Steven Schwartz (00:01.988)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the concierge medical marketing podcast. I’m your host, Stephen Schwartz, and it’s my pleasure and my privilege to have you along today. My guest is Ryan Ross. Ryan is an expert on creating engaging webinars and he has five amazing tips, secrets or tricks, whatever you want to call them to creating an engaging webinar. Ryan, thanks for being with us here today.

Ryan Ross (00:29.998)
Pleasure to be here.

Steven Schwartz (00:31.896)
Wonderful. Thanks so much. Quickly give us a background on yourself and how you came about learning how to create an effective and engaging webinar.

Ryan Ross (00:44.398)
Yeah, so I began in the world of webinars in 2016. I started working at a company called Bright Talk, which is arguably the world’s largest webinar platform. A lot of people know about Zoom. This is the B2B. We would call it like YouTube for Business because it was a network of professionals that would come to Bright Talk and watch the content that our clients would create. And I helped.

bright talks, clients create content and we would create 400 webinars a week at the company. And I would also help specific clients, develop their content strategy, host the webinars, make sure they’re engaging. And that was in 2016. I started with them. And then in 2021, I started my own company helping individuals, consultants and, other, other types of professionals, smaller businesses.

create content strategy and also do like back end technical work on webinars. I’ve seen, I probably have been involved in over a thousand webinars myself, helping people develop content calendars, content strategy, making sure that the webinars have the right elements in them in order to actually make them worth it because you’re putting a lot of time into creating a webinar. And if it’s not effective, if it’s not engaging people,

It’s kind of just a waste of time. So I hope people not waste time on webinars.

Steven Schwartz (02:14.114)
Excellent. And obviously your, your specialty is working with independent financial advisors on their webinars. But as we talked about before we started recording, you said that the same techniques are great for concierge medical practices, as well as many other industries and types of businesses, correct?

Ryan Ross (02:33.622)
Yeah, I think because at the end of the day, you’re trying to identify the needs of your audience. As long as you know who your core audience is, who’s in the audience, and what their needs are, if you can identify the hero that they are to your guide. There’s a great book. I think it’s by Donald Miller called Building a Story Brand. And the concept is like, you are the guide.

Your audience is the hero, and they’re in their story. And this will work across industries. We can apply it to Concierge Medical or Independent Financial Advisor. It doesn’t matter, right? We’re building that foundation and using the elements to create a compelling webinar, regardless of who is in the audience. But it comes down to knowing who is in the audience and making sure that they can be engaged.

Steven Schwartz (03:26.298)
Well, let’s jump right into this. said you have five, five items or five tips to share with our listeners. What’s number one?

Ryan Ross (03:33.804)
Yeah, so first one is this is all these honestly might sound very simple, but I say that simple is a lot better than complicated. Doesn’t need to be rocket science here. These are the things that I have experienced in working on webinars for so long. And I’m just really going to simplify things. So the first one is pick a good topic, right? And there’s three kind of elements to picking what a good topic is. First one, you might want to talk to your clients about what

Steven Schwartz (03:44.408)
I totally agree.

Ryan Ross (04:03.406)
pain points they might have any time you speak with them. Like, know, if you’re a concierge medical doctor, right, you say, you know, what pains do you have in these days? How is your insurance working? Things like that. Speak with your clients, but also go to, I like to say, go to industry conferences and figure out what are the topics that people are talking about, right? So whatever the niche you have is, go to industry conferences. Actually, you don’t need to go to them because they’ll probably have a website.

and they’ll probably have the agenda on the website. not of this year, they’re gonna have, yeah. And we’ll get to the list of speakers in a second. But they’ll have what people are talking about. And if you look back through the last three to five years of those industry conferences, you’ll see that there’s gonna be two types of content that they’re speaking about. The first one is the things that always happen. Those are the consistent topics, right?

Steven Schwartz (04:35.81)
Right, the list of the speakers and what they’re going to talk about.

