Innovation: Build Your Webinar Audience Affordably

Why You Should Read this article: 
In this article, I want to discuss the Best, Innovative & Affordable Webinar Audience Building Method I Know. 

The Challenges for Those who want to do webinars or are doing them now:

1. How to fill your webinars consistently
2. How to fill your email lists
3. How to convert from your webinars effectively
4. How to do this without spending tons of money
5. How to do this in a style that is congruent and aligned with your prospective clients’ best interests 

I want to show you how I solved these challenges and continue to solve them for my clients using this system that I developed. 

Historical evidence of a working system:
Since 2007, I have been building webinars and in person audiences using the Meetup® . com .

Since that time, I have accumulated more than 150,000 solopreneurs and business professionals in hundreds of meetup communities (groups) around the world primarily in North America. 

From this audience, I have managed to get a weekly audience on my webinars of between 20-40 people who have raised their hands at least four times to say that they have interest in the topic at hand. 

I did most if not all of my marketing through this system that I uniquely developed using the Meetup® . com platform to generate a healthy income for my business. 

The costs of this system:

1. About $3500 for the year - that you pay Meetup® . com (a little south of $300 per month average) - these numbers are as of the time of this writing Oct 2024.)
2. About $100 to $300 per month for affordable admins to run the system for you. 
3. Depending on the program you do with me, there will be the costs or investment of working with me. Set up a time to talk with me if you wish for more details: http://www.meetupchat.com/ 

How I help clients build their webinar audiences and a working sales funnel for clients:

I realized soon that I can help others achieve results in two ways: 

1. DONE WITH YOU: Teach people how to do this on their own  and 
2. DONE FOR YOU:   Do it for them, so all they have to do is to show up at the webinars and lead. 

The two programs that can do this for you:

And that is exactly what I have created. These two programs have been in operation for the last year.

1. DONE WITH YOU PROGRAM:  click here to learn more  
2. DONE FOR YOU PROGRAM: click here to learn more  

In a nutshell, how does it work?

1. Set up numerous meetup groups in different cities that have large populations. 
2. Advertise the same webinar event (title, date, time) to all these groups / cities. 
3. E.g. You have a webinar on Wednesday Sep 24th at 1.30 pm PACIFIC. The title of the webinar is “From an Expert - The Secrets to Marketing & Sales Breakthroughs”.  We will post the same webinar with the same registration link on all your groups and cities.  So when you have the webinar, you will have people from different cities attending the webinar at the same time. 
4. Rinse and repeat the process from number 2 above every week or every two weeks. 

Qualification: Please do not attempt this on your own. There are so many nuances and exceptions to the rule that will need to be worked through that I am aware of from 15 years of doing this. 

Who does this work for?

1. Your audience includes solopreneurs OR professionals (not C level or ultra wealthy). 
2. The average annual income is between $35k to as high as $150k typically. 
3. The following types of business work: (contact me if you are curious to see if your business falls into the workable category) 
   1. Almost any kind of coaching, consulting.
   2. Wealth and Financial Education
   3. Speaking for Income Expertise 
   4. Real Estate Investing groups
   5. And more. 
4. You LOVE people. 
5. You LOVE doing webinars to educate. 
6. You LOVE guiding people to a sale rather than doing a sale right away. 
7. You Believe in Patience as the Key to Greater Results.
8. You are willing to learn project management skills to manage this if you choose to do the DONE WITH YOU approach. I can give you my system - you have to learn and practice. 

Testimonials from clients: (please see Qualification out of Integrity and Responsibility below). 

"Sold 2 high ticket items - one of them was from our meetup groups you set up. and on my second webinar offer last week I closed five new clients into my group program."
      -Debbie Allen, The World's #1 Authority on Expert Positioning

"..Attracted 97 new opt-ins to my email list, had 26 participants live on a workshop and 8 people booked a consultation... leading to 1 high-ticket sale."
        -Sean Stewart, CEO & Founder - Rock Your Gift

“For me, I think the greatest value is not being left on my own and floundering, trying to figure things out on my own.  That one thing is what makes your .. programs different.  You are in it with us 100% of the way.”
         -Melody Chambers, House Love Realty Broker/Owner   

There are over 200 plus more testimonials on my website.  

How much time does it take?
If you do the DONE FOR YOU - time to do the webinars (minimum twice a month)

If you do the DONE WITH YOU - time to do the webinars eventually, but in the short term, you will have to learn the system (six weekly sessions) plus manage the admins (not too hard to do with some training) plus a few other things to optimize the system about every month.   

