How to Increase Sales Conversions on Webinars

This video will show you how to increase sales and boost conversions into sales on a webinar. This is a list of tweaks for people who want to increase conversion sales on webinars.

This is for business owners who already use webinars. You guys already know the ridiculous conversions of webinars if done right.

This is a compilation of information from experienced webinar users. The information comes from their articles (linked at bottom) and/or live free or paid content they have done which I have attended.

Information has been kept to a minimum with a minimalist and essentialist theme. Only the high-impact, useful things have been mentioned.

I believe this free information below is worth more than other’s paid information so read it like you paid thousands of dollars for it or you will not value it.

Note: For a Top Ten List of Webinar Tweaks that’s much prettier, and better formatted, click here. 

You’ll miss out on a large amount of sales if you don’t do this:

• Trial closes: Russell Brunson’ profit per webinar registrant went from $9 to $16 by using trial closes. This is when you add in phrases to make the attendees nod in agreement. Add in as many as possible as long as it’s relevant. Examples include “Does this make sense?”, “Isn’t that awesome?”, or “Don’t you agree?”
• Feel free to call us with any questions: Russell Brunson increased webinar sales by 25% by adding an option at the end of the webinar that let viewers call in to a number with any specific questions they still had before they bought. They left questions via voicemail on a Google Voice. Russell called them back with answers.
• Use real-time live value bonuses to boost show-up rates. Must be actually really valuable and only available during the webinar. Ewa Wysocka of Mindvalley increased show up rate to 30 to 35% by doing this with exclusive, live chakra workshops during the webinar. She does Webinars with 9000+ live attendees. You can do this with maybe live mini-coaching. Be creative. Source: Mindvalley insights
• Mindset shift: Don’t assume every attendee is a lead. Source: Neil Patel
• Live is the best. Converts better than automated or replay. Don’t do automated until you’ve almost perfected live Source: Amy Porterfield, Kimra Luna and many others
• Increase Show-up Rate with No live replay and telling attendees beforehand in numerous pre-webinar emails. Worth testing, especially for more savvy audiences who rely on replays.
• A detailed webinar description on the registration page increases registrations. Source: Neil Patel: “a more detailed version of the webinar description converted 12.8% better than the original, with a 98% confidence interval.”
• Having sign up forms on the LEFT side of the registration page increased sign-up’s by 15%. Source: Neil Patel
• Removing bio’s of presenters on the registration page completely increased conversion rate by 19.3% with a confidence interval of 99.96%. Source: Neil Patel
• Having multiple forms to fill out does not decrease sign-up’s so might as well to collect more information. source: Neil Patel – Note: take this one with a grain of salt. Only seen through his testing
• Offer a demo of the product. Leads are often driven by this question. Source: Neil Patel “found that offering a demo converted over 10% better than offering a free trial.”
• Keep them engaged throughout the webinar. What works well: polls, ask questions, and fill-in-the-blank worksheets. Do this a few times throughout the webinar. Your biggest obstacle is preventing webinar viewers from clicking away or getting distracted. This one is IMPORTANT.
• Don’t make it a sales pitch. Give value, educate, and show how your product can solve their problems. Neil Patel has found that a more aggressive approach to get them to buy in the middle of the webinar dropped attendee rate by 20-30%.
• Name-location Call out method: Call out a bunch of people by their name and city location when you’re starting the webinar and when they’ve bought. Reason why it works: I don’t have any science behind this but my theory is because of social proof and proof it’s live. Source: A lot of people do this including John Lee Dumas of eofire.com
• Number of fields to fill in for webinar registration: Neil Patel found that having more fields did not decrease opt-in’s at all so might as well collect more information. Adobe has noted a slightly higher opt-in with much less fields. General rule of thumb: less fields to fill in.
• Answer relevant questions throughout the webinar presentation rather than just at the Q&A at end. Tripled revenue and increased attendee stick rate to 98% by doing this. Keep it natural and keep the flow going. Do a couple questions every now and then. Say out loud their name and question before you answer. Note: results are based on only a few webinars. Source: Tim Paige of LeadPages (on track to 450+ webinars and Guinness World Record holder for most webinars done)
• Making mistakes can result in more sales. By being genuine and not trying to be perfect, people see you are more of a person and it can show them that it’s actually live. Source: Tim Paige
• Call out their name when you’re answering questions. It seems the people you call out live are more likely to buy. Source: Amy Porterfield and Tim Paige
• Keep your biography about yourself on the presentation SHORT. (Under 10 minutes max) People want value and not your life story.
