Virtual Events to
Generate Prospects

This episode is the fourth in our new mini series, Generating leads – the highest quality for your business”.

Welcome to another episode of “The Rabbi Who Got Rich on Sunday” about living the dream through work life balance.  I’m Rabbi Dave and today we’re going to talk about virtual events to generate prospects. 

Virtual Events – Story

You may not believe this but once upon a time before the Metaverse there was something called live events in person!

We used to invite everyone we knew and ask them to bring ice for the drinks to make sure they had to come (or everyone’s drinks would be warm).

When they came, we would take their ice and put it in the tub and close the shower curtain so no one would realize that 20 people were asked to bring the ice!

In reality, we tried to ask each person to bring something different needed for the event, as a way to increase their commitment to showing up.

We would put out less chairs than we thought we needed so that if less came it would not look empty and if more people came then it would look like the event was more popular than we expected!

I’ll never forget my first event.  I thought that I had 20 people coming because I had invited 20 and they all said they might come and they were my friends so that meant it was “a sure thing” that they would.

I bought all sorts of refreshments, we baked fresh brownies, borrowed extra chairs, set up a beautiful display and waited excitedly for everyone to come.

That was my first introduction to the concept of a secret meeting in which no one shows up!  The upside was that we had enough snacks for a couple of months!

After that learning experience, I researched the most successful people I could find at running live events and learned their techniques and although it was not my favorite way to build a business, I became pretty good at it!

When the internet became a thing, I immediately started learning lead generation even though all my corporate mentors frowned on it and I became even better at that.

Recently, I decided to learn how to run virtual events and this time I started by learning from the experts and have had several successful events. I’ve run both virtual events through Facebook, Linkedin and Youtube and hybrid events that use these platforms to drive traffic to live in person events as well.  As before, I made several “mistakes” along the way and will share both basic and advanced tips I have learned.

Virtual Events Basics

1. Create the event on Facebook, Linkedin, and Youtube  by going to your home page and on the left side find the events section and click the plus symbol to create the same event on each platform.  The platform will put your event in their calendar and this will get you some free traffic.
2. Post the event in the feed of your various personal, business pages, and groups.
3. Use the built in invite function on your event page to share the event with your contacts (Linkedin only allows each individual to send 1,000 invitations weekly).
4. Ask your business partners to sign up to attend which will then give them the ability to invite their contacts as well!
5. Whether you use the internal functions to host the event on Facebook, Linkedin and Youtube or an external tool like Zoom make sure to include the link with all of your reminder messages.
6. Monitor those who express interest in any way on your event page and message people ASAP after they respond with “Going” or “Interested.” Check your page a few times a day!
7. Send out reminders a few hours before the event by email, your platform messaging and text.
8. Record the event even if it is a secret meeting.  No one needs to know how many people showed up live.  The majority of your viewers will come from sharing the “replay” whether or not you have a big showing!
9. Post event follow up on your platforms to see if they have any questions and where they see themselves getting started.  The platform will automatically create a replay for them to see. (where most of your prospects will come from).
10. Send follow up emails and texts offering a “replay.”

Virtual event advanced tips

First, I want to raise a “BIG” question on the level of “which came first, the chicken or the egg?”  

You can aim at having as many people attend as possible in which case always include the links for all your platforms where they can watch live in all your communications and event pages.

OR, you can focus on “quality not quantity” by using the tips below to create curiosity and double optin leads who register on the platform and then again on a second registration page.

Virtual events, quality versus quantity tips

1. You want to create curiosity.  Do not give out the link for the event in your event pages and messaging.  Instruct all who express interest to “Register” for the link for the event.
2. There are several tools you can use for registration.  I have them go to my events page https://trieditallforyou.com/events or use a service to host the event such as Eventbrite

Advantages of eventbrite:

• • Fully integrated into Facebook so that your event automatically loads to your FB Page.
  • Eventbrite captures your registrant’s information so that you can follow up emails and reminders so they show up right from the back office.
  • Eventbrite promotes events FOR YOU in the area in which it is hosted FOR FREE!
  • If your class has tuition, Eventbrite is a payment processor.            

3.   Send out reminders a few hours before the event by email, your platform messaging and text. Don’t put the links or times in the email or text, we want to pique curiosity and get the prospect to your registration page.
4.    Only send “replay” link to those that request it to create engagement.

Virtual events expert tips

1. Host your event using a service such as streamyard

Advantages of Streamyard. 

• • Easy live streaming and recording
  • Multistreaming to many platforms at once
  • Easily bring in guests

2.    Place Engagement ad to have people “in the right pond” register for your event.  I strongly advise you hire an expert to either do this for you or teach you how as most people fail at facebook advertising. Contact me if you want my help.
         3.     Monitor your Event Responses once your event page goes LIVE! Message people you don’t see in your Eventbrite or other registration list to get them to register there.     4.      Some other good tools for managing group posts about your events are: Cinch Share and Post My Party
        5.      A super advanced tip is to make a few good recordings and use streamyard to play as live events rotating between them and put this entire process on auto pilot.
        6.      Another super advanced tip is to use Zapier to create “zap” so that all of your Messaging, adding prospects to your crm, etc. is automated.

Messaging prospects tips

1. Be aware people may not get your message, they will go to “Message Requests” if you aren’t

2.      Make the questions about THEM, not you promoting your class.
3.      If they cannot come, no big deal. Start a conversation with them to get to know them. What would they like to learn?

Why were they initially interested?

4.      Keep track of everyone in a spreadsheet, it gets really confusing just trying to remember.

Ask me to get my free download of “Scripts that work.”

Virtual Event Recap

1.       Create an Event on your social media platform of choice
       2.        Create Eventbrite Event or other registration page and connect to the event
       3.        Create an Ad
       4.        Monitor event and message all Going/Interested people who didn’t Register to register for the event link.
       5.        Use Streamyard for easy live streaming and recording and multistreaming to many platforms at once
       6.        Send out replay to those who request it in your followup messaging

   Next week we will talk about using ads to generate prospects.

   For more guidance and tips on living the dream life, go to my website, https://therabbiwhogotrichonsunday.com to access content-rich articles and more.

   You can also access a link to that web page through the show notes, if you are listening to this podcast on any of the popular podcast platforms.

Resources: 

1. https://therabbiwhogotrichonsunday.com/podcast-episode/social-media-and-marketing-find-your-ideal-prospects/ 
2. https://trieditallforyou.com/events 
3. https://www.eventbrite.com/ 
4. https://streamyard.com/ 
5. https://therabbiwhogotrichonsunday.com/podcast-episode/fishing-in-the-right-pond/ 
6. https://www.cinchshare.com/facebook-party-central/ 
7. https://postmyparty.com/ 
8. https://zapier.com