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Inner Circle Roundtable of 21st Century Marketers |
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Chapter Forty-Two Webcasting for Money
By Ben Hart
Everyone needs to be an information marketer. Let me show you why by asking you a couple of questions.
What do you trust more? An advertisement, or an article?
Who do you trust more? A salesman, or a professor or expert giving a lecture?
People trust experts, teachers, authors. People want insider information. People want the straight dope – no BS.
No one wants to sit through something that is obviously a sales pitch. That’s incredibly boring. But people will gladly sit through a one-hour lecture or seminar if it’s on a topic of intense interest to them.
Or they will read an article or even an entire book before they will read something that looks obviously like an ad. People value information – especially insider information that gives them the bottom line. Everyone knows correct information equals power and equals money.
If you knew exactly where the stock market would be next week or next month, you could become the richest person in the world. If you knew how to avoid every mistake that you will make in your life, you could become richer than Bill Gates.
How do you get rich?
You do it by making the right moves. How do you make the right moves?
Well, you can do it with luck. Or you can do it with knowledge – with information.
That’s why having the right information is so valuable. If you have the combination to the vault full of money, getting the money is easy. If you don’t know the combination, getting the money out of the vault is very difficult.
Everyone knows how valuable information can be -- which is why being an Information Marketer is the single best way to sell your products and services, no matter what business you are in.
Even Donald Trump is seeing the value of becoming an Information Marketer.
Donald Trump made his fortune in real estate, and to some extent in casinos. But look at what he’s focusing on now.
He’s promoting seminars. He’s selling information products that show people how to get rich and be successful.
Why is he doing that? Especially considering the fact that he’s already gotten so rich in real estate development.
Well, he’s not selling seminars and information products for his health, or because he just enjoys it. He’s doing it because he sees how much money he can make by doing that.
Now, there are three big categories of information products that I use:
1) There’s the book. I write books. Not only do books help establish my credentials as an expert. They are of interest to my target audience.
2) There are special reports and “white papers” – the purpose being the same as the book, just shorter.
3) And there are seminars and lectures. The spoken word.
The focus of this chapter is electronic seminars. Now, there are four categories of electronic seminar: There is:
1) The old-fashioned telephone conference call.
It’s old fashioned, but still very effective because everyone knows how to call into a conference call bridge line.
The host and speaking guests have a phone number they call and access code. The listeners have a different number and access code they call. The listeners or participants (non-hosts) can be muted by the host so background noise does not interfere with the call.
2) The Live Webcast
The host and speaking guests call in on a phone or speak into a microphone that plugs into their computer. The audience listens and participates on their computer. A lecture or workshop can be one-way, or it can allow for interaction between guests and the presenters. It can be just audio, or also video.
3) The hybrid -- what I call a “Telecast”
People can participate either over the phone or on their computers. This is the format I use.
4) The “Podcast”
A “podcast” is just a digital recording of audio or video that you post on your website. People can listen to the audio or video recording whenever it’s convenient for them. People can also subscribe to a “podcast” and receive it automatically in the form of a feed, such as RSS or Atom. POD stands for “Portable on Demand.” You can carry your music or seminars with you in an MP3 player or iPod.
My live “telecasts” are recorded and then posted on my site in the form of “podcasts” that my Inner Circle members can access at any time.
I now have an accumulating archive of more than 80 hours of seminars on the subject of marketing.
I will just refer to all these formats as “electronic seminars.”
Now let me tell you why I think the electronic seminar has replaced the sales letter as the most powerful marketing tool in the history of man.
Remember what it is that makes the sales and marketing letter so incredibly powerful.
The most inefficient way to sell anything is to go door to door – like Willie Loman did in Arthur Miller’s tragic story Death of a Salesman.
You don’t want to end up like Willie Loman.
What the direct mail sales letter allows you to do is make your sales presentation to thousands, or even millions, of people all at once, without you ever having to leave your home or office.
The sales letter acts as your proxy sales force, going into people’s homes in a targeted way and making your sales presentation. Because of the economics, you can often have a very successful marketing campaign if just 1% or 2% respond to your sales letter with an order.
Why?
Because your sales letter might cost just 50 cents or maybe $1 apiece to mail.
Depending on what you are selling and what your profit margin is per sale, you can get very rich if just 1 in 100 or if 2 in 100 answer your letter.
But a door-to-door salesman would go broke if 99 out of 100 people slammed a door in his face. Plus, it’s just too psychologically devastating to have 99 out of 100 people say no to your sales pitch – many of whom won’t even listen. That’s the Willie Lowman method.
But the sales letter allows the marketer never to experience rejection. The replies that come back are almost all “yes” answers.
I still get a giddy feeling when I see the truck pull up with thousands of reply envelopes with checks inside – representing answers to one of my direct mail sales letters.
I’m not sure how many sales and marketing letters I’ve mailed over the years.
I’ve probably mailed close to a billion direct mail letters during my 20 years in this business. I have made a very good living over the last two decades as a direct mail copywriter and strategist.
The direct mail sales letter allows you to achieve tremendous leverage. It allows you to leverage your time and money to achieve a big result.
What is leverage?
Leverage is using a tool, method or technique to achieve a big result with a minimum of effort. That’s what the direct mail sales letter allows you to do.
It allows you to talk to thousands of people (even millions of people) at the same time (simultaneously) in a highly cost-effective way – and in a personal way that approximates a one on one communication from one person to another.
Letters are far more effective than an advertisement.
Letters can be personalized. People prefer to read letters. That’s why, even when I run a print ad in a newspaper or a magazine, I often format it to look like a letter.
Even though a letter that runs in a newspaper cannot be personalized, people are far more likely to read something that looks like a letter than they are to read something that looks obviously like an ad.
The letters-to-the-editor section of the newspaper is one of the most popular sections because people love to read letters – letters from real people.
People don’t like to read or watch ads. They like to read letters – which is why surveys still show that the daily event people still anticipate the most is the arrival of the mail man.
So I love the sales and marketing letter. I still do a lot of direct mail. In fact, later in this book, I will show you why you should be combining old fashioned direct mail marketing (as well as other offline advertising) to achieve even more spectacular results with your Internet marketing efforts.
But now I believe an even more powerful marketing tool than the direct mail letter has come onto the scene. And that’s the electronically delivered seminar.