• Keep your topic intriguing and specific. Avoid vague topics. Do this in your headline and during your presentation. Example: How to succeed at life vs. How to increase the retention rate on a membership fitness site. Use “How to” topics and key bullet points on your registration page. Source: Neil Patel.
• Highlight the pain or the benefit. Good examples: Time saved, pain if you don’t. Note: I recommend you do it ethically and don’t exaggerate. I prefer highlighting the good versus the bad. Source: Neil Patel, Brendon Burchard, and others. (It’s sales knowledge)
• Answer all or most of the questions during your Q&A at the end. You’re answering their objections to why they won’t buy. Source: John Lee Dumas, Amy Porterfield
• Use most asked questions in Q & A to tweak your slides/presentation to make them better. Russell Brunson went from 30k to 120k in sales with this technique. And he had a smaller audience too with the 120k one.
• Smaller webinars can sometimes work better because you can better answer everyone and cover all scenarios. Source: JLD from Eofire.com and Neil Patel
• The follow-up is crucial and can double your earnings if done properly. Not everyone is ready to buy immediately. Some need to think about it and get to know you better. With a blog or weekly/daily/monthly content, they can get to know you more. Intermediate process: Send a limited time replay for 48 hours (test how long for your market 2 to 4 days) with good copy, listing the benefits of your product. Don’t hard sell. Send more than one email. Advanced: Do what I said plus more advanced follow-up email sequence. Track where they left the webinar (in the middle, at the end, before the sales pitch) -> have custom email-follow-up’s for each of these groups including changes to the email subject line to follow-up if they don’t open. Survey them on why they didn’t buy and/or stay. Source: Neil Patel, MyWifeQuitHerJob, and Russell Brunson
• Consider having a directory of old webinars. Source: Neil Patel “old webinars provided about 20% of our overall webinar leads, which is nothing to sneeze at.”
• A warm audience converts better. Obvious but overlooked. If you have a loyal readership from other content out there, they trust you more. Continue giving, responding to emails, etc. to increase this goodwill. Be ethical, give real value, don’t scam people. Source: Neil Patel and Ryan Lee
• Highlighting the amount of time saved by your product. Example: “Reading this article saved you hundreds of hours of research.” Highlight the amount of time you would have wasted doing it yourself and/or the time you have now saved. There’s a lot of psychology behind why this works. See psychology lemonade stand studies.
• Emphasize the system and not yourself. Emphasize the process is what saved you a lot of time rather than your own abilities. Moves the value from you being a superhero to a proven system. Source: David Siteman Garland
• Be very clear on what you want them to do next. People need simple instructions or can be confused. Although it may seem like common sense, clearly state and show with screenshots the next step: “Click the Order now button to purchase the product through my link. Here is a picture” Source: David Siteman Garland and Steven Essa
• On-screen Timer and discount. Have a counting down timer and a discount code. I have my own opinions on this. A discount kind of pust a lesser perception of the quality of a premium product but that’s just my theory. You may want to try ‘early bird special’ or ‘bonuses expire’ instead. Make bonuses relevant though. I would say just don’t use scarcity as your foundation. If your core product isn’t providing real value, the whole scarcity thing just becomes a scam, which I hate. It works though. Be ethical. Sources: JLD on eofire.com, Amyporterfield.com, and many others
• Tell them to remove distractions: At the start, have a script like this “I put in a lot of hours to create this presentation so I ask you respect me by turning off your cellphone, closing the door, and making sure there are no distractions. Get out a pen and paper if you want to take notes. I promise you will get a lot of value from this webinar.”
• Webinar Script (works for selling on stage too): Intro ->Big Promise-> Hook to end -> Command attention -> Remove distractions -> Qualify -> Future Pace (future rewards attendees get with your system) -> Content (3-7 Key Value points are ONE core topic) -> Remove false beliefs audience has -> 3 Secrets -> Stack If/All -> Real price. Source: Russell Brunson (further elaborated in Dot Com Secrets and Perfect Webinar)
• The Stack: instrumental in increasing sales. I’m feeling like I’m giving away too much free stuff, but here goes: the essence of a stack is just listing all the benefits in a list with the price of each on the right. At the bottom of the list, you say a much lower number for how much they will actually pay for all of this. Example: “I’m going to teach you the Stack. That’s worth $400, I’m going to teach you the 90 second bridge, that’s worth $597, I’m going to teach you the Freebie and Surprise at End technique, that’s worth $197… in total, that’s worth $1,200… but you’re not going to pay $1,200… you’re going to pay… $97!” Source: Russell Brunson
• The 90 second Bridge: The script goes “I’m not sure why you showed up today. Maybe it’s … Maybe it’s …” The basic idea is to get the attendee to agree to one of the hypothetical’s. Use it when transitioning from teaching to your selling. David Siteman Garland said telling his friend to do this alone increased his conversions drastically. (note: anecdotal evidence. He didn’t test this using any standard statistical analysis)
