When you use webinars to market to a very specific content niche, what are the opportunities and pitfalls?
In this episode of #ThoughtLeaderConversations V2's Roger Courville, CSP sits down to chat with webinar veteran Fran Simon who not only has a corporate background in marketing, but for years now has run EarlyChildhoodWebinars.com using an agency model. In other words, she delivers high-touch webinar marketing services for enterprise-level clients...and her enterprise-level understanding of webinars is sure to give you a nugget or three that'll help your own marketing!
Along the way we chat about...
The opportunities and pitfalls of using webinars to market niche content
How to leverage webinars for inbound marketing and lead generation
The importance of crafting specific and engaging content
Effective ways to collect and use data from webinars
Strategies for growing and maintaining a healthy email list
The significance of earning audience data through valuable content
How to create meaningful online experiences for different audiences
The role of email marketing in driving webinar attendance
Key questions to consider when starting with webinar marketing
Tips for selecting the right webinar platform
Tips for preparing presenters
And more...
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Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations
Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com
Host: Roger Courville, CSP | https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: When you use webinars to market to a very specific content niche, oh, like early childhood education, what are the opportunities and what are the pitfalls? Well, greetings and welcome to Marketing Educational Content with Webinars. My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of Thought Leader Conversations sponsored by the crew here at Virtual Venues, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team with this blue chip crew that will come alongside you, help you achieve excellence and results.
by helping you focus on something other than the operations and tech. But we're not here to talk about virtual venues. We're here because we have today the privilege of having a chat with somebody who's an expert at the intersection of a really specific area of content. And marketing, education, content, and, and webinar marketing, Fran Simon, MED, chief engagement officer of, engagement strategies, LLC works with companies and nonprofit organizations who happen to target the early childhood education industry sheet handles like inbound marketing and business development and lead generation and content development and produces This ongoing series of conference quality free webinars.
That's kind of the center of the bullseye and why I'm excited to have a little chat with her. of course, in her case, those who serve the early childhood education space. Fran, welcome. I'm so glad you took a moment to be with us today.
[00:01:27] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Thank you for having me. This is going to be fun.
[00:01:31] Roger Courville, CSP: I know that you know your stuff.
And, so before we get started, fill in some gaps for us. What else should we know about you?
[00:01:39] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Well, what is there to know about me? Well, I'm super charged by things. I'd like to make things happen. And so first begin. In the marketing industry, I was enamored and this was way back in the day. Okay. I'm, you know, I'm not,
[00:02:03] Roger Courville, CSP: we've been connected all the time.
So yeah,
[00:02:06] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: I was, what really got me was actually email marketing because it was so immediate. I mean, I would send out a massive email blast and immediately people were responding. And so Uh, that's one thing to know about me. I don't like to delay gratification. I like things to happen. That's what's unusual about me, but, um, so probably not necessarily something that relates to our topic today, but it is an interesting fact about me.
[00:02:41] Roger Courville, CSP: Perfect. No, well, no, it actually does because I know you have a background in corporate marketing, which includes, uh, I think brilliantly just being specific. about choosing the niche that you're going to focus on. And I imagine there's a backstory there, but I got to say this before we even get started, because, uh, I've known Fran for a long time, uh, in an unsolicited way, Fran has this sense of humor and sent this picture like, Oh, that's perfect.
We got to show that that's, that is, that is too awesome. Audio back it up.
[00:03:17] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: With, you know, delaying gratification. It's right there all, all about it.
[00:03:26] Roger Courville, CSP: So Fran, you've got a background in corporate marketing. So for this venture, Early Childhood Webinars and its related activities, why did webinars become your primary go to market tactic?
[00:03:41] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Because it's easy to, it's not easy, nothing's easy or free. Let's just get that straight. Um, but because it's. It's a really wonderful way to use content to target the audience.
So the topic is super important to, uh, really crafting that more intimate experience with uh, customers. And so what I found is it's, it's really, really especially powerful in terms of the data you can collect. And so between the content, narrowing the focus and then the ability to collect Uh, content, uh, that is really powerful and that is what the service I offer to the sponsors slash clients that I have.