There are many reasons this is such a powerful marketing medium – even more powerful than the good old fashioned postal sales letter.
But one reason is cost.
I pay just $47 per month for a service that allows me to talk to 2,000 people at the same time, as often as I like.
I use a service put out by Xiosoft.com which you can find here: http://xiosoft.com/instantteleseminar
For $47 per month with this service, I can conduct an electronic seminar for 2,000 people. In fact, I can do this everyday all day if I want – and still just pay $47 per month.
So that means if I conduct just one seminar a month for 2,000 people, it’s costing me just 2.4 cents to talk for one hour (or more) to each person participating in the seminar.
I typically hold at least two seminars a month, with about 2,000 people (my Inner Circle members) participating in the seminar. So that means it’s costing me just 1.2 cents for each participant in the seminar. And I can talk for as long as I want.
The electronic seminar allows me to communicate with my members in a much more personal way and with much greater impact than I can with a printed sales letter.
You get a better sense of who I am and what I’m like by listening to me than you can by reading my material. A live seminar also has much greater “perceived” value than the printed word.
Would you rather read Robert Frost’s poetry? Or would you rather hear Robert Frost read it?
Most people prefer the live performance. It’s more entertaining, and it’s a much richer experience.
Studies show people learn faster by hearing than by reading. People learn and absorb information in three ways:
1) They can learn by reading 2) The can learn by listening. 3) And they can learn by seeing -- visually
This format – this media – allows you to absorb information all three ways. By the tones and inflexions people hear in my voice, they can get a much better sense of what I believe is important than if they just read the same material.
So that’s why people like to attend seminars and listen to seminars.
What’s great about the electronic seminar is people from all over the world can attend without buying a plane ticket or booking a hotel room. They can attend simply by logging into the webcast or picking up the phone and calling the conference call bridge line number.
Plus, I don’t need to book a conference room. I don’t need to provide food and refreshments. I don’t need to dress up.
I can deliver my electronic seminar in my boxer shorts and tee-shirt. And I can deliver it anytime of the day or night. I can even do it on the spur of the moment – just send out an email to my list announcing the seminar.
Now, here’s something else my electronic seminar program does for me. It forces me to produce content for my books and articles.
This book is mostly content that I produced for the Inner Circle seminars during the past year-and--half. I also repackage the material in the form of a course – or several courses – that arrive in a box that I can sell for $500 to $1,500 a copy.
So by knowing that I need to deliver an electronic seminar to my Inner Circle Roundtable of 21st Century Marketers every two weeks or so, that forces me to produce content. And the content needs to be good or people (who are paying $38 per-month) will cancel out of the program.
If I did not have this deadline every week, the books and courses might never be produced.
For my Internet business, the electronic seminars, the books and courses that arrive in a box are the main products I’m selling. I’m selling my marketing knowledge that will allow any business to become a whole lot more successful.
So for me the information is the product. I’m not trying to get clients any more. I’m basically done with that phase of my life.
So your economics are now so much more favorable for reaching your target audience. It costs me just 1.2 cents to talk to each person in the seminar for an hour -- compared to 50 cents or $1 to reach each person by postal mail.
And I am communicating with people with much more impact and intimacy in an electronic seminar than I ever can with a postal direct mail letter.
So I have lowered my cost to reach each person in my target market by a factor of 50 or more – and I achieve much greater impact.
The electronic seminar also allows for interactivity. I typically have anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 people attending my electronic seminars
So that prevents a general free flowing discussion involving everyone. The way people ask questions and make comments is to type them into a field on the telecast page and hit the “submit” button.
But if you are conducting a small seminar with eight people, you could and probably should open up the call to a free flowing discussion, with everyone on the conference call being able to speak.
There are so many ways you can use this electronic seminar for your marketing program. You are limited only by your imagination. But I’ll give you a few of the ways here:
1) The first category is what I call the “preview” seminar.
This is great for high-ticket items, or technical products that require explanation.
Let’s say you are launching a new product.
Maybe it’s some new software that you know your prospects will like if you can just get them to pause and hear what it does.
What you do is simply invite your prospects to call in or log in to your webcast seminar.
A big reason this is so effective is that it’s not threatening. People don’t feel they are being pressured by a salesman sitting there in their office. They are just on the phone listening. Or they are listening over their computer. And people are much more likely to listen to your seminar than read your long letter.
That disturbs me a little because I love to read and I’m a writer. My father was a professor of English literature at Dartmouth college. So I grew up in an atmosphere of books and learning.
But facts are facts. Most people would much rather listen to what I have to say than read what I have to say.
So if you are talking to 10 people at once and you close just 10% of those people, that would be the same as if you closed 100% of your one-on-one presentations.
Now what if you are talking to 100 prospects at once or 1,000 prospects at once? I am usually talking to 2,000 people at the same time.
That’s how you use electronic seminars to leverage your time to become 100 times or 1,000 times more productive than anyone can be making one-on-one sales presentations. Plus you never need to leave your office to make your sales presentation.
I don’t even like the term “sales presentation.”
All you are really doing is describing what your product or service does, and how it will make your prospects a whole lot of money, save them a whole lot of money, save them lots of time . . . or whatever the big benefits are.
The challenge here is to have a big list of qualified prospects that you can alert, and tell them about your conference call or webcast.
You do that by building your email list and by following the list-building strategies I’ve been describing to you in this book.
So that’s just one use of the electronic seminar as a marketing tool. We’ll call if the “product preview” or “new product launch” seminar.
2) The second category of seminar is what I call the FAQ call, or the Frequently Asked Questions call.
This can be an awesome tool for building customer loyalty.
People sometimes have “buyer’s remorse” – especially when they have just bought something that is expensive. Your Q&A conference call or webcast will just about eliminate buyer’s remorse. Your customers really just want to know if you will be there if they have a question or if something goes wrong.
Set aside time for when your customers can ask you questions. This is great if you have a big customer base. What you do is ask your customers to email their questions into you during the call. The www.xiosoft.com service that I use has a form where people can type and submit their questions during the event.
What’s great about this is you then don’t need to create your own content. You just read the questions that come in and answer them – like Ann Landers.
That was her great formula for success, and it can work for you. Ann Landers was just about the most popular newspaper columnist for many decades – because people like to read questions and answers.
When people go to your website and if they are interested in what you are selling, they will go to the FAQ section, the Frequently Asked Questions section.