• Freebies, Surprise-at-end, and/or Real value gifts during the webinar. Announce before the webinar. Increases attendance and engagement. Prevents people from clicking away. Announce early during presentation before people drop off. Source: Kimra Luna, David Siteman Garland, and Mywifequitherjob.com
• Sharing works. Get people to share on social media leading up to  the webinar and at the intro of the webinar. Has been shown to increase attendance. Of course, you want relevant attendees though. Source: Lewis Howes, Mywifequitherjob.com
• Set up expectation at beginning. Let them know you will follow up with questions, if not in the Q&A at end, with emails after the webinar (works especially well for automated webinars) Source: Casey Zeman via Ryan Lee’s Freedym Show
• Future Pacing, Disarming and Value Stacking – Beyond the scope of this article. Sales knowledge. Example: “All this is worth … How much is this worth to you? Could you imagine the [time saved and/or results] … even if you only got a fraction of these results? … But you will only be paying …” Note: Stay ethical and honest. Disarm specific audiences especially audiences that are really not trusting – “I’m not going to […] in this presentation, don’t worry” Sources: Russell Brunson, Frank Kern and others
• Have at least one other person helping you. Usually 1 more is enough. Get them to handle and monitor chat for you. Source: Mywifequitherjob.com, flippedlifestyle.com and other sources
• Send attendees straight to a simplified sales page rather than a super long sales page. Attendees already heard everything you’re saying in the long-form sales page. Still use long-form sales page for follow-up sequence and limited time replay’s. Source: Amy Porterfield “Sales came in so much quicker” Podcast #73
• For replays, disable everything but pause/play. One of the reasons I think webinars do so well is because it is like a live interaction. People can’t rewind or replay. It’s live and moving forward, which helps with a lot of human psychology for selling. Pausing is necessary because sometimes they want to listen but they have to do something before they can give you the time. For instance, they have a crying baby. Source: Me and insights from Ryan Lee
• Proper use of upsells and cross-sells. Some of these bullet points alone can make you tens of thousands of dollars when implemented properly on an already working system. This is one of them. Do this properly. After the sale do 1 or 2 proper upsells or downsells. Don’t leave out content (very rude to do) from something they just bought and try and sell that. Instead, have an add-on in a related field they need help in or personal coaching. Be ethical. Sources: Ryan Lee, Russell Brunson, Amy Porterfield
• Double down on what’s working. If webinars are working, do them more frequently. Especially during a launch or promotion. Facebook Ads seem to be working really well for people. Note: Some people are doing better with Facebook Ads to a cold audience by not using their face in the ad at all since they don’t know you yet. I have my own opinions on this since I know human psychology reacts differently to a face … but not always. Source: Amy Porterfield
• Keep them engaged and prevent them from being distracted using these tactics: James Wedmore said use tons of word-for-word full length sentences and text in your slides. He’s said this is shown to convert into more sales.  **Take this one with a grain of salt. Amy Porterfield has said the exact opposite: less text, lots of slides, don’t read from slides, and move through slides quickly. From my own analysis, it seems that the recurring objective and theory behind why these tactics work is to keep the audience engaged and prevent them from leaving the webinar or getting distracted. Therefore, I suggest testing both with a large enough sample size (number of webinars) for a decent confidence interval. I prefer Amy’s. (Note: For those of you who aren’t good at statistics or science, it’s really important. Theories and results based on just a few webinars aren’t enough.)
• Joint webinars with proper introduction framing  creates great free warm traffic- Do a joint webinar with a trusted authority in your niche. Get them to do a really good intro to build trust and authority. This audience trusts their authority but maybe not you yet. A proper introduction does wonders for many reasons. Adobe has found the cost per registrant to be 36% cheaper than cold traffic. They’re also warmer and more likely to buy. Who does a lot of these? David Siteman Garland.
• Mention the product but don’t hard sell at once at the beginning. Be up front. Source: James Wedmore
• Share your struggles, pains, stories, shortcomings. I think why this works is it helps your audience relate, makes you human, and helps them believe you. Note: don’t make your life story too long. Source: James Wedmore
• Make sure webinar presentation is congruent with registration form information to keep up stick-rate.
• Get them excited before a webinar starts. Get them less bored.
• Stand up while presenting, visualization, meditation, light jogging before webinar – These things haven’t been scientifically tested but people have claimed they help. Source: Me, James Wedmore, Lewis Howes
