Transcript of Traditional PR is Still a Fabulous Way to Stand Out written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is sponsored by Ahrefs, the SEO tool set that I use every single day. Listen into this episode because I’m going to tell you how you can win a full year subscription, over $2,000 value on this amazing tool. Check it out.

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host John Jantsch, and my guest today is Christina Nicholson. She’s a former TV reporter and Anchor who is on the other side of the desk these days, helping small businesses tell their stories as the founder of Media Maven. Christina, thanks for joining me.

Christina N.: Thanks so much for having me.

John Jantsch: PR’s one of those terms, I mean I’ve been doing this a really long time. It’s evolved greatly, the role of the PR firm, the role of the PR practitioner. Where in your opinion, does PR fit into the marketing mix today? I think a lot of small businesses, when they think of PR, all they think of is media relations.

Christina N.:  Right, and that’s usually what people reach out to a PR firm for, is for the media relations aspect. There is a lot under the PR umbrella, but that’s what sticks out in people’s mind, is getting on TV, or in newspapers, or in magazines. But there really is a lot more to it than that, because what happens after you earn that coverage? If somebody’s going to click on that link that you earned online and go back to your website, is your website user friendly, is it loading fast, do you have a way to capture leads on your website? Or if you’re sending people to a brick and mortar store, are you ready to handle the traffic?

There’s so much more to it than just earning the media, but earning that media is a big part of PR for sure.

John Jantsch: Back in the day when I used to pitch publications, there were Editors, and Assistant Editors, and there were people that were always working on stories, and listening to story pitches. Boy, most publications that are hanging around, particularly print publications it seems like, I mean they are so short staffed today that, how do you even get on their radar?

Christina N.: Yeah, I think the secret is to hand them everything they need on a silver platter. They are definitely over worked and underpaid, and they’re doing everything. I know in my last TV market, and it was a big market. It was Market 16, it was Miami. Many days I was out there with my camera and tripod, doing my own interviews, doing my own video work, editing my own stuff, and people think that’s what you just do in small markets, working your way up. But now, really, anybody in the media, they are doing any job just to get their job done really. What I tell people is to literally give the media everything they want on a silver platter.

When I book a client on TV for a segment, I write the pitch, I make sure they have the lower thirds, I write the web script, I send the web scripts to the Web Editor, I send the TV scripts to the Producer, because when you do all of that work for them, they’re not only more likely to book you because you’ve done the work, but they’re more likely to invite you back because you understand what their job is, and you are helping them do their job.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I’m even seeing what I would call mainstream publications, accepting photographs. It used to be, “No, no, we have to shoot all of our own photos.” But now video and photos, everything, they’ll take everything won’t they?

Christina N.: Yeah, they will. That’s why it’s good to have that stuff. Like I always tell people, before you reach out to anybody, make sure you have all of your ducks in a row, and all of your I’s dotted, and T’s crossed. I know a lot of times when I was pitched as a reporter, I would get something. I’d say, “Okay, let’s do this.” I would call them, and they wouldn’t be ready. They needed to prepare, they needed to get this, or they needed to get that. I always advise people, as soon as you hit send on that email, or you pick up the phone to call, you make sure you have everything you can possibly need in order, and ready to hand over. Nine times out of 10, the early bird gets the worm. It’s not necessarily the person with the best story, it’s the person who can deliver the goods the quickest.

John Jantsch: Let’s say I’m listening to this, and I’m thinking, “Yeah, I should hire a PR person.” Somebody comes to you and says, “We want to get media coverage.” What’s kind of your way to prepare them, to see if they have what it takes, to even see if they have a story worth pitching? I mean, how do you kind of go to work to make that analysis?

Christina N.: Well first I make sure that they understand, they know what PR is. Because a lot of-

John Jantsch: Yeah, “Get me on Oprah, get me on Oprah.” That’s what it is, right?

Christina N.: … Right, a lot of people just don’t get it. They think if they hire somebody and they want to be in Forbes, that means they’re going to get in Forbes.

John Jantsch: Right.

