From Crickets to Conversions: The 3 Webinar Mistakes Costing You Money

Your Dream Business

In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I talk about the big mistakes a lot of business owners make during their webinars that end up hurting their sales and costing them money. Based on my own experience with marketing and running webinars, I highlight three common slip-ups: treating webinars like free lessons, not showing your expertise clearly, and rushing through the part where you actually sell. I also break down how to set up a webinar that really works—like using case studies, setting the right tone, and confidently sharing your offer. If you’re a course creator, membership site owner, or coach looking to make your webinars more effective and boost your results, this episode is definitely worth a listen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Webinars aren’t a free workshop—balance teaching with teasing – Give just enough helpful content to demonstrate value and spark “aha” moments, but leave room for curiosity so attendees still want the paid offer.

• Show your authority all the way through –Sprinkle in short case studies, quick wins, and personal proof as you teach; this builds trust and positions you as the obvious guide before you even reach the pitch.

• Slow down and sell with a clear structure –Warm‑up → story → offer → next steps. Move through each phase confidently, repeat the benefits, and handle questions—don’t rush the close if you want conversions.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Transcript

Teresa: Have you ever hosted a webinar that you thought was absolutely awesome? You created amazing value. People were super engaged, they loved what you did, and yet when you made the offer, crickets, literally nothing. If that sounds familiar, you've likely made one of these three crucial mistakes that I'm talking about in today's episode. After being involved in hundreds of webinars, reviewing them, participating in them, and running my own for years, I've seen these same three mistakes over and over again. And let me tell you straight, they're not just hurting your conversions, they're actually costing you money. In fact, mistake number two is actually something we've had to focus on even more in the last year because it's becoming. Absolutely crucial for webinars that convert into today's market. If you have plans to run webinars now or in the future, you definitely want to listen to this episode. These simple fixes could be the difference between crickets and conversions. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing Also, I wanna take a minute just to say thank you for spending some time with [00:02:00] me. I really appreciate as a busy business owner. It can be really tricky to make time for things like this, but it's so, so important. I personally spend a lot of time when I'm getting ready, when I'm cooking, when I'm driving. Not that I do a whole lot of that, but I always try and fill those times with watching YouTube, listening to podcasts, listening to audio books. My quest is to constantly learn things and. One of the reasons I love the podcast so much is that I get to share that stuff with you, and I get to constantly learn, constantly develop not only in what I'm learning, but also what I'm doing in the business. One of my words for the second half of this year is experiment and test. And that is something that we are really embracing this year. And the more I experiment and test, the more I can come and tell you what is working, what is not working, and what you can do in your business. So. [00:03:00] I just wanted to say thank you and I appreciate you greatly taking the time out, and I'm gonna ask a favor. There is a surprising number of people who listen to the podcast who don't yet subscribe or haven't hit download on whatever the app is that you're listening to. So if you don't, and if you haven't subscribed, I would love it if you could actually subscribe. The other thing I would really love you to do and I'd appreciate it so very much, is if you could go and give me a really lovely five star review wherever you are listening to this. Honestly, I can't tell you how much it means the world to me, but not only that, it means that more people are going to find the podcast, which means that I can invest more time and more effort into creating an even bigger and better podcast for you that you can use to help grow your online business. Okay, let's get on with today's episode of the podcast. Today we are going to be looking at the three mistakes that I see business [00:04:00] owners make when they are doing webinars. If you're new round here first, welcome. Secondly, I have been talking about webinars for a really, really long time. I've been teaching about them for a long time. I have been doing them in my business, doing them with clients for a really long time. And although things have tweaked and changed and they really have, there are some fundamental things that I see people getting wrong all the time. And I wanna share these three mistakes with you today. Mistake number one. Thinking that the webinar is just a free training now, I think it's not held by the fact that there are lots of different names for different types of things. So for instance, you've got things like workshops and webinars and master classes and training. So what, what is it? And which is which? So what's the difference? Well, a workshop and a training normally is when you are fully teaching them a thing, [00:05:00] and most often there is a cost for it. It doesn't have to be high. It can be a low cost thing, but that isn't what I'd call a webinar. So I do low cost paid workshops throughout the year. In fact, I have one coming up in a few weeks time to do with webinars, so keep an eye out for that and you'll be able to find out more about that. But basically these workshops, when I do them and when I teach them, it's all about giving you the transformation that you