AMY PORTERFIELD: Hey there, Amy Porterfield here. Welcome to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am so thrilled that you’ve shown up here today because we are talking about webinars again.
I know I’ve talked about webinars a lot in past episodes. But this time I have a special guest. And I have a really cool strategy to share with you. My special guest is Tim Piage. Tim Paige is the conversion educator over at Lead Pages. If you’ve ever been on any webinars that I’ve done about Lead Pages you have likely heard from Tim because he’s the host of all of the Lead Pages webinars.
Tim is also the host of Conversion Cast, the Lead Pages podcast. It is a really great podcast and you definitely want to check it out.
This is going to be a shorter episode because I’ve invited Tim on the show to talk about one very specific strategy he uses on webinars. It is something I don’t typically do. Again, I typically invite guests on where I can learn as well because I want to be in the trenches with you learning this stuff.
This is something I’m going to apply to my webinars and I’ll report back and let you know how it’s going once I get this up and off the ground and actually feel comfortable with it. It’s a strategy that could be awkward in the beginning for you as a presenter but really valuable for your audience. I don’t want to give it all away, it has to do with engagement, of course; but, beyond that I’ll let Tim explain it.
Before we get there, I want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by MeetEdgar.com. MeetEdgar.com is my tool of choice for social media scheduling. I use it because it saves me so much time in terms of getting posts up on social media. I specifically use it on Facebook and Twitter but you can go beyond that with other social media sites.
I love it because it’s all about repurposing old content. If I want to post about this episode I can put it into Edgar and it goes into a library. I can create a really great post in terms of the text and image. I put it into Edgar and then it posts today and will post again and again and again based on how I want to schedule my post.
I am creating a library versus a one-and-done kind of post where you put a lot of effort into it and then you only send it out on Facebook one time. Those days are gone. The library is where it’s at.
If you want to check out MeetEdgar for free, you can go to meetedgar.com/amy and you can get started today with a special offer. Thank you, Edgar, for sponsoring this episode. Now let’s go ahead and dive in and hear from Tim on his very cool webinar engagement strategy. Let’s do this!
Amy: Hey Tim, thanks so much for coming on my show. I really appreciate it.
Tim: Hi Amy. I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Amy: This is a real treat because you and I have been working together throughout the last few years doing so many webinars together about Lead Pages and now I want you to talk about some of your mad webinar skills because you DO have skills!
Tim: Boom, Boom…How to do the webinar.
Amy: Seriously, webinars are your thing. I already gave you a really good intro in my intro so that people know all about you. But I want you to talk about the fact that you are doing webinars all the time. How many have you done in the last few years?
Tim: I’ve been with Lead Pages 22 months as of today and I have done over 410 webinars now.
Amy: That is insane.
Tim: I’m waiting right now, the application is pending for the Guinness Book of World Records for most webinars done in a 12-month period, which was over 250 for me.
Amy: Holy cow! I cannot wait until we can say you are a Guinness World-Record Holder. That is the coolest thing ever, right?
Tim: I’m so excited. It was just a goofy idea I had to apply. But I was sure there would be someone who had done more. I asked around and could not find anybody that had even come close, so I figured, “Why not? Let’s go for it!” That would be a fun thing to be able to say.
Amy: Super fun thing. I know you’re married with a little boy, right?
Tim: That’s right, a two-year-old boy whose name is Owen. He is going to be real trouble when he gets up there.
Amy: Like his dad.
Tim: Yes, something like that.
Amy: If you weren’t married, the whole Guinness World Record Holder could be a really good pick-up line. You kind of missed your chance there.
Tim: That’s exactly right, “I hold the Guinness Book of World Records…” “Oooh, what for?”
“Webinars.”
“Oh, I’ve got to go.”
Amy: Exactly, it is the super nerdiest thing ever. But we love it.
Tim: I hold the Guinness Book of World Records for the most comic books ever read, come on.
Amy: Wait…you really do?
Tim: NO!
Amy: I was going say, “wait a second.”
Tim: No, it’s not the same level.
Amy: It is the same level, for sure. But, because I’m, nerdy like you, it would totally work for me, just so you know. You also do something really cool, this is a little extra on your bio, you do voice overs.
Tim: I do! I’ve done a bunch of video games and commercials and I’ve done over 600 podcast intros and outros.
Amy: Oh wow, I had no idea. That’s really cool. I have to say, every time I hear your voice I just love it. It makes me feel calm. Do people tell you that?
