior of your market.

Application of these eight studies will not only help you earn more revenue through your business, but also save you and your team the time and effort of trying things that won’t work.

About the Author: Nathan Chan is the Publisher and CEO of Foundr magazine. He is extremely passionate about entrepreneurship and has interviewed some of the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet today (Richard Branson, etc). He shares all of these interviews at www.foundrmag.com.

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Benchmark Email and EU Safe Harbor Certification

After 15 years of successful data transfer based on Safe Harbor Principles, the European courts recently rendered it illegal.Related Articles

1. Come and meet us at the eCommerce Expo 2015
2. Announcing the launch of new Benchmark Email!
3. Introducing The Benchmark Email API

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Benchmark Email and EU Safe Harbor Certification

The Data Protection law formulated by the European Commission in 1998 prohibits the transfer of personal data of European citizens to other countries that do not meet privacy protection standards.Related Articles

1. Benchmark Email and EU Safe Harbor Certification
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3. The Weekly Wrap’s Gonna Get You Every Time

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A Beginner’s Guide to Cornerstone Content: Answers to 9 Common Questions

When it comes to defining cornerstone content, Brian Clark said it best:

A cornerstone is … basic, essential, indispensable, and the chief foundation upon which something is constructed or developed. It’s what people need to know to make use of your website and do business with you.

Cornerstone content pages can also help you accomplish many of your content marketing goals.

Goals like getting links to your website, finding new readers, attracting subscribers to your email newsletter, ranking well in search engines for competitive keywords, and giving new life to old articles.

Which makes cornerstone pages important for both seasoned bloggers and brand-new websites. And fortunately, these pages aren’t complicated to create.

So, let’s answer nine common questions about cornerstone content.

1. How is cornerstone content different from a blog post?

A blog post is usually a detail-rich, nuanced, and sometimes epic focus on a particular topic — like this article on cornerstone content you are reading right now.

Cornerstone content, on the other hand, is one single page that is a main location for the content about that topic. One “hub” page, if you will.

For example, a cornerstone content page would be a hub for all of our articles (say 10) about cornerstone content.

You could think of cornerstone content as broad and wide, while a blog post goes narrow and deep.

2. Why create cornerstone content? What’s the “big goal?”

First and foremost, cornerstone content is useful and relevant for your website visitors.

But if it’s interesting and all-inclusive, people will want to share and link to it, too.

There is not one “big goal” behind creating cornerstone content. That’s because there are several important reasons for creating cornerstone content:

• Getting links to your website
• Finding new readers
• Attracting subscribers
• Ranking in search engines for competitive keywords
• Highlighting archived material

3. When should I create cornerstone content?

Cornerstone content should be your first priority when launching a website. It will be your foundational content, and all subsequent content you create will support and reinforce it.

You won’t have many internal pages to link to in the beginning, but as you create each piece of cornerstone content, you’ll likely generate blog post ideas related to your cornerstone content.

Or, you can write five to six blog posts about a particular topic to start, and then create your cornerstone content pages as the foundational material for those articles.

As you continue to build the content on your website, you may notice a certain topic gain popularity and decide to create a cornerstone content page for that topic to capture your audience’s interest.

4. How do I figure out what to write about?

To start, focus on keywords and content categories.

Create a list of eight to ten keywords that summarize what all of your content will be about.

Keep in mind that over time you might think of additional keywords you want to create cornerstone content for.

Andy Crestodina has a nice list of 23 questions to help you get started on what type of content you should create.

5. How long should a cornerstone content page be?

There is no magical word count for the length of a cornerstone content page. Your objective should be to clearly explain the topic to a reader and provide enough content so that search engines can determine what a page is about.

Consider writing:

• A 150-to-200-word introduction
• A short description for each link you share on the page (about 200 words total for this section)
• A 100-word conclusion
• Call-to-action copy

As you see, a substantial cornerstone content page could be between 500 and 750 words.

And don’t forget there are two reasons to write a great headline for these pages:

• When you write a compelling headline that answers the exact question someone types into a search engine, that person will more likely click through to your website.
• When you write a compelling headline about a certain topic, people are more likely to link to your content.

