Today's episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast comes from a range of questions I've received around maximising webinar attendance.

Let me explain...

Whenever I do podcast episodes about webinars, I get many questions about webinars afterwards. I've received a lot of different questions, but in essence, they're all asking the same question.

The types of questions I have been asked are:

"What do you think about the strategy of offering a bonus resource to people if they attend my webinar live?"
"Do you think it's a good idea if I do a prize draw for live attendees who come to my webinar to maximise the number of people who come?"
"What do you think about webinars with no replay so that people have to come and watch it live?"

In essence, every single person is asking me how to maximise the attendance at their webinar.

I thought I'd lump all those questions into one juicy, tangible episode of the podcast on how to maximise attendance at your webinars.

Let's dive in and get your webinar attendee numbers skyrocketing...

First and foremost, a big shout out and thank you to every single person who sent me this question in some way, shape or form. You know who are.

I really do love when you ask questions for me to answer on the podcast. It makes podcast content planning so much easier, and it also helps me to ensure that this podcast is really valuable for you.

If you have a question that you'd like to answer on a future podcast episode about webinars, business, behind-the-scenes, me, launching, etc., feel free to submit your question at: tashcorbin.com/question

There's a good reason for wanting to maximise attendance at your webinars.

We want to have more people come to your webinar live because:

1. It's great to have lots of people in the chat box asking questions. It gives it a good vibe, and it also makes it feel a lot more connecting and engaging for you as the presenter.

2. We know that the more people who attend a webinar live, the more conversion you are likely to have into whatever your offer might be at the end of the webinar.

3. The more people who attend your webinar live, the bigger the connection you have with those people and the more you fast-track the nurture stage of your client attraction process.

The client attraction process is:

That nurture part of the client attraction process is one that a lot of people struggle with, especially in the early stages of their business.

We often default to creating lots of one-way content and screaming at people through the internet. Whereas nurture is about getting to know your audience as much as they get to know you, and delivering value as much as they ask you questions.

There's a lot of value in having people attend a webinar live, far beyond the fact that it has a direct correlation with conversion.

But that is one of the big reasons why we want people to come to your webinar... because the more people who complete the webinar (either watch it live or watch the replay), the more likely they are to then go through that bridging process and identify whether working with you is the next logical step for them or not.

Of the strategies that I mentioned in the intro, which of those are the best to maximise live attendance at your webinar? Should you bribe people with some kind of bonus for attending live? Or a resource that they only know what the link is if they either attend the webinar live or watch the replay all the way to the end? Should you do a live attendee prize draw? Is it better to go without offering replays?

Which of these strategies are actually effective at maximising webinar attendance?

It might surprise you that I'm not going to argue with any of these strategies. It's true - if you don't have a replay, people will set aside the time and watch the webinar live more than if you did offer a replay.

If you have a live attendee prize draw, it can get more people to attend your webinar live. If you bribe people to attend your webinar with some kind of bonus resource that only live attendees get access to, or you put the information about the bonus resource at the end of the webinar, they will either have to attend live or watch the relay. All of those things do work.

There are other things that I think you absolutely should be doing to maximise live attendance.

For example, promoting your webinar at least two weeks out.

Give people ample time to get it into their calendars, especially your hottest audience. Give them time to have space in their calendar.

If you keep surprising people with webinars at the last minute, you're going to reduce live attendance.

I also think it's very important to have your reminders in place. How far out and how often you send those reminders differs depending on your niche.

If your audience is the kind of people who are on their emails very consistently, then I would sway towards fewer reminders and make those reminders closer to the actual webinar (ie. doing one the day before and then one 30 minutes before the webinar).

But if people aren't on their emails regularly, then it may be a better idea to send reminders three days before, one day before and an hour before. I usually don't do any more than three reminders.

Those things definitely help people to remember about the webinar and attend live.

When I run webinars, I also make it easy for attendees to add the event to their calendars so that people actually block the time for the webinar. My team set up an ICS file that allows them to do that easily.

All of these things work, and some of them are just basic fundamentals that you want to do for every webinar.

I would say getting your reminder strategy sorted and paying attention to which reminder levels and intervals work for you and your audience is best practice. Similarly, experimenting with time of day and day of the week can make a difference.

