The following detail is an excerpt from a DishyMix interview with Leesa Barnes, President of the International Association of Virtual Events Managers.
Leesa Barnes of Virtual Event Boom
In this post, Leesa explains the various ways you can charge for a virtual event.
Note: I am participating in Virtual Event Boom, May 10-14th, 2010.
There is a free Preview Call May 5th to learn more – click HERE to sign up.
Be one of three lucky winners of a free Plan A $97 seat. Click HERE to find out more.
Susan Bratton: Let’s get into the details about technology and infrastructure to run a virtual event. What do you use or recommend, how are all the pieces connected together so you can register people, do the outbound email marketing, collect their money, confirm them? What’s the tele-seminar, the conference call system that you use and do you have, is there follow up beyond that that you need technology for? How does that all stitch together?
Leesa Barnes: There are certainly two ways that you can go about doing this. One way is to spend anywhere between $10,000 dollars and up on a 3D virtual event platform. Most in the corporate environment, if your audience is corporate, this would probably be the way to go. These 3D platforms, you open your browser and you encounter a table, a welcome table, and then an avatar will walk up to you and say “Welcome. Where do you want to go today?”, and you’ll see a bunch of signs. It’s very fancy, quite beautiful and elegant. But again, you’re going to pay for it. So if you have $10,000 dollars and up to spend, then that’s the way to go.
On the other side, if you have a smaller budget I use WordPress and a few plug-ins to offer the same interaction online so that attendees have a place to go and interact with other attendees, interact with speakers, and then find a spot to get the recordings and the call-in details all in one spot.. The plug-in I use to build this virtual internet platform is called WishList Member, and both of these together provide a very powerful environment to host a virtual event. Now you’ll need a phone line and what I use is a service called The Instant Teleseminar. If you go through my affiliate link at www.virtualeventbridgeline.com you’ll skip the opt-in page and you’ll go right to the order page and you’ll get your, you can get 21 days for a dollar. And so this is the conference bridge line that I use to deliver the live sessions.
The reason why I actually pay for my phone line service as opposed to use one of those free conference bridge lines is 1), that I need something reliable. I find that when I’m paying a fee for my conference bridge line service I get a lot of options and I get better uptime. But secondly, many people cannot call the phone numbers that are offered by the free conference bridge line services because many of the Tel Cos have banned their customers from calling. There’s something about subsidies and, you know, there’s something tricky going on there, and I still don’t fully understand. But in a nutshell, because these phone numbers are in rural parts of the United States, that anyone that services calls through those rural spots will actually get a subsidy or get a kickback from the long distance charges that are being routed to those areas. Now many of these free conference bridge line services, their companies aren’t even located in these rural areas, and thus making the Tel Cos feel it’s unfair to route calls through there and give money to companies that don’t even reside in those areas. These numbers are typically 712 and 218 numbers. I cannot access them off my phone line, and thus I don’t use the free conference bridge line services. So I would rather pay.
So WishList and WordPress together, plus Instant Teleseminar give me a really powerful platform. And in turns of interaction, there’s forms that you can use to plug into your Word Press blog. And of course you can invite your attendees to use Twitter and other social media tools. So as you can probably tell, one solution is least expensive, but you’re using a lot more tools plugged into each other; whereas the other option is more expensive and the benefit is that you use everything in one place, so you don’t have to go off and rent a bridge line service, you don’t have to go off and get attendees to sign up for something else. Instead it’s all in one spot, the drawback is the expense. So you’ll just need to look at your own budget and decide which one is going to meet your needs.
And then to accept payments I just want to mention this, that I use a program that, it’s called virtualeventcart.com, and it allows me to accept payments, to easily put payment buttons on my web page, and then it has an auto responder feature so that once the attendee signs up then they start receiving a series of emails every few days that kind of coach them on how to use the virtual event platform, where to go and also provides an affiliate center so that my affiliates can sign up, get their affiliate URL and be able to run reports to see how well their campaign is doing.
So, you know, all these tools together, again, like I said, one option is to use a least expensive tools, but then they’re all over the place, but they integrate nicely so that’s the nice thing about it. Or to use something more expensive, which is the drawback because of the expense, but the benefit is that it’s all in one spot.
Susan Bratton: Yeah, and I’ve heard nothing but good about Word Press and WishList Member, which lets you drip out the content over time – it’s awesome – so that, you know, each day when you have your Monday tele-seminar with your, you know, your opening keynote and your heart-centered copy writing, those things appear. Then the next day on Tuesday you get the easy expert interviews with me and multiple streams of virtual event income, and then the third day you get how to get anyone to say yes and launch secrets for the marketer. So it’s great because people have to keep coming back and I think it creates the mentality of your virtual event being more than just some recorded audio content or a tele-seminar. It’s like, “Wow, this is my resource. I am a member of this site and I can come back and get this stuff as much as I want, listen to it whenever I want to.” Don’t you think that the mentality is here, it’s more like a membership with a forum…
Leesa Barnes: Yes!
Susan Bratton: than it is a tele-seminar….
Leesa Barnes: Exactly.
Susan Bratton: It vaults you to a whole new level.
Leesa Barnes: Oh Susan, this is where I get so excited, so excited, because your virtual event doesn’t stop once your virtual event is over. Now you’ve got this huge of database of people that have bought from you, that are interacting with each other. In other words, your virtual event has helped you shake out your tribe. So now that it’s over you can start to leverage that content, either by inviting more people to join or by offering more content on top of that. Perhaps you turn your virtual event platform into a membership website where then you do monthly expert interviews. You can charge an extra fee or you can offer that to your attendees at no extra cost. I mean oh, the possibilities are so endless when it comes to leveraging your content later on and fostering this tribe that you’ve just built. The strategy here is just amazing.
