Workshops, training, masterclasses, webinars, or whatever you want to call them aren’t new by any means. I can tell you from personal experience that you can and will grow your business if you do them consistently. I think there are a lot of businesses that don’t take advantage of this lead generation tactic because of one major roadblock - it’s too much work. I’m going to share a simple way for you to do this with the least amount of effort possible.
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A Simple Workshop Framework You Can Use To Build Credibility And Authority
Training workshops, masterclasses, webinars. I don't care what you call them, they've been around for a long time and they have been proven a proven way to generate interest in your business, build credibility and grow your business.
And I can speak from personal experience that if you do this consistently, it will absolutely work. But one of the biggest roadblocks I see people having when it comes to hosting webinars or workshops is that it just it takes too much time. So I'm going to share with you a simple way that you can implement this in your business consistently with the least amount of effort possible. I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult.
All you need is the right plan. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to tune in.
Serving People by Teaching
So I'm just going to dig into this when we serve people, great things naturally come our way, and one of the ways that we can serve people is by teaching and the one of the things I love about teaching is that it helps position you as knowledgeable as someone that's credible. And over time, it builds your authority in your space. Teaching builds trust.
And we know that people have to know, like, and trust us before they're going to actually sign on the dotted line and say, "Yes, I would like to work with you." Now, one of my mentors always said complexity is the enemy of results. So this simple framework is going to help you implement training consistently in your business with as little effort as possible. Now, the first thing that we need to do when we think about workshops and training is nail down these three high-level steps.
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A Simple Workshop Framework You Can Use To Build Credibility And Authority
The first step is we need to tell people something interesting. We need to create a great topic and headline or title for our workshop that is going to bring people in. That's the first thing.
The second step is we need to teach them something, right? We've got this great title, this great hook, bringing people in now we need to actually teach them something that is of value.
And then the third thing is we need to invite them to something after. What's that next step that they will logically take after you are done with this workshop, right? You've taught them, you've helped them. What's the next step? If they run into roadblocks, are you there to support them? Is there some information product that will help them implement? Would you just talk them, taught them faster, quicker, more efficiently? And whatever that is, there has to be some type of invite to the next step, okay? So those are the first those are the three high-level things we need to nail down first.
Promoting Your Workshop
Then the next thing is promotion. How are we going to get people to this workshop? And, you know, initially I don't think we need to worry about am I going to have one hundred people on this thing? Just start. If you have two people on there, who cares if two of those if one of those people ends up working with you down the road, well, then it was worth it, oka? Just forget about the numbers. Just start doing the work and that stuff will follow especially as you get better and better with this. But promotion keep it simple in the beginning.
If your email list, send it to your email list promoting it. You do not have to have a large email list to get some people on, especially if they don't see value in the topic that you are teaching about.
Your social media posts. You can put out social media posts that promote the workshop and get people signed up that way.
Another easy way is if you can send out targeted LinkedIn messages. So LinkedIn is a good channel for you, which for most of us in the business-to-business space. LinkedIn is a fantastic channel. You can send targeted messages. Promoting your workshop to connections that you have on LinkedIn, "Hey, I've got a workshop coming up about X, Y, Z, if that's something that you've been struggling with, would love to have you on. Here's the information. Thanks so much. If you know somebody else that might benefit from this, please feel free to share." This doesn't have to be complicated. Let's keep it simple.
Those are three really easy ways to promote in the beginning. As you get better and better at this and more and more comfortable, you can certainly expand out from there.
Maybe there's joint venture partnerships or affiliate partners where you can do your workshops for their audience and get exposure to a new audience. But in the beginning, just start with what you have and start getting used to the system and comfortable with it, ok? So we've talked about the first three steps, the high-level steps you need to nail down.
Hosting the Workshop
Talked a little bit about promotion now actually hosting the workshop. And again, I'm going to focus on keeping this simple.
Zoom Meeting or Zoom Webinar. They're not terribly sophisticated. OK. There are some things that I don't like about Zoom Meeting and Zoom Webinar, but it is a super easy place to start. At this point, everybody is used to Zoom so and it's very inexpensive, especially Zoom Meeting. I mean you could do the basic plan of Zoom Meeting and bring people on and it works very, very well and it's easy to use. So I would recommend starting there. And if you, as you start to get experience under your belt and you know, hey, there's, there's some gaps here, I need to fill these gaps, then you know exactly what you need. And you can start to look for another platform if you need to. But I currently you Zoom Webinar and it works just fine and I like it. It's easy. So start there.
It's a great place to start now with your slide deck for the presentation. Forget the slide deck. Keep this simple, right? If you slide decks take time to present, to put together, I don't think you need it. Use a Google doc. Put together an outline of the high-level points that you want to talk about in this workshop, and you are going to use that Google doc outline as your cue, and as you go through the workshop, you just fill in the blanks underneath each one of the points that you want to touch on and talk about. This works really well. It's very casual. It's very laid back. But here's the thing. When you use an outline like that and you're filling in the blanks, you are communicating to people that you really know this subject because you have to know the subject. You don't have cues sitting there. So it's very free flowing and what I found is people really like it, so do it. It's so easy and you don't have to take the time putting together a slide deck, create a Google doc outline at the end of the presentation, all you do is share the Google doc link right there in the comments, in the chat, and people can just click it and refer back to it. So it's really, really easy. Just make sure you get to share settings, right. Share it so that anyone that has the view can the link can view it. And that's all you do. It's very, very simple, but it's a great way to establish your credibility and your knowledge in the field because you have to know it really well to fill in the blanks in an outline. So it's a very easy way to do it.
And when you're done, you can take the Zoom recording, upload that link to the Google doc and everything somebody needs is right there.
The Call-to-action
Last really critical step is that call to action. What's the next step? Right. And I just touched on this in the initial three steps. We need to invite them to something when we're done. What's the next step? For me that's typically a free consult. So at the end of a workshop, I just let people know, hey, here's here's all the information. The recording is going to be there. If you start implementing this and you're starting to run into some challenges, some roadblocks.
Conclusion
No pressure from me, but I'm happy to offer a free consult for you. You can go to our website. Here's the link to schedule a free consult, if that's something that you would find beneficial and you need help to really hone in on what we just talked about. Jump on over there. Schedule free consult, be happy to talk to you. OK, but whatever that next step you want people to take is make sure that you have that at the end of the presentation, you're inviting them to take that next step.
Some will. Some won't. And that's totally OK. But what you'll find is when you do your workshops consistently, whether it's once a week, twice a month, once a month, whatever it is, whatever you can handle. And I don't want you to bite off more than you can chew whatever you can handle. If you do it consistently over time, you are going to start to see results from this. So I hope you found that helpful.
I know you can do this if you've had some roadblocks and you're a little concerned. Hey, man, gosh, it just seems like a lot. Once you get into this, it's not. I know you can do it. Give it a try and let me know what you how it's working for you. And I'd be happy to give you some tips, pointers if you're running into roadblocks. So I hope you found this helpful. Again, I'm Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing.
If you want to gain clarity on where to focus your marketing efforts right now or you need help on your workshops. Click on our website, Rialto Marketing dot com. R-I-A-L-T-O marketing dot com. Get a free consult button is there. I would be happy to chat with you for a few minutes. I guarantee you will get some clarity on where you need to focus right now to get the best return on your marketing dollars. Thanks so much for tuning in until next time. Take care.