Um, they're looking to connect with a very, within our very small niche, a very specific group of purchasers. And so, and they're different depending on what the product is. So the webinar content is a great way. for them to attract the right audience and then interact with them and demonstrate their thought leadership and their, um, uh, special sauce, their sales proposition.
[00:05:10] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Um, first of all, because you're exactly right. Content is, is, is how you position your content. Uh, We'll, we'll help you not only attract the right audience, but, but not attract those. It might be a waste of your time to, to follow up with, but I love, I love the fact that you just brought up data generation because I've been arguing for a long time.
We can get such a, a, a much richer data set out of a webinar than a white paper or something because a webinar has a life cycle, right? Not just the registration data, but, but all of the data collected after. Uh, based on someone's participation, et cetera. Just curious, how do you use that data?
[00:06:03] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Well, I share it with some sponsors, obviously, but I'm also building my company, my organization as well.
So the data is great, obviously for email growth. And one of the things that I find a lot of my clients and a lot of, uh, uh, companies don't focus on email growth. Um, that's. That's counterintuitive to me, but email is, I don't care what anybody says, and even in the social era, what I've found is email works, and that just, it does it, it works.
Um, so, you know, I, I think email growth is one way that we use the data for my company and for my clients. Um, some of our sponsors are, um, people who still live in the catalog era because they're publishers and they send out catalogs to people. Not a bad strategy, um, expensive, but not a bad strategy because catalogs live on on people's desks and they leave through them.
And, you know, it's. It's not a bad strategy, but you have to have a good, healthy list, um, uh, address list as well as a healthy email list. Key to both of these is earning that data. And so a lot of companies go out and buy lists. It's not going to be effective first of all. Second of all, it's also going to get you white, it's going to get you blacklisted uh, by the ISP.
So you really want to make sure you're earning data. So those are two of the ways that the data is being used, but it's also going into their CRMs. We have very specific data, not only on the actions people take during webinars, but we collect a lot of data over the course of time. And so they're able to use that information.
their CRM for their sales pipeline and their, um, their salespeople are acting on that data. They're calling exactly who they want to connect with. Um, so those are some of the data uses. Um, yeah. So what, what other ways are we using? So, uh, we're connecting people, uh, to their, we're connecting the data, there's social media presences as well.
So all of that is just really right. Um, for sales pipelines and building, nurturing, nurturing the relationship with customers.
[00:08:38] Roger Courville, CSP: I love the phrase that you just used about. earning the data. Uh, in, in one sense, we might even assume that people know what you mean by that, but let's for a moment, not assume what do you mean by earning their data?
[00:09:00] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: It all goes back to that content again. So we're using, so inbound marketing is based on the idea of offering people something they want. And in exchange for that, they can, they give you their data. And so, um, as opposed to, I think on social media, while there's lots of tools and, um, things you can use to scrape data, about the people who interact with you on social media.
This is giving people something that they want, earning their trust by offering something valuable. And then they become more connected to your company, your organization, and they're more likely to want to engage in a long relationship with you. This is not transactional. really it's more about earning that trust in that relationship.
So you can't really get that another way. I mean, I think video in general, even YouTube builds that as well, a little bit on the social media side, but those are snippets. But if you think about, Some of the people who are on, on YouTube, for example, are really building a relationship with their audience. I think there's something about that one on one that well, it's not really one on one, it's one to many, but, um, that what we're doing right now, the face to face communication is really important and, uh, to building that longterm relationship and building trust.
ut leadership. So that's what I mean by Ernie.
[00:10:51] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I'm, uh, I'm, uh, gonna put an exclamation point on that because I know you and I think exactly the same. In fact, I just wrote a blog post a couple weeks ago about it. There is something that happens uniquely in real time or synchronous interaction because it's not just about in a sense face to face connection.