Tim: I hear that a lot. It’s a nice compliment. It’s what got me started in it in the first place and it’s led me down this really, really fun journey to something I have really loved. When I was watching TV with my family we got to see a commercial come on for a Disney toy that I did the commercial for. It was so much fun to watch my son light up when he saw it.
Amy: Yes! What is the Disney toy so I can look for it?
Tim: It’s called the Stellosphere. It is Miles From Tomorrowland’s little TOMY ship thing. It’s really fun. You hear me talking all exuberantly about Miles From Tomorrowland. It is really funny.
Amy: I will be listening. I’ll get super excited. I don’t think my family will understand but that’s a really cool thing so I will be looking for it for sure. Today I have brought you on the show because I wanted to talk about your unique style with webinars. As you know, I have a webinar program and I love teaching webinars.
You do something I don’t do and it’s something I’m looking to do more of. You create amazing engagement throughout your entire webinar. I talk about engagement and I ask my audience questions like, “On a scale of 1-10 how do you feel about this?”
Different things are baked into my presentation but you take this to an entirely new level. So I want you to set this up for us. What is cool, on your own podcast, Conversion Cast, you talk about this and get down to specifics and metrics and stats. I love that. I don’t love it for me, I actually hate doing that stuff. But I love that you do it. So break it down for us and tell us what you learned.
Tim: Early on, when I first started doing webinars, one of the issues I always had was that as an attendee of webinars, it always felt like people would do the 45 minutes of content, do an offer, and then a Q&A.
The only opportunity I had to say anything in that webinar as an attendee was at the end in the Q&A and it always felt like I was watching a 45-minute long YouTube video and then someone started answering questions.
Early on, I wanted to test the idea of, instead of waiting until the end, take every opportunity I could throughout the process of presenting a webinar to look over in the questions box and start answering questions live as we went, as long as they were relevant and weren’t off topic.
I found in answering questions, not only did I see a 98% stick rate (98% of the people that joined the webinar in the beginning stuck around all the way until the end) but in one split test I also saw a tripled revenue from one webinar to the next. It was the same affiliate partner, the same exact presentation, and the same traffic source.
Literally, nothing changed other than the fact that on webinar #1 I didn’t answer questions until the Q&A and on webinar #2 I answered questions throughout the whole webinar.
Amy: That is so crazy. That’s a huge uptick there.
Tim: Yeah, it was unbelievable. And, the second webinar had 130 less attendees than the first webinar.
Amy: Let’s talk about this a little bit because one of the reasons I don’t answer questions in the middle of my webinar is that I do get into a flow. I want to make the presentation amazing for them. I practice in advance.
When I start going I feel sometimes when I stop to look at the Q&A it rattles me a little bit. When I first heard you start talking about this you did say it is something you kind of need to work on a little bit, right?
Tim: Absolutely. I was terrible at it at first. In fact, there are still days where I’m not on top of my game with it and I sometimes slip up. Sometimes I’ve done the same presentation many times but I’ve had a couple of experiences where I would go to answer the question, I would answer the question, and then I would say something I haven’t even gotten to yet. I would start saying something I’m going to say in 15 minutes but would say it now because I got off track.
That’s going to happen from time to time. You are so good at this and I know the people I see that seem to perform the best with their audience are the people that are genuine and real and are people you can relate to. I think everybody can relate to making a mistake and to screwing up when people are paying really close attention to you.
I always say, “Oh my gosh, I just said something to you that I’m not supposed to say for another 15 minutes, let’s get back to where we were.” People laugh about it. They will pick on me a little bit and I’ll respond to it. I find that kind of genuine, just being a real person and not trying to be a perfect presentation machine, ends up causing a better connection with the audience and that almost always results in more sales.
Amy: That is so very cool. I love that you are talking about being transparent and you really are super real on your webinars. I love that about you. One thing I did notice…I’ve tried it just once and I haven’t seen huge results yet, but I was also very awkward with it. This is something I’m dedicated to continuing to do, not just to make more money on my webinars, but I did notice that I feel like people feel heard.
I know that’s why you wanted to do it. They have a question in the moment. If they don’t get an answer now, the response they want is not as powerful then.
Tim: Yeah, it’s two things. One is to make people feel they are a part of something. It’s actually something that they are there, they are a part of the group, and they are being recognized. The other thing is that a lot of times, especially when you’re talking about something that can be somewhat of a complex topic like list-building and doing webinars and Facebook campaigns, these things can be complex to a lot of people.
Early on in the webinar, if I explain a concept like “lead magnets” and I don’t define it and somebody in the audience has never heard that term before…then if I say “lead magnet” 100 times throughout the webinar and they can’t ask about it until the end, that can almost make the whole webinar pointless to them because they don’t know what I’m talking about the whole time.