6. What types of calls to action should I add to the pages?

Cornerstone content pages provide the perfect opportunity for attracting organic traffic from search engines and links from other websites.

Targeted traffic will be sent to these pages, and then you’ll want to convert that traffic into leads.

You can do this with several types of calls to action that encourage visitors to sign up for your email list:

• Offer an email newsletter.
• Give away an ebook.
• Present a short email course that you deliver through an autoresponder series.

7. Should I have a different cornerstone page for each ideal customer I want to reach?

Your cornerstone pages will work better if they all appeal to your general target audience. But if you serve two different groups, it’s okay to create pages for each.

However, if you can determine the common ground between your two different groups of prospects — the common questions they ask, the common problems they share — then you can write one set of cornerstone content pages that answer questions for both groups.

Copyblogger’s cornerstone content pages appeal to different types of professionals who all want to build an audience with content marketing.

8. Should cornerstone content be public or protected behind a membership site?

It should be public because you want the content to rank high in search engines. It doesn’t make sense to hide it behind a password-protected wall.

Remember, this is content you also want people to link to and share.

In addition, these are the pages you will link to when you write a guest post for another site. Cornerstone content is not helpful for your new potential audience members if it’s password-protected.

9. How should I promote my cornerstone content?

Link to your cornerstone content pages within new blog posts or podcasts you publish, include them in your autoresponder series, share them on social media, and so on.

Since they provide an overview of the main topics we teach here at Copyblogger, we highlight our cornerstone pages in our fresh content whenever we see an opportunity.

Cornerstone content: an essential part of content marketing

We hope this article answers your questions and helps you get started creating powerful cornerstone content for your site.

In the next article in this cornerstone content series, we’ll look at the essential ingredients of a cornerstone content page.

About the author

Demian Farnworth

Demian Farnworth is Chief Content Writer for Rainmaker Digital and host of the podcast Rough Draft. 

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Cornerstone Content: Answers to 9 Common Questions appeared first on Copyblogger.

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The 10 Capabilities CMOs Look for When it Comes to Creating a Modern Marketing Organization

A few weeks ago in London during Modern Marketing Experience Europe, we released some new research. Created in partnership with The CMO Club and penned by John Ellett, CEO, nFusion, the paper entitled The CMO Solution Guide For Building A Modern Marketing Organization looked to shed light on the proverbial trials and tribulations CMOs and marketing leaders the world over go through when it comes to building a modern marketing organization. 

As part of the research we interviewed over 20 marketing leaders of some of the biggest brands in the world. As part of the overall research we uncovered the following 10 capabilities that CMOs pay the most attention to when it comes modernizing their operations. 

1. Customer Insights

There is an increasing desire among CMOs to use documented customer decision journeys as foundational planning tools for marketing. Customer insights specialists must become adept at mining data, asking consumers new questions and seeing patterns of behavior that inform the development of the CDJ maps.

2. Digital Marketing

Creating digital experiences is now a central part of any marketing plan. This has shifted the need for digital marketing expertise to be contained in a center of excellence (COE) to having digital expertise ingrained in the skills portfolios of line marketing and brand managers.

3. Social Media

The unprecedented popularity of social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest over the past five years has had a significant impact on the marketing plans of most companies. As with other digital marketing activities mentioned above, there is a need to build the acumen for leveraging social media platforms within the broader marketing organization.

4. Integrated Engagement Planning

Creating seamless experiences for customers across all touch points has become an increasing challenge for marketers, as has developing plans that effectively incorporate emerging digital, social and data-driven capabilities. Brand managers at consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies who were well schooled in television-centered advertising need to broaden their expertise, and skill-enhancing initiatives are underway at many of those companies. Other organizations that have managed their marketing communications activities through siloed departments are beginning to structure new roles for integrated planning. 

5. Content Development

Marketers are learning that content that consumers and business decision makers find interesting, relevant or entertaining will be engaged with and shared more frequently than general messages broadcast at them. This has led to the rapid growth of content marketing and the investment in content creators.