There's a potential to create peer to peer connection either like more explicitly like putting people into a breakout room or less explicitly because now everybody's sharing the same experience and typing things into chat at the same time. Yeah. But then you have the chance. Assuming you've got the presentation chops, you've got the chance or the opportunity as the, as a percenter, facilitator, thought leader to develop, to enhance that relationship by responding to an individual that helps them feel seen, right?
That, that question that you had. is specific to you in your context, even if I don't fully understand all of you or your context. And when I respond, that could potentially be one of the most valuable things that you get out of the webinar relative to everything else that was said, because that was something that answered something specific for you.
Um, that,
[00:12:34] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: yeah,
[00:12:34] Roger Courville, CSP: it was, let's go
[00:12:35] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: back to data. When you talk about that too, because in session, you know, all of that is being recorded as well. So that. If we share that data also, if the chat transcripts and the Q& A with our sponsors, and we also use it, go back and look at the transit, you know, the interactions that are happening, not between other people, that would be unethical, but between the, uh, between the presenter and the, and the audience.
And we share that with the sponsors and they can use that also. to build that relationship on one on one. Hey, we saw you were in the webinar and you mentioned XYZ. And that is powerful.
[00:13:25] Roger Courville, CSP: Yes. Oh my gosh. I cannot tell you how many times, how many years I've been preaching that and so few people do it. Um, yes, that, that warm opportunity. And here's the problem is, you know, there's still generally. Big silos between sales and marketing,
[00:13:43] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: right?
[00:13:43] Roger Courville, CSP: But clients and we get the two talking together, sales ends up coming back and going, that's one of the most powerful things ever because now they're lead development people or they're inside reps or whoever's going to be dialing.
The phone has a warm entry point going. I, Fran, uh, I saw you were at our webinar last week and, and asked about, uh, how to launch widgets on Tuesdays. Um, did your question get answered? Is there a way, you know, what were you thinking about launching widgets on Tuesdays and That right there now sounds like I'm a helper instead of an intruder.
That's huge.
[00:14:20] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Absolutely.
[00:14:22] Roger Courville, CSP: Fran, a couple, it looks like, uh, I was going through your website and it looks like this was probably a couple of years ago, but you, you, you had a, uh, one of your events had the title of that I just found fascinating facilitating meaningful online experiences with young children, unexpected challenges and joyful opportunities.
And I just thought, you know what? Besides the fact that that's what we're just talking about here. When you think about facilitating meaningful online experiences. What were, what was top of mind for you there? And if you don't remember, cause it was two or three years ago during the pandemic, it's okay.
[00:15:02] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: No, um, at the time people were really struggling to, uh, to connect with children using, you know, online synchronous events. Um, and I think, and they still would be, because remember we're talking about not high school students. We're not talking about college students. We're talking about little tiny things.
Itty bitties who are very, they're very active. So, um, I think the important part was giving children, just like we talked about giving value, giving them something that they can really experience you know, in that moment. Okay. Not unlike very ADD people who can't sit still either. We need to capture them and find ways to help them.
They are 3D. Children are 3D. They're like, you know, they touch, they feel, they want to move around. What can you give them that keeps them interacting with the 2D, uh, kind of. experience. And so that's what the session was focusing on. Not unlike what you should be doing with. adults. If you're really good, a lot of it has to do with tone of voice and variation and, um, expression.
And that's how you keep people. I know you Roger and you are the best at keeping people really engaged using just simple things like your voice, your expression. So, um, that's where we were kind of headed in that session. Yeah. I'm just
[00:16:48] Roger Courville, CSP: an old fart in a who. resorts to party tricks now, like like this.
[00:16:59] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: That's what I was talking about, that dial up modem.
[00:17:03] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, and I know because you and I've, you know, talked over the years, but yes, talking with instead of at is, is a big deal. But thinking about the psychosocial experience that the person on the other side is having. Right. If we want to talk about a common denominator between you helping little itty bitties, you know, stay engaged relative to just sit still and watch a screen.
It's
[00:17:34] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: the difference between consumption.
[00:17:36] Roger Courville, CSP: And I've facilitated events where we've done a virtual DJ. I've had people who did intermissions at like a whole day conference and would do an intermission with like a dance instructor. And literally had her studio set up and she would tell people to stand up and move around and give them stretching exercises.