Ryan Ross (04:59.802)
And in the advisory world, it’s going to be like, what’s happening in ETFs? Or what’s the macro environment look like? In health care, it might be dealing with insurance, right? Or like how to improve your medical practice. Those are going to be the consistent topics. But then you’re to have the hot topics, right? AI in concierge medical. What does that look like? Or it might be Medicare stuff. I don’t know. But identify what those topics are.

Pick a webinar that topic that is I would say start with general and Then go to the really complicated stuff start with a simple topic, right? another thing you can do to find a good topic is go to answer the people calm and you can get like yeah, you can get like you might be able to only do like three Topics per day three searches per day, but just type in like

Steven Schwartz (05:47.844)
Yes, great website.

Ryan Ross (05:57.742)
whatever your target market is and it’ll say like what people are asking about and you can use that to guide the content. At the end of the day, you want to educate, you don’t want to sell during the webinar. like let people know, give people facts and let them decide for themselves. Don’t use the webinar to sell. You can use an attachment at the end of the webinar to guide them to a link and sell or maybe sell them something.

but use it as a chance to inform them on what’s happening in the world. So that’s one. Pick a good topic.

Should I go to the second one? OK, number two. Well, is a continuation of number one. Get speakers. It might be you only talking in the webinar. And I did this earlier today, right? This was me talking about megatrends in the industry, right? Big topic. But it might be a panel of people. And if you need to find more people to speak on the webinar, you could ask family or friends, maybe not family, or industry colleagues, things like that.

Steven Schwartz (06:36.206)
Number two, go for it.

Steven Schwartz (07:03.098)
Unless they’re a concierge medical physician or office staff.

Ryan Ross (07:05.07)
Unless they’re a cot series medical… Maybe you work with them, My pediatrician, she works… Her brother’s like working with her. So that actually could work well.

Steven Schwartz (07:15.138)
Many times in the physicians I’ve worked with, the spouse is the person who works at the front desk and office manager. So it’s not as crazy as you think.

Ryan Ross (07:22.132)
Mm -hmm. Honestly, depending on it it could be a really good conversation or it Actually, that might be a really good place to start but if if that’s not the case for you Go to those industry websites figure out like who’s already speaking. All right, maybe who spoke last year the people might that might be speaking They could be really enthusiastic to speak and they’d be like, yeah I’ll definitely talk about the XYZ subject and you can have a discussion there. They’ll probably have panels

on those industry conference websites and say, four people are speaking. I’ll invite all of them to, I did this all the time at Brighttalk. We would just say like, hey, do you want to talk about the topic that you were speaking about at the conference? We’ll just replicate that online. And it’s fresh in their mind, so it makes sense. Or you could also look on Amazon, see who’s written a book about what you want to talk about and say, hey, you want to come on the webinar and talk about that? And I want to incorporate that into my panel.

So get speakers. If you’re doing a panel, it’s people you know or industry speakers from the events. I would not do more than four people outside of the moderator, right? So you don’t want to have more than five people total on a webinar. It just gets so crowded.

Steven Schwartz (08:37.742)
I would think right. would say the more people you have, the more complex it is, the more chance of people speaking over each other. And typically the guests that you have on your webinar or your podcast have such a wealth of information to share. You don’t want to have them sitting there and waiting for their turn to talk. So for me personally, I’d rather have just a one -on -one conversation like you and I are having today.

Ryan Ross (08:58.584)
Mm

Steven Schwartz (09:04.345)
as opposed to juggling three or four people and me, but that’s a personal preference.

Ryan Ross (09:08.046)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, wouldn’t have like definitely not more than four people on the webinar total. So you and three guests maximum. That gives you enough time to kind of go around the round table as it were. It gets so crowded in 16 minutes. So I would keep it small and manageable. So that’s number two. First one was pick a good topic. Second one is get speakers, maybe yourself, maybe a panel.

Steven Schwartz (09:34.234)
All right, what’s number three?