6. Evaluative Analytics 

All CMOs want to get a better handle on how their investments are performing. By having marketing analysts in an independent marketing operations function, rare data science competencies can be leveraged across multiple brands and business units. These analysts can also bring a degree of autonomy from the program managers who have a vested interest making their activities look as good as possible.

7. Predictive Analytics 

Progressive marketers are not only using data to evaluate the past but to predict the future, to direct their actions and resources where they can have the biggest impact. Common scenarios include predicting those customers who are at risk of churning, identifying customers who are most likely to respond to a new product or a special offer and identifying which happy customers may be open to becoming vocal advocates.

8. Customer Data Management

In order to deliver personalized customer experiences that are synchronized across touch points, it is essential that all relevant information about a customer is connected and available for use in real time. Bringing all the appropriate data together securely while protecting privacy rights can be a major undertaking. It requires funding that spans business units, marketing and IT.

9. Marketing Technology Planning & Implementation

CMOs realize that they can’t simply wait for their IT partners to show up with a crystal ball and divine a solution. This has led to the appointment of a chief digital officer, a chief marketing technology officer or a director of marketing operations to lead martech planning and to work in collaboration with the company’s IT organization to implement new tools.

10. Innovation Planning

CMOs are finding they must dedicate talent to focus on “what’s next.” Marketing must also innovate at the executional level. This requires new methods for testing and learning, experimenting without fear of failure and adopting agile prototyping methodologies.

The bottom line in all of this and why this research is so valuable to CMOs is pressure from the board to deliver business results is mounting. Technology adoption by consumers is accelerating changes in their buying behavior and dramatically increasing their desire for more personalized experiences.

Download The CMO Solution Guide For Building A Modern Marketing Organization to learn from those just like you who are dealing with the same pressures you are. 

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8 Design Rules to Live by to Take Your Website to the Next Level [Infographic]

Designing a website is a challenge. Even the pros make mistakes. With so many things to consider, it’s no wonder the internet is full of mediocre to poorly-designed sites. Don’t let this happen to you! Here are the eight most important rules to follow to get the very best out of your website. 

© 2015, Vertical Response Blog. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

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How to Build and Deliver Your First Webinar: 5 Simple Steps

Do you know what the hardest thing about doing webinars is? Doing your first webinar. Seriously!

In my experience of teaching webinar courses, live workshops and developing webinar software for over 6,000 people, I’ve learned that once anyone does their first webinar, it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there on in. It just gets exponentially easier and better each time.

This is why I’m so excited to write this post for all you wonderful Fizzlers! I am a Fizzle alumnus myself (look me up in the forum — I’m still one of the top contributors). I’m pumped to give back to a community that gave so much to me two years ago.

But I’m even more pumped because I know that this post will, without a doubt, help you get your first webinar out the door. And once you start doing webinars, your business will thank you. Which brings me to a question you might be asking…

Why Webinars?

If you’re reading this, it’s because you have a goal. Maybe you’re an established entrepreneur with a long and successful track record looking to break into a new field. Maybe you’re working for someone else, but thinking of taking the leap to building a business. Maybe you’re an expert without marketing experience, but you want to market the expertise and knowledge you’ve gained. Whatever your background, the goal is clear: you want to grow.

So why grow through webinars? With people having more and more access to information, product reviews, and expertise than ever before, webinars allow today’s entrepreneurs to prove themselves to an audience of potential customers through live, interactive demonstrations.

With webinars, you can lay it all out on the table: what you’ve got to offer, why it’s different from the competition, and most importantly why customers should trust you.

Webinars are unique in that not only are they capable of reaching an audience as wide as the Internet, they offer an opportunity like no other to build credibility. By using webinars to establish yourself as a reliable expert, you can create the kind of trust that traditional sales methods can take far longer to produce. By interacting with your audience to demonstrate your capabilities and offer consumers immediate value, you reap the reward of that trust and the sales that come with it.

I hope to pass on to you the benefits of my experience as a webinar user, attendee, and creator of the Webinar Ninja platform. I’ll show you how to make the most of your webinar, formatting and directing it to have maximum impact on the number of sales conversions you make.

