Using free webinars to sell a product

Free webinars are an excellent way to sell a product. You offer free information to attract people to attend and then provide solid content.

At the beginning, you state that at the end, you’ll explain an opportunity to delve deeper into the topic.

At the end, you deliver on your earlier statement and describe your product, that is, you start your pitch. But when you’ve already stated that you’ll be explaining the opportunity, it doesn’t feel as “salesy.”

In the past, many Internet marketers used teleseminars, which are conference phone calls. They are inexpensive and sometimes even free.

But more and more, marketers prefer the visual component of webinars. Research has shown that images are more powerful than words for helping people understand, remember and agree with what you say.

Here’s what one service (InstantTeleseminar) found in their testing:

The testing protocol was telephone only or telephone and Webcast.

Over several test events, the data showed 65.3% of listeners preferred one medium over the other. No, surprisingly it wasn’t the telephone… it was the Webcast! And, to boot, we saw a 56% increase in attendance compared to telephone only!

Webinar services

There are too many webinar services to cover, but I’ll discuss a few.

GoToWebinar: This is the service that I use. It’s rock solid and their customer service is excellent. People can listen via their computer (VOIP) or call in. It uses desktop sharing, which means that people see what’s on your screen. They offer a robust registration feature. Two disadvantages are that chats are not viewable by attendees and their recording format is difficult to work with. It costs $49/month for up to 25 attendees (GoToMeeting) and $99 for up to 100 attendees. There are higher rates for more attendees, up to 1000. They’ve just started offering live HD video.

InstantTeleseminar: This company has expanded from teleseminars to webinars. They don’t offer desktop sharing; instead, you upload a PowerPoint file. They don’t have VOIP; people have to call in. They charge $47/month for up to 100 attendees and $97 for up to 1000 attendees.

WebEx: This is one of the first webinar companies. They are similar to GoToWebinar. They charge $49/month for up to 25 attendees and $89 for up to 100 people. They also have higher rates for more attendees.

There are a number of low-cost desktop-sharing services that don’t offer as many other features. An example is join.me.

Update: See my post, “Comparing webinar services-Google Hangouts on Air, GoToWebinar, and Zoom-and why I chose Zoom.”