Ryan Ross (09:35.63)
The third step is a platform you know. A lot of times, I did research on this, There’s like 35 webinar platforms out there, right? And they all have, there’s so many. There’s Zoom, Easy Webinar, Demio, GetResponse. There’s a huge list. Adobe has something, there’s Microsoft Teams, there’s Hublio, Brighttalk is one on 24. And they all are really good for specific use cases. Some are more broad.

Steven Schwartz (09:44.506)
Stop, Manny.

Ryan Ross (10:05.718)
Zoom has a great webinar product. I would say if you’re trying to figure out which platform to use, use what you know. Use the thing that you’re using all the time, right? If you’re using Zoom all the day, that’s probably gonna be the simplest solution in order to just get the ball rolling in creating the webinars. Also, I would make sure if you’re considering one versus the other, figure out like, okay, what do you want the audience experience to be?

Steven Schwartz (10:14.777)
I agree.

Ryan Ross (10:34.22)
because sometimes you want a classroom experience where there’s you and everybody. You can see them and they can talk and everything. But other times you might just want to be you in a room and not here or see anybody else. So I would consider what you want the audience experience to be. Many webinar platforms do not allow for that kind of classroom feel. the classroom feel in Zoom is just a meeting, right?

And that’s free, up to 45 minutes. But consider what you want the audience experience to be. especially for the engagement, we’ll get to this in a second. They have different engagement features, like downloading things or you can push through offers. But that might just be, if you’re just getting started, I would keep it very simple and just use what you know.

Steven Schwartz (11:29.966)
Yeah, fewer bells and whistles, right? If you get to the end of your webinar and you have some sort of offer, literally you could just have a slide that comes on your PowerPoint that says, you know, click this URL dot com or whatever the address would be. People can literally type that into their browser, find the landing page and buy your product or service.

Ryan Ross (11:32.321)
Yeah, because

Steven Schwartz (11:51.31)
but as opposed to building it in so that at the proper moment of the webinar, pops up on the screen on the right with the beautiful button. There’s something to be said about that and the ease and use. I would say test it and see what converts better.

Ryan Ross (12:05.708)
Yeah, that’s probably, if I were to have a sixth point in this, I have five steps, but testing is so important, doing webinars over and over and over again, even if it’s just to understand what the platform looks like right when you start it, what does it do, right? You don’t wanna be presenting the webinar for the first time when you’re going live to the audience. I recommend a technical rehearsal to make sure that you can feel what that’s like first.

But it’s much easier on a platform you already know. that’s number three, platform you know. Four, okay, I think this is gets way less traction than it needs to. Over -promote, people forget. So keep them aware that that’s something happening. Like start promoting three weeks out, three business weeks out, and then make sure that you get great images.

Steven Schwartz (12:39.012)
Great. Great. Number four.

Ryan Ross (13:03.192)
for the webinar and I’m talking about like faces of the people that are speaking and maybe have like a great, you call, it’s a thumbnail or a holding image. Make sure that it has really nice pictures. If you are in a specific city, have a high depth image of that city, right? That people recognize. Or if it’s like of your office or you have a really, really good like office building.

make it that, make sure it’s a really high quality image and a very clear name and time for the webinar. You know, sometimes I recommend against actually, sometimes I recommend against having a time on the holding image because as soon as the webinar goes live, it’s already like outdated. So you might not wanna put the time on there, but I would definitely have a clear name that says what you’re talking about, who you’re talking.

Steven Schwartz (13:38.522)
Yes.

Ryan Ross (13:58.574)
for like who is the ideal audience like how medical how concierge medical practices are operating in 2024 right that’s arguably you don’t want to put the date in there but make it a very clear title so people can self -select and they can join it if it’s relevant to them right

Steven Schwartz (14:23.098)
Right. If the topic is such that a physician sees that and says, wow, that’s solving a problem that we’ve been struggling with. You know, for instance, you how the most effective digital marketing strategies for concierge medical practices in 2024, something like that. And a physician can say, wow, we need more patients in our panel. We really should sit in on this webinar and see what these guys have to say to help us learn.

Ryan Ross (14:30.167)
Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Ross (14:39.478)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Steven Schwartz (14:52.388)
how to get more patients into our practice. So it makes good sense.