• Risk reversal/other business/sales/pricing knowledge – There’s a ton of fundamental business, psychology, sales knowledge that obviously helps a ton in conversions into sales, especially if you’re delivering real honest value. Some of them being a money-back guarantee, price comparison, urgency. Some of these things that are beyond the scope of this article to elaborate on include simple price tweaks, removing the dollar sign, emphasizing time saved, and proper use of payment plans. This is a fantastic article. I recommend it: http://www.nickkolenda.com/psychological-pricing-strategies/#pricing-s7-t22 
• Get to the point and SIMPLIFY your message. Make your presentation the minimal effective dose so you don’t overwhelm them. The worst thing you can do is overwhelm them. Keep the points you teach between 3 to 7. (3 usually works better) The point is not to overteach but find their belief patterns and structuring the content around their belief pattern. Find their belief pattern, break it, and structure it around the truth. Source: Leadpages, Russell Brunson, and Steven Essa
• Mention testimonials. Have testimonials in your sales page and slides. Have as many as possible in your sales page (studies show this works better).
• Free webinar traffic: SEO, Other people’s email lists, podcasts, interviews, Joint Webinars
• Have more than 100 people in attendance: Increased conversion to sales when you have more than 100 attendees. May be due to increased energy levels. Source: Leadpages article
• Optimal webinar length: This is strange. According to Steven Essa, the longer the better. 60 to 90 minutes is typical length. He also says that as a general rule, the pricier the product you are selling, the longer the presentation should be. However, that is completely anecdotal advice. Some people are testing out these new ‘flash webinars’ that are 10 minutes long and it’s working well for them. In a recent PGi customer survey, 81% said they prefer a 30-minute webinar. Be careful with anecdotal advice and don’t get starry-eyed by the “next big thing”
• Highlight the benefits and results they get. Not the features.
• Selling physical products sometimes convert better. You can sell any price point on a webinar not just high priced products. What’s worked: Jewelry, real estate, meditation, coaching, etc.
• A primary goal of each slide is to keep them engaged and moving through to the next slide. Keep that in mind.
• Have at least 1 slide per minute of presentation.  I can’t emphasize enough that one of your biggest obstacles is keeping your attendee from multi-tasking or being distracted by a thousand things (Netflix, Youtube, TV, children, etc.) More slides are important in order to keep them from getting distracted. As a rule of thumb, 120 slides for a 60 minute webinar is good. Source: Amy Porterfield 
• Slides work better than facecam – Tested many times. Converts into many more sales. Source: Steven Essa. Note: May vary depending on market. Some markets like real estate and selling physical products (jewelry) through Etsy convert a lot better with a webcam where you are showing them around the house or showing the jewelry. Source Kimra Luna
• Starting Now Hack – Change the title of your webinar to include **STARTING NOW** 20 minutes before. Source: Leadpages has shown this increases show up by at least 20%
• Have a Proper Pre-Webinar Process: 4 Days before email everyone, 3 days before, email those who didn’t open with different subject line, 2 days before: follow-up once more with those who haven’t opened, 1 day before Reminder email, 1 Hour before, 15 Minutes before with good Copy
• Increase Show-Up Rates with Mini-Value content: Mini-video courses, 1 to 3 Short videos in the emails before giving value, Add intrigue/curiosity
• Optimal Webinar times: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10AM, Noon, 1PM, 4PM, 8PM Eastern. Varies depending on your market sometimes.
• Keep answers concise: Don’t go into a long-winded explanation of things when you’re answering questions. Quick, concise yes-no answers are good. Source: Leadpages blog
• How long should you spend on selling? As a general rule of thumb: ~10 minutes for $97 product, 15 to 20 minutes for a $997 product. (not including Q&A) Source: Amy Porterfield
• Work on retention not just acquisition: Try doing a free, live on-boarding webinar for customers. Can help increase retention. Other things that work: In person phone-calls
• If you’re presenting, don’t look at the webinar attendee number. If you keep checking this, it can affect your psyche
• Countdown timer on limited time replay page
• Track numbers. A bit of an advanced thing. Key numbers to look at: sign-up, show-up rate, revenue/attendee, follow-up buy rate, messages that trigger the sale, views per replay
• Keep the Webinar registration page simple and with few words. Big value bullet-points. Not too convoluted or elaborated. Worth testing. Shown to convert to more sign-up’s. Source: Amy Porterfield
• Rewatch your own recorded webinars to pick up on quirks or things you shouldn’t do that you didn’t even notice you did to eliminate them.
• Optimize sales copy on registration page. Important but overlooked easily.
• Have passion for your topic.
• Automated webinars work but first do a bunch of live to get the hang of it and find which recorded webinar converts the best. Easywebinar seems to be the recommended automated webinar service.
• Other Webinar options: Invisible Funnel – one free Value-driven webinar to pitch a paid Webinar. Beyond the scope of this article. Source: Russell Brunson
• Don’t do full screen slides. Have the mini-slides on the left sidebar. Note: Tim Paige does this but not because he’s tested it and it results in more sales or because of the numbers. He just prefers it. Worth testing though