What’s great about a live Q&A is that the questions are real questions – not just questions thought up by the business owner or some marketer.
The most interesting part of a seminar or lecture is often the Q&A portion. Your Q&A telecast is a great relationship-builder with your customer base.
And the relationship is always where the money is in business.
Remember, your job as a business is to turn customers into clients, clients into relationships and relationships into friendships. The FAQ or Q&A telecast is a great tool for doing this on a mass-scale.
3) The third category is what I call the coaching or consulting call.
This is great for consultants.
I recently conducted one of these for leaders of some large non-profit organizations on the subject of “How to Use Telecasts to Maximize Your Fundraising.”
These can be free, or they can be calls people pay to be on.
In this case I limited the call to 10 people so they could ask questions and we could engage in discussion. I charged $250 per person to be on the call. So that hour I made $2,500. Not bad for one hour of work.
But I could have done the call for free if I were interested in using the call as a way to get clients.
A webcast or conference call can be advertised as a one-time event – or it can be an ongoing coaching program such as my Inner Circle marketing training program.
What I mostly do today are coaching and consulting telecasts and conference calls.
These kinds of coaching and consulting conference calls and telecasts are fantastic for getting new clients.
I don’t use it for that purpose anymore because I’m not actively looking for clients. In my case, the telecast seminar is the program I am selling . . . along with all my other information products.
It’s a business that is mass-produceable and infinitely extendable.
4) A fourth category is the celebrity webcast or conference call.
What’s great about this kind of conference call seminar is that you don’t have to come up with any of your own content. You just ask questions – like Larry King or Oprah.
Larry King and Oprah don’t provide their own content. They have guests on and they ask their guests questions. That’s all they do.
This is a great way to attract a big audience for your conference call or webcast.
It’s a great way for you to become a celebrity yourself. All you have to know is how to ask questions. Anyone with a brain can do that. You don’t need to be a good writer or a good speaker. Just have a list of good questions.
The celebrity interview does not need to be with a household name known by everyone – just someone who is a leading expert in your field or industry, someone your target audience will be interested to hear from.
This is not hard to do. Usually if you just ask, people will say yes.
Most people love to be interviewed. Very often the person you are interviewing might not be a big name at all. But all you need to do to generate interest in the call is build up the credentials of this person.
Talk about your guest’s great track record of success. People will be interested to listen if the subject is in their field of interest.
Of course, it’s even better if you can get a really big name celebrity. In that case, you might propose a joint venture with that person.
You might propose splitting the revenue as incentive for your big name celebrity to be on the call. If your guest has products to sell, your telecast is a great way to generate sales for your guests product. You then just come up with some fair split of the profits from sales generated by the call.
In that case, you are playing the role of Don King promoting the big event. Most people – even big name people – will be glad to take you up on your offer to split the revenue.
Keep an eye out for celebrities who have a new book in the stores. Celebrities will be much more inclined to be a guest on your show if they have a product they want to sell.
Unless it’s someone really huge like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, you’ll have no trouble getting guests for your electronic seminars.
Really, this is no different than a radio show where you have guests. You are conducting your own radio show on a specialized subject that is of intense interest to your target market.
The key to making your electronic seminar program work as a powerful marketing tool is to always deliver valuable information to your target audience. If you do that consistently, you will have no trouble building a big audience for your conference calls, webcasts, telecasts and podcasts.
Do you remember that old EF Hutton ad? “When EF Hutton Speaks, people listen.”
EF Hutton was put out of business because of unethical practices. But the point here is their ad – which was great.
“When EF Hutton Speaks, people listen.”
What EF Hutton was saying is they have valuable information for you that can make you a lot of money. Everyone knows the value of having the right information at the right time. If you know the combination to the safe, you have away to get the money.
That’s the principle here. And that’s why everyone who wants to increase their sales exponentially needs to be an information marketer.
But what if you are selling something that seems mundane – such as bolts or gravel. Can you use electronic seminars to sell these kinds of products?
They answer is “yes, absolutely!”
Why and how?
Well, because buyers of your bolts are interested in information about bolts. And because buyers of gravel are interested in information about gravel.
If there is money in a subject, people are interested in it. There are no boring topics, just boring writers – just people who have no imagination.
Those who love bowling will read article after article about bowling. They will take bowling lessons. They will join a bowling league. Their friends will be bowlers.
But if you have no interest in bowling, than nothing anyone says about bowling will interest you. People who buy bolts are interested in the subject of bolts. So you can certainly have a very profitable information product and electronic seminar program on the subject of bolts for those who buy a lot of bolts.
If the people on your email list are not interested in information on what you are selling, you have the wrong list of prospects. You have conducted your lead generation program incorrectly. You have done a poor job of building your list.
If you are selling bolts, don’t build you list by giving away a free toaster. That will not build your list of qualified leads.
Give away a free book on “How to Buy Bolts” or “The 12 Most Common Mistakes People Make When They Buy Bolts.”
And then run your lead generation ad where you know your fish are – such as in a trade publication that is read buy buyers of bolts. Or you advertise on websites that are read by bolt buyers.
That’s how you build your list of bolt buyers. It’s really not a whole lot more complicated than that.
And then once you have your list of prospects and buyers, you can then become a big brand to your leads and your customers. That’s what the electronic seminar does for you.
Now you have heard me criticize the brand building advertising you see done by the big Fortune 500 companies.
These kinds of ads don’t make any kind of specific offer. They just build the brand of the big company in our minds. That’s what the Nike ads do.
No offer is actually made. There’s no “call to action” in these kinds of brand-building ads.
But this kind of brand advertising is effective for these enormous companies like Nike and Coke because they can pour so much money into it. They can spend billions of dollars emblazoning their brand on our minds.
You and I can’t do that with the general population. We can’t afford it.
But you and I can do that if we have a list. If we have a list, we can afford to be in frequent contact with everyone on our list. And now, with high-speed internet, we can deliver our own radio shows and TV shows to those on our list for almost no money.
Marketing and media today is getting more and more specialized.
Let’s face it, most of what’s on general TV is just awful, mind-numbing junk. And the commercial channels are so saturated with ads that they’re unwatchable.
I love watching NFL football on Sunday afternoon. But half the time (or more) is taken up with ads. The ads are making TV and entertainment program tedious to watch. People want programming with no ads.
