Webinars, zoom meetings and other forms of online communication with your clients and customers are one of those trends most businesses are adapting now. While a lot of businesses are turning to Facebook live and email, this unique form of communication presents a great opportunity for businesses to communicate and connect. People are now adjusting via GoToMeeting and Zoom.us to have that kind of off-the-cuff meetings. During this time of uncertainty, these virtual meetings are a great way to show that sense of belonging and to connect with each other.
So I did an episode a few days ago around leveraging Facebook Live. And I’m seeing a lot of success in businesses that are using Facebook Live to communicate. It can be used in any industry across the boards because every single industry and niche has been affected in some way or another—whether it’s the gatherings or how many people can be there. Whether your business is closed or open or just temporarily suspended, you can benefit from doing Facebook Live.
One major trend most businesses are doing now and somewhat similar to Facebook Live is putting together weekly webinars, which offer a little bit more structure. With Facebook Lives, those are really meant to be more off-the-cuff and connection rather than a commercial. Webinars, on the other hand, are really meant to give some value. There’s going to be some kind of pitch, some kind of call to action whether in the midway through the webinar or at the end of the session. When making a webinar, you have to consider two key points:
- What value can you provide to your audience at this very moment in time?
- What offer can you make that is relevant to everything that is going on at the moment?
So, let me walk through some examples. And then again, we’ll talk about the technology and how to execute this.
If you’re a contractor or you’re doing some work in someone’s home, obviously people mean most of those businesses, if not all of them are deemed essential. However, you’re going to have to get over that hurdle of people not wanting outside people in their house at this time. So a webinar example could be something like this.
“I’m inviting you to attend a webinar on Wednesday. And we’re going to talk about how to still get home improvements done during the Coronavirus crisis.”
So what you would do then is you would put together some slides and you can use PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Canva. Those are just a few options you can utilize. You could put together some slides, but make it educational in nature. Send these to all your existing customers, those on your prospect list. Your slides could educate potential customers and discuss options before deciding to do the home improvement. Some topics you could cover in your webinar:
- Verify what steps they are taking to ensure that no one at their office is sick.
- Hygiene protocols for when they’re there like washing their hands and using booties on their feet.
- Discuss about financing options and terms.
Once you have given the educational content some thought, think about how long your webinar should be. Should they be an hour, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or two hours? The recommended length is however long it takes you to give some really great content and have your call to action. Let’s say for home services, 30 minutes would be plenty of time— 15 to 20 minutes of good content and 10 minutes of a little mini commercial.
When you’re giving that content and going to pivot over to the commercial piece, keep it in a very sensitive manner. What I’d like you to transition would be something like this. “So, I hope that you’ve enjoyed the content. I know some of you that are listening are probably here because you’re considering doing a home improvement. As you know, my company, ABC home improvements, offers home improvements. If you want to stay on for a couple minutes and hear a little bit more about our company and how we could help you during this interesting time, please stay tuned.”
That’s kind of how you transition it. And when you’re doing your little commercial or your pitch, you have to be sensitive to the fact that everything you just shared, you can almost sell yourself based on what you just presented. You could say “everything that I just presented in the first 15 minutes about our protocols we’ve been executing since day one.” You can then talk about your track record and success stories, and show some jobs that are currently active during the crisis.
The biggest hurdle you might be facing is thinking when should you start? Do I start now or do I start in a couple of months? No one can really predict but I think there’s gonna be a lot of pent up demand for a lot of different services. What I would encourage you to do is at the very least, start taking deposits and building your waiting list, in case every single person decides that they want to wait and not start a job. Looking at the trends, there are still some home improvement jobs that are currently ongoing. And then, let’s say things clear up in May, that your jobs are booked out for the rest of the year. But if you’re wrapping this with a webinar, it’s much easier and it’s much more polite or accepted to do a webinar at the end of it.
In terms of tools and technology, there are GoToWebinar, GoToMeeting. Zoom.us which has already been very widely used. The only challenge that I’m seeing with Zoom is that there are so many people that have been jumping to it. So, I probably have pivoted back over to GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and you don’t need it for six months. You can grab it for a month a month commitment to start with, and that would start to move you along in the process.
Your action item today is what kind of webinar could you do? Get an email drafted, get it out to your list, no matter how many they are. Those who communicate are going to rise up and survive this better than everyone else.
Get out there, make a change and take some action. And hey, don’t forget to leave a five star review and tell all your friends this is the greatest marketing podcast ever.