Christina N.: That’s not how it works. I use the analogy of, it’s like going to a doctor to cure your cancer. There’s no guarantee the doctor’s going to do that, but he’s going to use his expertise, and his knowledge, and what he’s done before, and what’s worked before, to try to cure your cancer. It’s the same with earning media. You can hire me and you can have these great big goals, but at the end of the day, if they don’t want you and they don’t like your story, they’re not going to put you in their publication, or on their air. I do a lot of client education to make sure they understand what they’re signing up for, before we move forward at all. Then we talk about their goals, because like you said, everybody wants Oprah, everybody wants the big national stuff. Which, makes sense. Why would you not?

But then you’re competing with literally millions of others. Let’s start with your goal. If your goal in a small town is to get people walking through your doors, Oprah may not help that much. Your local newspaper may do a better job of that than Oprah would. I start with the goals, and then I give them realistic expectations because a lot of people don’t understand the industry. It is complicated, and it is always changing. I think client education is huge, especially when it comes to PR today.

John Jantsch: A lot of people do like to, they kind of get this wild hair, and they want to get this big home run story. But, truthfully to use it as a channel, I think you have to look at it as something you would plan, that you would execute on consistently. At least that’s my view. How do you go about kind of helping somebody create a PR plan as maybe part of their overall marketing plan?

Christina N.: Yeah, well first like I said, you always want to start with the goal. Do you want more business, do you want to build your email list, do you want people shopping online, what is your goal? Then we build out from there. I always, even if you want the big stuff, I always like to start local because you need a newsworthy story. Nobody’s going to give you a free commercial, nobody’s going to promote you just to promote you, to give you business. It doesn’t work that way. This is earned media, so you need to earn it. It’s not easy. I always start local, because that is where you are more newsworthy, because you are a local person, so you have that local tie in.

The second thing I do is I try to put some kind of time table on it. You don’t want to pitch a story that can be done today, or it can be done next month, or it could be done a year from now. You want to give a journalist a reason to do that story now. If they don’t have a reason to do it now, they’re going to do other, more timely stories, and put you on the back burner. I would start local, and find a timely thing to include in the pitch, and then another thing to include is any relevance to anything that’s happening locally or nationally. For example, this is a hard client to pitch, somebody who does wills and trust. It’s not a very sexy topic.

John Jantsch: Right.

Christina N.: But when Prince died, the big news was that he didn’t have a will. That’s your opportunity as an attorney, to pitch the media and say, “Hey look, let me tell you what this means, let me explain this to you, let me dumb it down and tell you what could happen here for Prince, and how you could avoid this in your life, or your family’s life.” When you find some kind of relevance that’s already being talked about to tie your brand into, that’s another great strategy.

John Jantsch: Hey, wanted to remind you, this episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is sponsored by Ahrefs, and I’m giving away a full year subscription to this awesome tool that helps you grow your search traffic, research your competitors, and monitor your niche. I use this tool every single day, one of my favorite ways to use it is to learn why competitors are ranking so high, and what I need to do, to outrank them. There’s so many great back link tools, search tools, keyword research tools, rank tracking, all built into this tool, and that’s why I love it so much.

If you want to enter to win a full year of this tool, that’s like $2,000 value, go to Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, and find this episode. If you’re listening to this, if you’re on the page, the links are down below. But you’re going to subscribe to the podcast, you are going to maybe do a little tweet to get some extra bonus entries, and in a couple weeks we will pick a winner, and we’ll let you know if you won a full year. Go check it out.

Personal branding for kind of solo-preneurs maybe, or even that attorney that you’re talking about has become a very big piece of marketing. What role does PR play in your mind, in trying to help people build kind of personal brand authority?

Christina N.: I think it’s always important to promote yourself as an expert in your industry, no matter what your brand is. Whether you sell clothes, whether you work behind the scenes, because at the end of the day, people do business with people, they don’t do business with businesses. When you promote yourself as an expert in your business, that’s you promoting your business. I always tell my clients, it’s not my job to promote you to the media.

John Jantsch: Right.