That’s why people are willing to pay extra for HBO and the movie channels. That’s why satellite radio is taking off. People are willing to pay in order not to listen to ads – not to have their program interrupted.
We see an enormous market out there for commercial-free highly specialized programming – i.e. your telecast or webcast – perhaps aimed at bolt buyers or plastic surgury, or whatever your field or industry is – which you can now produce and deliver for almost no money.
All you need is a message, a phone, a recorder and maybe a webcam if you want to do video. What people want is content. What they want is information – which is why the electronic seminar is so powerful.
One reason the infomerical on TV was so successful for a while was because the half-hour ad was more like an entertaining show.
Yes, it was an ad. But a good infomerical can be entertaining. And airtime was very cheap because infomercials run at times when airtime is very cheap, like at 3:00 a.m in the morning.
Infomercials became less economically viable are the cost of airtime increased. They can still work. Infomercials just aren’t as much of a license to print money as they used to be.
But your airtime on the Internet is just about free. So you are under no economic pressure to close sales immediately. You can take all the time you need to build rapport with your audience. Your big job is deliver great content.
Understand, too, that your webcast must be part entertainment to be successful. You can’t hold an audience and you can’t sell by boring people. You need to be interesting.
Now, I am certainly not saying I am all the entertaining. I don’t tell many jokes, because I’m just not good at that. I know my limitations. But I build my audience by delivering valuable interesting information.
And I think I have a knack for taking fairly complex subjects and making them understandable for the average person. That’s my strength. The big point here is there is a great demand for commercial-free great content.
With high-speed internet, combined with the telephone, you now have a way to deliver this content for almost no money that is exactly on target with the interest of those on your list of prospects and buyers.
To give you an idea of just how powerful a marketing tool your teleseminar program or your podcast can be with your target audience, I’m amazed at how annoyed some of my Inner Circle members can be if I skip a week.
People are used to hearing my telecast seminar every other Thursday night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. But I figured I would skip Thanksgiving. No one’s going to want to attend a marketing seminar on Thanksgiving, I figured.
I figured wrong.
I received dozens of emails and even phone calls asking: “Ben, where are you?” I was both amazed and encouraged because I had clearly succeeded in becoming part of the regular routine of at least some people.
I have built an audience. Not an audience like Rush Limbaugh or Oprah. But it’s a good audience. And it’s a highly targeted audience.
My audience is entrepreneurs who want to take their business to the next level. And if they can be entertained and inspired along the way with my webcasts and podcasts, all the better.
Now I don’t entertain by being funny and telling jokes. I entertain by providing valuable information that allows entrepreneurs to grow their businesses exponentially and quickly through better marketing. I supply information they can’t easily get elsewhere at an affordable price – about the cost of a cup of coffee a day ($1.27).
So that’s what the electronic seminar can do for you -- close sales on a mass-basis without you ever having to make another sales call or even conduct a one-on-one sales presentation ever again.
Remember what I keep coming back to over and over again as one of the big keys – maybe the biggest key – to building a successful business. And that’s automation.
You want to automate as much of your marketing and business as you possible can. You want to reduce customization.
It’s just as much work for me to deliver a presentation to one person as it is for me to deliver it to 10,000 people. You want to get out of the business of making one-on-one presentations as much as possible.
Sure, you might have to do some one-on-one presenting, especially if you are just starting your business. But you must strive to minimize that, and eventually eliminate your one-on-one sales and presentation work.
The electronic webcast, telecast or teleconference are great tools for allowing you to do exactly that . . . because remember what your most valuable asset is.
Your most valuable asset is your time. You only have 24 hours in a day. And some of those hours must be used for sleeping, eating, seeing your family and doing all the things you like to do.
So maybe you have eight hours a day to work – maybe a little less, or maybe a little more. Whatever it is, you have limited time – a few hours a day to work. Your time is a finite resource.
Once your time is gone, there’s no way to get more of it. The way you build a successful business, the way to build wealth, is by finding ways to mechanize and automate every part of your business and your marketing that you possibly can.
That’s how you escape the “time trap.” The electronic seminar, with its many variations and hybrids, helps you achieve that -- escape the time trap.
You can never really achieve what you want to achieve in life until you figure out how to escape the time trap. If you have been reading my books or listening to my seminars, you know the importance I place on escaping the time trap.
I don’t want to be paid by the hour. I don’t want to auction off pieces of my life to my customers and clients. I think my life is worth more than $300 per hour or $1,000 per hour.
Frankly, I hate thinking of my time (and by extension my life) as worth a certain amount of money.
I believe success is not defined just by how much money you make. It’s defined by how much time you have to do the things you want to do.
Who is wealthier?
The guy who is making $500,000 per year, but working 70 hours a week as a stockbroker on Wall Street. Or the guy who’s making $50,000 a year, but is able to spend his time on the beaches of Costa Rica, and working 10 hours a week.
I would argue that the latter is doing far better – because his quality of life is so much better. He’s certainly freer. Isn’t that part of what money is supposed to buy? Freedom?
If you are making $500,000 a year and working 70 hours a week to make that money, are you free? Are you secure? What if you lose your health and can no longer work 70 hours a week? Then what?
And if you are working 70 hours a week, what are you really buying anyway with your $500,000 per year.
But that’s really another topic. In fact, I’m going to write a book on this topic -- on the question: “What is Success?”
I have a completely different view from most of our society about what constitutes success. The point here is time is your most precious resource. You must find ways to leverage your time.
There are three basic ways you can leverage your time:
1) You can use money to leverage your time. For example, you can find investors who can help you capitalize your business so that your business can grow faster.
2) You can hire employees to do most of the work that needs to be done – which helps free up your time so that you can focus on what you should really be focusing on.
3) And you can leverage your time by using technology.
Most successful businesses use a combination of these three ways to create leverage. But of these three ways, I prefer using technology.
I have never sought investors. I have no desire ever to get investors. Investors are a pain to deal with. And I’m not a big fan of having lots of employees either.
Employees are very time-consuming. Some of the biggest problems I have ever had in business have been personnel problems. Plus, if you have a lot of employees who can quickly turn your business into a bureaucracy, you limit your flexibility and mobility.
You have to be in meetings all the time. You have to be an administrator.
My preferred method of leveraging my time is to use technology – and to outsource everything possible.
I have basically outsourced my life so that I can focus on doing what I like to do and that’s create and deliver content and information on marketing – so I can focus on writing books and delivering seminars on marketing . . . because I figured out that what I really like to do is teach.