I want to be able to answer that question if it’s something that is important to them. But you are right, it can be really awkward. I’ll give you a few tips for what I’ve been able to do and practiced to get better at doing that.
Amy: Great.
Tim: One thing, I’m really selective about the questions I answer.
Amy: I’m so glad you brought this up. Real quick, don’t forget that you were going to talk about that, because I had the situation where I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to read a few real fast and then pick one in the moment and then I didn’t and I answered one that had nothing to do with what I was talking about right then. He threw out a random question and it totally got me off my game. So talk about being selective on the questions.
Tim: I will sometimes batch them together and rapid-fire answer questions. They can usually be a “yes” or “no” answer. If it’s a yes or a no I will read the question and go, “Yes! You can do that,” or “Yes, that’s right,” or “No, don’t do that.”
I think it comes down to what questions, if you answer them, will seem completely out of left field and destroy the flow and momentum you’ve built up. Something that works a little bit, in the beginning I will ask people that when they ask questions to keep them relevant to the content we are talking about at that point in the webinar.
Amy: Oh, good one. Okay.
Tim: I also tell them if they have questions that aren’t relevant to the content we are talking about they can still ask them but please understand I won’t answer them until later when they are relevant to what we are talking about.
Amy: Cool. So you do kind of preface that in the beginning. Then, you made a good point. This is something I’ve watched Tim do many times that I’m going to experiment with and that is that you find a place to look at the questions. You are in your zone doing your webinar and then you go over to the comments.
You are right, you do a rapid fire with three or four, bang, bang, bang. Then you go back so it doesn’t feel like you are stopping every five seconds to answer questions from somebody. I think that’s important. I think, as you know, the flow of the webinar is important and people need to know that you keep moving forward and you’ve got stuff to share with them.
I like the rapid fire for a few seconds and then coming back. One thing you also do is say, “Oh Jane is asking…” or “Rick is asking…” I think it’s important that we’re calling out people’s names as we are answering their questions. Would you agree?
Tim: Yeah. It’s interesting. With the webinars we’ve done together, we have had the names. With the webinars we do internally at Lead Pages, we don’t actually get their names. I ask them to give me their names as we go. I will often ask them to give me their name when they type the question.
If they don’t, I will just read the question. But when there’s a name, if you have it, you should absolutely use it because, again, people feel special and you have used their name. It seems dumb but it’s precious to us and we think, “Oh my gosh, so and so just addressed me.”
Amy: That’s so true. So many people do automated webinars. I have my own automated webinar always running in the background of my business. But when I do live I want people to know I am here live because there is a huge perception of whether I will pay attention the whole time, is it really real.
We all know automated webinars are just as good, but when someone’s there live there’s a lot of value there. If I’m saying someone’s name I’m really going to take advantage of that to let them know I am here with them, it’s live, I’m excited about it. I always play that up.
One thing I did notice, Tim, I played with this just one time and just a little bit so far and, in terms of buyers, when the names started coming at the end (my team sends them to me via Skype while I’m still live on my webinar), I knew every name because I had already called them out in questions.
That’s when I knew, “Okay, Tim’s onto something.”
Tim: Yep. I’ve noticed the exact same thing. You know, there’s another part to that too. When you call out their name…schoolteachers do this when they notice somebody’s not paying attention, they say that person’s name and now that person will pay attention again because they don’t want to be caught off guard. It gets people to just sit there and pay attention.
You know you are providing a lot of value and are helping people with what you are doing on the webinar so do the best to keep their attention. Call out their names, answer their questions, it really does work wonders.
Amy: It does. I love that. I also think you probably just get better at becoming a speed reader through the questions. You don’t want big awkward pauses while you’re trying to look at questions.
Tim: That’s right. What I’ve found works for that, as you are preparing your webinar, you are creating your deck and practicing it, find little spots where it seems like it would be okay to insert a few questions. You are in the middle of a section and you’ve just finished bullet points and it seems like there will be a little transition, that’s a great spot to just look over and answer a few questions that are relevant to what you just talked about or even ones that might just help people grasp what it was that you just talked about.
After that you transition into the next spot. That’s a great point. I would say if you are starting out and you want to just get started answering questions, if you’ve got a webinar that’s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4; or Step 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5; after each step is a great spot to stop and answer some questions.
