The Information Marketing Primer For Helping and Healing Solo-Professionals - Part 8 - Teleseminar

Your Information Marketing business should include both written and audio content in your area of expertise that addresses the needs of the target audience you have chosen to serve (see part two of this series). Later in this series, I will talk about combining audio and written content for a powerful back-end information product. (Back-end information products are more expensive products that people buy after they have bought your less expensive products.) 

One of the best ways to share your expertise is through audio. I wrote about this subject earlier when I suggested turning your free or special report into a free audio recording. 

People want to buy from people they know, like and trust. Hearing you speak the solutions to their challenges helps people make a deeper connection to you. 

Now, you are going to move from a free audio teleclass that is an introduction to your work to a content-rich teleclass or teleseminar for which you will charge. 

You will follow many of the steps I outlined for doing a free audio (see part five of this series) but there are additional steps and considerations.

Here are the steps to follow: 

• Decide on your topic. You may choose to do a single teleseminar or a series of teleseminars on the same subject.
• Give your teleseminar a compelling title.
• Write your content. It is best to script your beginning and end and outline the "meat" of the teleseminar. Don't have more than five major talking points and be sure to include teaching examples. Remember, make these calls as content rich as you can, answering the "what, why and how" of your solution to a problem or challenge your target audience has.
• Your teleseminar should be about an hour and no more than 75 minutes. Remember, if you decide to put this audio onto CD's, CD's can hold about 80 minutes worth of audio.
• Choose a date and a time to hold your teleseminar.
• If you have not done so already, sign up for a free conference call service like Free Conference Pro or No-Cost Conference. Make sure to print off a copy of your call-in information and the codes that are needed to operate your conference (e.g., codes to mute/unmute lines, record the call and end the recording, etc.). Keep it near you before and during the call. If you can afford it, you can book companies that will host and record the call for you. By the way, most free conference lines will allow you to have up to 200 callers on the line at the same time.
• Promote your teleseminar (see some ideas below).
• Have your webmaster create a database to capture the names and email addresses of those who are signing up for the call if you are not using a shopping cart system or a system like AWeber.
• If you do not have a shopping cart, there are other alternatives to have people pay for the teleseminar like Pay Pal or Authorize.net.
• Only give out the call-in information to those who have signed up and paid for the call. If you will be listing your teleseminar on promotional sites, only provide the sign-up link along with the day and the time of the teleseminar, not the call-in numbers (and if anyone else is promoting the call for you, make sure to tell them this too).
• Make sure to let people know that you will provide them a link to the recording of the call if they cannot attend live...this will up the rate of people signing up because listening live is not the only option. Also, after the call,  provide the link to everyone who signs up and pays.
• Send reminders of the call a few days before, a day before and the day of.
• Make sure to get on the line at least 15 minutes before the call to make sure everything is working well. Expect some people will call-in early and it's up to you if you want to acknowledge them. You will hear the entrance chimes when they come into the conference; these chimes also sound when people exit. There will more than likely be a code to turn these off, so be sure to do so when you start the call.
• Mute all callers before you begin. When you are first starting out, you don't want to be fielding Q & A, so there's no need to leave the lines open because of the background noise.
• Remember to turn on the recording for the teleseminar. 

Note: I have a back-up recording system downloaded onto my computer that I turn on the minute I get on the line just in case something goes wrong with the bridge line recording (rare but it can happen). I use EZ Phone Recorder. 

What should you charge for your call? To start, you can charge about $20.00 for an individual hour long teleseminar. If you are offering a series of three calls, you could offer them at a special price of $50.00. 

Promote your teleseminar in a solo email blast to your list, in your E-zine and on your blog. Also post it on teleseminar sites. There are free sites like TeleSeminar Nation and Seminar Announcer and some that are paid sites. Stick to free for right now. There are also ones that offer a basic free listing and a paid upgrade like Teleclass.com. Also, consider asking colleagues in complementary professions to promote your teleseminar. You can also list your teleseminar on Craig's List.