It's less of a difference than most people will try and lead you to believe, but it does make a difference.

Then make sure that you're promoting in advance and making it easier for people to put it in their calendar and work out what the time is.

Just do those every single time.

Before I move on, another big tip is to open your webinar five minutes before the start time.

I'm not saying to start the webinar five minutes before the start time, but we live in a short attention span/ADHD/very distractible world.

A lot of people go and open a webinar a few minutes before because they like to be there on time. If they join the webinar and it's not started yet, you're maximising the chance they're going to get distracted. They're going to go and make a cup of tea and forget. Then they'll come back and the webinar's 15 minutes in, and then they can't get into the webinar because they missed the most important bit at the start.

You do want to make sure that you get some of those things nailed.

But when it comes to the bribery tactics, that's where I start to question: What's the real problem here?

If we're trying to maximise webinar attendance, we want to use strategies that don't fudge the numbers.

If we want to maximise live attendance (because live attendance maximises conversion and connection and fast-tracks nurture), then I think the number one reason you want people coming to your webinar live is because they are super dang excited to attend the webinar.

They're excited for the topic. They're excited to learn from you because they've learned from you before, or they've heard you speak about this before, and they ate up every morsel of what you were sharing. This is something that's a priority for them. It's something that they're excited to get their teeth into.

That's the number one reason I want people to attend my webinars live.

I don't want people attending my webinars live for the chance to win a free one-on-one session with me.

If that's their number one reason for attending live, then either:

You may be surprised to know that I don't measure the success of my webinar by live attendance alone.

I always look at live attendance plus replay watches, because I also know that for some of my best ideal clients, my most likely to convert leads, my most itching to learn about this topic and dive into further work with me people, they can't attend the webinar live.

They will be hungrily waiting for the replay email to go out so they can watch it that night.

They will email me the next day if the replay doesn't go out within a few hours and ask where the replay is.

I don't necessarily think that it has to be live attendance for it to be valuable attendance in terms of return for my business.

I also want to ensure that the people who are watching my replays feel the love and get just as much value from my webinars as the people who do attend live.

One of the things I can't replicate from live attendance versus watching the replay is the ability to ask me questions there in the call and clarify things as you get to them. But when I send out the replay, I always encourage people to email me and ask their questions after they watch the replay.

My number one measure of completion of my webinar is actually how many people attended the webinar live plus how many people watched the replay.

I'm much more interested in that number than I am in the live attendance number alone.

One of the reasons why a lot of marketers and people who teach webinars in particular will force this live attendance thing is because they will often advocate for bypassing people having time to think about the offer and making them buy live on the call by having an offer that's only available to people live on the call.

This is something that is not necessarily a consent-based marketing practice. It's something to be very mindful of. That is a pressure tactic. It's a manufactured urgency that bypasses people making an informed and well-thought-out decision about whether to buy something and whether it's the right fit for them or not.

Therefore, I don't use that methodology in my webinars. That's why live attendance isn't as big a factor for me compared to live attendance plus replay viewership.

If I have 100 people sign up for a webinar, and 75 people have either attended live or watched the replay, I'm a happy camper.

That's a very high completion rate for a webinar.

If it's 15% of people came live and 60% of people watched the replay, I'm not too bothered by that because I know that my replay watch rate is very high. I know that I tend to attract marginalised people and those who may not have the capacity to watch live due to various responsibilities.

There are lots of different reasons why they can't watch live. They prefer to watch the replay so they can pause and take notes because they have processing capacity issues, or they want to be able to stop and focus and think about things before we move on to the next point.

There are lots of different reasons why people prefer to watch replays.

If everyone's hungry and excited to watch the replay and there are fewer people there live, I'm less bothered by that.

I just wanted to mention that before we continue.

Now let's have a think about these strategies...

Are you wanting to use those manufactured strategies to get people to attend your webinar live because your topic's a bit off, and you're wallpapering over some big cracks in your foundations?
Or are you wanting to use those strategies because you're afraid no one's going to turn up, and there's some mindset stuff we probably need to work on there?
Would it actually be better for you to not use those bribery-type approaches and those fake-urgency and scarcity approaches in order to ascertain whether you've nailed the webinar?
Have you done a good job of expressing the value proposition of the training itself? Have you connected with something relevant, timely and urgent for your audience and something they're excited to do with you?