Ryan Ross (14:54.35)
Mm -hmm Yeah Promoted everywhere you can as well and I would say like hit people multiple times with the promotion I I I did a podcast years ago. It was called the fierce focus show and I remember I had a great Instagram channel. I had like 10 ,000 people that had like signed up for my Instagram channel I was pretty proud of that and so I went to I went to a I was living in New York City and I

The end of this happens, I did everything wrong. But I approached the guy that opened up the Cadillac house, which was a really cool like coffee shop lounge. And I’m like, hey, you just opened this place up. Do you want to host a live podcast recording here? I’ll interview you and we can we can get people here. It was a great event space. So he’s like, yeah, let’s do that. So I promoted it. And I promoted it once because I’m like, 10 ,000 people. It’s going to be sold out.

Steven Schwartz (15:54.99)
I see where this one’s going.

Ryan Ross (15:54.994)
Nobody like three people showed up right nobody showed up because I didn’t keep reminding people they are People are scrolling through they’re clicking through they’re getting emails so many times but you got to keep reminding them keep showing them why they should show up and Yeah, I think I think so many webinars have gone poorly because they were not promoted correctly mine included in some cases But if people have like yeah

Steven Schwartz (16:20.558)
Like anything, you do things, you try, you fail, you scrape your knees, you get up, you fall forward. Sometimes you fall backwards, but you learn and you do better next time. And that’s not just marketing. I that’s life, right?

Ryan Ross (16:26.262)
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Ross (16:31.082)
Yeah, and that’s the thing. Yeah, this is the whole thing, right? So over -promote, don’t be worried that you’re gonna be annoying people because people get annoyed for a lot of different reasons. It might just be you coming across their scope. And then the final thing on this over -promotion thing is only give one place to sign up. Don’t have multiple places because then you’re gonna be like, did they sign up through this?

That’s it’s tough with attribution of like, where did people go come from? but it also is like, if you have to update something on, the landing page, for whatever reason, you might forget to do it on the other place. And that’s just like a drag on your time. So I would only have one place to, to sign up and that it’s a lot easier to keep it simple. So over promote that’s number four. Okay. Five is okay.

Steven Schwartz (17:23.162)
Great. So we’ll promote. number five.

Ryan Ross (17:28.846)
This is all about creating an engaging webinar and I think that people they think their their personalities will be engaging enough to keep it engaging or like the facts they have which is possible But I think like if you give people something to engage with they’re much more likely to engage so Many webinar platforms they offer you the ability to do polling which is wonderful, right? Use the polls. They’re underused all the time

It doesn’t always need to be like an official poll, right? Polls do help you enrich your audience data. questions you would ask in a sales conversation are great to have in a webinar poll in order to like qualify a prospect, right? So if you want to ask them like, what’s your insurance or have you had any medical ailments in the past, things like that, that’s great to know.

But also it can just be like what’s what city are you in or like what’s your favorite? Type of pizza. I don’t know these can be like like gentle suggestions or like like benign questions But they give people something to engage with and they become more invested in whatever the content is because they’re like I’ve had a choice. Yeah choice to like Inform the content of this webinar, which is really empowering for people so use polls if at all possible I would say if you’re gonna do a series as well

use the same polls or at least some of the same polls so then you have some longitudinal data that you can refer back to when somebody’s, you know, when you’re analyzing the tendencies of your audience. So polls are really good idea. A PDF handout. If you’re using a deck for whatever reason, everybody always asks to view the deck later on. It’s like, this be available? You got to make it available. And that’s a great

way for you to put links to your website into the hands of people that are in your audience. Here’s another one that I only learned recently, and it’s a genius idea. A workbook with fill -in -the -blank sentences is a great way to get people engaged, right? Like, if we were doing a workbook about this, I would have a bullet point that said, a blank is a great way to get people engaged in the webinar.

Steven Schwartz (19:42.308)
Love it.