Christina N.: If I just kept trying to promote you, it would never work. It’s my job to help the media do their job, and try to bring you into that when I can. Many times, nine times out of 10, they already have their story, and they just need an expert. I need to get that expert, and get them in front of a journalist’s face and say, “Oh, you need a chef? Here’s my chef from this restaurant I represent. Oh, you need a stylist? You need a fashion expert? Here’s this stylist that I represent.”

When you promote yourself as an expert, eventually you do that enough, and the media will come to you. You don’t even need to be pitching yourself, because they’re going to be finding you through SEO on your website, they’re going to be finding you on social media because you’re always out there sharing your expertise. That makes your job at earning publicity so much easier, because you’re putting yourself out there to be found.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I used to tell people, it’s amazing how, especially in a local market. It seems like the same people get quoted all the time, and that’s just … I think that’s proof kind of, of what you’re suggesting is because … We already talked about it, they’re not lazy necessarily, they’re over worked. If they can find a source by reading another article that, that source is quoted in, a lot of times that’s going to be an easy way for them to find a source.

Christina N.: Yeah, I mean I remember one story, I represented a therapist. My friend at the station I used to work at, they sent me a text and said, “Hey, we need your therapist.” 20 minutes later I got back to them and they said, “Oh, we found somebody else.” I said, “Oh, well how’d you find them?” They said, “Oh, we just Googled somebody, and she was the first one that came up, and we called her, and she was ready to go.”

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. I do think that it used to be we Googled for information, but I think there’s a level of trust applied to Google results that hey, if you’re showing up on page one for a search for a state attorney or something, that almost implies a level of trust that we don’t need to know much more about you.

Christina N.:  It’s so true, and it’s really just SEO.

John Jantsch: That’s right.

Christina N.: But people who don’t know better, they think, “Oh, well you’re someone up high so you must be legit.” Granted, those link backs that you earn help with SEO, so there is definitely a correlation to the higher you show up in Google, the more credible you are. But yeah, for sure. It’s the best way to be found. Like I said before at the beginning, there’s so many elements. It’s not just pitching the media, but it’s also your website, and SEO, and social media. They all work together.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and that actually brings up a question I was going to ask. My whole last 25 years I’ve spent talking about marketing as an integrated system, and that really the consulting that I’ve done, is that kind of wholistic approach. It will include PR in a lot of cases, but only because it’s part of the strategy. There’s so many people that are out there doing web design as a standalone, doing SEO as a standalone, doing PR as a standalone. How does a business owner kind of reconcile that with an entire planner? How does even an individual practitioner get results if they’re not working on the whole integrated plan?

Christina N.: I think it’s hard to track the outcome. Yeah, you can get results, you can get somebody on TV or in the newspaper, but then what?

John Jantsch: But to what end, right?

Christina N.: You need to be tracking what happens after that. Are they clicking to your website? You need to know how to go into your Google Analytics and read where people are coming from, and how they’re getting there. That way you can say, “Oh, well we did this and look at how it works, so we need to go back and do more of this.” I think a lot of times, people in PR and marketing, they just want to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. And then not really look at it, and analyze it, and see what’s working, and what they should be doing more of, or what needs fixed. When you do things on their own standalone like that, it’s hard to see what’s working, and what’s not working.

But when you put them all together and they play off of each other, and then you take the time to actually analyze it, you will build your business and grow it so much quicker, because you’re using all of those things together. They all tie in together. The thing, the tricky thing about marketing is, there’s really not a right or wrong, it’s a lot of personal preference. But when you look at data, it all goes back to data. Luckily, a lot of the things are online now, and online, Google Analytics, and Facebook Insights, it all gives you so much data that basically tells you, “Yes, this was a good thing. No, that didn’t work.” That’s so helpful for planning your future strategies.

John Jantsch: If somebody is trying to actually add a PR firm because they want that specialty, they want that person’s connections maybe even in the media community to be a part of the team. How should they go about finding what might be considered the right fit?

