This post corresponds to podcast Episode 17: Conducting Teleclasses with Office Queen Tracey Lawton which is included in our Core Program, accompanied by workbook and video tutorials that show you how to do this on your own.
Our last couple of posts have explored “traditional” methods of marketing which are being reborn due to new technical advancements. Public Relations and Email Marketing are incredibly easy and inexpensive “long tail” marketing activities so we hope you are now using them to plant seeds. In this post we’ll talk about another form of media that began “offline” but can now be integrated online to grow your business.
As a small business owner or marketer, you probably find yourself saying and doing many of the same things over and over again. Teleclasses are a great way to package, redistribute and profit from your first effort while eliminating much of that duplication.
You have information that people want to learn about.
The best way to market and sell is not to market and sell at all, but to become a trusted advisor. You can accomplish this by sharing valuable advice. Let’s say you bring together a bunch of customers for an interactive “Frequently Asked Questions About…” session, for example. Maybe you’ll share cost-saving tips and best practices about an area where you’ve developed some expertise. While you are helping out these customers and prospects you are also drawing people into community, building your database and generating leads. Better still, you are also likely to pick up some valuable feedback about your products, services, image, etc.
Plus teleclasses are great because they help you expand the reach of your company beyond geographical limitations. There is a revenue opportunity here, especially if you offer a teleclass series and/or sell the recording as a package with a workbook.
So how would you get started? First you’ll need a conference service that provides an administrative bridge line including functions such as muting and recording. Freeconference.com and freeconferencecall.com are good places to start. ReadyTalk (a Free Marketing Made Easy contributor) is another service that includes great (and simple!) administrative functions for registration, reminders and follow-up. As you would imagine, these services can be fairly inexpensive investments (you can even choose to cover the cost of a toll-free line or maintain a long-distance call-in number).
Beyond that things are pretty simple. Pick a concept. Promote it through your website, enewsletter, blog and social media platforms. Then get going.
What could go wrong? Not much actually, although some people will feel intimidated during their first few hosting sessions. The easiest way to overcome this hesitation is to prepare a couple of practice sessions with trusted advisors, colleagues, employees, etc. The Free Marketing Made Easy kit actually shows you how to set up teleclasses and also covers the logistics you’ll want to know in advance, so it’s a valuable resource if you want to learn how to “do it right the first time.” Just remember that you are sharing, not selling. And good luck. Let us know how you do!
Since teleclasses can be used to record, you might want to re-purpose that content for a new audience. Therefore our next post will address Podcasting Basics.