What are the typical results?
Again, results can vary considerably. You must be ready and willing to be patient in this game. 

Results can look like

1. 40 to 200 registrations on an average over a few months at a time. 
2. Of which a third to a half show up on the webinar. 
3. Of which 20 to 25 percent can convert into a discovery session
4. Of which 20 to 25 percent to 50 percent can convert into paying clients during the discovery session. 

Again, please note! This is a game of patience - these results tend to happen over a period of time where initially you may not get great or good results.  Also results can vary considerably. 

Most marketing

1. Takes time. 
2. Requires patience. 

One item of note: I make more money from the email list generated at each webinar. This list will include people who registered for the webinar but did not show up.   

Why does this work?

1. Meetup® . com is a little known platform. Most people think of it as a hobbyist platform. But there are 70 to 80 million members all looking for events to go to and communities to join. So this means, far fewer people market on this platform - implying less competition for you.
2. The platform is way more affordable than other audience building options e.g. Facebook, Google ads. 
3. You have a much more favorable ratio of webinar promoters to potential audience on Meetup.  On Facebook, you have 200 people to every one of the 10 million advertisers.  On meetup you have 70,000 for every one of the estimated 1,000 regular webinar hosts. (this is a very conservative estimate I believe.)   That means that you are more likely to build an audience on Meetup® .com more affordably than you could on Facebook.  I.e. Far less competition. 

Do I teach you how to present your webinars, convert effectively into discovery sessions and convert from discovery session into clients?

The simple answer is yes. I love doing this. This is valuable education that is not found much out there and is based on my 30 years experience of doing presentations (in person and webinars starting in 2008).  

What converts into paying clients from a webinar?

1. Who you are being trumps what you say.  If you indicate a willingness to be patient and to not be aggressive with your sales, but more aggressive with making sure people learn and see hope - you are more than likely to enable people to trust themselves. 
2. When people trust themselves, they can take full responsibility and accountability for their results and they are more likely to trust the process that you believe can help them.  This is mostly a function of how well you demonstrate trust in your process and in yourself. 
3. This is more of an art than a science. I can teach you both. 

What are the catches?

1. The system is not as efficient as Facebook, so it requires more patience as you build up the audience and gain engagement with people.  I believe patience is a worthy price to pay for the results.  I also believe that you will probably need to be patient even with Facebook or Google ads. 
2. You have to LOVE doing webinars and teaching people. 
3. You must learn to be patient with the Meetup® . com crowd - they are longer term buyers, which is why my email follow up has been more profitable (longer term strategy) than my webinar strategy on the platform. 
4. You must prefer to upsell a discovery session from the webinar as opposed to directly selling or offering your paid programs at the event. You can still choose to directly sell if you wish, but you will take the risk of failure entirely on your shoulders. 

What other benefits are there?

This is where the system gets tremendously interesting, because if you are patient - you will reap some rewards from some hidden secrets about the Meetup® platform. 

1. Build traction for your speaking career:  As your visibility on the platform increases, your credibility as a speaker increases and so does your range of options to speak. If you are hosting a meetup webinar event every week, you can now state proudly that you speak 50 times a year, across all the top cities in North America.  I leveraged this fact when applying to speaking organizations who were immediately more impressed compared to other speakers they were getting; Of whom, it was difficult to prove their audience sizes and frequency (your meetup events are there on your groups transparently for the world to see.)  
2. Build traction for Joint Ventures:  When you do joint ventures, you need an audience; If you have no audience, who will want to joint venture with you? The Meetup® platform is the fastest way to build an audience I know that enables you to joint venture a lot quicker. 
3. The most affordable Search Engine Optimization I know:  In the first year of using the platform, I discovered that if I set up the groups and events in a particular way, my meetup groups and my website would be found on common searches conducted on Google relevant to my business. 
4. There could be other pluses customized to your needs I can share with you if you are interested. 

Where can I start easily and without cost?
Schedule a time with me to learn more.  Click here to schedule http://meetupchat.com/ 

My style is not to sell. My style is to serve. I will tell you if the program does not work for you, so you save time and money. 

Sunil Bhaskaran, Founder of the Global Small Business School 

P.S. Qualification - out of Integrity and Responsibility: 
I make no guarantees or warranties in any of the statements made above. I have to say this, as using this system is a game of patience and continuous learning about your market. This takes time and there are so many things that can go wrong like in any (repeat any) form of marketing.   

Thank you for taking this statement seriously.