How to Use Online Workshops to Attract and/or Retain More Clients – In Just 7 Minutes with Tyler Basu

Resources/Links:

• Want to know how to craft the perfect workshop with less stress? Click here: tylerbasu.com/online-workshop-checklist

Summary

Have you been investing in workshops but it doesn’t seem to get the leads you want?

Crafting a workshop can be for many things– to introduce, to educate, or to sell. However, it’s not as easy as it seems. To turn your audience into committed clients, it’s crucial to first see the demand and understand your clients in order to craft a workshop that fits their needs.

Tyler Basu is a Customer Education & Marketing Strategist that specializes in helping online business owners create effective online workshops to attract and retain more clients.

Grab some coffee and listen to Tyler as he shares how you can craft the perfect workshop that can help you either generate new leads or effectively retain your clients without the stress and extreme expenses.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:46 – Tyler’s ideal client: I work best with B2B software companies that generally have between a few hundred and a few thousand customers. I’ve worked with folks that sell like coaching, consulting, training courses, etc, as well.
• 03:00 – The problem he helps solve: The problem that I solve is helping other businesses create educational, but implementation-based online workshops that they can either use and bring into their marketing and help to attract and acquire new clients.
• 03:57 – The symptoms of the problem: A symptom that shows up on the marketing side of things is that they’re either generating leads that are not quite qualified or completely unqualified, or they’ve built a list of leads using free content and free training and educational resources.
• 05:26 – Clients’ common mistakes before consulting Tyler: The folks who make really good courses, for example, usually have some sort of educational background like they know how to teach. They know how to transfer information effectively.
• 06:38 – Tyler’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): This is generally the first step that I have anybody do that is about to go down this road of creating a workshop is to go and gauge the demand for your workshop.
• 07:15 – Tyler’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Want to know how to craft the perfect workshop with less stress? Click here: tylerbasu.com/online-workshop-checklist
• 08:44 – Q: How are workshops different from webinars? A: I know you’ve got tremendous resources when it comes to webinars. Webinars, as I define them are generally educational in nature.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“Make sure there's interest in the topic before you commit to creating the entire workshop.” -Tyler Basu Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Greetings, everyone, and a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. As ever, I am Tom Poland beaming out to you from the Sunshine Coast in Australia, joined today by Tyler Basu. Tyler, a warm good day from Down Under. Sir, where are you hanging out?

Tyler Basu 00:24
Hey, Tom! I’m just outside of Vancouver, Canada. So west coast of Canada.

Tom Poland 00:27
Oh, beautiful part of the world! In Vancouver, I remember you can go swimming with the dolphins in the morning and be skiing in the afternoon.

Tyler Basu 00:36
Hey, you should go swimming in the sea with the killer whales and the seals, more likely.

Tom Poland 00:42
This is a marketing label, I know, but I think I’ll stay clear of the killer whales. Just the label. Folks, Tyler’s got this really, really, really interesting thing that he does that- obviously, he’s going to share with you during the interview. But as a background, and the reason I’m excited about it is that I’m known as the “webinar” guy, but we do that for marketing, and we do a lot of value with the online courses. But Tyler’s got this really effective method for taking responses to webinars just a whole new level. So I’m really going to be all ears, Tyler. But as I said, for the background of everyone else, he’s a Customer Education and Marketing Strategist. He specializes in helping online businesses, probably you and me, create effective online workshops to attract and retain more clients. Can’t wait! The subject is, officially, “How to Use Online Workshops to Attract and/or Retain More Clients”. Tyler, our seven minutes is going to start just as soon as I find this stupid app that’s disappeared. Our seven minutes, let’s kick off now. Question number one, sir, who’s your ideal client?

Tyler Basu 01:46
So I work best with B2B software companies that generally have between a few hundred and a few thousand customers. I’ve worked with folks that sell like coaching, consulting, training courses, etc, as well. But it’s the software businesses I find that are the most likely to really be prioritized, like customer education and retention over a longer timeframe.

Tom Poland 02:09
Right, they probably have more of a business development mindset, if you like. You know like “What can we do to establish a longer term, highly profitable business” as opposed to people like me who, by nature of the business or the personality, whatever, tend to have a shorter term timeframe. But, just want to underline, folks, that whether you have a personal business, executive coaching business, corporate training business, or in software, you’re going to get a lot of stuff from this. Really key to take your results to another level and Tyler and I don’t have any sort of affiliate arrangement. There’s no kickback or something going on here. Just as a professional webinar guy, I can just smell how effective this is. That’s why I’m a little bit excited!

Tyler Basu 02:48
I’ll try not to disappoint you. You definitely put me on a pedestal.

Tom Poland 02:52
No pressure! A bit of a build-up. But, I could smell gold when it was around. Question number two is what’s the problem you solve?

Tyler Basu 03:00
So the problem that I solve is helping other businesses create educational, but implementation-based online workshops that they can either use and bring into their marketing and help to attract and acquire new clients. Or they can use those to retain the customers that they’ve already got by more effectively supporting and training them. And that’s usually the case for the folks that don’t sell education and training but need to give it to their customers, or they’re not going to get as great results or stick around as customers.

