Ashley: Thanks for joining me again, Sarah. We’re on #2 today, people. We had some problems this morning, and we’re trying again for a second time, so thank you, Sarah, for your time yet again.Sarah: Sure, no problem. Thanks for having me again.Ashley: Yes. We’re going to try again to talk about webinars this morning. I asked Sarah onto the podcast to give us her knowledge on webinars, because she’s been doing it for a number of years and has a lot of experience. So we’ll certainly see what Sarah can teach us, and yeah, let’s begin.Sarah, what would be your motivation, I would say, that you started webinars in the first place?Sarah: I think I started getting into webinars about 2 ½, 3 years ago, when I really wanted to go into this direction of running an online business. As you, actually, I’m based in Switzerland, as you know. Our world is rather small, so in order to increase that reach and get people from all over the world, I realized that webinars is a great way to do this.So I started looking into the technology and what it takes to run a webinar. It was very intimidating for me at the beginning, but I thought, “Well, this is the way I have to do it.” And yeah, that’s kind of how I got started.I think what you need to realize when you run webinars is that you kind of have to have already an idea of first of all, what it is you want to do, but also in terms of presentation and content, but then also what do you want your audience to do with this information?

Are you just running webinars to build a relationship with the audience? Or do you want them to buy a product at the end of your webinar, or do you want them to just sign up to your email list? Already ahead of time, have a plan, and not just go in there and say “Oh, I’m just going to run some webinars.”

I think the worst webinars are the ones where it’s just sales pitch after sales pitch, and people think that they’re going to invest their time and learn something, and then all they learn is about the person and how good they are and all the certifications they have and all that.

So getting back to what do you have to do before you get started, is having a plan in place about the content you want to share and realize that you want your viewers to take an action, and then what action it is that you want to take.

Ashley: That’s actually an interesting point, because I’ve heard a lot of complaints on the email lists for exactly the same thing, which is – and I’m on some of them as well now; I think I’ve been getting some emails from a particularly famous person recently, and I don’t blame them for it, but it’s been eight emails or something in the last 2 weeks about a new product.

It’s starting to get a bit old. It’s kind of like, “Okay, you normally give me a lot of value, so I’m willing to forgive you,” but it’s starting to get to the point where I’m about to unsubscribe because – yeah, okay, “time is running out, subscribe to my offer” – yeah, great, okay.

I think with webinars, that’s even probably more important, because someone’s not just getting a bunch of emails they’re ignoring, but they’re investing potentially half an hour or an hour of their time, and if 15 minutes in, they still haven’t heard anything apart from how amazing you are, then what’s the point?

Actually, I heard something recently from quite a famous webinar guy, or at least quite successful; I don’t think he’s that famous. But he said he doesn’t really pitch anything. He says, “Look, I’m going to give you an hour of awesome content, and at the end I’m going to tell you where you can go for more information.”

And that is then something to buy, but he doesn’t talk about it like that. It’s basically just an extension of what he’s given you. “I’ve given you great stuff. My intention is to give you great stuff, and if you want to take it further, you can get in touch with me.”

Sarah: Exactly. I think that’s the end. Either you do that way and then your pure goal is to really establish a relationship, or you tell them upfront, “Listen, I’m going to share some valuable content. At the end of the call, I’m going to take 2 minutes out of your time and share some information about a product.” Most people are okay with that if you’ve given them valuable content before.

I think some of the big names out there, what bothers me about their webinar is that they go into this “blah blah blah,” 10 minutes of “blah blah,” how great they are, and this is the company they worked with and this is the certifications – I’m like, by that time, I’m already bored and I’m already switching off.

If I signed up to your webinar, there’s a very good chance that I did my homework, and I know why I’ve signed up to your webinar. So you don’t have to tell me how good you are, because I wouldn’t be on the webinar if I didn’t think that you have some valuable content to share.

So I would suggest don’t go into too much – 2 minutes of intro is enough, and then go into the content. That’s why people are there.

Ashley: I think it’s similar in all content we do, like blogging, where it’s nice to give a little bit of personal information to solidify the relati