The Wonderful World of Teleseminars
The internet is abuzz with them. Interviews with gurus. Words of
wisdom from whimsical wonders. Make a million through
Teleseminars! So what are they? Who thinks them up? And how can
you make some money with them, too?
There are many types of teleseminars. My topic today is an Ask
campaign. I learned about the Ask teleseminars from Alex
Mandossian. He says that the best marketing genius you can have
is your customer. If you want to know what they want, just ask!
The Ask campaign does just that. Say you are a public accountant
and you want to acquire more business. So you set up an Ask
campaign with the question, "What is your biggest question about
your 2006 tax returns?" and you send out emails to all of your
clients and prospective clients. The email has a link to your
Ask page, and they fill out the question, along with their name
and email. Then they are taken to a Thank You page that has some
sort of little gift, like a free report on the top ten
deductions that people often forget about. If it is something
really good, they'll tell their friends about it and some of
them will sign up too.
Then all of those questions go into your database. When you have
enough questions, you read them to find out what questions keep
getting asked over and over again. You pick out 7-12 of them,
depending on how long you want the teleseminar to last, and you
create your top questions about tax returns.
Now you send out another email to all the people who asked
questions (and anyone else you can thing of) and tell them when
the teleseminar will be, and what the top questions are. They
click on another link to sign up for the teleseminar. In
exchange for their name and email address, they get the call-in
number and the secret passcode.
With the most common type of Ask teleseminar, the expert (that's
you!) gets interviewed by someone who is good at doing
teleseminars (like me!) The interviewer asks the same questions
that you got from your ask database, and you answer them as
thoroughly as you can in the time you have.
The point of this example teleseminar is to get more accounting
business, so you want to be knowledgeable and honest. If someone
wants to know how to get the best deductions for the house they
bought this year, you would go over points and the interest they
paid on the house, and what forms they have to fill out. Anyone
who was thinking about hiring someone to do taxes for them will
know that you really know your stuff, and anyone who bought a
house this year and was planning doing it themselves will have
to think about all that paperwork!
It is always a great idea to record your teleseminar.
Afterwards, you can send an email to all of your current and
prospective clients telling them that if they missed the call or
want to hear it again, they can listen to it on your web page.
This will bring them back to your website, and get them thinking
about what a headache it is to do taxes every year.
This particular form of Ask campaign and teleseminar has many
possible uses. You can do several different teleseminars on
different but related topics (like real estate taxes, home
business taxes, etc.) then create a set of CDs that you can give
away as a special gift to your clients, or even sell. You can
also have them transcribed and put together a book.
Teleseminars can be a great way to market your business,
product, or service. If you have a product that you can sell on
line, you can make a great deal for it during the teleseminar
and create a feeding frenzy by telling people how many orders
you are getting while they are still on the phone. Or you can
use a free teleseminar to give your prospects a preview of an in
person seminar you will be holding later on. You can even teach
a class or sell a content only teleseminar.
Teleseminars are a way to really connect with your customers.
People buy from people they know, like, and trust. Giving them a
content rich teleseminar lets them get to know you from the
comfort of their own home. The Ask campaign will let you find
out what your customer's greatest needs are for much less than a
marketing survey, and you can address those questions directly
and immediately.
So consider adding teleseminars to your marketing toolkit.