So, you've got this online course to sell. But you can't launch it every week of the year. And if it just sits on your website, there's not much motivation to buy it right now.
That's where evergreen webinar funnels come in.
If you learn how to create an evergreen webinar funnel to sell your online course, you'll get loads of sales on autopilot. It's the reason that so many bloggers set up evergreen course funnels to make income all year long.
Can you say passive income?
Let's get into it.
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What is an evergreen funnel?
So first of all, what exactly is an evergreen funnel?
An evergreen funnel is a way of selling your course (or anything else) in an automated way. Once you set it up, it runs without you having to do much of anything.
In other words:
The truth is, an evergreen sales funnel is just a fancy way of saying an automated system that sells your courses year-round, every day, to your audience, in a strategic way.
Mariah Coz
(Source).
So, for example, an evergreen funnel might look like this:
- Sally Sue sees your Facebook ad promoting your evergreen webinar and she signs up.
- Sally Sue watches the webinar right away, because it's available on demand through a service like Easy Webinar.
- In your webinar, you pitch Your Amazing Course.
- Sally Sue is thinking about buying, but isn't sure yet.
- Using a tool called Deadline Funnel, you set a 72 hour deadline for Sally Sue to enroll. After that, enrollment is closed. Sally's deadline displays when she views your sales page and in the emails you send her.
- You send Sally Sue a series of emails over the next 72 hours using automated features on an email tool like ConvertKit urging her to buy and reminding her of the deadline.
- Sally Sue buys your course.
The steps of an evergreen funnel
There are a few steps to creating an evergreen funnel for an automated webinar.
One – Sally Sue opts into something free. This can be an evergreen webinar, like we're talking about here, but could also be any other kind of freebie (checklists, workbooks, ebooks, templates, etc.).
Two – You pitch Sally Sue on your course. This is done in a few ways. If you're using an evergreen webinar, you'll pitch your course at the end of the webinar. You'll also send emails after the webinar urging her to buy.
If you're not running a webinar, but are instead offering something like a freebie checklist, you'll still send Sally Sue emails urging her to buy your course.
Three – Sally Sue has a set deadline to buy the course. (More on this below).
Four – Sally Sue buys your course.
What tools do you need to create an evergreen webinar funnel?
You'll need a few tools to run an evergreen webinar funnel:
- A slide deck creator. This could be KeyNote or PowerPoint, or Canva (which is my personal choice…much easier to edit!). If the idea of starting with a blank slide deck is no fun, check out Creative Market for some fantastic templates that work on a variety of platforms.
- A screen recording software. You'll need to have a video for your automated webinar, of course, so you'll need a way to record your computer screen showing the slides and your voice. My #1 fav screensharing video software is Screenflow. It's super easy to use and edit. I use it for all my videos.
- Optional but recommended – a microphone and a webcam. These aren't strictly necessary, because of course your laptop comes with a camera and a microphone built in. But you'll get much better quality if you invest in a decent microphone and a decent camera (although the camera isn't necessary if you're not ever going to be on screen). I use the Blue Yeti microphone and the Logitech web cam.
- A webinar platform that has automated webinars. Of course, you need a webinar platform to run your webinar. Not all webinar platforms offer automated events, so make sure that yours does before you buy it for your webinar sales funnel. My personal recommendation is Easy Webinar, which offers both live and automated webinars and has a lot of great features.
- A sales page. You'll need a sales page for your course. Your course platform probably has a sales page builder, although some are better than others. I prefer to buy domains for my courses and build my sales pages from scratch using either Elementor or Divi.
- An evergreen countdown timer. This isn't absolutely necessary, but adding urgency to a course (i.e., by giving a hard deadline) will definitely increase your sales. The absolute best tool for this is Deadline Funnel. Deadline Funnel customizes the deadline for each person who enters your webinar sales funnel. So, for example, if you want your course to be available for 72 to hours to everyone who signs up for your webinar, Deadline Funnel will start each person's clock the moment they sign up for your webinar. So everyone has their own 72 hour deadline. Deadline Funnel can display countdown timers in emails, on a bar on your sales page, or embedded in the sales page.