are promising. It's all about saying from start to finish you are gonna take 'em through everything. You're not gonna leave anything kind of, you know, behind a paywall or anything. The thing that you have said, you are going to train them on, you are going to fully train them on a webinar or masterclass, just a different name for a webinar. I. Isn't quite like that. You don't give them everything. And in fact, this is one of the big problems I see and one of the mistakes I see is that people are viewing them as a training. They're not structuring them as a webinar because they've seen webinars and they think, great, I just give some free training for an [00:06:00] hour and then I give them a cell. It's a very different format. It's a very different structure, and that might be if you've done a webinar that didn't convert, that might be why you see the problem when you treat it like a training. You are not making your paid product a natural next step. You are basically giving them everything they need. So even if it is a natural next step to buy your thing, they're potentially either overwhelmed or feel like they've got everything they need because of everything that you've covered in that webinar. Whereas actually the webinar needs to, it's almost like a story arc, right? So you know how someone's telling you a story, it's almost like. In a training, someone gives you the entire story from the beginning to the end and you come away going, oh, that's a lovely story. You've heard the whole thing. A webinar isn't that. A webinar is like they've told you the story, set up the bit that gets really exciting, and then they're leaving the end off and you wanna know what the end is. You [00:07:00] wanna get to that final thing. You want to have that complete kind of circle of the story, and that's what your paid product is. You've heard me talk about this before and lots of people talk about this and it still very much stands that a webinar tends to show more of the what and the why and not so much of the how. So for instance, if you were doing a webinar on. I dunno, gluten-free diets. Okay, so it might be what is a gluten-free diet? Why you need a gluten-free diet, but you won't necessarily go into the full ins and outs of how to do a gluten-free diet. Now what I always like to do, because one of the key things for me is that if someone comes to a webinar of mine or a masterclass of mine, I want them to come away feeling like they have used their time really efficiently and it was a. Good use of their time and therefore I am going to give them a little bit of the how. I am going to show them a bit of what they can do, but not too much because I do want it to naturally [00:08:00] lead into the next thing. A webinar needs to be a balance between value and selling. You do need to give some value, but also it is a sales tool. It is a thing to be sold to. Now, depending on your audience, some people will know that some people won't. So for instance, when I invite you to come and do a mask class with me, because you are in the online space, you know full well, I find this whole thing really matter actually. It kind of really makes me laugh. I was just teaching someone to do an open house strategy. I was teaching a, a group of people to do the open house strategy, which is a very cool strategy if you have a membership. And I then sold to those people, and in doing the sales bit, I was kind of showing them what I had just taught them, and also I was like, look at the emails that I'm about to send out. Like I look at people's sales emails with real curiosity, and I love it when people do that to me. I love it when people come to my webinar to see how webinars structured when they opt in for my emails, [00:09:00] to see how things are, like, what emails I send, how I then go into a sale, how I manage pre-launch content. So it always makes me laugh that kind of, if you come to my stuff, it's a little bit meta 'cause I'm teaching you to do the thing. But I take comfort that I am from marketing. I've been in marketing for 20 plus years and this is not just me. Like buying a course on how to do a course and then selling a course on how to do a course that it definitely is not that. Okay? Anyway, now I'm kind of like getting myself into a bit of a hole here. So the one thing that is really important to note is with a webinar, when I teach how to do a webinar, I teach three very distinct sections of the webinar. The three sections are setting the scene. Which ensures that they understand what this is going to be, that you've got the right people in the room. And there are some very specific things that we do here that isn't just training. In fact, there's no training in this bit. This is about making sure that they are the right people and you're gonna teach 'em the right thing. Then we have the next section, [00:10:00] which is delivering the content. And this is the bit where you are giving your expertise and you are telling them the what and the why, and a little bit of a how. And then the last section of the webinar is the making the offer. And I know it's a webinar when someone follows that, that kind of framework, when they have those three distinct sections within their webinar, and by the way, watching someone else's webinar, I can spot those three sections. So they really do work. Okay, so that is mistake number one. This is not a free training. This is a webinar that happens to be teaching 'em something, but it's also selling mistake number two. You are not proving your expertise enough throughout the entire webinar. Again, people almost get it into their head that they teach and then they sell, and it's not, it's so much more nuanced than that. It's so much more integrated than that. And one of the things that I see all the time in my program, in my group, in my Grow Launch [00:11:00] Sale program, one of the things that people are able to do is send me their stuff to look at and I record myself looking at, say, their