The other thing I do want to say is that sometimes those bribes can be a turnoff.

Especially if your audience are entrepreneurs and they've been in business for a little while, we see those strategies and we know that you're going to force us to sit through sixteen testimonials in a row disguised as 'if this person can do it so can you' in order to get that bribe.

For me, if I see people offering webinars with those bribes attached - either there's no replay (not inclusive), if you attend live, you'll get a resource that non-live attendees won't get (ie. you have to force me through your webinar) or there's going to be a webinar-only offer and you have to buy it then and there (not consent-based practice) - that is a real turnoff.

For those of us who've been around a while, those strategies are a turnoff. They speak volumes about either your willingness to bypass my consent to maximise your profits, your lack of inclusion in your business model, your lack of belief in your content, or the way that you run your webinars is going to be so mind-numbing and so salesy that you know you have to resort to bribing me to stay to the end of the webinar.

One of the worst things someone can say at the start of a webinar for me is "Make sure you stay to the end of the webinar because...".

I do the opposite.

At the start of my webinars, when I explain how the webinar is going to unfold and what I'm going to talk about, I openly say "At the end of the webinar, I'm going to let you know about how we can do more of this together in my Take Off program. But if that's not something that's of interest to you, or it's not the right fit for you, you don't need to stay for that part of the webinar. There's no extra carrot dangling afterwards. If we get to the end of the core content and you do not want to hear about the Take Off program, you do not need to stay. You don't have to worry that you're going to miss out on something because I don't do that to you."

I want you to think about that from a buyer's perspective.

Which of those two strategies has you leaning in and feeling a sense of safety in your nervous system more?

I know which one I'd rather hear. I know which one I'd rather say.

Many people don't adopt this strategy because they're afraid. Many people don't adopt this strategy because their webinars are terrible and they wouldn't make sales if they didn't use bribes.

So many people need to force-feed their testimonials and their pitch throughout their webinar at you so hard that they have to resort to this kind of strategy. In fact, I've even seen people so afraid that people won't stick around for the offer at the end that they do their sales pitch at the start before you've even learnt anything.

That speaks volumes to me.

I already did touch on this a little, but I want to overtly say that marginalised people are less likely to be able to attend live, or less likely to have the capacity to attend and absorb a webinar live.

For me, the strategy of not offering a replay is not one I subscribe to. It's not inclusive.

It's really important to me that I have a very inclusive business because I am neurodivergent, I am marginalised. I am marginalised in a range of different layers, not only because I'm a woman, but also because I'm neurodivergent and I have been excluded from being able to access certain resources and certain advantages over the years as a business person, throughout my education, and in early days of my career. Therefore, it's important to me that I ensure I have an equitable and inclusive approach to the way that I run my business.

I always offer a replay, and I always ensure that that replay has controls on it.

Another strategy that I've seen that forces people to sit through all of the sales pitch of the webinar is they offer the replay of the webinar, but all the controls are unavailable. They don't work.

You can't pause it, you can't rewind, you can't fast forward, you can't swipe through the slides. You can't even watch it in double time. And you can't see how long the webinar goes for. The little timing thing is often gone on the screen so you don't even know what you're strapping yourself in for.

Again, this is a non-inclusive process.

As someone who tends to listen to webinars on the go, I need to rewind and re-listen to points here and there. Sometimes I want to pause so that I can write notes down.

That's your most engaged listener. And you're so afraid that if you don't force people to listen all in one go and take away people's ability to pause it, you won't make as many sales. It's a bit cringe. It gives me the ick. But this is taught.

I'm not saying anyone who's ever done any of this is to blame at all because this is what is taught.

There is a very well-known, very widely regarded launch training and a very well-known, very widely regarded webinar training that both teach this stuff.

When unpacking these strategies, a lot of people will feel so guilty for having done then. But it's not your fault! You were told to do this. But you were told to do this through the lens of fear, and you were told to do this through the lens of forcing people.

You were told to do this through the lens of bypassing consent.

It's not your fault if you believed that this is just how you do things. It's not your fault that you were told that this is the best practice.