- An email provider with automations. Unless the person buys right away while she's actually watching the webinar, you'll need to be able to send automated emails to her for the next 72 hours urging her to buy. ConvertKit is my all-time favorite for this because this because their automation features are the bomb.
- A checkout platform. You need a way for people to pay. Your course platform will almost certainly have a checkout page for you to use, but if you're ready to upgrade, I suggest Thrivecart. You can totally customize the checkout page and it has TONS of other really great features (and no fees!).
Ok, so let's get into how to actually set this thing up.
How to create an evergreen webinar funnel: How to create your automated webinar
Creating your webinar has a few moving parts.
How to create your evergreen webinar slides
You need to create a slide deck for your automated webinar. I suggest 80-100 slides (give or take).
I know that sounds like a lot, but you move through them quickly to keep people's attention.
Tools you can use to create slides include:
- Canva
- Keynote (for Mac)
- PowerPoint (for PC)
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe InDesign
- Google Slides
I use Canva because I find it much easier to edit than any of the other platforms.
If you want to design your slides from scratch, go for it. But if you're anything like me, you'd rather have a snazzy slide deck all laid out for you.
That's where Creative Market comes in. Creative Market has TONS of webinar slide decks on all of the different platforms listed above. It'll make it way more interesting for your audience than a boring PowerPoint template.
Check it out, I bet you'll find something you like.
What should the content of your evergreen webinar be?
Your evergreen webinar should have three main sections:
- Introduction
- Teaching
- Pitching
Introduction (10-15 minutes). You'll start off with some preliminary slides to tell people who you are and why you're qualified to teach whatever it is you're teaching.
You should tell them a story of how you went from a beginner in this area to an expert in this area. Try to connect with people.
Teaching (30-45 minutes). This is the meat of your webinar. This is where you teach the actual content.
Don't skimp on this part. If your audience isn't impressed with what you're teaching for free, they're not going to be interested in your paid course.
Give people actionable takeaways, even small ones, so that they can really feel like they accomplished something.
Importantly, what you teach should relate to your course topic. In general, think of your webinar topic as telling people WHAT they need to do to accomplish their goal, and your course as telling people HOW to actually do it.
Again, don't skimp on this part.
Pitching (15-20 minutes). This is where you'll pitch your course.
Tell people all about what the course is about and what result it will get them.
Go over the course content in a fair amount of detail.
Tell them about any bonuses they're getting (including a fast action bonus, more on that below).
Share testimonials from past students.
And tell them that there's urgency – the course is only open for 72 hours (or whatever deadline you want to set).
How to record a webinar
Once your slide deck is all done (and you've practiced it at least once, if not more), you're ready to record it.
To do this, you'll need a screen-recording software that will record your slides as you display them on your screen and will record your voice as you speak over your slides.
My favorite tool for this is Screenflow. It's extremely easy to use and extremely easy to edit. It actually has a fair amount of cool editing features, which I've never learned to use, but you certainly could.
You could record using just your laptop microphone (and laptop camera, if you're going to be on screen at all), but you'll get much better quality if you invest a little money in a nice microphone and a nice webcam.
I use the Blue Yeti microphone and the Logitech webcam.
How to create an evergreen webinar funnel: How to set up your webinar platform
Now that you've got your fabulous webinar ready to go, you need a webinar platform to run it.
There are loads of webinar platforms out there with many different features and many different price points.
When you set up your automated webinar, you'll be given options for times it's available. In reality, it's always available, but you'll want to display a few times for your person to register. It's a good idea to offer a just-in-time option (i.e., the webinar starts in 5 minutes) to catch people right away.
You can also do things like having an offer box with an image of your course and an “enroll now” button pop up at a set time (likely when you start your pitch).
How to pick a webinar platform
NOTE: not all webinar platforms offer automated (or evergreen) webinars, so make sure yours does.
My favorite automated webinar platform is Easy Webinar. You can customize the times that will show up when people register, it'll give them a just-in-time option, and it integrates well with other services like ConvertKit.
