There's only one thing I can think of that's worse than attending someone's webinar, and that's having to run one yourself 🤭.
Webinars have got a major branding problem.
They’ve become synonymous with “someone’s going to try and sell me something for an hour.”
And if that’s how we think about them as attendees, the idea of running one isn’t exactly ‘appealing,’ is it?
Recent conversations inside MicDrop have forced me to confront what turns out to be a series of extremely limiting beliefs (the irony is not lost on me).
That, and the fact that I happily gave up my lunch break yesterday to attend a member's 'webinar' - which basically blew my whole theory apart.
My favourite reasons for not running any for the last 5 years include:
Fear of no-one showing up 👻
Few things more humiliating than presenting to an empty room.Webinar concept apathy 😕
If your webinar looks and feels like every other webinar that no-one wants to attend, you’re not going to be excited by it.Dreading the ‘sell’ at the end 🤮
As though ‘the sell’ is a compulsory requirement! (It’s not)
If I'm being 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 honest, with myself once the business reached a certain level, I told myself that I'd graduated from needing to run free sessions, and that giving them away would devalue the paid talks I deliver.
And yet it turns out a very high percentage of our most successful members run them to devastatingly good effect.
So I spent the weekend analysing what makes a webinar 'must-attend' by looking back at all the free events I've attended over the years.
Turns out, you can break down successful webinars into three categories.
Type 1: The Knowledge Session 🧠
What is it? You teach something specific that your target audience needs.
Example: Borrow Everything I know about growing a newsletter.
Speaker: Lucy Werner
Attendance: 888 attendees
Why it works: This session gave unfiltered inside track. Not a framework, not a theory, but exactly what she did and what actually moved the needle.
—Type 2: The Working Session 🧱
What is it? You help a specific group of people build or complete one specific thing in 60 minutes. Everyone leaves with something done.
Example: 10 Upgrades to Make Claude more Powerful
Speaker: James McAuley
Attendance: 279 attendees and counting!
Why it works? The value is in carving out time to get something done. The title is a delivery promise.
—The Connection Session 🤝
What is it? A session where you bring together a group of people to give them a stake in a bigger conversation.
Example: The "no obligation" breakfast brainstorm for an Online Business Embassy (a session I attended in lockdown!)
Speaker: Oli Barrett
Attendance: circa 40 if I remember correctly
Why it works? The people in that room are self-selecting as people who care about the same thing you do. I’m still in touch with some of the people I met there.
Alex
This is the kind of work we focus on inside MicDrop, my community for founders using talks, workshops and podcasts to grow their businesses. Find out more