Christina N.: I think referrals is huge, obviously. Because there are, and I’ve seen them, and I’ve been pitched by them. There are a lot of PR firms who pitch the media, and they really have no idea what it’s like to be in the media. They’ve never stepped a foot in a news room, or they’ve never had a real conversation with a reporter, producer, to see what their day is like. I think referrals from people are huge, and I also think talking to the actual person who will be working your accounts is a big deal. Many times people who sign on with PR firms, they’re sold by the owner, or whoever is in charge of the sales. And they never actually talk to the person who’s going to be working their accounts.

I worked at a firm when I got out of TV, and the owner was the one who would go out, and wine and dine the business owners, and make the sale. And then he’d come back to the office and he’d say, “Hey, we just got this client and I told him we were going to get him here, here, here, and here, so you’ve got to do that.”

John Jantsch: Yeah.

Christina N.: I mean it’s like, “Uh, okay.” Then I’ve also seen in other firms where the same thing will happen, and they’ll turn the account over to the 20 year old intern unbeknownst to the business owner. They have no idea who’s really handling their accounts. You definitely need to do your homework. Another thing that a lot of business owners need to make sure of, is that they are getting weekly, biweekly, or monthly reports of what’s going on.

John Jantsch: Yeah.

Christina N.: Because this is an industry where you have no control over the outcomes. I could pitch you to 100 different outlets, and if they’re not interested, then that’s not my fault. But you can see I am pitching you, I’m doing my job to pitch you. Or, I could pitch you to no outlets, just take your money and do nothing, and tell you that I’m doing something. But I’m not sending you anything to prove it. I think those updates of what is going on behind the scenes are very important for a business owner to see.

John Jantsch: Well Christina, thanks for dropping by The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Tell people where they can get a hold of you, and find out more about Media Maven.

Christina N.: Yes, thank you so much. Well for your listeners I have a free book. We’ve been talking about standing out, so you can get my eBook for free at MediaMavenAndMore.com/Standout.

John Jantsch: Great, and we’ll have links to that in the show notes as well. Christina, thanks and hopefully we’ll bump into you out there on the road.

Christina N.: Thank you so much.

John Jantsch: Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Wondering if you could do me a favor? Could you leave an honest review on iTunes? Your ratings and your reviews really help, and I promise I read each and every one. Thanks.

Transcript of Webinar Best Practices Throughout the Customer Journey written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Webinars. Everybody’s doing them, right? Well yeah, right, everybody’s doing them, but are they doing them well and are you using them in your business? I think that webinars are a great tool to use for every stage of the customer journey, not just as a sell tool, as a hard sell tool, like so many people use it. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I speak with Omar Zenhom. Not only has he been running webinars and teaching people how to do webinars, he’s actually created an amazing software for doing webinars called Webinar Ninja, so check out this episode.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is sponsored by Ahrefs, the SEO tool set that I use every single day. Listen into this episode because I’m going to tell you how you can win a full year subscription, over $2,000 value on this amazing tool. Check it out.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Omar Zenhom, the author of The $100 MBA and a podcast by the same name, and he’s also the creator of a webinar platform called Webinar Ninja that has a new, shiny release that we’re going to talk about a little bit today. Omar, thanks for joining me.

Omar Zenhom: Thank you, John. It’s great to be here.

John Jantsch: So you have a whole course on webinars. You see a lot of webinars. I’m sure you consume a lot of webinars just in your kind of daily business. In your opinion what makes a good webinar? And I know there’s probably a lot of answers to that, but generally speaking.

Omar Zenhom: That’s a great question, because there’s so many people that are doing webinars today and I’ve seen a lot of them, just some of the taste-makers in our marketplace, and I find that the best thing that somebody can do when it comes to running a webinar is making sure that they’ve been able to convey some sort of value in a way that people can use. So a lot of people, they like to just do a value dump where they’re just like, “I’m going to tell them everything they need to know about golf,” and just if [inaudible 00:02:24] golf expert, let’s say, for example, and it’s just like an information dump.