Ryan Ross (19:55.83)
And you fill in the blank, right? I did this with the webinar earlier. it’s not like, it doesn’t need to be the fanciest of workbooks, but giving people something to work on, they feel accomplished afterwards, and they’ll be like, wow, this person was really thoughtful. It doesn’t take that long to make. You can make it in Canva. But it also lets you have a chance to say, these are the speakers, right? These are the topics. These are upcoming webinars. So it’s a takeaway.

Steven Schwartz (20:24.748)
it. I was going to say is if you want to make a document like that and send it to me, I’ll take that document, the PDF and put it on the web page on conciergeMD .marketing on the blog so that people can watch this video. And again, I’m not asking you to do it because I don’t want to give you more work. But if you want to make a PDF workbook, send it to me. I will put it on our website.

Ryan Ross (20:46.648)
Yeah, I can do that. Happy to do it. Well, I’m almost finished with the engaging ones. That’s OK. No, the last one is links to your LinkedIn or your website, right? Put those in the attachments. if you’re using Zoom, you can just put that into the chat. But the core thing is to make it engaging. Give people something to engage with. Workbook, polls, links to your LinkedIn.

Steven Schwartz (20:48.602)
Cool. So can you recap our top five techniques? I thought you were done. Go for it. Please.

that’s really…

Ryan Ross (21:15.862)
or just ask them to like type in the chat something, it gets them invested in whatever the webinar is. So just.

Steven Schwartz (21:21.166)
Right. And if you have a private Facebook group where people who have participated in your webinars can now have access to this free group, click this link, they go, they request or whatever, they get granted permission in the group. And that could be another place where you can essentially start building your list of no like and trust, give free content in there. And as people really, you know, grab on to what you’re offering, then you can make an offer from time to time in your group.

Ryan Ross (21:24.664)
Yeah. yeah.

Ryan Ross (21:51.537)
I also have some operational tips. Yeah, bonus tips. those are kind of like the theory of webinars. These are just the operational tips to think about like housekeeping. I would hold it on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, 11 a or 2 p That’s just when most people watch webinars. If it’s like individuals rather than businesses, you can arguably hold it later in the day.

Steven Schwartz (21:54.529)
bring it. Some bonuses. Go for it.

Ryan Ross (22:20.622)
But for those, probably just want something on demand so people can watch it whenever they want to watch it because consumers like on demand stuff now. We talked about promoting it three weeks out. That still stands. One thing I touched upon is always doing a technical rehearsal. And I just I usually do those one week out at the same time for a weird reason, which is the sun has an effect on how much light

is in whatever room somebody is in. if you’re doing it after the sunset, it makes it harder to know what the sun’s going to look like. So do it at the same time if you can. And for the technical rehearsal, you’re just going to make sure, especially if this is a panel, you’re going to make sure that everybody knows what you’re going to be talking about during the webinar. You want to make sure the deck is either

finished or in the works and people know the next steps on what to do with the deck, only send two to three slides. And then you can make sure that you know what it feels like when you start the webinar. So if you’re using Zoom or really whatever platform this could work for, create a webinar, like a duplicate template webinar that you can just jump into and feel what that feels like when you’re going to go live.

because your heart’s gonna be beating a lot probably and you’re gonna wanna do some like breathing exercises. So do a technical rehearsal to feel what that feels like at least once the week prior. So that’s the third operational tip. I got a couple more. Titles, I think we talked about this a little bit but I think you wanna call out the industry and the problem to solve and then like the urgency.

Steven Schwartz (24:02.81)
Go bring it. Good stuff.

Ryan Ross (24:12.914)
or the results of whatever that is, right? So if it’s like a results -based thing, you’re talking about, I’m just thinking like off the top of my head in the medical space, right? Like how the Jones family got more Medicaid. Maybe this isn’t like concierge, right? I’m thinking like, what are the results that a patient would get out of the webinar? Or is this like a month, something that’s going to expire at the end of the month? You’re gonna want to hear about it now. That’s the urgency.

