Joint Ventures and Strategic Alliances:
Seminars and Webinars:
Seminars have always been a great way to sell. If you can get enough people to attend a seminar or a webinar you already have a great business opportunity. Selling to a large group has many advantages. It also has larger costs and planning is important. Finding a Joint Venture (JV) or Strategic Alliance (SA) partner is a great way to share the costs.
Seminars and Webinars are a great way to cross promote each others products. You both share the time in front of each others customers live and in person. Your customers already trust you and now you are taking the time to introduce them to something that can offer them more value.
They have taken their time to attend your joint venture so you owe it to them to make it the best presentation you can. Make sure this event is full of value and has lots of useful information they can take away from it.
Seminars have worked in the past and still do today
Seminars can get a large group of people interested and excited about your business. This excitement feeds off the group and creates a fantastic buying situation.
Selling to a group in this format can be very profitable. It also allows you to create a large word of mouth in your local area. You can use your News Release to help promote your events and other marketing methods to create a buzz before the actual event.
News releases and pre-event advertising drives more people to your event. Pre-registration is a must. It allows you to get your prospects contact information ahead of time. Once you have this you can feed them updates right up to the day of the event. Tease them with free usable information to help build the anticipation of the big event.
Introduce a special gift for attending, a cheat sheet, Resource list, bigger discount for whatever you are selling. Have a door prize for value and make draw at the end of the seminar for only those attending.
The use of Autoresponders and direct mail letters and postcards helps to keep their interest before any seminar. You want to build it up and make sure your audience is coming. You can use e-mail, direct mail, audio recordings and even good old faxes to keep reminding them of the seminar.
Follow up from the initial registration is a critical component in any seminar or webinar.
Webinars are today’s seminars
The headline says it all. Today webinars are the hot method of teaching using the internet. They are seminars, on the internet and are very well attended. The advantage is that attendees can be anywhere in the world, if they have internet access.
The suppliers of the webinar space have automated the whole process. They use an autoresponder to email the invitations and all pre-attendance emails. This means they will send emails to the attendee’s right up until an hour before the webinar begins.
These firms will then record the webinar and give you a copy of it once it ends. You can then use this for promotion or build it into another product you offer with your JV or SA partners. It makes a great bonus product to help sell your main or core products or services. Using recordings of the webinar as another product is a great idea. It can be another valuable Lead Magnet or a stand-alone product or even as a bonus for attending.
You and your partner can add bonuses or discounts to the package and sell it at the end of the webinar. Normally you are selling another product or service but these recordings make great extra bonuses. You and your partner can use these recordings for month or years to come.
The advantage of webinars
The advantages to using a webinar over a seminar are:
- Lower costs, as no hotel room needed or refreshments needed
- More attendance space. You can have up to 1000 attendees with webinars. Seminars would need a conference center to hold this many people
- Worldwide attendance: Anyone can attend from any location in the world.
- Easily recorded and then used again for future promotions or bonuses
Of course, there are others but these are the main advantages of using webinars.
Using Seminars and Webinars with JV and SA partners
A great way to help promote your business is to sell to a large crowd in one session. The same principle holds true for your JV and SA partners. The only issue is who will set it up and make the whole thing work?
This is where you come into the picture. You find a great partner that can complement your business. You then write out the objectives of the seminar or webinar and demonstrate how it will help to sell the services of both your businesses.
You get the pricing information and quotes done to produce and hold your seminar or webinar. Once you have all your pricing and booking options available you approach your joint venture or strategic alliance partners with your business opportunity.
Sell them on the fact that you can promote attendance to their client lists and also advertise to new prospects.
Together you build some great lead magnets that you can give away. These can be used to attract new attendees or to entice your customers to attend.
Plan every detail of the seminar or webinar
Remember: “You get one chance to make a first impression”. Even when dealing with your own client list. You seldom get a second chance. Treat your seminar or webinar partnership as a “First Impression” situation.
You need to plan every part of the presentation. From the initial greeting, through to the end, and the call to action or sales offer.
Script out all the wording and then tape it to hear what it sounds like. Listen to the presentation and fix any parts that are wordy or have little input into the presentation.
Prepare your handy out material, slides, or videos. Make sure they work exactly as you want them to. Practice how you will introduce them into the presentation. Do some dry runs of the full presentation to ensure it all works perfect. A good idea is to create a transcript of the webinar and notes you can follow while on the webinar.
Double check every detail of your presentation and of your material. Have others test it if possible. If you have any partners you need to have them test and review the presentation. Your partners need to participate in the testing phase to ensure they know their parts and when you will bring them into the presentation.
Do a full practice run of the seminar or webinar
You can use a variety of software programs to tape the full presentation and the video or slide shows.
Using this software do a full practice presentation and tape it. Review it and make any last-minute changes or additions. In some cases, this will not be possible as the webinar is a live event. Expect problems and have answers ready. If you can’t do a dry run, at least go through the steps with your partner.
Once you have done these steps you will find that your confidence level increases 10-fold.
It’s time to promote the event
You want to combine your forces and prepare the promotion materials. Make sure they are all finished and complete and that all your lead magnets and handouts are prepared and ready to use.
Map out each contact with the registrant for the webinar. When it will be delivered and what it will say. If you have to deliver a freebie make sure it is ready to be done automatically without your need to do it manually. This is a simple process with today’s autoresponders and with fulfillment companies or employees.
The best freebies are digital products that can be delivered using software programs. They cost little to produce, offer great value and can be delivered with the touch of a button.
Make a top 10 list, offer a question and answer handout, offer a series of instructions. Anything that you think can be a value to your prospect and attendee. These become your freebies to entice your attendees to come to the seminar or webinar.
Follow-up immediately upon registration
You need to contact your participant immediately after they register. Say thank you and restate the date and time that the event will take place. Deliver the first freebie or lead magnet if possible, to add value to your upcoming seminar or webinar.
Create your series or emails or other follow-up material and begin sending them immediately using your autoresponder or staff. You need to stay in contact with the participant until they are in the seminar or webinar.
You will lose some participants all the way up to the event. You can’t take this personally this is just the reality of these events. The more value you can add to the event the better your attendance will be.
Running seminars and webinars is easy once you know what you are doing
The trick is to study how to do it and learn from the experts. Then prepare every step of the presentation. Once you have it laid out, practice it. Criticism from peers and even from good current clients or customers.
Practice makes perfect, and you must do it if you want to succeed in this marketing method.