And then there’s some people that on the other end of the spectrum they’ll maybe banter a lot and they’ll just go on and on and they just really don’t give a lot of information. Both camps are really not useful because when you just have some sort of information dump, it’s just so hard to retain all that information. And when you’re just bantering and you’re not really giving a lot of information, people feel like it’s kind of a waste of time. So what you’re really trying to do here is you’re trying to give specific information, give specific value in a way that they can retain it.

In my previous life, I was an educator for 13 years as a high school and university educator, and that’s one of the first things you learn, that when you’re teaching a classroom of students is that it’s not about how much information you give it’s just how well they can retain it. So you got to keep in mind that whatever I teach, let me see how I can make sure that they can retain it and implement it. That’s how they’re going to feel like they got a win. That’s how they’re going to feel like, “Wow, this wasn’t a waste of time. Wow, this was great. This person gave me a whole bunch of value that I can use, and it’s very applicable,” and they go away remembering your webinar and having that trust built with you so they can go ahead and purchase a product of yours or check out your next piece of content.

John Jantsch: I suppose it’s like any good presentation. There has to be that narrative arc that brings it all together, that keeps people interested, but then also, like you said, delivers a lot of value.

Omar Zenhom: Definitely, yeah.

John Jantsch: So you kind of alluded to this. I’ve probably been doing webinars for 15 years or so, and it used to be a really unique thing. I probably get 10 webinars pitched at me a day now. So what about that kind of glut? What is that doing even to the consuming, educating market? Is it too much, or is there still a purpose for it?

Omar Zenhom: Well, what I love about that dynamic is that when there’s so much going on, when there’s so many webinars or there’s so many videos on YouTube or whatever it is, it’s so easy to rise to the top. It’s so easy to stand out because people are just used to a mediocre presentation. So if you just do a few small things that differentiate yourself, that makes you a little bit better than the rest, you stand out and people remember you. Person that comes to mind is Tim Page. Tim Page is one of the best I’ve seen on webinars, so much so that we’ve hired him at Webinar Ninja to do our webinars because he’s so good.

John Jantsch: So a lot of people view, and I want to talk about various uses of webinars, but certainly the one that a lot of people see is the webinar that is selling something.

Omar Zenhom: Right.

John Jantsch: Are there some effective ways to, and again, you see people that are just like boom boom boom, they sell a lot but everybody comes away feeling kind of sleazy at the end, right?

Omar Zenhom: Yeah.

John Jantsch: So is there an effective way to both get people what they need but also not kind of come off as the hard sell?

Omar Zenhom: Definitely. There are two strategies that I’ve found that are really effective when it comes to this. The first strategy is just to be very honest about it from the start. A lot of people they talk about the problem they want to solve, they say that this is what this lesson’s all about, they’ll spend about 20 minutes on their back story or something like that, talking about their war stories. And then they spend about a good 30 minutes pitching at the end. And the whole time they’re watching the webinar they kind of feel like this is coming. “Oh my gosh, when are they gonna sell, when is the other shoe’s gonna drop?”

So one strategy is just to be upfront about it in the beginning, like the first five minutes. “Hey guys, this is what we’re gonna be covering today, this is what today’s webinar’s all about.” Or, “The first thing that I’m gonna just do right now is get it out of the way. We have an offer today, this is what the offer is. I’ll be going into detail what it’s all about. I’ll even give you a quick warning before I start this offer at the end so if you want to leave, no problem, no hard feelings.” I like to joke around about that. They feel like, “Oh, this person’s a real person,” and it also just lowers the anxiety. Like, “Okay, I know what this product’s all about, I know that this person’s just being honest with me, they’re an entrepreneur and they want to offer me something that can help me.” But then we can just move [inaudible 00:07:01]. “Okay guys, that’s a quick glimpse of what today’s offer is and the bonuses. And let’s move on to the lesson and let’s move on to the workshop.” And at the end I can go into detail and refer back to what I was talking about. A lot of people like that because you just feel like, “Okay, this is different and it just makes me feel comfortable.”