I'd never do this, but I bet you that if I ran a webinar and I used all of those strategies (bypassed people's consent and forced them to come and watch the webinar), my conversion rate overall would be lower than doing it the consent-based way.

I know and I accept and acknowledge that my conversion rate often takes a little longer.

If my webinar is the first time anyone's ever come to a webinar of mine, they are probably the least likely to convert in that launch in the first two weeks. This is because I'm not forcing the decision, and I'm not creating this false scarcity and false urgency.

But I also know I have a much lower unsubscribe rate.

I have a much longer average length of time that people stay on my mailing list, and I also have a far lower refund request rate than across the industry for marketing and business strategy programs. Far, far lower. My refund rate would be less than 10% of industry averages. For every 10 refunds they get, I get one refund request.

For me, that speaks volumes about the fact that I'm not creating buyer's remorse. I'm not pushing people into buying something that they don't want or need or that isn't a good fit for them. I have far more trust in my audience. I have far less burn-and-churn of my audience as well.

This means I need to spend less on audience growth because my audience sticks around much longer. Rather than forcing people to make a decision whether to buy or get off my list within the first 15 days, I give people the time to hang around. I help people to feel valued as a member of the community, see how much valuable information I share for free, and really get to know me as a provider over a longer period of time.

I'm 100% happy with that choice.

If I were to switch up and start using those fear-based and pressure-based strategies, I don't think my conversion rate would be as high overall.

I think I'd have to spend more on list growth because my list would be churned so much faster.

Still to this day, I see people saying that when a bunch of people join their list during a launch, they expect to lose 25-40% of those people within 60 days of their launch.

When I do ads to get leads onto my mailing list, each lead costs $1.20 to about $5.80. If I then had 40% of those people disappear within 60 days because I spammed them, I would feel like I just wasted my money.

They've unsubscribed because I've overwhelmed them, I've put too much pressure on or I'm just sending far too many emails. And if I didn't do that (which I don't do), I have people, on average, stay on my mailing list for over two years.

I've only been using my current platform for my mailing list for eight years! The longer I use that platform, the longer the average time that someone is on my mailing list.

I've only got eight years of data, even though I've been in business for 12 years now.

I went a little tangential there, but hopefully, you can appreciate that there's a lot of finessing to webinar strategy, and I want to make sure that I address a lot of the #ButTash's that I would normally get from people when they first hear me talk about not buying into some of that fear-based rhetoric.

Let's make a decision to stop fudging the numbers with these bribes and some of those strategies that are forcing people to watch your webinars.

Instead, let's just get a better strategy!

We want to ensure that we get those reminders out. Make sure that when you send your reminders about the webinars that people have signed up for, you reiterate the value proposition of that webinar.

I get so many email reminders from people just telling me the webinar I signed up for is on the next day. Most of the time, I don't even remember what the webinar was about or why I chose to sign up for it.

It's generally because there was something on the signup page or in the promo for the webinar that really landed for me, but I was reminded of that in the reminder email. 

Be mindful of that when you're writing those reminders. We get a lot of information. We sign up for a lot of stuff.

Just because you're sending me a reminder and I already signed up, doesn't mean I was definitely going to be coming and I had prioritised it already.

It also definitely doesn't mean that I'm going to remember why I signed up for that webinar and what it was that appealed to me.

For the love of all things that you do, ensure that you are putting the time and energy into the messaging of those reminders, rather than just dialling them in and using a copy-paste template that someone gave you.

Tell us about why we should come live, beyond the bribe.

Tell us about what difference it will make in our lives. What are we going to implement? What are we going to learn as a result? What're you going to help us resolve or achieve?

Remember to include that in all the spaces where you have an opportunity to remind us to attend live.

When I say reminders, that also includes posts on social media that remind people about the webinar.

Even though someone signed up to attend your webinar, that doesn't necessarily mean they're opening all your emails. That's just the hard truth. 

Make sure that the day before the webinar, you post on your socials saying something along the lines of, "Oh my gosh, the webinar's on tomorrow! Can't wait to help people with X. This is a really important foundational part of achieving Y goal."

I also post on the day of the webinar talking a little bit about it and asking who's coming. 