My father was a professor of English literature at Dartmouth College. So maybe I inherited the teaching gene from him. So that’s why I have designed my life this way.
When my Dad was a professor at Dartmouth, he would teach seminars of 12 students and also larger classes with up to 100 maybe even 200 students.
I use webcasts to teach classes with 2,000 students – sometimes 10,000 students. And I don’t have to get dressed up for class or for work like my Dad did when he was teaching at Dartmouth. I can conduct these classes in shorts or a tee-shirt if I want.
Heck, I can teach these classes in the nude if I want. Nor do I have to get in the car and drive anywhere. I have a 12-second commute to work – the time it takes me to get from my bedroom to my office or my sofa or my deck if the weather is nice.
Nor do I have to find a physical facility to teach the class. I don’t need a conference room. I don’t need a room of any kind.
Plus, this is a whole lot easier for my students -- those attending the seminar.
They don’t have to get in a car and go anywhere – or fly somewhere. They can attend from the comfort of their home or office. This gets into how this technology is changing life as we know it.
Is there really any reason to have offices anymore?
Is there any reason to keep fighting rush hour every day to get to your office? And then fight traffic again for two hours to get home – to complete your 12 hour work day. Is there any reason you could not work remotely?
If you need to have a meeting, you just use a virtual conference room to have your meeting. Heck, the electronic seminar and virtual conference room service I use costs just $47 a month. And presto, you have a virtual conference room.
Why spend all that money to have a physical conference room?
Why put yourself through all that torture to get to the physical conference room?
I have not been to an actual office in years. I hope never to see an actual office again. To me the office is a prison, an instrument of a kind of torture. There’s very little reason for it. The traditional physical office is a dinosaur – designed for control-freak employers to torture their employees.
What we see happening – what this technology is allowing us to do – is to redefine success, redefine productivity. In the old world – in the 20th Century – your value to a company was generally measured by how many hours you spent at the office.
Your performance was measured not by results, but by how busy you looked.
If you wanted to look good to the boss and get a raise, your best bet was to run around the office like a maniac with a cell phone in one hand and stack of papers in the other looking, yelling into your cell phone and just looking generally stressed out.
What you did not want to do was get all your work done quickly so you could spend the bulk of your day at the golf course or on the beach.
That would be a great way to get fired. By creating a virtual business where people meet in virtual conference rooms, this will force a paradigm shift in how we measure performance and success.
In stead of being measured by how busy we look to our bosses and how many hours we put in at the office, people will be paid based on the value of their output.
When you go to a movie, do you really care how long it took them to make it?
What you care about is, is this a good movie. What you care about is the value of the product.
If you had an employee who came up with a way to make your company another million dollars a year or save your company a million dollars a year, would you really care how long it took your employee to develop this new method or system or gizmo that allowed you to achieve this.
Of course not. You’d be thrilled to pay your employee a lot of money for this new gizmo – even if it took him 10 minutes to make it. And you would not care if he developed this new gizmo at home or at the beach or at the north pole.
What matters is the result – the fact that this ingenious new gizmo he just developed will now save your company $1,000,000 a year.
So we are now moving away from this idea that we all have to be in one place if we are to work together. We can now meet in virtual conference rooms and virtual offices . . . for almost zero cost.
And there’s no limit to how many people can attend our virtual meetings, conferences and seminars.
There seem to be very few good reasons to have all that brick and mortar. What’s going to happen to all those big office buildings, those skyscrapers in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Miami? Will they become empty shells?
And if there is no reason for everyone in the company to actually physically be in the same physical place, what will happen is a shift in how companies are managed. Instead of measuring worth by how much time an employee puts in at the office, management will need to find more ways to track actual results – and to pay be according to what their output is actually worth.
And what this is going to generate is millions of new businesses.
The media keeps telling us all this “outsourcing” and “downsizing” is bad. I think it’s fantastic . . . because the result is the creation of millions of new small businesses and independent contractors. The result is more freedom and opportunity. The era is the corporate sweatshop is coming to an end.
There’s just absolutely no reason any more for anyone to have to spend two or three hours everyday on the train or trying to fight their way through the Holland Tunnel to get to their job in Manhattan when you can just meet in virtual conference rooms.
Everyone will be happier, freer and more productive. And corporate managers will increasingly be forced to stop focusing on process and come up with better ways to measure the value of an employee’s output . . . because, guess what.
When you have a way to measure and track results, and when you reward based on results (not process) you eliminate the need for management. The management takes care of itself.
If your employee comes up with a gizmo that can make or save your company $1,000,000, do you really care that when he works he insists on working in the nude?
Probably not – as long as he remains in your virtual office and does not show up that way at your physical office.
This chapter is going off on a little bit of an unintended tangent. What I am doing with this tangent is show you where this relatively simple technology is taking us and what it’s allowing us to do; and also how its changing the way we conduct business, market our services and distribute our products.
Think about what the big barrier was to starting a business.
The big barrier to starting a business used to be money.
The big barrier was capital. At a minimum, you needed money for a physical office. Now, you no longer need that.
In fact, a physical office will actually puts an artificial limit on your business.
Look at my customer base.
I have more than 2,000 Inner Circle members from more than 50 countries (at last count) – plus a dozen or so clients. There’s not much point in having a physical office anymore since most of my customers live nowhere near me.
So I got rid of my physical office. And what a liberating experience that was!
I now conduct my seminars from all kind of locations. One month I’m in Key West, Florida. Another month I’m in Jackson Hole Wyoming. Another month I’m sitting on a beach in the Costa Brava region of Spain.
No matter where I am, I can meet with my clients and their staff by using a virtual conference room.
The first question my clients always have is: “Where are you now, Ben?”
What I have achieved with this is unlimited mobility. My business has a global reach, and can be conducted from anywhere – with almost zero overhead – largely through use of the virtual conference room, which I use for all my seminars and meetings.
So what are some other uses of the teleconference or telecast – besides for all these uses I’ve already mentioned?
As you can see, it’s great for delivering educational programs. But what if you are not in the teaching business, like I am?
Maybe you are a lawyer or a realtor or a financial planner or a dentist or a doctor or a mortgage broker. Or maybe you sell socks or cars or batteries or light bulbs.
How might this technology – the virtual conference room – be used for businesses like these?