The second strategy that I saw that has been really effective, and I picked this up actually from our mutual friend Michael [Port 00:07:27]. So what he does is he actually has no pitch on the webinar. So what he says at the start, he says, “Hey guys, we’re gonna be doing a workshop and I do have a product that can really help you take your public speaking to the next level.” That’s his area of expertise, for those of you who are listening. “But I’m not gonna be talking about this today. You’re all automatically registered to another webinar tomorrow at the same time, and that’s when I’ll be talking about the product and you can ask all the questions about the product at that time.” And that’s all he talks about. That’s it, that’s the last time he talks about the product.

And then throughout the webinar people will ask questions like, “Hey, so do you have a payment plan for this product you mentioned?” “Well, really sorry but we’re not going to be talking about it today. Today’s the workshop, tomorrow you can ask all the questions you want.” And it makes people feel comfortable and it also makes people understand that this is not a sales webinar. What’s great about this is that the next day when he runs that second webinar for everybody who’s invited, everybody who was registered to that first webinar, it’s just fair game. Everybody expects him to sell, everybody expects him to talk about the product, everybody knows what they’re going to get. And they can ask buying questions and it’s just so much easier for Michael because he can just be himself and sell the product, and at the same product no one’s kind of guessing what this webinar’s all about.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I wrote a blog post recently about using webinars in every stage of the customer journey. And I think that that’s kind of the key point there is that the first one was maybe awareness and trust building. And so then once you earn that trust then it’s like, “Come back tomorrow,” and you’re going to be ready to buy maybe even because you’ve kind of moved to the next stage. And clearly some of the people don’t come because they are in that stage. And so I think that’s a real key too. So many people just want to sell sell sell, and you’ve got to earn, I think, the opportunity. I have done webinars where we were down to 10 people left that wanted to get on the call, but all 10 of those people wanted to buy and they just needed a couple questions answered because they had gone through several gates, if you will, or stages. And I think people need to realize that this medium is no different than running an ad or something that would tell somebody to buy.

Omar Zenhom: Definitely. And I love what you said there because I firmly believe you can’t make anybody buy anything. Some people that use pressure sales, that sale’s not going to stick. They’re going to return it, they’re going to cancel, or they’re just going to have a bad taste in their mouth. So you really can’t make anybody buy. Plus you’ve worked so hard, you’ve spent so much time and effort and money to earn that trust to get them on the webinar. No, it takes a lot to try to promote that webinar. Don’t lose that trust, allow them to feel comfortable and buy when they’re ready.

John Jantsch: I tell you another side of using webinars that I don’t hear enough people talking about is we use them to serve our customers. So in other words we do a ton of training with webinars, we do a ton of added value or kind of helping them along with something that maybe they’re struggling with. And we also use it for a lot of internal things too. So I think companies should probably look at internal training and training of customers and serving customers as a way to think about webinars as well.

Omar Zenhom: That’s true. We love the idea of doing live training, live Q&A for your current customers. It’s a great way to [inaudible 00:10:59], it’s a great way to keep your customers happy. And these are really low maintenance kind of webinars, there’s no real performance needed because you can send an email out to all your customers or specific customers once a month and say, “Hey, it’s an AMA, ask me anything,” open Q&A, and people can ask you questions, people can get advice. And it’s just a great way for you to kind of hop on. It doesn’t have to be long webinar, it could be 30 minutes and ask a few questions, and feel like they’re being supported. Some people are really surprised when they get an email and the founder of the company shows up and answers questions for 30, 40 minutes once a month. They’re like, “Wow.” Sometimes that’s just enough for them to be like, “Okay, I’m going to hang on with this company. Even if I’m not using it right now I know I want to use them in the future so let me just sit tight, because these guys care.”

John Jantsch: And I think that you can only do so much with an email, but you get on and maybe you’re video sharing, and there’s just so much more trust that could be there, there’s so much more feeling of connection. And it’s not unlike, I should say, flying across the country and sitting in somebody’s office.

Omar Zenhom: I love that.

