Hey there. Are you planning to host a webinar anytime soon? If you are, stay tuned because I'm going to share some tips for you. Three reasons why webinars fail and how copy can help. That's what we're going to talk about today on the Resilient Faith Online Show. Welcome. I'm Arissa Shadrick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm an online marketing coach and certified copywriter. In this podcast, you'll find a different perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we create positive change online. To connect with me in my private Facebook group, go to MarissaShadrick.com forward slash community. Hello, hello. How is everyone doing? I am excited to be here today talking about copy. Yes, it's become my love. It's what I do all day long, it's what I talk about, what I coach about. And I've been actually writing a lot of copy lately. I hired myself to write a bunch of copy. And I wanted to share some things that I think it's important if you're planning to put one of your courses, maybe digital courses, or maybe you want to start coaching and you want to put yourself out there and start promoting your products or services. And a way to do that is to provide a free event like a boot camp or live training of some sort. These live presentations are called webinars. And I'm going to talk specifically about some of the things that can happen when we're preparing for a webinar. Some of these mistakes, it's not because we do it intentionally. Sometimes we just don't know what we don't know, right? And so I'm going to try to pull back the curtain and explain step by step, not to overwhelm you, but to give you a more realistic look at what it takes to be able to write the copy that you need for a webinar launch. Now, why did I pick this topic? Because I've made these mistakes, right? I've made these mistakes and it's frustrating and it can really be discouraging when you look back and you think, oh, I wish I would have known that. I wish I could have done that earlier, and I wish I would have changed that. And so I want to remove that, and I'm going to try to remove some complexity for you so you can have an effective webinar launch. So let's start with copy mistake number one. It's believing that creative writing is copywriting. Now, some people are very good at writing stories, creative writing, blog posts, articles, and they think, well, I'm very creative, so I'll probably write really good copy. Well, although there are some elements of creative writing, they are two different things. First, let's look at what copywriting is. It's not copyright, which is the legal ownership of some type of created content where you're trying to secure ownership of that. Copywriting is different. Copywriting are the words that you use to communicate the right message to the right audience for engagement or sales. In short, it's results-based marketing that promotes products and services. And the goal of copywriting is to attract and trigger action. So that person begins that customer journey. You can't begin that relationship if you don't attract them first. And copy helps you do that. And in the case of a webinar, it's really important to attract people to your webinar registration form so they can go ahead and sign up and show up to the webinar. Now, creative writing is a form of literature, and primarily it is very entertaining. We all love a good book, right? It's used very creatively. There's a lot of stories, and it often promotes the author. Now, creative writing can serve as a foundational skill for writing promotional material because creative writers like to go beyond the boundaries of conventional methods, right? They like to use the imagination and go beyond that. And that's why they can be very entertaining. But for promotional purposes, it can become too wordy or too clever rather than persuasive. And we want to be persuasive when we write copy. So copy isn't really about entertainment or authorship. It's a hundred percent about your audience. Now, if your audience can be attracted through some entertainment that's relevant to the topic, of course you can use that. But you have to always consider the audience. It's all about the audience. It's not so much about creativity, although there are elements of creativity in copy, but we're thinking about the audience and writing in a language that's going to resonate with them. So we always want to keep that in mind 100% about the audience. And we use elements of creativity or imagination to enhance what we're trying to communicate to that audience, but it has to align. So hopefully that makes sense. That copywriting can have elements of creativity, but it's all within the context of the audience. It has to align with the audience. And so if you have a misalignment of this, it can affect your registration of your webinar, and it can also, as a result, affect your overall revenue. So that's one of the things you want to keep in mind that creative writing and copywriting are two very different things, different skill sets, although elements of creative writing can be in copy. But the main thing about copywriting is a hundred percent writing in a way that resonates with your audience. Okay, let's look at copy mistake number two. Now, this one is a long one, so I'll prepare you. Number three is shorter, but this one is really the meat of this podcast today. Copy mistake number two, unrealistic timeline for writing your promotional content. Now, product