By mastering the 5 Steps outlined here, you’ll be able to show your audience the value of your expertise and establish yourself as someone worth buying from.

The 5 Steps to Your First Webinar

To understand the 5 Steps, it’s important to understand their overall trajectory, from your first concept for the webinar to potential sale. Each step will only be as effective as the ones before it, so it’s a good idea to consider the whole process before delving into the particulars.

The 5 Steps are:

1. Choosing a problem
2. Creating a preview lesson
3. Creating the webinar
4. Marketing the webinar
5. Converting to sales

To get to that last step, it’s vital that the other steps are well executed. All five work in tandem, building on each other and multiplying the effect of each.

The first step establishes what to sell by identifying a need in the market. Step 2 offers consumers proof of concept, an indication that your expertise is effective. Step 3 includes all of the vital preparation that will make the webinar run smoothly, while Step 4 will ensure good attendance. Finally, Step 5 is where you’ll cash in on all of that careful work done along the way.

The challenge is making that assumption a reality by doing the necessary preliminary work to ensure that when your webinars land, they make waves.

With that said, let’s get in to it!

Step 1: Choose a Problem

When I was in educational administration, it was my job to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers. A webinar host is a teacher, too. The only difference is in the desired outcome; in school, the desired outcome is student proficiency. In webinars, the desired outcome is usually a sale. Just as a good class arms students with a new skill set, a good webinar offers attendees something to take out into the world and use.

Therefore, the first step to ensuring your webinars’ sales conversions goes to the heart of good overall salesmanship. It’s the foundational principle on which all great sales efforts are based: solving a problem.

Understanding sales as the act of solving a customer problem is the best way to ensure success. That’s why the design and execution of your webinar has to start with choosing which problem to solve.

In other words, you’ll have to identify a need in your industry or area of expertise. Then, your job is to meet that need with your product, be it a physical product or an informational one.

To take a hypothetical example, say that you’re an expert in pet care. Knowing that nothing makes the Internet go ‘round more than cats, you create a website about cat care and grooming. You want to monetize this expertise and maybe sell some cat care tools, products, or tutorial information through a webinar.

But before you can do any of that, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, “what’s the problem?” From what problem do the teeming multitudes of cat fanciers suffer that you can solve?

To find out, you’ll want to troll the internet (for information, that is). Look to the comments on your cat care blog. Look to the comments on other cat care blogs. Look to Facebook groups and Twitter accounts and Tumblr pages run by kitty enthusiasts.

Get in conversations, interact, and probe the feline-loving community for the information you need. The goal is to identify a common problem. Look and listen for that common thread, that ubiquitous complaint that you can position yourself to address through your product. By finding it, you’ve already done the most important (and one of the most difficult) things necessary to ensure big sales.

To continue with our example, let’s say you discover that the biggest problem afflicting millions of frustrated cat owners is grooming. Cats hate grooming. More accurately, they hate being groomed by their owners.

There’s a good place to start. In defining the problem, you’ll have to be as specific as possible, because the more specific a problem is, the more solvable it is. The more precisely you define the problem, the more unique the product necessary to solve it. The more unique the product, the more likely it is to sell.

You can solve that problem specifically with a webinar. Not a webinar on “cat care” generally, but one that could conceivably be called “How to Groom a Cat in Under 5 Minutes a Week.” The more specific the problem, the more narrow (and therefore unique and sellable) the expertise or items needed to solve it.

Of course, you need to actually have a compelling solution to the problem you’ve chosen. Your ability to identify and describe the challenge will open doors, but it’s the answer that will lead to sales.

In other words, the problem and its solution must be congruent with whatever it is you hope to market. Simply talking about cat care may draw the online crowds, but it won’t inspire them to reach for their wallets. Whatever the problem is, your job is to provide the solution.

Step 2: Create A Short Lesson

Once you’ve identified the problem to be solved, it might be tempting to immediately put together your webinar. Every good lesson plan begins with a SWBAT, which stands for Students Will Be Able To.

