Webinars are amazing: they’re a great way to deliver information, to connect with an audience, and even to sell your products and service… And the best part?
When you do a webinar the right way, it can be a huge list builder and create buzz about your brand.
All in all, webinars are a powerful way to market your business online… But if you’re only doing webinars on your own, you’re missing out on the power of hosting joint venture webinars.
Keep reading to find out how to get started with joint venture webinars, how to find the right allies, and when it’s best to go solo depending on your situation.
What is a Joint Venture Webinar?
Generally speaking, a joint venture webinar is an event that’s held by two business owners or “hosts”, and where one of the two businesses makes an offer at the end of the webinar.
In most cases, you’ll have one business owner inviting the other one to present to their existing audience… essentially introducing the new business to a warm audience.
Behind the scenes, the financial arrangements can vary… but for the most part, the person who is a guest presenting to a new audience will offer a percentage of any sales income to the “host” of the webinar.
Example Of a Joint Venture Webinar
Let’s take a look at an example, so you can see this in action.
Joan has a highly engaged email list, and invites her new business colleague Kim to present a webinar to her audience about a complimentary topic. Let’s say Joan’s business is all about flower arranging, and Kim’s business is about home styling.
Kim has a paid program on do-it-yourself interior design, which she offers at the end of her venture webinar with Joan. Together, they make 25 sales of the program, and Kim sends Joan an affiliate commission for half of the income from these sales.
And because Joan sent a few emails to her list inviting people to the webinar, Kim’s email list now has an added 760 subscribers. This gives Kim a chance to build a relationship with these new folks, starting from a place of trust – because Joan spoke very highly of Kim in her communications with her list.
What are the benefits of this cross-promotion?
You might be wondering what the benefits are for Joan and Kim. Well, Joan gets to offer a very fun instructional webinar to her audience… with content that she did not need to create herself.
She also gets to earn some affiliate commissions, likely at a higher conversion rate than if she had just sent a direct email to a sales page for Kim’s product.
Kim, on the other hand, is able to get in touch with a new audience, build her list with targeted subscribers, and make some additional sales. Plus, she can re-use the content and presentation she designed for Joan’s audience over and over again with other potential joint venture webinar partners, or with her own list.
Taking Joint Venture Webinars One Step Further
Now at this point in the example I gave above, both Joan and Kim are satisfied with their promotion. But if we take this one step further, which many joint venture marketing pros do, the two can swap places.
So for the next webinar, Kim can invite her existing email audience to attend a webinar presented by Joan about flower arrangements. The whole thing can be done in reverse, meaning that Joan will now share her revenues with Kim and build her list with Kim’s existing fans.
This is where reciprocity really comes into play, and can make this joint venture webinar concept really shine. At this point, everyone is happy – and both partners build their emails lists while selling more of their products and offerings.
How to Find Your Webinar Allies
Okay, maybe this system for co-hosting webinars is starting to sound good to you… but you might be wondering how you can go about finding your webinar allies!
After all, to pull off a webinar “swap” like this one, both business owners need to really trust each other, believe in each other’s products, and know that they will deliver quality stuff to their loyal fans.
That’s why I really recommend entering into a joint venture webinar partnership with caution, and having done some preliminary explorations on values and branding before you dive in with both feet.
The first place I recommend looking for your webinar allies is your existing business friends. If you already have a relationship established, and you’ve gone through highs and lows together… it’s more likely you’ll be able to weather a storm if something comes up during your joint venture.
You can also start to look at other business owners in your space, that you might have considered “competitors” in the past. Ideally these businesses would be complimentary, but it’s okay if there’s some overlap in what you teach or offer… People tend to buy and learn from many people.
What Software You’ll Need For Joint Venture Webinars
You’ll want to look for a webinar platform that allows you to have more than one “host”. You’ll also want to be able to record the webinar, for anyone who isn’t able to make it live… Especially because the follow up after a webinar is where many of the sales happen.
There are a few different software options that you can check out, to see which fit the bill, including:
- CrowdCast: This is a YouTube Live based webinar solution, with built-in chat and additional features that make it easy to organize live events.