And so there was a physicality to them, even attending an online event.
[00:18:01] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Exactly. That's what was going on during the pandemic with little itty bitties in front of computers. There were people. all over dancing and singing in front of their kids. Actually, it was pretty much like TikTok for little tinies, you know, and then theoretically you were watching the kids respond.
Of course, they'd run across the room and you'd lose them on the screen, but still that was the idea is that, you know, a physical experience for them during, um, during, while they had the camera live.
[00:18:35] Roger Courville, CSP: Talk to me a little more about. email marketing. Is there anything in particular that you've learned about your email marketing relative to webinars?
[00:18:48] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Oh my gosh. Let me just tell you, we do all the channels, all the channels. We do all the channels. We're omnipresent. Okay. But email, the email marketing. is what really gets people in. And the thing that surprises me, we will, we do a lot of email, um, that can be repetitive for the whole audience, but we segment the list so that we're not repeating, um, the same people who've already opened.
So there's a lot of segmentation there to make sure we're not repeating too much. But, um, it does take many emails to get for people to always respond. But what I have found in general is that we're getting 40 to 60 percent more out of email than we are, um, through social media. I mean, it just is, and it, you know, and I'm talking about organic social media, not paid, paid social media.
[00:19:53] Roger Courville, CSP: Which is part of the problem, right? Because if I post something, you know, only a tiny fraction of my 15, 000 Twitter connections or, LinkedIn connections actually see it unless I give them money.
[00:20:08] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Yeah, exactly.
[00:20:10] Roger Courville, CSP: But even
[00:20:11] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: then, you know, we're repeating our social media posts over and over and, you know, take a post and put it on stories and you know, reels and the whole thing and this is more organic.
I earned that email address and I'm going to use it. Um, and so is there churn on our list? Sure. There's churn, but we're able to keep it. We're able to keep it the list at a really high level. We have over 185, 000 subscribers on Two different lists, and we're able to meter out the emails so we're not losing people at a higher rate than we're gaining them.
Remember, we're gaining them all the time through our ongoing webinars, and we have usually between eight. And two webinars per month, depending on the month. So, um, we're continuing to churn, but we're also keeping our email list really healthy. And that's the keys. Those, the unsubscribes are keeping the list healthy.
You don't want people who don't want your email, right? So, um, I think the surprising thing, people say email's dead, but it really, it really is not. Now granted, I'm selling free. Okay. So, you know, but we have constant stock that's coming in and it's like fast fashion.
[00:21:35] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. No, no, don't apologize. I mean, for the selling free, the, you have a business model and somebody listening to this has a business model and it's, it's more true than not that people are offering content.
at no charge because that is going to build their pipeline or, you know, and, or advance their pipeline or whatever. Um, and I think it's just, uh, I think it's interesting that, um, that you do it for a, just as really specific niche. Because I think that's what most people should do. And the temptation is always to, is always to spray and pray, right?
Oh, I got 5, 000. So I'm going to send it to everybody because more is better, right? As opposed to going what you just talked about, which is almost like sub niching within your own niche going. Okay. Based on, I presume content frequency, whether they did or didn't respond in some other way. I'm I'm now, um, I'm only going to send to some subset of my total subscriber list.
Um, and I
[00:22:49] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: do a certain amount of. of Spray and Pray. There, that is true. I do a certain amount of that, a limited amount of that, and then segment along the way. So, uh, there's nothing wrong with wanting to broadcast, and use the word broadly broadcast, um, and also wanting to be very specific. So, I think it's a lot of companies.
forget that you can't be everything to everybody and really that if you can be very very very good at what that one thing or that three things that you do, you're going to be better off connecting with the very specific people who need that very specific thing. Then you are trying to be everything to everybody else because you can't do, you just can't.
I'd love to tell you that you can be, you know, perfect at everything, but I don't think I've ever seen a company that does.
[00:23:56] Roger Courville, CSP: If someone, who is just getting into webinar marketing came to you. What questions would you tell them they should ask?