The idea is that the information a teacher provides will have an immediately demonstrable value. Your webinar should follow this same formula. What will your webinar attendees be able to do after your webinar?

The key is to give your audience a small victory, one that will make them see that listening to your advice will lead to success. A simple household hack, a short DIY project, or any other short lesson with a small but immediate payoff will establish you with credibility — just enough to get customers to give you the chance to establish it further if they give your product or service a shot.

It’s important to put real effort into the short mini-lesson. You can do something as simple as an “instructional blog post”, but it’s best to make the lesson as engaging as possible, taking advantage of as much multimedia as is available to you. Powerpoint, Keynote, Prezi, Gmail slides, short videos and presentations are all eye-catchers that can be included in the short lesson. Not only your expertise, but the production values you apply to this project will convince your audience that the full webinar is worth checking out.

If possible, make the short lesson an interactive one, include some meeting, some greeting, and some question and answer. An interactive short lesson is by far the best way to introduce yourself to the audience you hope to see at your webinars and jumpstart their perception of you as a credible source of help. Once they’ve “met” you and walked away with an immediate value, the lesson will be impossible to miss: you’re someone worth listening to, and your webinars are worth attending.

Step 3: Build the Webinar

Once you’ve found your mission in the market, and created your lesson / educational experience to be delivered on your webinar, it’s time to build your webinar.

Precise planning and formatting is a must, but it doesn’t have to be difficult or even especially time-consuming, provided you know what you want to convey and have access to a quality webinar platform.

Creating the webinar itself used to be a lengthy and involved process that required a certain degree of technical know-how. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case.

To use my own product as an example, Webinar Ninja actually guides hosts through the process of creating the webinar in isolated steps. It’s simply a matter of populating prearranged fields.

You set the start date and time (with an option for recurring webinars), fill in the pre-arranged templates, upload images and videos and customize the registration page. Cosmetic options like fonts, colors, and layouts are all easily customizable, and any changes you may want to make afterward are as simple as a keystroke, even if you decide to make changes right up to the minute the live webinar begins.

That’s the kind of ease that not only makes setup less time-consuming, but makes the event run more smoothly, without the technical bumps in the road that can derail a good presentation.

Step 4: Market Your Webinar

Now that your webinar is ready to go, it’s time to pack the virtual house. To ensure good attendance, I’m sharing my top 5 webinar marketing strategies. Pay attention… these work.

1. Start with your own website.

Add attractive, calls to actions and links on your website that take visitors directly to the registration page. The beauty of using your own website is that you can be as subtle or as bold as you like. Pop-ups, sidebar ads, or hyperlinks within your own blogs are all good options, so use whatever you feel comfortable with. You’re getting traffic to your website anyway, use it to get attendees to your webinar.

2. Devote a blog post to the webinar itself.

Use the blog to articulate your unique approach to the problem you’ve identified and build interest in your solution. Describe exactly what will happen at the webinar, especially for the benefit of those who’ve never attended one. Tell them what to expect, and make them want to see it for themselves.

3. Send invitations.

Fire a well-composed and exciting email out to your entire list. Post the registration link, dates and basic info on all of your social media accounts.

4. Team up with others in your industry.

Ask them join you as a co-host and have them invite their audience to the webinar. You can exchange their support for a share of sales proceeds (or for a similar cross-promotion for one of their events).

5. Get social.

A week before your webinar, ask your audience on social media what areas are they struggling with in your area of expertise. Get some engagement going and let them know you’ll be addressing this topic in your next webinar. When people are engaged in a conversation about a topic, they are more inclined to attend a webinar about it.

Keep in mind that the goal isn’t simply to invite as many people as possible, but to target those most likely to attend.

Registration numbers can be deceiving, so reserve judgment on the impact of your marketing until you see the number of attendees as a percentage of registrants. Quality platforms include analytics tools that can help you wade through the data to determine exactly what brought guests to each webinar. This allows you to focus on the strategies that work best for you.

Step 5: Making an Offer

Too often, webinars and other allegedly educational programs are thinly veiled infomercials. This approach is not only ineffective, it gives honest entrepreneurs a bad name.