launches include a variety of copy. There's a lot to be done. And so sometimes people underestimate all the pieces that are needed, and then they are overwhelmed and they're up against a deadline, and they start writing drafts and sending out and publishing drafts that really aren't finished or polished to be able to promote your webinar, promote your product. So you want to give yourself ample time. So I thought what I would do is just give you a taste of some of the things that are needed when you're going to launch a webinar because it's not just the registration and the thank you page. There's more to it. So if you're going to launch a webinar, you are probably going to promote a product or service at the end of the webinar. So the first thing you should start with is your sales page. Your sales page is going to clarify so much as far as who you're going to reach, who that product is for, what it is that they're going to be able to learn and benefit from, what the transformation is, what the objections are, how you are different than others. You can list testimonials, you can provide guarantees, you can provide bonuses. There's so much in a sales page to be able to present your argument why your product or service is the best option for them. And so the sales page takes a lot of thinking, a lot of processing as far as what it is that you're creating. If it's a digital course, you need to have the digital course created, or if it's going to be drip style, you need to at least have all the onboarding done for them. So the sales page will help you see where there are gaps and what needs to be maybe tightened or created to be able to have one finished completed sales page. So you want to have everything in the sales page. And once you have the sales page, then you're ready to think about promoting. The second thing is the confirmation page. Number three is the sales page wait list because you can have a wait list after the cart closes. So you want to be able to have something that they can see for those people that go to that site. You want to redirect them to a wait list page. So those people might go ahead and sign up and wait until you open card again. One of the other things you would need, obviously, is the webinar registration page. And then you would need a webinar confirmation page. And you would need a post-webinar waitlist page for when the webinar is over. Most webinar registration pages have a little timer, a countdown timer. And once that countdown timer reaches zero, some automations will automatically redirect to a wait list page. You need the pre-webinar registration follow-up emails. So when people register to a webinar, you want to be able to follow up so they attend live. Because statistically, about 50% of the people that register attend live. So you want to increase that percentage by emailing them and reminding them why they registered, reminding them all of all the benefits, reminding them of maybe a bonus, maybe sending them the handout for the webinar. You want to create the webinar slide deck. You want to create the webinar handout. This is really, really helpful. I like to have a handout because if I send it out ahead of time, people will look at it and they'll see that it's not just some quick thing that I put together that I put a lot of thought and effort into it. Then you want to have the webinar email invitations for your email list. You want to have maybe content creation for organic traffic. If you have a website, if you blog, if you do a live stream, if you do a podcast, you might want to do something special to be able to attract organic traffic to that piece of content and from there invite them to the webinar. You might have, in addition to that, a lead magnet that relates to that webinar. And that lead magnet could be something that you offer inside the webinar as well as an extra free gift. Then as you think of promoting it, you want to also have a section on your website homepage that announces that you're going to have a webinar or at least teases it where they click and they're able to go to the webinar registration page. You want to create Facebook ad copy. If you want to get a lot of traffic to it, you'd want to test out a variety of Facebook ads and not just put one out because it can cost you a lot of money if it's not really attracting people. But if you put four pieces of ad out and test it, you can see which one is attracting more than others and you can shut the other ones down. If you want to do video ad copy, you can create videos for YouTube and you can do the same thing for audio, but you need copy to do that as well. You can create also social media promotional content, all those snippets that you put on social media, that is also copy. And then after the webinar, you want to have the post-webinar replay page and you want to have the promotional emails. After the webinar is over, the cart is still open. So you can still promote to your email list what you are offering. So you want to have those emails created. And of course, for people that go to the actual checkout page and they abandon the cart, you want to have abandoned cart emails. Can you see what I'm trying to prove here? You need a lot of copy when you're going to launch. And I think most online entrepreneurs don't realize how much copy is needed and they try to piece it together without giving themselves enough margin, and then they're overwhelmed and they don't realize that