Well, first its great for any business that requires meeting people. It’s great for any business that requires educating your customers or prospects.
Let’s say you have a new product you want to tell your customers about.
You could try to introduce them to your new product the old way – by trying to schedule a meeting. Well, anyone who’s tried to sell anything knows how hard that is.
Scheduling a meeting with a decision-maker could take weeks – might never happen. And even if you do manage to get past the gatekeeper – the secretary – to shedule a 15-minute meeting, it will almost certainly be canceled at the last minute.
But let’s say you actually do manage to get in to see the decision-maker for 15 minutes to make your presentation, your prospect is going to look for every excuse to end the meeting quickly. Your prospect knows you are try to sell something, so his guard will be on full alert.
You will be rushing through your presentation as fast as you can to make sure you get all your big points in before you are whisked out of the office. Then your follow-up phone calls are never returned.
You are essentially Willy Lowman in Death of a Salesman.
In my view, that’s just no way to live or generate sales. But that’s how many do it. I’m amazed they can make a living at all.
Or you could try a mailing.
That’s certainly better – but if you are selling a high-end product to a business, you’re not going to make many sales that way.
Direct mail is best for low-priced products – best for the impulse buyer. Not so good if you are trying to sell, say, a $10,000 or $100,000 item – let’s say a big piece of equipment or software.
You can certainly use direct mail as a lead generation tool for your high-priced item. But then you are still left with trying to schedule meetings so you can make your sales presentation. You’re back to being Willie Lowman in Death of a Salesman.
Not good.
Instead, let’s get out of the 20th Century way of doing things and start conducting business the 21st Century way. Let’s invite our prospects and customers to a teleconference or telecast on the subject.
Invite them to a 30-minute or a 60-minute seminar.
Let’s return to the example of our seller of bolts. Let’s say your new bolt is cheaper and stronger than the bolts your customers are currently using.
Invite your customers and prospects to a telecast to hear more about this new cheaper, lighter and stronger bolt. If your prospects and customers are buyers of bolts, they’ll love to hear your presentation on the subject.
For them, the psychology of attending a seminar on the subject of your new bolt is very different than it is in a one on one sales presentation. In a one-on-one sales presentation, you are not staring at each other anxiously across the desk. But in your electronic seminar, your prospect does not feel under any pressure.
Your prospect can attend your telecast anonymously. His guard is down. He can listen from the comfort of his office or home with his feet up on the desk. He can listen while sitting on the can.
And if the time is not good for him to hear the live telecast, he can listen to a replay later whenever its convenient for him. If what you have to say is of interest to him – if your bolt really is cheaper, lighter and stronger than what he’s currently using – then you’ll have no trouble getting the sale.
And look how much easier and more efficient this process was for everyone.
Let’s say you have a prospect list of 500 potential buyers of your new cheaper, lighter, stronger bolt. You send out your email announcing the telecast on the subject of this cheaper, lighter, stronger bolt. And let’s say, of 500 prospects, only 50 actually attend your live seminar on the subject.
Doesn’t that still just beat the heck out of trying to schedule meetings and meet with your prospects one on one?
Plus, you are not limited by geography. Anyone can attend your no-pressure presentation from anywhere.
Now, there are steps you can take to boost attendance on your telecast or teleconference.
You can’t just send out one announcement and expect many people to show up. You must send out at least one reminder, shortly before the event.
Even if people want to attend and intend to attend, people get busy and forget.
You must remind them.
But it’s a heck of a lot easier than getting people to drive across town or fly across the country to attend your physical event. If your telecast event sounds interesting and is in line with the interest of your target audience, you’ll have no trouble getting a good turnout.
As with all advertising, the most important element of your marketing message is the headline. Your headline is what gets attention and creates interest.
The title of your event is your headline. The title you choose for your event will make or break your attendance. For your headline to attract interest, it must highlight the primary benefit of attending.
There must be a big payoff for attending because – even though your even is free, you are asking people for their time.
People are not going to give you their time unless the headline or title of your even sounds interesting – sounds like there will be a big potential benefit for attending.
Let’s say you are a plastic surgeon. What might you call your event or seminar?
Well, I have no knowledge of plastic surgery. But you might call it:
“How to Eliminate Wrinkles Without Surgery or Botox.” or “How to Avoid Being a Victim of the Six Most Common Breast Implant Disasters”
You get the idea.
And of course, you must include your credentials – that is, your qualifications to talk on the topic. You must include all the usual information you must include in any good marketing piece or advertisement.
The copy under the headline must answer the six key questions: WHO, WHAT, WHY, HOW, WHERE and WHEN?
But your headline – the title you give your seminar or event – is how you get people to pay attention and show up to your virtual event.
By the way, that’s another secret power of the seminar – whether 30 minutes, or 60 Minutes or 90 Minutes. You have the time and space to answer all questions and objections. You have a chance to deliver a full and complete explanation of what you are selling or the idea or concept you are communicating.
If you have read my book How to Write Blockbuster Sales Letters, you know that long sales letters work far better than short sales letters 90 percent of the time.
Some of my most successful letters have been 16 pages even 32 pages long.
“How can this be?” you might wonder. “Who has time to wade through all of that text?”
The answer is: those who are intensely interested in the topic will read every word of a 32-page letter. Many will read every word several times.
If you are intensely interested in a subject, there’s no limit to the amount of text you will read on that subject. You might not want to read articles about bowling. But serious bowlers will read article after article and book after book on the subject.
Well, same thing with the telecast seminar. The telecast seminar is like a super-charged sales letter. It’s kind of like my 16-page and 32-page letters.
You have the time and space to go into all kinds of detail – time you don’t have in 60-second TV ad or even a full-page newspaper ad.
The reason you must keep your TV ad or your radio ad to 60 seconds, or even 30 seconds is cost. It’s just too danged expensive to take out a 60-minute ad on TV – unless its at 3:00 a.m. in the morning on an obscure channel (where you see infomercials).
But with this format – the webcast or telecast – I can spend as much time as I want and not get charged one additional cent.
I can go 60 minutes, 90 minutes – heck three hours.
I once conducted an eight-hour webcast. It lasted all day on a Saturday. I called it “The Root Canal Marketing Boot Camp.”
And guess what. My 8-hour “Root Canal Marketing Boot Camp” seminar is one of my bestselling programs. It just about kills me to put it on, so I don’t do it often.