[00:24:12] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: That's a lot of those. Um, so we could take apart the Webinar service providers and put that on one side and then we'd have the logistical side of things and then I think the key thing that I would say is to think about the before the webinar. the during the webinar and the after the webinar, which is really super important.
I also, so I have to think backwards in questions. You made this a hard question. I'm
[00:24:49] Roger Courville, CSP: talking to people and I know you're an expert, so that's a great answer. Keep going.
[00:24:54] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: I would also ask a lot of questions. about, well, first of all, you have to ask yourself questions. What do you intend to get out of it?
What is it you're looking, hoping to do? Are you growing your email list? Are you growing your sales pipeline? Hopefully you're doing both. Um, I'd also suggest that you ask about Uh, planning, um, you start defining your planning, um, really well. Um, I have to think about content, um, definitely think about content.
Uh, what does your audience need? What do they crave? right? That's what you want to give people is what they crave in terms of content. Right. Um, and, uh, gosh, I could go on and on. I would have to start from scratch. The one thing I would tell you is you're going to be doing a lot more marketing than you are actually doing the webinar.
Um, and I also think you should be very careful about the webinar provider you select. Tell me a little bit. Well, um, everybody uses Zoom. A lot of people do. There's tons of different companies to choose from. I do think, um, that Zoom has a lot to offer. And, um, Roger had a conversation with the Zoom account representatives today and came to understand that perhaps the product they sold me is not the product I needed, which was a higher level of service.
obviously more expensive. Um, it's a wonderful platform. It's very innovative. I have a lot of positive things to say about Zoom. The one thing that I will say about Zoom is if you don't know what you're doing, it is hard to find answers and get service. And to get, you can't, it's very difficult to get.
There's so much to know about Zoom. No matter what level you're using and meetings is pretty intuitive. But once you get into a lot of people think, Oh, assume it's easy. No problem. I got this. But when you get into the, the webinar world, There's a lot of choices you need to make at Zoom, and there's a lot to know.
It's very deep and rich, and finding those answers can be frustrating, but the functionality is there, um, at different levels of service. Depends on if you are a deep data person. I think there are probably Better choices unless you're going to go for the super deluxe package and zoom then you can have all the analytics you want But it's complicated, but there's a lot you need to be able the thing is zoom Does it have a consultative sales process?
They just sell you their product. They don't ask you questions about your business And I think you have to be very clear about what you're trying to achieve with webinars in order to make the best selection of the service provider you choose.
[00:28:22] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, um, this will sound self serving, but it's not. One, that's part of why at Virtual Venues we host multiple platforms.
[00:28:32] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Yes.
[00:28:32] Roger Courville, CSP: And two, why we in the pro services, you know, we don't do marketing like you do. We just do the production. Working with the program managers or marketers or those that are, are putting their webinar series together, um, two things really emerge. One is oftentimes it takes a good bit of querying in the, in the pre sales process to even help them figure out how to ask the right questions, right?
Yeah. Um, it's very frequent that people don't even realize what's potentially available. Uh, and then. The devil's in this, right? The distinction between platforms is down deep in the details and how and whether we steer you to zoom or on 24 or, or, you know, WebEx can very much depend on some little thing that requires some follow up questions in the pre sales process.
You've got the benefit of having the experience of doing this on your own. So you understand it at a really granular level. A lot of people in the corporate world, their only experience is, well, I use my, we use Microsoft teams day in and day out for our meetings and collaboration. But when it comes to my webinar program, I haven't thought through necessarily what happens.
And, and I love how you began to answer that question by Talking about the before the during and the after, because those each have their own distinctions that are really important to consider, right? Whether it's things get handled on the front end of the, uh, what you can or cannot do on a registration page or right at the beginning, but it's crazy how many of them suck on the backend with regard to data or how you can continue to market, you know, the, the content you've created or whatever.
[00:30:25] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Yeah, I mean when you say granular it's micro granular actually and you don't know what you don't know until you are doing it And then you're like, oops, how do I do this and does it do this? Can you do this? And then you find out if you can or you can't and then you're like, oh Shoot. This isn't right.
