Create a free webinar "mini course" to bring in prospects for a full paid course

You have access to Ruzuku's built in webinars features. This includes the Video Conference and Presentation features, which can be great ways to get people interested in your paid courses.

If you're thinking about running a free webinar to generate interest in your paid courses, it's important to plan out how you'll set up the webinar on Ruzuku, how you'll promote it, and how you'll follow up with prospects afterward.

Setting Up a Free Webinar

1. Create a course in your Ruzuku account for this webinar. Every Ruzuku-hosted video webinar must take place inside a course, which is why creating a course is the first step.
   
   The course can be as simple as one Module (with the name of the webinar) and one Lesson (with some information about the webinar).
2. Go to "Meetings" in the "Manage Course" menu of your course and create the webinar.
   

   

   Make sure you set the event to record, so you'll have a replay available for prospects who cannot attend live.

   

3. Create a free price point for this course, so that Ruzuku knows to allow your attendees to register without paying. 

You should now have a free Ruzuku course whose only content is the webinar.

Promoting a Free Webinar

If you are attracting prospects who don't know much about you or your services, we highly recommend that you use the built-in Ruzuku sales page template to describe the outcomes and benefits of attending the webinar. Share the link to your sales page with anyone you think may be interested. The sales page will automatically include a button leading to the checkout page, making it easy for prospects to register for your webinar.

If you are attracting prospects who are very familiar with your work, you may be able to skip the sales page and instead send your prospects straight to the checkout page. You may also want to send prospects directly to the checkout page if your other marketing materials have already persuaded your prospects to attend the webinar.

In either case, because your webinar is hosted inside a Ruzuku course, your attendees must set up a username and password as part of the checkout and enrollment process. Note that this is different from many webinar systems, which simply require a name and email address.

If your prospects attend lots of webinars, they may be confused by the necessity of creating a username and password for your webinar. If you think this may apply to your prospects, consider adding wording on your sales page or marketing materials that mentions they'll need to create a username and password to access the webinar.

Following Up After a Free Webinar

During your free webinar, you'll promote your paid course and invite attendees to sign up. Some prospects may sign up right away, while some will think it over before purchasing. And of course, some prospects who sign up won't attend the webinar at all!

In order to maximize paid course sign ups, it's important that you think about how you'll follow up with people before you run the webinar! 

The key element for now is to think ahead and realize that you'll need the names and email addresses of your webinar attendees, and to expect to write some emails to them after the event is over. 

In Ruzuku, you can download a spreadsheet of all your webinar attendees' names and addresses from the Students page. You can then remove anyone who has already purchased your paid program. Finally, you can upload this list to your email provider (Aweber, Constant Contact, etc.).

You can also download this information by clicking the "Download CSV" link:

A standard approach for following up with webinar attendees is with a series of emails. If you offered a replay of the webinar, be sure to email everyone who registered for the webinar and let them know how to access the replay.

As the deadline to sign up for your paid course approaches, consider sending a reminder email highlighting the benefits of your course. This email can go out to everyone who signed up for your webinar but did not sign up for the paid course (this can be done within the Ruzuku platform). 

Or, you can get a bit fancy and craft one version of this email for people who attended but did not sign up for your course, and a second version for people who signed up for the webinar but did not attend (this would need to be done outside the Ruzuku platform).

Need Help?

If you have any questions about how to use a free webinar to promote your paid course, we'd love to help! Just email support@ruzuku.com, and our team will be glad to assist in any way we can.