Susan Bratton: Then you’re selling them on a continuity program, you’re billing them on a monthly basis a nominal fee to get updated information, ‘cause like you said, I used to use Facebook groups, now I use WordPress and WishList Member. Now I use Instant Tele-seminar. I used to use, you know, Go To Meeting. And so you’re constantly evolving, the markets constantly evolving. You’re the expert; they want access to that. I love it.
Leesa Barnes: Yeah, and Susan I want to also add that there’s another powerful strategy here that I just want to make sure we don’t ignore, which is that some of you might be saying, “Oh virtual events, they sound great. They’re nice, oh yeah.”
But, you know, I do training, I do workshops, I do training in classrooms, you know, and I don’t want these virtual events to take over that. So to that I say that there’s this whole concept of hybrid events, and that’s where you use your non-virtual event to fill your virtual event and vice versa.
So one of the person that has done this really successfully and has been doing this over the last few years is Alex Mandossian. He’s been training virtually for years and then what he does once a year is he has a reunion day event where he invites his students to come out to network, to meet him, and to, you know, go through a light training day. But the emphasis is on networking. And what he does is he charges a very small fee to cover his costs and invite his students to come on out. And usually what he does is he flies into a certain city and he’s there to speak or lead a workshop, then he’ll fly in the day before and run this reunion day.
So you can use it like that, if you’re someone who trains virtually and you want to bring, and you want to fill a workshop in a city, that’s just a wonderful strategy. Or vice versa; maybe you’ve been doing training sessions all along in a non-virtual environment. You’ve noticed there’s this climb in the number of people attending your training sessions and workshops, as what happened to one of my clients, Mary O’Brien. She teaches a lot of internet marketing and just noticed a decline in people coming out to her training events. So then she employed a virtual event strategy and has really taken off. She hosts an annual event called AdWords Advantage. She attracts a few hundred people to attend. And then from that database she then offers a discount and invites those who attended her virtual event to come out to her training and workshops, and vice versa. For those who attended her training workshops in a classroom, she’ll give them a discount for them to attend her virtual event. So it’s a wonderful strategy.
So if you’re thinking that virtual events, yeah, you know, “I’m a trainer, I’m a meeting planner. I don’t want to use it ‘cause I think it going to take over”, instead you should look at virtual events as helping to supplement what you’re already doing with non-virtual events.
Susan Bratton: I’m going to stop right here. I forgot to ask, could I give away one seat to the conference to my DishyMix fans?
Leesa Barnes: Well actually Susan, lets do this. How about we give away 3 seats at the $97 dollar value? So I’m more than happy to give away 3 seats at the plan A level, and that’s the $97 value. And so Susan, you can work it out with your listeners how you want to give those way, but okay, so 3 seats at the plan A level, it’s $97 dollars, and Susan you and I will work behind the scenes so that once you identify who those winners are then we’ll be able to give them the registration details.
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW TO BE THE LUCKY WINNER OF A FREE SEAT AT THE VIRTUAL EVENTS BOOM
Susan Bratton: Okay. So we only have time for one last thing, and you and I have known each other for a couple of years now, and I’d love to talk more about sewing and what the hot things are in Toronto, but the one thing that I really respect about you Leesa and that I think more people should really step us and own is an efficiency trick of yours. Share it.
Leesa Barnes: Yeah, this is something I have learned once I got into my 30’s. When I was in my 20’s I wanted to please everyone, and so I did everything. And then it got to a point where I started to over-promise and under-deliver, and my professional reputation started to be tarnished and affected by this. So now that I’ve reached my 30’s and I’m a little bit smarter – probably not as smart as I’ll be when I reach my 40’s, but you know, I’m a little smarter now – and what I have done is I just say no to everything. I say no to everything, you know. I plan my promotional and sales calendar 12 months in advance, and unless it’s a really compelling event or program or product, I just say no. And that’s how I remain efficient in this busy world so that by saying no I don’t over-commit, I don’t over-promise. I maintain my professional standards and my integrity. And people respect me for that. They respect me for being able to be honest and not take on more than I can chew.
Susan Bratton: It’s brilliant to say no as much as you possibly can. And I think that if you knew that if someone was truly empowered to just say, “You know, I just can’t do that. I’m sorry. I’m focused on my deadlines and deliverables and, you know, I can’t get those done fast enough. I can’t take on another thing. And I really appreciate it and would love to help you but I can’t”, they’re okay with that. It’s all right, because it’s shocking if you are….
Leesa Barnes: It is.
Susan Bratton: somebody like you Leesa, whose definitely extraordinarily well connected, very out in the world, and doing something that has, it’s very hooky, you’ve got, you know, lots of things that could be done around what you do…
Leesa Barnes: Yes.
Susan Bratton: you’re just going to be bombarded with requests.
Leesa Barnes: Absolutely.
Susan Bratton: Yet if you say no in a nice way or if you just, if you ask for something and a person says, “No, I’m sorry”, I say, “Hey, don’t feel bad. I appreciate the no. I thought I’d ask”, and I’m glad you can say no if it’s not good for you – you don’t have time, you don’t have energy, you’re not interested, whatever – no worries. I asked, you said no. I’m good with that. I support that, you know. I just want to send out to everybody that I want you to say no to something today… and feel good about it because you’ve actually done that person a favor, ‘cause if you said yes and you were cranky about it, you’re not really doing them a favor, right?
Note: I am participating in Virtual Event Boom, May 10-14th, 2010.
There is a free Preview Call May 5th to learn more – click HERE to sign up.
Click Below to listen to this whole interview.
Leesa Barnes: President, International Asso of Virtual Events Managers
Part of this content was featured on the monthly webinar by David Garfinkel and Brian McLeod for Fast Effective Copy followers. It was called, “Launching With Real Time Copy.”