they need not just one email, but a series of emails depending on what it is they're doing. So knowing that you need these things, then you can go from sales page when the sales page is completed. And then realistically set a date for the webinar, and then you'll be all ready, you'll be calm, you'll be prepared, and it will be awesome. Let me move on to copy mistake number three. Now I talked about this in a previous podcast, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this. I'll give you a link to that podcast episode. But here's the mistake number three: living by the motto done is better than perfect. This phrase is really a reminder for us not to pursue perfectionism because perfectionism will cause you to stall every time. However, there is a difference between perfectionism and excellence. So in today's evolving market, we need to pursue excellence. That means expect to have revisions. So when you write your copy for your webinar, your first draft is your first draft. I don't care what copywriter claims to be the best in the world, there will be revisions. And one of the things that I do is I write and then I let my copy just sit and breathe. And I walk away from it and I'll go back to it a few days later, at least three days later, and I will look at it and immediately see what needs to be added, what needs to be removed, what needs to be tightened. It's almost like my brain has reset and I'm able to see what I could not see during the first draft. The magic is in the edits. If you want to have a good turnout for your webinar, if you want a lot of registrants, you can write the copy, let it breathe, go back to it, and make sure you embrace the process of editing. So my tip for a magnetic piece of copy is edit. The magic is in the edits. No one writes perfect copy on their first draft. So you need to give yourself enough time to write the draft and then go back to it and look at it a few days later. All of this takes time, and I'm not even mentioning all the back-end tech tools that you need to make all this fly, but at least have the copy done and have it done well and written in a way that really communicates with your audience. And once it's done, it's done. You can reuse it, and then all you have to do is tweak it or change a few things out. You know, three months down the road. If you're using it and you're launching, say every month you're launching a webinar after a while, you know, you don't want to have tired copy, you want to freshen it up a little bit, but you're not starting from scratch. You've already got a baseline, you've already done most of the heavy lifting, and it will be much easier to complete any updated copy that you need for another webinar launch. So I hope this was helpful. I just want to recap really quickly the three copy mistakes. So let me go over it very quickly because this was a lot, but I do have something for you. So hang in there. Copy mistake number one is believing that creative writing is copywriting. They're two separate things. Copy mistake number two is an unrealistic timeline for writing your promotional content. And I gave you 20 examples of pieces of copy that you would need in a launch. Maybe not so much for a $49 product, but if you want to start offering a high-ticket item, you want to have more copy to be able to convert people. Copy mistake number three was living by the motto done is better than perfect. We just can't afford to put first drafts out there. We need to put out the best work that we possibly can and communicate the best way we possibly can. So that was what I had for you today. And I didn't even go in to once people buy the product because then you need onboarding emails and all these other things. But this was everything prior to becoming a customer. So you can see how much copy is needed. But like I said, once you have it done, you don't have to start from scratch. So I hope you enjoyed these tips. And I'm going to be launching a webinar in about three weeks or so. I would love for you to join me. I'm going to share three copy tips. It's going to be full of valuable information. And what I'd like to do, if you're interested and want to get on the wait list, I want to give you a resource, and it's the three reasons why webinars fail and how copy can help. And the suggestions I gave you in this podcast is in this resource. So all you have to do is get on the wait list. You'll be able to receive this resource. And then when I'm ready to announce the date for the next master class, you will get notification and you can decide whether you want to take advantage of that or not. Sound like a good deal? All right. So I hope that was helpful today. I know there was a lot there, but I think it's important to at least get the timeline right. Realize how much you need and have a realistic date when you want to launch and give yourself an ad because there's nothing worse than being overwhelmed, not having everything in place, then you feel flustered when you're going live on the webinar. You don't want that. You want to be able to show up confident, ready, and give your audience a great experience and you enjoy the process as well. Awesome. So until next time, take care and I'll talk to you soon. Wait, before you go, if you found this podcast helpful, subscribe so you never miss an episode. Every subscription, review, or rating means so much to me. Remember, cultivate resilient faith online to create positive change in the world.