The point is, money is no barrier on the Internet. You can take as much time as you need to make your case.
Now, I generally don’t try to sell anything with my seminars – at least not explicitly. For my business, the seminars are a big part of the product I am selling – along with my books, courses and other information products.
But, of course -- that’s selling also. It’s just very soft selling. I need to deliver good seminars to keep people interested and coming back and renewing their membership or subscription.
So I’m selling the same way Stephen King is selling when he writes his books.
Stephen King is in the book selling business. If his books are not good, people would stop buying them. Stephen King is rich because he’s interesting. His fans devour his 600-page books – more proof that long copy sells. Stephen King has created an army of addicts for his books.
Part of your job as a marketer and business person is to create addicts for what you do – especially if you are in anyway in the information marketing business.
Seminars can be great vehicles for creating addicts for what you do.
When I was in college, there were certain professors that I thought were great. I made it my mission to take all their classes. And once I took all their classes, I asked them to create additional classes – which some of them did.
Now, I’m sure many of you are thinking, “But I’m not a public speaker. I’ve never spoken in public before. I’m terrified of the thought of speaking to a group.”
Well, let me give you a few thoughts on this subject.
First, how do you get good at anything?
You get better by practice. You get better by doing it and falling down a few times – maybe falling down many times. I’m a big believer in learning by doing . . . and failing.
You learn by trial and error. How to you learn to ride a bike? You can’t learn by reading a book about it. You can only learn it by doing it.
I’m a very serious skier. I’ve been doing it all my life. I used to be a world-class ski racer.
Some years back, I took a group up on the mountain who had never skied before.
It was their first time. So I conducted an experiment.
I put half in the ski school. The other half I took up the chairlift to the top of the mountain. When we got to the top, I pointed them in the direction of the beginner trail, the green trail.
I showed them all a few of the basics -- how to control their speed, how to stop, how to turn. And then I just left them there. I said I’ll see you guys in 20 minutes or so to see how you’re doing.
Now, of course they freaked out. They screamed at me. They called me all kinds of names. But I skied off and returned 20 minutes later to see how they were doing.
Guess what.
They were skiing. Not well, but they were sliding down the hill. Yes, crashing every now and then. By lunch time, they were all skiing decently. They could all make it down the easy trail without much trouble. And they were having a ball.
So how was the other half of the group doing – the half I had put in the ski school?
Well, they had not really achieved anything yet. They had their equipment on. And they were walking around on their skis next to the ski lodge. But that was it.
The group I had just dropped off on the top of the mountain and left to figure out how to get down off the mountain were doing great.
Same with public speaking. You can learn some things by reading a book. You can get some useful pointers from a public speaking coach. But there is no substitute for just getting out there and doing it.
But I will give you this one key pointer.
There’s no substitute for thorough preparation. The better you know your material, the more confident you will be.
You need to know exactly what you are going to say before you get out there. Never go out there and try to wing it. That will always produce a disaster.
You might not want to write out every word of your speech. I work from detailed notes. I think it’s impossible to over-prepare.
Some will disagree with me on that. Some say too much preparation can produce a stiff wooden performance.
I disagree.
Extensive preparation and rehearsing will make you far more relaxed.
You might have seen the great golfer Gary Player in that commercial – I forget for what product. Gary Player was the greatest bunker player of all time. He had an uncanny ability to put the ball in the hole from the sand.
Inevitably someone would say, “What a lucky shot!”
Gary Player’s response: “It’s a funny thing. The more I practice, the luckier I seem to get.”
Same with public speaking. You will certainly be nervous if you have never done it before. But you’ll get better with practice.
But if you don’t like to speak yourself, just have guests. I do both. I often deliver the entire telecast myself because I’m trying to deliver comprehensive content.
I have found that when I have guests, the telecast becomes disjointed – the material not fully conveyed. Key elements I want covered get missed. But I have guests also. It’s good to provide a mix of formats. this helps keep a telecast interesting.
Rush Limbaugh essentially delivers a monologue for three hours a day.
That works great for him. But that does not work for everyone. Most radio talk shows, most TV talk shows have guests.
Having great guests is an excellent way to create content for your telecast.
I have no idea if Larry King is a good public speaker. Probably not especially. But he’s a great interviewer.
And, by the way, the questions he asks his guests are always basically the same.
He has a list of 10 or 15 “crutch questions” he asks on every show – questions like: ** “How did you get into this business?” ** “Who was the #1 influence in your life?” ** “What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned in life?” Questions like that – designed to get his guest talking.
So you can conduct your telecasts like that – as Q&A interview shows.
Now, right about now, you might be wondering, “How do I build my audience for my telecasts and conference call seminars?”
It’s all about building your email list – just as it is for any other product or service your are marketing online. We’re not going to get much into list building in this chapter. I cover that all-important subject throughout the pages of this book.
In fact, that’s mostly what this book is about – how to build an enormous list of hot leads and happy customers. Your list is your most valuable asset.
You absolutely do need a list. You need to know how to build your list of people who are interested in what you are doing – because if you don’t have a list you really have no way to bring people to your telecast.
Before you begin a telecast or teleconference program, you need first to answer the question: What is the purpose of my telecast?
Is the purpose to make a sale? Is it to capture leads? Is it to serve customers? Is it to build a big audience so I can become a media property? Is it to train staff? Are you using to conduct meetings? Is to deliver information to students – like what I do?
The reasons for holding a telecast are infinite. Have you seen the Obama Girl video on YouTube?
Well, that’s one purpose for a webcast.
So there is no right answer for how you should run your webcast, telecast, webinar or conference call seminar.
Heck, maybe the purpose is just to have a family reunion over the Internet or get together with old friends from high school. This is a tool that can be used a thousand different ways.
It’s an extraordinarily powerful and versatile tool. It can be used for marketing, for entertaining, for informing, for socializing – just like any media.
But the big advantage of this is that it’s almost free. If you want to launch your own TV show or your own radio show, you now can on the Internet.
Money is no longer a barrier – because producing and distributing your own podcasts, videos, radio shows and TV shows really doesn’t cost anything.
I believe the big media conglomerates are about to die a quick death – about to be replaced by podcasts that seem to come from nowhere.
The good ones will have to trouble finding an audience. You no longer need to go through Hollywood and the movie studios if you want to create movies.
You can now create movies for the Internet. It’s already happening.