John Jantsch: Hey, wanted to remind you this office of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is sponsored by Ahrefs and I’m giving away a full year subscription to this awesome tool that helps you grow your search traffic, research your competitors, and monitor your niche. I use this tool every single days. One of my favorite ways to use it is to learn why competitors are ranking so high and what I need to do to outrank them. There’s so many great backlink tools, search tools, keyword research tools, rank tracking, all built into this tool, and that’s why I love it so much. If you want to enter to win a full year of this tool, that’s like $2,000 value, go to Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and find this episode if you’re listening to this. If you’re on the page the links are down below, but you’re going to subscribe to the podcast, you are going to maybe do a little tweak to get some extra bonus entries. And in a couple weeks we will pick a winner and we’ll let you know if you won a full year. So go check it out.

So you have spent a great deal of time and effort and sweat and blood building a webinar platform of your own. Let me ask you this. What was sort of missing from the myriad of platforms out there that had you kind of say, “Why gosh darn it, I’m building my own.”

Omar Zenhom: Oh wow, that’s a good question. The funny thing is that I built Webinar Ninja by accident. I just built it out of my own necessity to scratch my own itch. I was running webinars to promote our membership program, the $100 MBA. I was using it also to support our member’s office hours. And I just couldn’t stand the solutions that are out there. They were clunky, they were not complete solutions. Often I’d have to build all these other components on the side whether like my own email notification system through my email marketing, and then I would have to do a follow-up of sequence and have my own landing pages. And then when I was doing it there was no kind of built in chat, so I had to have a separate chat. So it was almost too much trouble than it was worth.

And I was just like, “But I like doing these webinars,” because again, I’m a teacher by trade and I loved the medium and I was like, “Okay, let me see if I can just slap something together to make my life easier every time I run a webinar.” No intention to make this a commercial success. I’m a self-taught developer, if you want to even call me that. I just know simple HTML, CSS, some PHP. I couldn’t even complete it, I got a freelancer off freelancer.com to help me out to just clean it up. And then I started using it and my members that I was doing the webinar for were like, “Hey, I love what you’re using for this webinar. What is it?” And I was like, “Oh, it’s just something I slapped together.” And they’re like, “Oh, can I buy it?” And I was like, “Can you give me like a day to put up a sales page?”

But in all seriousness I think what attracted people to it and why we decided to say, “Hey, let’s open this up and see if people actually are interested in it,” is because we really just wanted to make it easier for people to create and run webinars, to let the technology kind of fade in the background and let their content kind of shine. There’s so many platforms out there that promote, that have all these features or they’re going to make your business blow up and all of this stuff. But when they actually go and create a webinar or use it it’s just tedious, it takes 10 steps to create a webinar. It kind of just prevents you from doing them consistently. So that’s why we like to say is Webinar Ninja is just better webinars with no worries. You just go in, it takes 10 seconds to create a webinar. We do everything in the background, we create all the landing pages and the notifications and everything for you. If you want to geek out there’s advanced settings or you can edit all the stuff. But if you don’t you can just rub the webinar instantly. It just makes things just so much easier for people.

And when it comes to running the webinar we want to kind of just, again, let you shine. And we let you control everything on one screen so you can upload your slides and show your slides while you’re presenting so you don’t have to share your screen or use PowerPoint if you don’t want to. You can manage all the layouts, you can chat, you can answer questions, all that kind of stuff. And I built it as an educator. That’s why I built it because I wanted to make sure it’s a great tool for teaching, because I believe teaching is the new learning, and the new selling. Sorry, teaching is the new learning. Teaching is the new selling.

John Jantsch: Well I learn a lot more when I try to teach something so I’ll let you have that too.

Omar Zenhom: Yeah. So yeah, that’s really kind of the driving force or the influence I’ve had on Webinar Ninja, making it a great teaching tool that people like using. So yeah, I’m a firm believer as an entrepreneur. There’s so many great ideas out there, it’s really the person that implements it the best is who wins. And that’s what I’m trying to do.