• GoToWebinar is best software for increasing attendance rates as of right now. Neil Patel’s seeing a 15-38% increase. Digital Marketer has seen similar stuff. Cons: A bit pricey ($99/month). Back when I started, I was made to believe there were no free webinar options (possibly to get me to use their affiliate link). I’m telling you what I wish I knew then: best free option is Google Hangouts. For those who are getting 2,000+ attendees, UStream is preferred by many because of the high HD streaming quality.
• Google Hangouts is a great free option. Some have had better experiences with the usability and interface despite having tested GoToWebinar. If you do this, use
• Chatwing may be a better chat service than GotoWebinar. It allows for users to see other people’s chat questions and respond. (May be better for community and sense of it actually being live)  Source: Kimra Luna and her Facebook community
• Try a follow-up Google hangout to answer more questions and answers the day after for people. Increased sales a decent amount. Source: Russell Brunson
• Webinar Cliff-Notes technique: Write a bullet point summary of your webinar presentation. Send it on the last day before the webinar goes down. An additional 150 thousand dollars of a total of 250k came from the follow-up with this strategy. Source: Russell Brunson (https://player.fm/series/marketing-in-your-car/episode-121-notes-from-within-the-inner-circle)
• Reference industry standards: People don’t know standard show-up and stick rates so they don’t realize they can improve on them. Kimra Luna gets show-up rate around 50%, Russell gets around 30%, Adobe gets about 36%; Stick rate: ~90%. These are ball-park and may fluctuate depending on industry.
• Notable stats from Adobe; May help you decide what to do and what not to do: On average, 50% downloaded presentation slides, 54% participated in polls, 51% participated in chat, 40% used emoticons when prompted, 40% participated in moderated Q&A, 19% accepted the 10 minute product demo, an interactive activity spikes engagement 60 to 80%. Editor’s note: I take this as to do a cool engagement activity every 10 minutes as Adobe does. The numbers show it really helps with stick-rate. Examples: emoji polls, answer questions live, etc.
• Adobe has seen a 500% conversion lift with these strategies: Don’t do a demo webinar of your product. Start with offering value with education or best practices on a webinar, include a slide about your product in a rotating slide deck before the webinar begins, have a very brief notification in the intro about an upcoming opportunity to learn more about your product (emphasis on brief), provide a solution overview download during the webinar, have a 10 minute demo breakout session after for those interested, include a link to the next webinar in follow-up emails, send every registrant a link to the product demo.
• In a recent Adobe study, 55% view the webinar recording (supposedly) not including the ~30% who attended live to add to a total of 85-95% of the total registrants who consumed some form of content. (I know John Lee Dumas isn’t doing nearly as well with the recordings and follow-up rate even though he’s making 100k+ per month; he could learn a few things from here.)
• Adobe went from 1% conversions to 20% by changing their whole approach: used third-party organizations that already have a relationship with the target audience rather than rent lists, don’t treat everyone as a lead (just as an inquiry), built rapport first with an initial solutions webinar (open rates went up to 30%, CTR went up to 11%), added a third webinar understanding buyers are at different stages in the cycle (30% conversion to sales), 30 day trial with daily training (30% conversion from trial to sales), 10 minute product demo after a solutions webinar

