Brian Kurtz 15:53
The fewer, the fewer words, the better. On a slide, right?
Dylan Frost 15:58
Usually, yeah, I’ll say, I’ll say, in most cases, yeah, fewer words.
Brian Kurtz 16:02
Joel Weldon, who is a professional speaker, Speaker Hall of Fame or whatever, he always said, slides are free, so what the hell? Right?
Dylan Frost 16:11
And you can have fewer words if you are doing more slides. You know what I mean exactly, because you’re very, being very quick about it. So, and I’ll say 6, 7, 8, years ago, before internet speeds and bandwidth was a thing, where you could create, create these, you know, 400 slide presentations. And easy, easily get it to load and easily, get people to be able to see it right? You couldn’t use a whole lot of images, or images were really hard or frustrating to be able to put into presentations. But now you can, and it’s not an issue and it’s not a limiter. So you can use your slides to visually communicate what you are speaking and saying. And also I really, truly believe in when I have things that I feel are profound or really important, I like for it to be also communicated via text. Show as text, right? So big takeaways, big things that I think that I like are really, really critical. I like to show it as text in my webinars as well. So people hear it, read it, and apply some multiple learning modalities. That’s kind of what you have to think about. If there are, you know, your kinesthetic learners, auditory like you think about the different learning modalities, and you want your presentation to appeal to as many of those modalities as possible, to have the highest conversion rate as possible. Another thing to think about, okay, so the structure of the webinar itself. The sequence from beginning to end doesn’t always follow this exact order, and this is a real high level overview. And so let’s get into it, the intro part, which are steps one through seven. Let’s talk a little about that. First thing to cover. You have to start your webinars with a really strong hook or a bold promise, right? That? And this is what I’m talking about. Your opening slide, when you first officially start, it can literally just be a few sentences. This part can be, it can be a little longer than that, but you have to have started really, really strongly. Pattern interrupts, strong hook. There’s a lot of different ways that you can do this. So long as you’re opening you know your first 30 seconds, 40 seconds to four minutes is really strong, really punchy, and grabs attention, creates a bunch of generates a bunch of interest, right? The best? Like one of the ways that I there’s a reason for this. There’s a few reasons for this. One is that, well, let me, let me say it this way. You want a huge part about your webinar is people have to make it to the offer, right? So the more boring it is, the more likely they are to click off so it can’t because you don’t want it to be boring. And you also want to not only make these hooks important, but your hooks at the beginning are also what make people want to stay to the end. Talk a little bit about that here in just a second. So the biggest mistake I see people make most frequently is with webinars. One of the largest mistakes is they start their webinar by introducing themselves, to which I say, No one gives a shit who you are. But why are you introducing yourself at the beginning? No one cares. You haven’t given anyone a reason to care yet. So don’t introduce yourself as the first thing that you do on a webinar, unless introducing yourself is part of the hook and error. It is the hook which I have seen or I have done before, and some of the stuff that I have written, but it’s rare. So you start with a really bold promise, a really great question, or really something that positions and gets people super, super interested in the next thing you’re going to say, and it can be related to the hook that you use for registration, and it doesn’t have to be. It can be something completely different that’s new or unique to the people that show up. So long as it makes sense and it’s for that audience, right, then the next thing I’m typically going to do for that really, really strong hook, is I’m going to set an agenda. And again, the points in this agenda have to be really good, if you know what I mean by setting the agenda. I’m going to tell them. By the end of this webinar, you will know how to, and then I’m going to hit each one of those things and then be, you know, feature benefit, right? And transformational based copy, right? So if you’ve, you know, if you’ve ever heard of the copy tactic, you know how to blank without blank, how to do this without this, right? That this is a good spot for that as well as when you’re setting that agenda. Setting that agenda is really powerful. And again, people getting people to stay know what they’re about to get and receive, having clear expectations about what they’re here, here to receive, so it increases likelihood that they continue to listen. And then you have to just meet that expectation that you said as well. Then I’m typically in a really strong hook to the end. If you stay to the end of this webinar, I’m going to do something really special, blah, blah, blah, you know. So if you know, again, if you want to make a sale, they have to see the offer. So if they are going to see the offer, you have to give them reasons and continue all throughout the webinar. You’re not just doing this here, but you’re typically hooking to the end all the time. Always open