John Jantsch: Well so I have, because I’ve been doing this a long time, because I do a lot of webinars for people, I’ve been on every platform probably that’s ever been created. And I will say that the common threat is they all lack a sense of elegance at all, and I think that in your latest update, 5.0, is that what we’re calling it?

Omar Zenhom: Yep.

John Jantsch: I think you’ve added an element of elegance that really doesn’t exist in a lot of the other platforms. Was that intentional or is that just hard work has eventually got you there?

Omar Zenhom: No, it was incredibly intentional. When we were working on 5.0 about 18 months ago it was like on the top of my list to hire the best talent when it came to design. And we went through so many interviews and finally we found [Irina 00:18:13] who is our head UX/UI designer. And on the interview I remember her, this is just a great story, I was asking her, “Hey, can you tell me a little bit about your experience and how your experience can contribute to our company?” And she came to the interview and said, “Hey, I actually signed up for your platform, I took a look at all your UI, your current UI, and hey, can I just share my screen? This is some mock ups I created where I think it would really much, a lot better for UI for the next version.” And she just came with these designs which were great, but it was kind of like the early stages of what 5.0 are. I was just like, “Okay, this woman’s got to get hired right now because she just gets it.”

And she understands that it’s not only elegant and it’s not only supposed to kind of make you look good as a contributor, as a teacher, as an entrepreneur, but also make people’s life easier, just make people say, “Oh, this is friendly, this is easy.” It’s one of the things we try to do with our brand is to kind of not make webinars seem so intimidating. And we want to make sure it’s approachable. In fact on our about page everybody on the page is a cartoon character dressed up as a ninja. So we just make everybody kind of approachable. And that’s really what we try to do with the UI is to really make people feel like, “Hey, this looks great, this makes me look professional.” But at the same time my attendees are going to feel like, “Wow, this is easy to use and I want to attend something that looks like this.”

John Jantsch: So without getting too technical, what’s the delivery platform built on? In other words I know in original versions there was a Google Plus integration. Has that gone away or is that still a part of it?

Omar Zenhom: Yeah, so Google Hangouts was a part of what Webinar Ninja was. It was part of kind of our history I guess. And I got to thank Google for giving us that kind of technology. But it couldn’t service forever, it was kind of like a stepping stone because Google Hangouts has a delay of about 30 seconds, or sometimes it gets as good as 15 seconds. But as an educator, as a teach, you know that that’s not so great with interaction. If I say, “Hey, let me know what you think of this thing on my slide,” and the chat the answers are like 15, 30 seconds late, it’s not really interactive, it’s not really great for that kind of technology. Plus I just didn’t like the idea of being reliant on another system that I had no control over.

So over the last 12 year-, 12 months, I’m sorry, we’ve been working on building our own media servers. We work on a technology called Web RTC, which is the latest technology for live video. It’s the video technology that Facebook Live uses or some of the bigger players that do live broadcasting. And it’s something that we really wanted to kind of use, because they’re really going to take us to the next level and allow people to interact in real time with no delay in HD, which is something that we really wanted to do. So that’s the video technology behind Webinar Ninja.

John Jantsch: Awesome. So tell people where they can find it. And we’re recording this show, it’s mid-September 2017, but obviously whenever you’re listening to this it’ll still be available. And we’ll have links in the show notes, so tell us where we can find out about it.

Omar Zenhom: Sure, it’s at WebinarNinja.com. And every plan comes with a 14 day trial, so you don’t get charged anything when you get started. So you can test it out, try it out, run a few webinars, see for yourself if it’s the right fit for you. Yeah, so go check it out, WebinarNinja.com.

John Jantsch: Well Omar, thanks so much, or Oman, thanks so much for joining us. And I’d venture to say the Citrix is nervous.

Omar Zenhom: Well I know how hard it is to create a webinar platform so a lot of respect to them as well.

John Jantsch: No kidding. All right, thanks. Hopefully we’ll into you soon out there on the road.

Omar Zenhom: Take care.

John Jantsch:  Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Wonder if you could do me a favor? Could you leave an honest review on iTunes? Your ratings and reviews really help and I promise I read each and every one. Thanks.