So far the movies for the Internet are not much good – at least not that I’ve seen.
But they are getting better. And it won’t be long before we start seeing very good full-length feature films created exclusively for the Internet – probably created by teen agers. And they’ll be TV shows created for the Internet by individuals we have not yet heard of. You can be certain these TV shows will be a whole lot better than the drek we see on TV.
Just look at the audience YouTube is now getting. And you can seen where media is heading. We are just now seeing to start of the podcast revolution – a revolution that’s still in its infancy.
In a few years, as Internet connections get faster and faster, the old media world of the 20th century that was dominate by a few large corporations will be gone – replaced by the new media who are made up of millions of individuals who just have an idea.
Now let me give a few more tips for having a successful electronic seminar:
1) Don’t use a cell phone.
Remember, the host and speaking guests call in by phone. People listen either on the phone or on their computer. Don’t use a cell phone. Use a hardline. In an emergency situation (like when I was stranded in Vermont last year in a snow storm) I conducted a telecast on a cell phone from my car while stopped on the side of the road in a blizzard.
Not good. The connection must have cut off half a dozen times.
In a way, it succeeded anyway because I described the situation I was in – stranded on the side of the road in a blizzard. So this added a certain amount of drama to the event.
Best just to conduct your electronic seminars from a hard line. Best not to use a cordless phone if possible. A hardline is best.
2) Make sure “call waiting” is off and that you hear no entry or exit beeps.
Beeps and noise signals on your telecast are not good – very distracting. Silence is golden for your telesecast, except for the voice of the host and speaking guests.
3) Start exactly on time.
You are like a radio show for your audience. Start on time. I usually get on the phone a few minutes early just to let folks know the call is about to begin and to reassure everyone that they are in the right place.
I will say a few pleasantries and let everyone know we will start at the top of the hour.
4) Make a back-up recording.
It’s frustrating if you do an entire webcast only to have the battery run out of your recorder, or to have your digital recorder run out of memory.
Problems always happen with recordings. Have a back-up.
5) OVERprepare
The reason Rush Limbaugh and the big talk show hosts are successful is not only are the talented, but they know exactly what they are going to say for each show.
They prepare. They are preparation fanatics. You need to know exactly what you going to say. Most speakers under-prepare and the result is a poor performance. People will forgive you if you have average or even below-average speaking skills.
But they will not forgive you if they feel you have wasted their time with under-preparation. Err on the side of OVERpreparation.
Lack of preparation shows disrespect for your audience, and they will punish you for that. People don’t want to hear your random thoughts. They want to hear a tight and coherent presentation.
People want one big theme – and also a few key points they can act on right away.
7) Show the real you
This is huge. Prepare well, but show the real you. Let your audience see your real personality – who you really are, warts and all.
Was Rush Limbaugh hurt by his prescription drug problem? Was he hurt when he went deaf?
Well, he certainly was physically. But I mean with his audience.
No. These problems just make him more human. Don’t be afraid to show your human side.
And by the way, this brings up another key point of marketing and the power of the electronic seminar. And that’s the “law of polarization.”
The spoken word allows people to see the real me – warts and all. Either you like me or you don’t. If you don’t, we have no use for each other
It’s best just to cut the strings as quickly as possible. Your most expensive prospect is always your undecided prospect – the ditherer. They can’t decide “yes” or “no” about you.
You want to cut these people loose fast so you can focus on your fans, those who really do love you for what you do.
Your teleseminar, webcast, or podcast allow people to quickly decide “yes” or “no” about you.
You want to be freed from your undecideds and your ditherers to focus on your real fans. Your electronic seminar program gives you the opportunity to find and build your following for almost zero cost. And you don’t need millions of followers to be successful.
In less than 18 months, I built an audience of more than 2,000 Inner Circle members who pay $38 each month. And that’s just one source of income. But I’m fixing to make it my only source of income once I add another 1,000 members.
Why?
Because to do anything really well, I believe you need to do one and only one thing. So that’s what I’m going to continue do -- build the Inner Circle program, adding more features and upgrades and creating a richer experience for my audience.
Why?
Because I love doing it. It’s fun. And its rewarding to see so many benefit from the program -- taking their businesses to the next level because of the marketing knowledge they gain from the program. It’s rewarding to see the difference the program is making in people’s lives.
But here’s the thing.
There’s absolutely no reason why you can’ do exactly what I do – in your field or industry. It’s really not that difficult. You’ll make plenty of mistakes, as I certainly did and continue to do.
But who care?. It’s not like you are talking to a million people, right?
And even if you are, who cares?
Why are live performances so much more popular than a recorded performance?
I believe it’s because people want to see the real thing . . . not some polished up phony version. You can buy a CD recording of your favorite band for $15. But you’ll pay a lot more for the live performance.
The CD will have much better sound quality than the live performance, but you will pay more for the live performance anyway.
People want the performance – warts and all – and I would submit perhaps especially the warts. Mistakes make it all seem more interesting, human and real.
I make plenty of mistakes on my telecasts. You’ll hear me cough. The phone will fall out of my hand. My microphone will fall off. I’ll take a drink of water.
Heck, a toilet might flush in the background and a train whistle will go off. Not that I want these things to happen. I don’t. But they happen.
There’s nothing polished at all about the electronic seminars I hold. But that does not hurt. It actually helps increase their perceived value. Makes them more real and genuine.
So don’t worry too much about mistakes and mishaps . . . which are certain to occur. Your audience is not looking for a polished production.
They are looking for the real you. They want to know if they can trust you.
The more slick you are, the less trustworthy you seem.
So don’t worry excessively about your gaffs and mistakes, which you will certainly make on your electronic seminars and podcasts. Don’t edit them out. Leave your flubs in.
Plus, people like to be a “fly on the wall” eves-dropping on secret conversations.
If someone were to give you a recording of a strategy meeting Bill Gates had with his top executives at Microsoft, would it matter to you if the recording was not the best quality?
I don’t think so. What matters are the insights you would get from listening in on this conversation. If this were a slick production complete with intro music, you would know this is not a tape of a secret meeting. It would be less valuable.
Remember this above all else. Content always trumps style of delivery.
Great content will overcome any deficiencies you might have in style of delivery.
So just focus on delivering great content, and letting your audience see the real you. I believe that’s really the formula for success for your electronic seminars, and in fact all your information marketing.
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