loop, closed loop. If you ever close a loop, what do you have to always immediately do after you have to open a new one. So all loops that you know when you’re using open loop, closed loop. I’m speaking to a bunch of people that I think understand copy, so I have to dive into that too deeply, right? But you have the process of opening a loop and then you close so you generate curiosity, right? You satisfy that curiosity with your teaching. But when you satisfy that curiosity and close that loop, you must open a new loop to create more curiosity, to keep people hooked and engaged, the same way that you know, Netflix does that with cliffhangers on their show, so that you binge watch 10 episodes of a TV show, right? You want to do that same process in these presentations, where anytime a loop is closed, a new one has opened. And you do that all throughout and in the final loop, the only way that it can be closed is to do what you buy your product or program. Okay? Next, I typically like to command attention in some way or format or another. This is, you know, there I will say that this is more of kind of like a more rookie oriented approach. If your content is really, really good and engaging and interesting, you don’t actually even have to do this because your content is doing it. But if you’re not to that point yet where you have just this really strong, engaging content and copy it in your webinar, what you can do is, literally, it sounds kind of douchey, but you can ask people and tell people. You tell people how to behave. The thing is, like, if you just tell people how to behave or what to do, you’ll be surprised how often they just do it. So if you tell people, hey, what I’m about to teach here today could completely change your life. So if you know you, are you? It really sucks. If you know your phone rang, or you know you, you stepped out for 15 minutes and you missed the one piece or one tactic or one thing that’s going to completely change your life. And right? So I literally tell them, like, eliminate distraction. Focus on this. If you focus on this, I promise the reward will be, it’ll be, will be huge for you, right? So I actually tell them to pay attention in this way. So look for their own benefit. And you tell people what to do a lot of times they just do it. Future pacing also happens here in the intro. Again, this happens throughout, but it’s really critical here and actually, let’s, let’s do a combination of these two. So here’s an example of what future pacing I can do, future pacing along with commanding attention might sound like, right? I’ll say, you know, eliminate distractions. Put your phone away. You’ll want to do that, because what I’m about to explain has a chance to totally change your life. Right now, this could be the moment you learn a business model that will enable you to finally quit your day job, to spend more time with your family and kids, to free you from the daily struggle of alarm clocks, pointless meetings and annoying bosses, right? So right there I simultaneously future paced with my commanding of attention. And you can combine lots of psychological copy tactics like that all the time, where you’re doing one thing but you’re also doing another with it right. Then you can get to introducing yourself. After you kind of set all this up, you could generate enough interest in who you are and what you’re about to teach, then people give a shit. Can give a shit, and you can establish your authority. Another thing that I like to tell audiences too is like, if you don’t have a whole lot of authority, yourself, borrow authority, right? I’ve done plenty of webinars where maybe in the space I didn’t have a ton of established authority, and so I borrowed a. Authority by this is a part where maybe it’s as part of introducing myself. I introduce myself adjacent to other people in my network that I know or that I have learned with, or I’ve worked with or I’ve partnered with, right? So there’s a lot of ways to establish tons of authority, whether it’s through you or through borrowing it in lots of different ways, right? So even if you’re new or just starting out, or don’t have a ton of authority, there’s really smart ways to be able to have a great introduction and create tons of authority for yourself that you maybe didn’t realize, or things that you could do before. Right? You can just say, I know Brian Kurtz, you know, you know how valuable it is to know Brian Kurtz. It’s incredible. So you can, you can borrow authority by just knowing and being in the ball in the sphere of influence of Brian Kurtz. Okay, next, typically, the strongest way to start setting up and creating a lot of engagement and heading into your content very soon is to use the story. It’s going to be the way that most people are going to be able to do this effectively, a story and a story of struggle and solution. It can be your story. It can be someone else’s story. It doesn’t necessarily have to be your own story, but stories are really strong and ideal for teaching concepts. Teaching concepts. It’s really strong for communicating your points and for keeping people engaged, because we as humans are actually, you know, psychologically, genetically, physiologically wired to listen to stories, because it’s literally a survival mechanism, because it is through story that, as we evolved in times, you know. And think about it, from the caveman times, right? Were cavemen like how they communicated back to each other about the dangers and the other perils of