Working with other people, collaborating or partnering on projects can multiply your business opportunities. Especially when you can find ways to reach out together to your community. Here is an excellent example of how one of my clients partnered with another successful entrepreneur to run an on-line workshop and co-promotion. Its a stunning example of collaboration and webinar success.
What does your audience want to know?
Sue Burton of the Homebaked Gift Company recently ran a survey to find out which aspects people find most challenging when setting up a home baking business. Sue recently launched her Homebaked Gift Company “business-in-a-box” for those seeking a fast track. The aim of her survey (via SurveyMonkey) was to identify which high quality content would best be received by those interested in setting up a baking business. This guided Sue’s weekly blog topics and the production of Sue’s downloadable “giveaway”. 5 Simple Steps to Setting up a Homebaked Business on her website.
Who to collaborate with?
In Sue’s quest for examples of good content on baking business related topics, Sue came across the website and blog of Pia Cato of Make Money with Cakes. Pia runs The Vanilla Pod bakery and offers advice and mentoring to other cake entrepreneurs via her Cake Business Success Programme. Sue contacted Pia and they found they had much in common not least they both love business and baking. Pia suggested they jointly host a free webinar, an on-line workshop, to provide guidance for those looking to set-up a home baking business.
Sue’s survey had revealed that issues such as food hygiene, using your own kitchen and registering with environmental health & HMRC were topics of interest to potential business bakers. Sue and Pia focused on these areas in the workshop with a plug for the Homebaked Gift Company and a time-limited special offer at the end. The webinar was entitled How Life After the School Run Can Make You Money. Webinar success!
How to run a webinar?
Sue and Pia decided to use Google Hangouts as their host for the webinar. (For more information on how to do this have a look at this link http://techbloke.com/host-webinar-with-google-hangouts-on-air/). One webinar fallacy is that you have to present yourself to camera, very daunting for some people. This is not necessarily the case. Sue and Pia carefully prepared slides which formed the basis of the webinar. After several run-throughs they then presented them live on the day. For the webinar Sue and Pia talk about the topics live. The audience sees the slides and can submit questions. To encourage attendees to engage in the webinar throughout, Sue and Pia offered a downloadable free gift available only at the end.
Both Sue and Pia promoted the webinar in a series of emails to their communities. Both promoted the webinar on social media. This resulted in more than 70 sign-ups for the webinar. For those who were unable to attend live the link to the on-line workshop was available to view for a week afterwards. To date it has had over 90 views. Plus Sue has received enquiries with regard to the Homebaked Gift Company offer. Webinar success!
Collaboration and webinar success
With Sue and Pia working together they were able to tap into each other’s expertise and networks. The webinar allowed them to establish their authority, develop trust and connect with their community. (More about this is in Jeff Walker’s excellent book Launch. An Internet Millionaire’s Secret Formula). By working together in collaboration they were able to leverage each other’s know-how and contacts. (See Daniel Priestley’s Become a Key Person of Influence and the chapter on Partnership.)
In short, Sue and Pia worked together to combine their expertise and used easily available technology. They were able to effectively connect with a wider range of people than via traditional marketing means such as advertising.
Next Steps
If you are thinking of running a webinar and want webinar success,
- Identify your specific target audience
- Decide on one topic which you know is of interest to them
- Become familiar with the technology
- Promote the event
- Prepare and practice
As we have seen with Sue and Pia, two heads are often better than one, so when looking for a potential partner consider,
- Would their expertise be of interest to your community and vice versa
- Do they have an existing list of clients
- Do you “click” with them so you could work together effectively