This is one of the main reasons why I started Webinar Ninja. We believe you can earn your audience’s trust and sell with your dignity intact. It doesn’t have to be gross. I’ll show you how.

In my experience, the best way for a webinar host to be a great salesperson is to be a great teacher, first and foremost. You will earn your attendees’ business by first gaining their trust, and gain their trust by offering a truly valuable education.

It all comes down to honesty. By providing a genuine, honestly useful educational experience, you earn the opportunity to offer your products and services later, provided you differentiate between the two and are clear about which is which.

But you might be asking, “When it’s time to sell, how do I sell?” Don’t worry, I got you covered.

Sales Strategy #1: Be transparent. Make it very clear to your attendees which portions of your webinar, are going to be educational and which are going to be where you make them a special offer.

Announce when you’ll be informing and when you’ll be selling, and don’t try to disguise one with the other. They signed up to learn something, and that’s what they should be able to do. Ideally, the webinar should be about 90% educational, and 10% sales.

Sales Strategy #2: Show them, don’t sell them. During the sales portion, the best strategy is to show what you want them to buy rather than selling them on it. Give a demonstration, something that proves the effectiveness of your product. Highlight the experiences of people who have benefitted from your work.

By demonstrating your product’s value rather than trying to convince the audience of it, you won’t need to do much selling. If you have an online course, give them a demo of the members’ area. Show them the quality of your videos and the engagement in your community. Prove to your audience that they’ve come to the right place.

Sales Strategy #3: Give them a reason to buy. Macy’s runs a one-day sale every Wednesday. Want to guess why? Because they know when they give their customers a reason to come into their stores, they’ll come into their stores. Pretty simple right?

So reward your webinar attendees for attending with a special offer. A discount they can’t get anywhere else. Throw in a bonus or two if they buy the day of the webinar. Reward action takers. Also, make sure you offer some sort of risk reversal, like a money back guarantee.

Sales Strategy #4: Follow up. Send emails, and reach out through social media to thank attendees. Some webinar platforms have automatic follow-up features that do this for you. Webinar Ninja, for example, cannot only send follow up emails to attendees, but to registrants who signed up but didn’t attend, expressing regrets and offering a playback link. Attendees who left early can be sent a separate email asking for specific feedback.

Following up thoroughly allows you to continue the conversation beyond the webinar, and lay the foundation for future opportunities, so take advantage of features like these.

Final Insights

What I’ve learned over the course of using and designing a webinar platform comes down to a simple but demanding philosophy. Put simply, no one can make anyone buy anything.

True salesmanship isn’t the ability to sell sand in the desert; it’s the ability to find creative solutions, and having the courage and passion to bring them to market. The best way to do that is through a policy of ruthless honesty, not in the sense of being critical towards others or towards the competition, but honesty about yourself and what you’re offering.

Webinars are the growth and sales tool most conducive to living that philosophy. They’re a way of offering something to consumers that simultaneously benefits them and the host.

By giving something to attendees, rather than simply trying to get something from them, you unlock the only sales strategy that works best on the web: substance.

If your product is worth buying, it will sell as long as you have the confidence to share yourself and your vision with the virtual room, hiding nothing and revealing the truth about what you can and can’t offer.

It requires trusting the audience to make smart decisions on their own. It requires putting your own money where your mouth is, and having the boldness to trust in the strength of what you’re bringing to the table.

It also requires patience, and practice. The more webinars you host, the better you’ll get at both designing and executing your program. Try it, and no matter how it goes, try it again, and again.

Getting comfortable with the technology (and the audience) is paramount. Like any teacher, you’ll discover what works best for you, what captivates an audience, what loses their attention, what inspires them, and what doesn’t. All along the way you’ll discover as much about yourself as you will about salesmanship.

With the right product, the right attitude, and the right platform, you can open the door to entirely new realms of possibility through webinars.

Whew! You made it to end of this post. Thanks for sticking with me. I hope you learned something. If you want to learn even more about hosting webinars, check out my free 7-part video course Plan & Launch Your First Webinar.

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