Note: Don’t get overwhelmed by these. Pick one, use it and let me know your results.

Remember:

Every increase in the conversion rate on the front-end increases conversion on the back-end for products and everything else. So these matter a LOT. From opt-ins to registration pages to show-up rates.

If there’s any resources I’ve missed, let me know.

Hope you enjoyed,

Will

Note: This article is constantly being updated.

Sources:

Russell Brunson: DotcomSecrets

Neil Patel: http://www.quicksprout.com/2015/02/16/how-i-generated-518399-visitors-and-16394-leads-from-77-webinars/

https://www.quicksprout.com/2015/10/30/a-step-by-step-guide-to-creating-a-high-converting-webinar/

https://www.quicksprout.com/2013/09/05/how-to-use-webinars-to-convert-blog-readers-into-customers/

http://mywifequitherjob.com/my-first-live-webinar/

Russell Brunson: http://blog.dotcomsecrets.com/

flippedlifestyle.com

Kimraluna.com

http://www.amyporterfield.com/2015/09/73-3-webinar-tweaks-that-made-a-62k-difference/

http://www.amyporterfield.com/2015/08/4-sneaky-webinar-myths-that-keep-you-from-delivering-super-valuable-sales-driven-presentations-that-convert-like-crazy/

https://blog.leadpages.net/24-webinar-marketing-lessons/

http://www.jameswedmore.com/7-slightly-odd-things-i-do-on-my-webinars-to-increase-online-sales/

stevenessa.com

Adobe

John Lee Dumas: eofire.com

David Siteman Garland: http://www.therisetothetop.com/interviews-guests/geoff-ronning-interview/

http://www.digitalmarketer.com/the-perfect-webinar-funnel-2/

http://www.mindvalleyinsights.com/boosting-webinar-show-up-rates/

Ryan Lee’s Freedym Show

http://www.amyporterfield.com/2015/12/88-how-to-boost-your-webinar-sales/