Some other webinar platforms that offer automated webinars are Demio and Webinar Jam.
There will be other settings to set up too, but those are the biggies.
How to run an evergreen webinar on your own site (optional)
As an alternative to the kinds of webinar platforms discussed above, you could also decide to just set up a page on your own website, embed your video, dress it up however you want, and just send people to that page.
Advantages to that option are that (1) you'll save some money on a webinar platform and (2) you can totally customize how the page looks (and could even put your sales page right beneath the video).
How to create an evergreen webinar funnel: How to set up Deadline Funnel
The coolest part about an evergreen webinar funnel, in my opinion, is Deadline Funnel.
Deadline Funnel is a countdown timer program. It can display a timer in emails, on a bar at the top of your sales page, and embedded in your sales page.
But if you just want to say that the course closes for everyone on August 20 at 11:59 PM EST, there are lots of tools that can do that for you.
What Deadline Funnel does is set up customized deadlines for every single person who enters your funnel.
So, let's say that you want your course to be available to everyone who signs up for the webinar for 72 hours, starting from when they registered for the webinar.
Deadline Funnel can do that.
If Sally Sue signs up at 11:30 AM on Tuesday, her deadline will be 11:30 AM on Friday. If John Doe signs up at 2:00 PM on Friday, his deadline will be 2:00 PM on Monday.
You get the point.
It's totally customized to each person. And this is really important. Because urgency absolutely gets people to buy.
“Human mind takes time to evaluate the situation and then take action. But when you add urgency to the mix, things get interesting. Now the same mind when sees some kind of urgency, is pushed to take action quickly without thinking too hard.”
coursepursuits.com
(Source).
If they know that it's always available, they'll procrastinate on getting it and maybe never come back to it at all. But when they see that clock ticking, they're more motivated to hit the enroll button.
So, while it's not strictly necessary to use Deadline Funnel, I highly, highly recommend it.
How to offer a fast action bonus in an evergreen webinar
Another way to increase urgency and thus increase course sales is to include a “fast action bonus” in your webinar.
A fast action bonus is a bonus that is ONLY available to people who enroll during the actual webinar. As soon as the webinar ends, the bonus goes away.
Just like we talked about above, this sense of urgency and FOMO can really get people to act.
(And of course you need to make your fast action bonus something juicy…otherwise, who cares?).
You can offer a fast action bonus on an evergreen webinar using Zapier to automatically enroll the person in the other bonus course if they buy during that time frame.
Or, you can create two identical versions of your course, one with the fast action bonus and one without. Give them the link to the course with the bonus during your “live” (but actually automated) webinar, and give them the link to the course without the bonus on the replay page.
Fast action bonuses can be a great way to increase webinar sales.
How to create an evergreen webinar funnel: How to set up your email provider to work with an evergreen funnel
Last but certainly not least, you need an email provider that can handle the kinds of automation necessary for an evergreen webinar funnel.
I can enthusiastically say that ConvertKit is the best option for this for most people.
With ConvertKit, you can set it up so that as soon as someone signs up for your evergreen webinar, they enter into a “sequence” of automated emails that will go out at set intervals.
For example, you might have one email go out an hour after the webinar ends, another 24 hours later, another 24 hours after that, and a final one 24 hours after that. But you can create whatever schedule you want.
It's important to follow up with email. Most people won't buy on the actual webinar, so you need to keep popping in their inboxes to remind them of your course, how great it is, and that they'll miss out if they don't act fast.
Don't neglect your emails.
*Phew*
That was a long explanation. But evergreen webinar funnels are a GREAT way to sell your course (or really any other digital product you offer), and learning how to run an evergreen webinar funnel to sell your course is well worth your time.
Have you set up your evergreen webinar funnel? Let me know how it goes in the comments!
More posts about blogging and online business you'll love:
- How to Create an Online Course: 7 Tools You'll Need
- How to Format a Blog Post the Right Way
- How to Create a Resource Library on WordPress
- What to do Before and After Publishing a Blog Post
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