This isn't right. So I mean, some of it is trial and error.
[00:30:53] Roger Courville, CSP: Think about the process of trying to get to know not just one, but a half a dozen platforms at that level so that you can make the right choice. I mean, you could spend a lot of time in cycles trying to figure that out. And that's not a sales pitch for us.
It's just the reality of the fact that, um, you know, you, Fran. live in a different place than we do at virtual venues. And we both live in a different place than say somebody that's working at a fortune 500 bank.
[00:31:24] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Yeah.
[00:31:24] Roger Courville, CSP: And that's okay. You know, that's not a right or a wrong.
[00:31:28] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: What's interesting is quite a bit of what we do here in my organization is enterprise level, but we're tiny.
We're two people and we have tiny revenues, but the way we serve our, our, the end user, the, the people who come to our webinars is really enterprise level. And the volume that we do and the volume of our sessions have up to 10, 000 registrants. That's really enterprise level and yet that isn't.
financially where we are. And it isn't, I don't even have more than I have one license as opposed to, you know, a big fortune 500 company that I'll have thousands of licenses. So, um, so it's very complex in that regard. Um, so, but I will say, I will say, if you're just starting out with webinars, it exceeds any other inbound content marketing.
Strategy you could ever use. I'm telling you, this is the jam. So definitely.
[00:32:46] Roger Courville, CSP: Most people in our world are not just starting webinars, right? People don't, people don't really understand, usually don't understand the value of outsourcing production. Yeah. Until they've done it , they start to realize, oh, it takes a lot of dang work to produce, you know, uh, 90 webinars a year, or, or whatever.
Yeah. And then that's when they, they do realize they can outsource to us. So let's speak to that advanced person. What's, what's something that you, cause I know you had a deep bench in your head. You, you've been doing that. You're legitimately deep in this. Expert to expert. What do you tell somebody who's in the marketing department, but maybe they're not, they're not doing webinars.
They're doing a lot of webinars, but they don't, It's not their primary focus because they're a corporate marketer and they got to do other things too.
[00:33:38] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Yeah,
[00:33:39] Roger Courville, CSP: what's what's
[00:33:42] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Well, I would say you probably need to work with virtual ventures Um, no, I'm just kidding, um,
[00:33:54] Roger Courville, CSP: friends,
[00:33:55] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: I said
[00:33:57] Roger Courville, CSP: that rehearse that
[00:33:59] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: this was spontaneous.
Um, I think don't underestimate, don't think, oh, webinars, no big deal. I know how to do that. Fine. I've got this. Um, I think you need to definitely have someone on your team work with you to first set up your registration, set up the logistics of the session itself, and then, um, practice. You're going to think I'm crazy.
It's no big deal. No, it's a big deal. And you need to think about how to prepare your audience. I mean, yes, they know how to use zoom. Okay. They know how they know they do. They've been there. They've done that before, but you have to have some little housekeeping things going on in your session. You must set the stage for the people who are with you to know what to expect.
For example, yes, this is recorded. Okay. Yes, you will receive a copy of the recording. Yes, or no, you will not, right? Um, there are a lot of little details you need to prepare the audience for. So, uh, so before the webinar you want to be practicing. Uh, before you first start out, you need to know what the pitfalls are.
You might even want to have a soft launch and have some family members join you and practice with them because the unanticipated is the audience, like what's going to happen with the audience? What could possibly go wrong? Um, lots of things can go wrong. Make sure your computer is plugged in. Yes, don't go on battery power.
Um, I could keep going on and on about that. So those are, um. Some things I hope marketing people will take away. Have a plan for afterwards. What do you, how are you going to collect your data? What are you going to do with the data once you have it? You know, what is that process actually going to look like?
And what does it look like for the attendees and the absentees who didn't join? How are they going to interact with you as well? So, Those are some of the things I would think about if marketing, if you're a marketing person, have less responsibilities, plan to, uh, plan to promote your webinars in all the channels, but plan your emails.