Then in the comments, I'll say, "If you're reading this and you completely missed it or you forgot what the webinar is about, here are the details. Here's the link to register. Even if you see this after the webinar is on, you can still sign up and grab the replay."

Make sure that you are being a good cheerleader and champion of your webinar and including the more specific part of the messaging and that value proposition.

We want to have a strong topic that people get excited about, that is meeting someone's needs, and that people are hungry to get help with.

I want you to ensure that you're not just dialling it in on the topic, but that you are listening to your audience and learning from what works and what doesn't.

Build your reputation as a great webinar facilitator.

I have people say over and over again that it doesn't matter what the topic is, if it's a Tash Corbin webinar, they're going to sign up for it.  And that's really beautiful for me to hear.

I think that speaks volumes for the effort, energy and diligence that I put into my webinar creation.

When I create a webinar, I'm absolutely creating it as a lead-generating and conversion-generating strategy for an offer. Every webinar that I run has an upsell of some sort... BUT I always craft my webinar through the lens of wanting every single person who watches the webinar to feel it was a good use of their time, regardless of whether they buy the offer or not.

That is always the intent and lens through which I create my webinars.

That has earned me a great reputation as a webinar presenter and a webinar deliverer.

This takes time, and it takes needing to do webinars consistently and growing your audience to build up that relationship and that reputation. But I think it is something not to be underestimated.

There are people who I discovered online because friends recommended them, and I have seen their webinar promo, attended their webinar, and then never engaged with that person's content again. I have unsubscribed from their list straight away. I have never bought anything from them, and I will never buy anything from them, because I attended their webinar and they wasted my time.

They wasted my time.

They did not deliver on the thing that they said they were going to deliver on in the promos. The thing that they said they were going to deliver in their webinar was the magical secret thing that was in their upsell.

That is a dodgy way to do business and I feel ripped off. I feel like you've wasted my time, and I don't care how good your offer is. I don't care how good your delivery is inside that paid offer. You wasted my time. That tells me that you are unafraid to waste my time. That might be my experience inside your course, so I ain't buying.

You're going to waste my time with your emails. You're going to waste my time with your content on socials. I'm not going to consume that content anymore.

We want to make sure that we're building your reputation as a deliverer on your promise.

As I said, we do sometimes want to experiment with day and time. That's probably a one-percenter.

Particularly for live attendance, I also think it's important to make sure that you open the webinar a few minutes early.

I try and open at least five minutes early. I tell people as they're joining that there's still five minutes before we start, but they should introduce themselves in the comments and let me know where they're joining from. I'll also say people's names as they enter the webinar room and acknowledge them for being there live.

Before I started doing that, I just had enough people saying that they had opened the webinar early, gone to the bathroom, and then gotten completely distracted. 

I had enough people say that to me that I decided to start my webinars a little earlier and open the room a little earlier.

It has made a big difference to my live attendance. I don't get those messages anymore.

Overall, let's just stop buying into the fear and instead discern what the mindset and fear stuff that's coming up for you is telling you.

Maybe it is that your topic isn't that great. Instead of avoiding that harsh reality and bypassing it and fudging your numbers with bribery, let's just be honest... "I don't know if my webinar is really that interesting and exciting to people. I'm not sure that I've really nailed the value proposition of the webinar. I know that people want the outcome, and I know that people want this type of training, but I just don't know how to talk about how valuable that is in a way that people get it quickly."

That's really good insight! That's really good self-awareness. And that's something we can fix.

But if you aren't willing to face up to the reality of your real numbers without the bribery and the trickery, then you may never get that insight. You may never have that realisation.

When it comes to maximising webinar attendance, my absolute number one piece of advice is...

Focus on making the number one reason people attend and watch the replay be that they're really pumped for the topic, and that they're really excited to grab that content of yours and learn from you.

If we focus on that, the effectiveness of your webinar, the upsell from your webinar (which is why you want people to attend), the conversion, the trust that you build, the relationship that you build, and the fast-tracking of the nurture are there for you without you having to resort to that trickery.

It can significantly improve your longer-term retention rates. Not only on your list but also with clients. You're lowering refund rates a lot of the time as well.

I hope you have found this episode helpful. 

If you have a question for me, please make sure to submit it at: tashcorbin.com/question

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.

Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.