Tom Poland 03:30
And there’s a general rule, people tend to be either very good at marketing their online courses or haven’t gotten any good online courses. Very often people have very good online marketing and vice versa. So this, both of those personality types. Questions three, four, and three-quarter minutes left. What would you say are a couple of the typical symptoms that people experience who actually need what you’ve got? What’s going on in their business?

Tyler Basu 03:57
Yeah, so a symptom that shows up on the marketing side of things is that they’re either generating leads that are not quite qualified or completely unqualified, or they’ve built a list of leads using free content and free training and educational resources. But those leads have still not been bought after weeks or months or sometimes even years. And so for those folks, an implementation-based workshop, especially one that you charge to attend, can help qualify those leads and turn them into buyers without asking them to commit to your higher-priced product or program just yet. And then for the folks that are using workshops to better support existing customers, the symptoms that they’re experiencing are like high cancellation or churn rates among the customers, and maybe their support team getting bogged down by questions that are just beyond the scope of a typical customer support rep. And so that’s how the symptoms show up.

Tom Poland 04:01
Folks, it would really be worth you replaying the answer to this question. I don’t have time to repeat it all, but there’s so much to unpack in that. And I know it’s a short interview. So rewind and listen to that again, and take notes. So question four, three and a quarter minutes left, what would you say are a couple of common mistakes that people have these problems that they’re not converting people from content to clients, for example? What would you say they try that was just never going to work?

Tyler Basu 05:26
Now, you’ve touched on it a bit, because the folks who make really good courses, for example, usually have some sort of an educational background like they know how to teach. They know how to transfer information effectively. And so when a business is trying to put out educational content, they’re not trying to be teachers, per se, but so they need their educational content to contribute to the growth of their business in some way. And we can make the mistake of teaching too much, and overwhelming people with too much information or cramming too much information into any specific presentation or workshop. Another mistake is not validating the demand for the topic to begin with, like checking in with your existing customers or with your email list, for example. Make sure there’s interest in the topic before you commit to creating the entire workshop.

Tom Poland 06:21
Yeah, that’s a very common mistake too, folks. And I know putting too much content in marketing presentations, in particular, is a real killer of motivation for prospects. Question five, one quick top tip you can give someone. It’s not going to solve the whole problem, but it might take them a step in the right direction.

Tyler Basu 06:38
Yeah, in fact, this is generally the first step that I have anybody do that is about to go down this road of creating a workshop is to go and gauge the demand for your workshop. So if you’ve got an email list, if you’ve got a customer group or private group, or like a Facebook group, for example, you can say, “Hey, I am thinking about creating a workshop on this topic. It’ll help you with this particular outcome. Is that something you’d be interested in?” And if you just fire off that email or post that on social media, and you get some interest, now you’ve got a green light to do the rest of the work afterward, but that’ll save you from possibly doing the work when nobody would have been interested.

Tom Poland 07:15
It might also flush out some prospects too. You can do this on LinkedIn as well, to see connections. So one minute left. A valuable free resource. Just for the sake of time, I’m going to tell people the URL. If you can go quickly, tell them what it is. What they’re going to find there is tylerbasu.com. The link will be down the bottom of the video or if you’re listening to this in audio, carry on with /online-workshop-checklist. Real quick, what are they going to find there, Tyler?

Tyler Basu 07:46
So that’s essentially a spreadsheet with a list of all the tasks involved in planning a workshop campaign from creating the content to creating all of the assets involved in promoting the workshop and filling the workshop and then hosting the live workshop.

Tom Poland 08:01
Folks, I’ve been there and I had a look at it. And it’s fabulous! It’s free. It’s comprehensive. And it’ll just save you from having things fall between the cracks when you’re doing your planning. You’ll be more efficient, and more effective. So the link, as I said, is under the video, or if you’re listening to this as an audio– tylerbasu.com/online-workshop-checklist, just put the hyphens in between, the dashes in between online, workshop, and checklist. And because I’ve been babbling so much, I paused the clock, which I don’t normally do because I know what the last bit is, because we talked about this before. I’m keen to give you a bit of air for that. So question seven is the one question I should have asked you but didn’t. So what is that question, Tyler? And what’s the answer? Let’s run it up with 60 seconds.

Tyler Basu 08:44
Yeah, so a big question would be, how are workshops different from webinars? And I know you’ve got tremendous resources when it comes to webinars. Webinars, as I define them are generally educational in nature. You’re providing more of a high-level overview of a particular process or your way of doing things followed by a call to action or an offer of some kind at the end of the webinar. That’s the typical webinar format. With a workshop, we want somebody to get something done. So we’re not typically covering a big topic at a high level. What we’re doing is we’re honing in on a specific challenge or obstacle that might stop somebody from getting the outcome they want. And then we help them work through that specific obstacle in a workshop-style format. And so in that way, a workshop can actually prepare somebody for working with you or make them more likely to succeed as your customer because you’re removing something that would make it difficult for them to get a result.

Tom Poland 09:41
And it increases engagement phenomenally because instead of sitting there while you’re running your webinar and checking Facebook or clearing emails, they’re actually involved in the work and they get to take some value back with them which increases the value of your brand and their brain until they’re ready to buy. Perfect! Tyler, thank you so much for your time.

Tyler Basu 09:58
No problem! This was a lot of fun.

Tom Poland 10:01
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.