their daily life was to communicate through story, you know, you know, I went over here next to the pond, and there was a saber tooth tiger, and it killed me. So be really careful the next time you go to that pond, right? And so that it’s literally that the reason that people listen to stories so much is because you’re you’re as it’s literally, a survival mechanism for you. And so that’s why they’re so effective and so strong and anytime that you can turn anything that isn’t a story into a story, it’s consumption is going to be higher, and the amount of psychological influence that it has on someone is going to be higher. So try to turn things into stories. Try to turn things into metaphors. Try to turn things into anecdotes. Anything that you can do, it’s just going to increase the likelihood of conversion at the end, because people will understand it better, listen to it better, care about it more, and then we’ll influence them internally more. Okay, so use story. I like to insert a story struggle and solution here at this point, then I like to say, okay, so let’s recap what I’ve talked about so far. Right? You want to make sure your ideal introduction is the first initial part of the webinar, the first 10-15 minutes is all we’ve talked about so far. Seizes attention, makes distraction impossible, establishes your authority and inspires commitment, hope and intrigue. Okay, I haven’t talked a whole lot yet about establishing commitment, and I don’t know, I can’t really remember if I’m gonna that’s a real establishing commitment. That’s an NLP thing too. That’s really, really big. Maybe it might be in my transition part, but the more so if you don’t know a lot about them, or a really, really valuable thing that you can be putting in your presentations, or commitment frames, understanding commitment frames, or trial closes or tie downs, the more that’s that’s one of the things, like, you can massively increase your results of a webinar if you just add more tie downs. Like, that’s like, what’s the one thing I could do in five minutes that makes my webinar convert better? Add more tie downs, right, draw closes, tie downs and commitment frames. So those are side things that you can write down to Google if you don’t know a whole lot about them. Add more of those, you’ll increase your results. Now for content, there’s a million approaches to content. We could spend an entire hour on just this part right from the secret, three secrets approach, popularized by Russell Brunson, the one thing approach out of blank, without blank, right? No matter what strategy you choose, the content should be just as it should. The goal of the content should be to create an epiphany, to create an aha moment with the viewer, and more importantly, that what that aha moment connects in some way to the offer, okay? And what I mean by an epiphany is you want your reaction where the person says, like, oh shit, that’s how that works, or like, oh wow, I didn’t realize that, but that makes so much sense, right? And then their whole dynamic and worldview starts to be changed and stuff like that, right? Analogy. Again, analogies, anecdotes, metaphors are great for that. They’re great tools for teaching. If you don’t know anything about the concept of the Epiphany Bridge, which Russell Brunson teaches a lot about, that’s really, really important to know and understand. But when you create that epiphany in someone, they feel empowered and they feel smarter. And they become more interested and motivated and take action on that opportunity, in part because they realize other people don’t understand it and / or that other people aren’t aware of it. So it makes them feel special and unique, and the more unique you can make them feel, the more likely they are to convert to your offer. I’ll also say, because I don’t remember if I have this in the presentation, another really good piece of advice, I think, and critical thing that you can think about conceptually is to increase the likelihood that someone takes you up on your offer, you have to create some type of change in the prospect. There has to be an emotional, potentially emotional or logical, or both change in their behavior and the way that they view or think about things. So that’s what you’re trying to do, is create that change in the way they view or think about things so that they will purchase your offer, right? Because there’s actually going to be very few people that are going to be on your webinars who are just perfect who already know that they’re a perfect fit for your offer. What you’re really doing is trying to convince a bunch of people that don’t know that they’re a perfect fit for your offer, that they actually are, or that it’s a good fit for them. Okay? And you have to think about it that way. Just create that change in their belief system and mindset a lot of time. And so how do you do that? You think through that and then figure it out. And that’s how you create a lot of your copy and your content. When it comes to your offer, you have to have three things that all connect throughout everything that I’m talking about. So the content has to deliver on the process of that big hook, that bold promise that you make and set up the offer. Okay? Another thing about setting up the offer with content in my content for my mainline program, which is called The Wholesale Formula, I mostly teach people how to find product opportunities they can sell on Amazon, but, but I will speak very briefly about how to actually acquire those