signup page or their presentation for their webinar or their sales page, whatever it might be. One of the things that I will do when I look through someone's presentation is I will tell them they have not given me anywhere near enough case studies or testimonials that I need, and it's not just about putting them in there, it's a very strategic way in which we put them in there. So, for instance, the mistake I see lots of people make when they do include testimonials and case studies is I see them basically just either. Well, either and at the beginning where they're introducing themselves, they just have like a, this is who I am, I am a, this. A list of things and then a list of the credibility pieces. So you know, I'm a award-winning speaker, I'm a podcast or I'm a this. They literally just list stuff, those things to go look how credible I am, am and my [00:12:00] expertise. Then they might have some logos or places that they've been, or things that they've done. That's one place people put them where we shouldn't. And that sounds quite strong that we shouldn't put 'em in there. But the reason we shouldn't put 'em in your bio bit is 'cause when we tell people who you are, there's a very specific way in which we do that in order to connect it to the webinar and to the sale. So we don't just go, Hey, I'm Teresa. This is who I am and what I do. We tell a story, but I don't wanna get into that too much. So the other place that people put their testimonials and their case studies is they sometimes put them at the end when they go to the office, they go, this is my thing, this is why it's awesome. And this is people who have done it and what they thought of it. And again, that is going to not hit how you want and it's not going to be convincing enough. The case studies slash testimonials need to be throughout the entire webinar. In fact, every single point that you share in your webinar. So let's say someone is [00:13:00] coming to you, they're gonna do a webinar about the three ways you can. Make more money selling badges. I just have no idea where my brain went there. Literally just made that up out of nowhere. But let's roll with it. Okay, so let's say, really I, yeah, not sure what happened in my brain at that point. So let's say that that's your webinar and you've got these three distinct things that people can do. To sell more badges. Hey, if someone is listening to this who does this as a job, you really do need to get in touch. So let's say that you've got these three distinct things. Let's say thing number one is you need to, oh man, now I'm really struggling because I've come up with this completely crazy business idea and now I've gotta think of things that I can add in. I'm just gonna go with whatever. So let's say number one is you're gonna start emailing more. Uh, I know that was a lame, a lame thing, but we're going with it. So number one, you are gonna email more. [00:14:00] What you're gonna do is you're gonna go point number one. You are gonna email more. This is why you wanna email more. This is what I mean by emailing more. And this is a tiny bit of the how. And then at the end of that section, you are going to say, just like my client Fiona did, Fiona had a badge company that this is so niche. I had a badge company where. She was only selling 500 badges a month. She did an email campaign that I worked with her aunt, and now she's selling a thousand badges a month. Well done. This is what Fiona had to say and like I don't even, I wouldn't even read the testimonial. I would have the testimonial on there, but I would talk about her more as a case study. Then let's say you are going to point number two and point number two, God, now I really am struggling, is you are going to advertise in the badge making magazine. Oh man, this is, if this is the first episode you are listening to be on, then I am so sorry. I'm not quite sure what's happening as I record this one. Okay, so number [00:15:00] two, the badge making magazine. Again, you're gonna do the what and the why, a little bit of the how. And then at the end of that, you are going to say, just like my client Robin did. Robin had never advertised the magazine before. We created a great ad, we put it together, we did it, and suddenly now Robin has. 10 his income like, so I wanna see, I'm gonna start with the badge stuff next. I wanna see a case study or proof that the thing you are telling someone to do is useful and works. I know what you're going to say. What if I haven't actually helped someone do the thing? What if I haven't helped Robin advertise in a magazine and 10 X's profit? Then what you could do, or one option is there's lots of options. One options you could do is you could find someone who is doing this and is successful. Now, you are not saying you taught them or you help them. You are saying though. There's this [00:16:00] person, they did this thing and they have this, this strategy works. You're not, and you are definitely not saying it's you that help them. You're just saying, this strategy is being used by this person and it's a great strategy. Okay, now we stopped talking about badges so random. Make sure you prove that you an expertise. Make sure you put it all the way through. I've just given you one example of every time you share the area of like this is what you should do, that you share on, but there are actually many other places that you should be putting in these case studies and you need to be putting them in lots and lots of places. So make sure that you are including the proof that you are good at what you say and you know that what you're teaching them works. Okay, let's get to the last third mistake that I see lots of people making when doing a webinar. The third one is rushing through the sale. And when I say rushing, I kind of just mean either physically, like the minute they [00:17:00] get into the sales bit, they suddenly speed up how they talk. They get very frantic just to click through the slides and be gone,