- Webinar Jam: This is another YouTube Live based webinar solution, that has a lot of additional features like landing pages and email integrations.
- Zoom: If you’re looking for a non-YouTube or Facebook option, this is one of the top contenders that is very affordable.
- GotoWebinar: This is the corporate standard that works great if you have a smaller audience or the budget to invest in quality webinars.
You’ll also want to look for an affiliate tracking system, to give your webinar partner an accurate count of how many sales you made together. Alternatively, you could set up a special product checkout page just for this joint webinar, but doing this the affiliate way is generally more transparent for the partner.
We personally use AccessAlly for all of our affiliate management needs, and Ontraport also offers this feature.
And of course, you’ll want to have a solid email marketing software to have these new subscribers joining your list, so you can follow up and keep building that relationship.
Other Systems To Make Your Life Easier
This is really just scratching the surface of what you can do with joint venture webinars! If you really love partnering with other business owners, this can become a central part of your ongoing marketing plan.
And remember, you don’t need to create all-new webinar topics and slides for every single webinar that you host. Sure, you might edit the content based on the audience, but overall the structure of your webinar can remain the same…
The best part about that? You’ll keep on getting better and better at delivering this webinar, meaning that you’ll end up making more sales with each subsequent presentation you host.
What Hardware & Other Tools We Recommend
If you’re wondering what tools you’ll need to run these webinars… it’s pretty simple. We personally love the Yeti by Blue, but even your built-in computer mic works.
In terms of your presentation style, you can keep it informal and deliver your content via an on-camera presentation… Or you can use slides and never show your face. (I get it, sometimes putting on make up and making sure that my hair is presentable is just not in the plans!)
Either way, you can show your built-in camera feed or switch showing your computer screen. You can create slides using tools like PowerPoint or Keynote, and export to a PDF for simplicity.
Turn The Recording Into a Podcast Episode
If you’re like me, you absolutely LOVE repurposing content! So why not turn your joint venture webinars into podcast episodes and get the added benefit of reaching more people via iTunes and other podcast networks?
Even if you didn’t want to release the entirety of the webinar as a podcast, you could pick out a 5 to 10 minute section that you feel is highly valuable and turn that into a podcast show.
You still get the list building benefits, and you get to share your guest out on a broader scale. To export the video to audio, you can download the video and strip out the audio… Or use something like Zencastr while you’re recording to capture a clean audio right from the start.
How Long Should Your Webinar Be?
If you’re new to doing joint venture webinars or webinars in general, you might be wondering how long you should make your webinar.
The generally agreed upon timeframe is about 60 – 90 minutes, because that gives you plenty of time to deliver lots of actionable information and to answer questions, while delivering a special offer or “pitch”.
Of course, you’ll want to think about the audience you’re attracting for your webinars. If they’re busy, you might want to shorten your presentation. That being said, people who give you their time and attention are more likely to sign up for a paid offering… so don’t take people leaving your webinar as a sign to make them shorter.
Instead, look at your sales results and the feedback that you’re getting – that’s a better indication than whether or not people stay for the whole presentation.
When It’s Best To Go Solo
Now that I’ve gone over all of the benefits and ins and outs of hosting joint venture webinars, I want to address when it makes sense to follow this approach… and when it’s best to host a solo webinar.
Joint venture webinars are amazing when you have a proven offer. If you’ve already presented a webinar to your email list, and have had good results (meaning that you made sales from the webinar) then you might be ready to explore partnering with new business allies.
On the other hand, if you’re releasing a brand new product or offering… it’s probably not a good idea to test it on a brand new audience that has never heard of you before.
You don’t want to do a joint webinar with someone and have less than stellar results, and not be invited back to present to that person’s audience again. That’s just not fun, and it doesn’t leave a good impression on attendees or their view of the host.
So make sure to test your webinar out before you approach new allies to cross promote!
What Questions Do You Have?
I did my best to cover joint venture webinars in detail in this massive guide, but I’m sure you’ll have specific questions…
So post ’em below in the comments!