Um, and start, prepare to do the same, promote the same webinars multiple times on your email, for sure. Uh, you will find that you will continue, it will continue to grow over time. I have an 8 week minimum for our webinars. We have to have 8 weeks to promote it, uh, effectively. And that will, uh, address your attendance issues for sure.
If you're charging for your webinars, you can anticipate fewer, way fewer people to come. So it depends on the purpose. If it's professional development, and you're, and that's a revenue stream for you, by all means, charge whatever the industry can handle. But if you're planning this for inbound marketing purposes, freeze the way to go.
Do not charge people. Crazy don't charge. Okay, that's it. So
[00:37:33] Roger Courville, CSP: Fran, you do a lot of webinars. And my curiosity is how do you prepare presenters?
[00:37:43] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: So we, um, we do provide them with a very, uh, like a two page outline of what to expect before, during and after the webinar. Uh, and the segments. So that's in writing.
Um, but we also do a pre webinar, um, onboarding kind of thing experience. We call it a webinar overview or a technology check. Um, and so we encourage them to be at the computer that they're using, um, to have the environment exactly. the way it's going to be during the webinar. We do that technology check to make sure everything's working.
Um, and you'd be surprised how many people do not have the environment set up and how many times that becomes a problem for us, no matter how much we prepare them. Uh, they come on half an hour early and that's a saving grace for us because we find all kinds of crazy stuff goes on because they just.
don't follow directions very well. And, um,
[00:38:58] Roger Courville, CSP: it's, I find for presenters to think, Oh, I do zoom meetings every day. So I got, right. And don't understand that you're going to bring them into a different context. Yes.
[00:39:13] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Right there. We have our own format, just like any radio show, TV show you see Roger has a format.
Um, There's a format to it and they need to know it in advance and they don't read and they don't, and, and so you'll have to have that pre webinar overview. for them or they're just lost. And then before the webinar, they always have a million questions. They always want to try something. They always say, Oh, by the way, I have a video, uh, which is in soon not a problem and go to webinar.
It's an issue. So, um, you need to know what, product you're using and what you can possibly, um, they need to know what product you're using so that they can be prepared for all contingencies. So definitely preparation is no joke.
[00:40:08] Roger Courville, CSP: Fran, are there any questions I should have asked you that I haven't?
[00:40:14] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: I don't know. Gosh, Roger, you might want to know the name of my firstborn child or something. I don't know. I think we covered it. His name is Ben and he's in, um, but anyway, that's a different story. Um, no, I feel like I may have made people more confused than they need to be.
So if you, if they want to contact me, I'd be happy to talk them through. Of course, virtual ventures, that's what they're in the business of doing. So they can do it better than me.
[00:40:42] Roger Courville, CSP: Um, well, no, we do different things. And besides actually, I've had, uh, multiples of these conversations, uh, with competitors because, um, we're confident.
That we're the right people for some clients. And we'll actually, we're actually really confident to enough to tell people that they're not the right client for us. We've got a really experienced crew, but, um, but you, you serve a totally different market. How do people get in touch with you?
[00:41:19] Fran Simon, M.Ed.: Um, I think the best way, the way that I will see your, uh, Really, it will come to my desk is if you use fran.
simon at engagestrap. com. That's the best way. But I'm on LinkedIn and I am open to connections. Please find me and I would love to connect with you. And I do, I'm on LinkedIn almost as often as I am on my webinar service provider. I am on LinkedIn heavily. I'm And Roger's group as well on Facebook. So, uh, and so definitely be in touch.
[00:42:03] Roger Courville, CSP: Fran, thank you so much for a whole ton of your wisdom. And I really, really, really appreciate that. Um, that said. We, uh, are certainly here at virtual venues. Just tickled that you, uh, that you join us for every once in a while. Of course, you can continue to find Fran, LinkedIn, earlychildhoodwebinars. com, and a number of different places.
Thank you again to our sponsor today, Virtual Venues, who can instantly help you scale your virtual and hybrid event production team. And we catch you on the next episode of thought leader conversations.
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