Are online webinars a scam marketing tactic?

Since we launched, we’ve been working hard on generating leads into 5 Day Challenges and Webinars for many of our clients.

Despite the cry I hear every few months that one of these lead generation tactics are "dead” or a "scam" I can assure you that The Social Ads Squad clients are seeing great results and this is because our clients already established, ethical offerings that can scale.

The trend still continues for Challenges with over 9 billion search results as of the time of writing. Business owners still want to use them to generate leads and sales:

For a service-based business, they enable you to showcase your expertise in front of your desired customers, who can then decide if they want to pay for your product or service.?

A Webinar is no different from taking a stage at a training conference and stating “meet me at the back to buy my book” at the end of your talk but enables you to reach so many more people because you’re online.?

You know the funnel: you see an ad or a post, or get an email.

Sign-up and then get a link to a live or pre-recorded training.

You watch and then decide if you want to buy "the thing' being sold at the end.

A 5 day (or 4, or 3 or even 14 - I’ve seen them all!) Challenge allow you to do that over a series of days.

They're like going away on a retreat together where you get to build trust every day with participants with the tasks you set and then chat around the campfire or at the bar each evening letting them know how they can work with you afterwards, but online in a Facebook Group.?

Lack of confidence in these tactics is typically uttered by those who haven’t had enough or any success and have already moved on to the next shiny thing.

This means they can excuse the lack of effort they put into making it work or deny that the product or service they were selling wasn’t what their ideal customers wanted.?

That’s a hard thing to admit as not everyone wants what you have to sell or wants to be sold to this way either.

I wouldn’t recommend creating a webinar to sell toothbrushes for example.?

They’re a necessary (possibly impulse) purchase and so don’t require an hour or convincing you or value-adding first.?

But if, for example, you were selling a dental training technique, providing free training to your audience allows them to see you and your delivery style first plus gives them time to decide if they trust you as an expert.?

It’s a great way to sell coaching services, online courses, memberships and methods.?

They’re a “try before you buy” way of seeing if the customer wants to buy into you and the way you train, coach, deliver, and instruct, however that may be.

There’s a fine balance between giving away value and pitching though and this is where the waters of the Webinar reputation get muddied.

Sitting on a free training Webinar to only be pitched at with no actual training delivered is highly frustrating for many.

It's a massive waste of time if your audience isn’t ready to buy straight away and led to a culture of assuming that all Webinars are scams.

One of our clients delivered free, really good value training recently with an hour of Q&A at the end of the Webinar and yet still received loud criticism from one person for pitching. (Just to note it was the most non-sales-y Webinar I’ve ever been part of!)

I have run 5 Day Challenges that cost me ￡3k+ each time to run (ads and staff), offer insane value in the daily tasks where we provide bespoke feedback to hundreds of businesses, AND do an hour of Q&A each evening for 5 nights in a row and still been told it “wasn’t right” to pitch my offer at the end by one person.?

Those one or two voices always sound louder than the people who I have genuinely helped and it’s hard not to think at that moment “this isn’t right”.

Also sitting on Webinars that appear live but are in fact recordings can cause disconnect.

Making users wait until the very end before you reveal the "secret" of your training is also super questionable too.

The “contrapreneur” way of selling is about personality and promises first with the product value sitting way down the priority list and this is where the reputation has grown.?

Business moguls with big audiences who want to reach smaller, sometimes more cash-strapped audiences mean the sales they make can sometimes ruin lives (watch this brilliant call-out of such an example by Edward Snowden) as the cost of course or scheme is put into credit cards that can never be repaid back.

Standing next to fast cars and private jets, holding stacks of dollars and proclaiming how they become millionaires at 19 "with this one technique" where you don't need any prior business knowledge is pure red flag for me but many can't tell the show from the reality.

Who wants to be associated with that type of online sales tactic?

You can see why it's easy to tar the Webinar or Challenge with the same brush.

By the way, I highly recommend following Mike Winnet on Twitter (he's not on here anymore) and Coffeezilla on YouTube for more educated and well-researched insight about how to look at this industry. That makes you realise that we could all do a lot better in how we sell online.

However, this does not apply to 99.9% of us trying to use these tactics to reach our audiences online and in fact many of our ideal customers would relish the chance to get direct help and advice in an hour or five days.

You can genuinely help your ideal customer and sell to them in a quicker timeframe then slowly building up contacts and clients one by one via referrals.

Using paid ads and outreach you could get in front of thousands of your ideal customers in just one week.

Denise Duffield-Thomas did this late in 2021 by running a 5 Day Challenge that had 10k participants. It's no wonder she had a million AUS dollar launch and she genuinely makes a difference to the lives she helps.

They can change the face if your business and your life as Helen Pritchard from Get Leads From LinkedIn discovered. I have the privilege to know Helen and see the inner working of what she does and the impact that she has on the businesses and lives of the clients she helps and it's all positive.

When you have something great to sell then people want it.

You can reach more people by packing your training or technics into an hour Webinar or 5 Day Challenge.

It's still popular because it works - this is where your audience attention is so you need to be there no matter how bored you might be of it all.

We're not all in the enviable position of being able to run a Webinar or Challenge with already established audiences though, so if you're starting out using them to reach your audience, bare this in mind:

If your training sucks they won’t work.

If your offer isn’t compelling enough or the right price point for the people you are pitching to then they won't work.

If they don’t trust you, they won’t work.

Never ever suggest someone is going to get rich quick from what you have to offer. Stop adding to the problem.

If they do trust you - take that trust seriously and deliver on your promises.

Also, running a Webinar about a product or service you have never delivered before in an industry you are new to will be obvious.

Go out and build your reputation and sign-up one participant at a time to the point where they are recommending you to others and then you can start scaling.

There is no "quick" to this process.

Setting up a business and deciding you will use a Webinar or Challenge funnel to an audience that has never heard of you will not work first time, so don't get upset when you don't sell a million dollars the first attempt.

Denise and Helen took years to build up their audiences, you don't get to have the same results as them after running just one Webinar.

The clients that have success with The Social Ads Squad are those with already established products and services that already sell.

Using ads to drive sign-ups to their Webinars and Challenges simply scales that.

And if you are worried about trying out this tactic, come and have a chat as I am a total marketing funnel nerd.

I have taken part in 100s of Challenges and watch 100s of Webinars in the past few years and always happy to help people understand if it's the right approach.

I have also run my own very successful Challenges plus head up the strategy for implementing leads to Webinars and Challenge at The Social Ads Squad.

So no, Challenges and Webinars are not a scam (unless you set out to be a scammer - in that case we don't want to hear from you) nor are they "dead".

Just because you see them everywhere doesn't mean your ideal customer will and just because you think they annoying doesn't mean they will either.

They are as effective as they ever have been, but you can't pretend you are something you are not. Your participants will know the real deal when they see it and if they do trust you then you have deliver on your promises, end of.

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I felt like I needed to address the elephant in the room with regards to this subject but let's carry on the conversation in the comments: are 5 Day Challenges and Webinars a scam or dead?

Have you used them to any success...or not?

I'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments below and as usual, thanks for reading. Please share this newsletter with your network if you think they'd enjoy it in their inbox every Saturday.