products that they find Right? And that’s because my offer closes that loop. I get people really excited to help them find really profitable, profitable product opportunities. And that’s what we teach in the time that we have together for my webinar. But what I don’t have, what we don’t have time in the webinar to get to, is how to actually acquire those profitable opportunities and make it so that you can sell them right? And that’s what my program provides. That’s the value of my program providers. So that’s where we teach you that and go into that. Okay? So things like that, you have to think, what is, what is one thing that I can teach? It’s really about because people are really excited. And then what’s the loop that is closed by my program? And maybe, maybe both parts are in your program. And so sometimes you’re just trying to figure out what’s the part that I’m going to teach. That I’m going to teach for free out of my program as part of this webinar, and then the rest of my program closes that loop, right? Then, really, after your content is over, the really important part is that I think people definitely screw up a bunch, right? And it’s that the transition from teaching to from teaching to making an offer, and it can be really awkward. It may feel awkward to you. It may be that that whole transition of going from teaching to selling can be awkward to you. But I have an important thing I want to say to you in regards to that, and it’s that if you are scared to sell, your audience will be afraid to buy. So think about that and use it to your advantage, to be less scared and figure out ways to sell in a way that makes you more comfortable. I’m going to show you an example of this that you’re going to be able to just copy, take some screenshots of here in just a second, right? So another thing when it comes to that transition, for a transition to be super effective when you’re about to make, when you’re about to switch from content to an offer, are things that you did before the webinar even happened, if you did it right. And what I mean by that is you don’t want people to feel bamboozled. You don’t want people to feel like this because, especially as more and more people have experienced more and more webinars, people are now at the point where they kind of have certain levels of expectation. It can work for you and it can work against you. They may have an expectation already that you’re going to sell something, or people may have an expectation that you’re not. But the point is, in your copy, in your registration copy, in the registration page, if you did this smartly, no one will feel bamboozled that you’re about to make an offer. I typically am able to set up in my introduction really well, that way back in the introduction part that I covered, I’m able to set up in the introductions during my webinar really well, that I am the founder of a program called he wholesale formula, and that I teach and train people and all the success that that program has had and stuff like that. And then I. Know, stop it. And I’m just like, Yeah, but enough of this shameless self promotion. Let’s get into, you know, the content, the reason that you’re really here today. And let me start talking about XYZ, right? So in the intro, I really already set up that I own a paid program, that people get amazing results in that program. That’s all I really had to say. So now that people aren’t going to be stunned, not they’re not going to be completely shook up when I’m going to ask them to enroll in my program later on, right? So you wanted to make sure you seeded that properly. That can even happen in the emails before they don’t want to feel bamboozled bait and switch. It’s a delicate situation, so that’s why you can think about it. And there, they could have been pre-programmed to know an offer was coming, or to not be upset that an offer does come, and then how the language that you use and how you set up that transition is really important and really powerful. And so I’m going to give you an a scripted example of a transition that I have used in my programs a lot, which also uses not to grow, not you can do this better than I have here, but also you can just a really simple, easy way to make a transition that I can recommend for people, especially people that are, you know, more rookie at writing these webinars is you can eliminate a lot of the tension that comes with transitioning to an offer by just asking permission to make where you literally just ask the audience like, you know, hey, I’ve got this program and you know, would you like to hear more about it, based on everything that we’ve talked today? And everyone will always just say yes, and they will literally give you permission to pitch them your offer. And that eliminates attention for them psychologically, and eliminates attention for you, so that you’re going to be better at it too, and they’ll feel more comfortable. So you can literally just ask for permission to make your offer at the end. And that’s like a really simple way to be able to do it as well, and you’ll see a little bit of that in here,
Outro 36:46
Thanks for listening to the Timeless Marketing Podcast with Brian Kurtz. Visit briankurtz.net, and click podcast at the top of the page for a full transcript and show notes. If you’re interested in working with Brian personally inside of Titans Xcelerator, go to Briankurtz.net/help to see how Titans can help you grow and scale your business. That’s B-R-I-A-N Kurtz [dot] net [slash] help.