From there you can evolve to where, as you are going, if there is a question that catches your eye and you bet a lot of people will want to know it you can be in the middle and say, “And, John wanted to know blah, blah, blah…it’s a perfect time to ask that,” then answer it and, Boom! You are back into the thing.
Amy: Nice. Tim is a great example of getting better as you do hundreds of webinars. If you want to see this in action, Tim, I’m going to link to one of the webinars that we’ve done together before so people can see how you do this and really get a good understanding. It will be one of our Lead Pages webinars so if you’ve never used Lead Pages before or want some advice in terms of how to use it, maybe you have the tool but want some ideas, we’ve got a really cool webinar you can check out.
You can also see his flow. It is flawless. I’ll give you a hint, he does something super weird on webinars…He actually never goes full screen. I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you why you don’t go full screen.
For those of you who don’t understand what I mean, you literally see all of the little squares of his slides to the left but then you see the main slide in the middle. But he never goes full screen so that one slide at a time is taking up the whole screen.
Why do you do that?
Tim: I would love to say that there is a tactic behind it. In reality, in the beginning it was my fear of not being sure what was next. In the first few webinars I noticed that Clay, our CEO, my mentor for webinars, did the same thing. I never knew why he did it but just followed in his footsteps.
Now, it works out great. I bounce back and forth between slides. A lot of things will go, “Oh, here’s something I want to talk about,” and I will go back ten slides. That’s so hard to do if you’re full screen.
Amy: It is.
Tim: Plus, I go back and forth between the internet and the slide deck all of the time.
Amy: Oh you do.
Tim: That’s a little more complex if you’re in full screen mode.
Amy: That is true. But I wanted to bring that up, not because Tim’s got an amazing strategy that’s going to get you ten times more sales if you don’t go full screen; however, I talk about webinars a lot and I give you strategies and tell people phases of webinars.
But one thing I don’t talk a lot about but want to make sure people understand is that you have to find your own style. You’ve got to do what works best for you. It might not be the traditional style. I usually stick to the rules and Tim is totally doing something different than most everybody does in terms of not going full screen.
It’s funny because if I don’t tell people when we start a webinar together everyone thinks the screens aren’t full screen yet and think he needs to switch it. People freak out so Tim is always reminding me to tell people he is “weird” or whatever before we get started.
I think it’s really cool. Tim does amazing webinars. He has huge success with conversions on webinars and he has his own style. I think you are a great example, Tim, in terms of doing what feels good to you where you will feel confident and come across with your style, this is how you do it, and you have amazing stuff to share.
Tim: Thank you, so much. I appreciate that.
Amy: Definitely. Thank you so much for being on the show. I just wanted to share your really cool strategy. You got amazing results with it. I think we should all engage more with your audience. We all have to find our own style and I want to encourage everyone listening to definitely start answering a few questions throughout.
I love Tim’s strategy of taking a minute or two after each step (if you are doing steps) to answer questions, then you can ease into it. I promise to link to a great webinar in the show notes that Tim and I did together so that you can see it in action.
Again, Tim, I consider you a great friend. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Tim: Same goes to you. It was such an honor to be on the show. Thank you for having me on.
Amy: Have a great day.
Tim: You too.
Amy: There you have it. I hope you found the engagement strategies for webinars as valuable as I have. It’s something you’ll see me do more and more. I’m not totally comfortable with it yet. When I get in the zone of webinars, stopping and answering questions of the cuff is not my natural habit but it is something I want to get better at because I see the value in it.
I want to tell you that you can check out Tim in action with this kind of engagement webinar if you go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/88. I will have a link to his webinar so you can check it out.
I also want to thank Edgar for sponsoring this episode. MeetEdgar.com is the tool I use to schedule all of my social media posts. I use it during all of my webinar promos as well. Anytime I’m doing a live webinar or if I’m doing an automated webinar, you can be sure I will load Edgar with all the different posts for social media to get people to sign up for my webinars.
The cool thing is, if a live webinar is over I can go into the library and pause the live promos. I can also fill up the library with my automated webinar promos so they are running every single week. The cool thing with social media scheduling through Edgar is that you can do live promos and have them go out during a certain period of time.
You can then fill up the library for the ones you want to consistently go out week after week and you get to schedule it all. You get to decide what’s best. If you don’t know what’s best, Edgar will suggest times for you and that’s really cool.
Remember, scheduling is all about more consistency in your business. You know when you are consistent you will make a bigger impact and you will see more revenue. I really do believe there is a direct correlation. Check out MeetEdgar.com/ amy to get your free offer to get started right away.
Thank you so much for tuning in. I cannot wait to see you again next week. Bye for now.
