A webinar finds clients when it answers one narrow question for one kind of buyer and ends with an offer of a short conversation. Twenty live attendees who run the kind of business you serve are enough. The work is a four week countdown: pick the question, find the guests, run a short session, and follow up within a day. Below is the schedule, the invitation, and the follow-up that turns attendance into calls.
Week 4 before: choose the question
Good webinar titles read like a problem a person has typed into a search box: "How to cut your month end close from 5 days to 2" or "What a restaurant owner should check before signing a payments contract". Avoid broad titles like "The future of marketing." Pick a question that you have answered at least three times for real clients, and write out three things a person will know how to do after 40 minutes. A fictional example: Suresh runs an IT support firm for accountants, and his webinar is "The five settings that stop most client email from getting hacked."
Week 3: find the guests
You need 60 to 100 invited people to see 15 to 25 attend, since many who register do not show. Where to find them:
- Your own list, past clients and people you have met at events.
- A partner's list. Another professional who serves the same buyers, such as a bookkeeper for an IT firm, may send your invite to their clients, and you send theirs. See referral partners.
- Direct invitations to people who match your buyer, written one at a time.
A direct invitation to a stranger is a commercial email, so include your real name, a mailing address and a working opt-out, and honor a request within 10 business days (CAN-SPAM). A note that invites someone to a single event is the shortest honest way to introduce yourself.
Subject: 40 minutes on securing client email, Thursday
Hi Carla, I run IT support for accounting firms, and on Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern I am showing the five email settings that stop most account takeovers. It is 40 minutes with questions, and I will send the checklist to everyone who registers. Here is the link: [link].
Suresh Rao, suresh@raoit.example
150 Main St, Hartford, CT 06103. Reply "stop" and I won't write again.
Week 2: build the session
- Five minutes: who you help and why this matters now.
- Twenty minutes: the three or five steps, shown on screen with a real example.
- Ten minutes: questions. Ask a friend to seed one if the room is quiet.
- Five minutes: the offer. One sentence about how you work and one invitation: "If you want me to look at yours, reply to the follow-up email and I will do a 20 minute review."
Run it once with a friend to check the timing. Record it, since people who could not come will ask.
Week 1: remind and register
Send reminders one day before and one hour before. Those two emails often add more attendees than the first invitation did. Ask each registrant one question on the form, such as the size of their firm, so you can tell who is a fit.
The day after
Within 24 hours, send the recording and checklist to everyone who registered, with one line for attendees ("Thanks for the questions about shared mailboxes") and a different one for the people who did not come. The calls are booked from this email, so make the ask plain. The wording in follow-up email after a webinar gives you three versions. A week later, send one short note to anyone who clicked but did not reply.
What to count
Registered, attended, replied, calls booked. For a first small webinar, 60 registered, 20 attended and two to four calls is a good result. If attendance is under 10 percent of those invited, the topic is too broad or the invitation is weak. Fix one, then run the next one.
Rocketship can find the people to invite: describe your buyer, see the first ones by name, and it emails them from your own Gmail and follows up so you can spend the week on the session. See the plans; each starts with a 7-day trial, card required.