But the industry or calling it calling out who is in the audience in the title People will self select if you do that correctly Here’s another really good tip if you’re if you’re doing a panel and you’re the host and there’s a question that comes in or if you’ve written the questions down beforehand and make it seem like a question came in Don’t hope somebody has an answer to the question direct the question at

a person say Steve question for you blah blah blah blah blah all right all right this question is for the panel we’re gonna start with Steve blah blah blah blah blah direct the questions of people because then you won’t have like a silence that it’s just like nobody yeah yeah yeah I’ll take a stab at that

Steven Schwartz (25:24.654)
Right. Are you going to answer it? Who’s answering this right now? They do that on the news, on a typical news channel. So Mr. Smith, so what so? What do you feel about this? So that person knows they need to start talking.

Ryan Ross (25:35.884)
Yeah, that’s where you go.

Then you could say their name ask the question and say hey Steve This is coming to you a question about blah blah blah, so you know Tell us about your time with concierge medical marketing, and what did you learn from that? Then Steve has some time to actually think about what he’s gonna say and then he can answer the question and Then maybe you even say John. I’m coming to you after I go to Steve so John has some time Yeah

Steven Schwartz (26:03.098)
Alright, giving them little heads up first so can start engaging. I gotta say something soon here. Love it.

Ryan Ross (26:08.276)
Exactly. operational tip, if you’re using a deck to present, I would use your own and ask your panelists to submit their two to three slides because then you own everything and give them a deadline for when you want them to submit those slides because you don’t want to be like, all right, they’re going to send it to me. Give them a deadline. And if not, then they’re just going to have to deal with it. But that way you can do it with your own formatting.

Steven Schwartz (26:34.852)
I was going to say you don’t want to have to switch the desktop that’s presenting slides or whatnot to guest two or guest three, but instead everything’s on your computer as the host and you have the magic button to advance to the next slide, even if Bob or Sally, whoever your guest speaking, it’s their content, let them speak, but you still present with the deck that’s presenting from your primary speaker computer.

Ryan Ross (26:52.557)
Mm

Yeah.

Ryan Ross (27:00.95)
Yeah. Yeah. And some platforms allow you to upload the deck into the platform rather than sharing your slide. And sometimes that’s okay, but often there’s build issues with the presentation. So the fonts might be different. You have more control over when you share your screen. But when you can upload it, at least this is what it’s like with Brighttalk. You can, everybody can advance the deck, but the downside of that is like,

Everybody could advance the deck. So they’re all clicking the same buttons and they’re like, who touched the deck?

Steven Schwartz (27:35.47)
That could cause some unexpected problems, I’m sure.

Ryan Ross (27:38.198)
Yeah, yeah. I want to go back to the technical rehearsal thing because it’s so important. That way, sometimes people just, they see all the buttons, they just want to press the buttons, say, hey, no button pressing, because then they just, they end the webinar without realizing that they ended it, or they start it without realizing that it’s actually going. So make sure that you’re the one that’s controlling the platform.

Make it one that you know. So that’s what I will end with. So we talked about five different things. Should we just recap them? yeah. So first, pick a good topic. Do industry research to figure out what the topics are trending right now. Second, get speakers, people that have spoken or that you really like, and you can speak with the stuff about a lot so that the energy is good. Use a platform that you know, something that you’re comfortable with already so the learning curve is less. Four, over -promote.

Steven Schwartz (28:12.58)
Yes, please. I was actually going to ask you to do that. Go ahead.

Ryan Ross (28:35.842)
People forget, so keep them aware that the webinar is happening at the time and place it’s happening. Five, give people something to engage with if you want them to engage. Polls, PDF handouts, links to your LinkedIn, et cetera. So those are the five things that we had our operational tips.

Steven Schwartz (28:52.666)
Love it. Ryan, thank you so much for sharing your vast knowledge and making it accessible to our audience. They could really take this, what, 30 minute discussion here and literally start implementing this in their very next webinar. I know that you offer a consulting service that clients can reach out to you, perhaps to ask you questions or maybe to hire you to help run their webinar, something like that. Are you available for that? OK.

Ryan Ross (29:21.208)
Yeah, see if so I Ryan at IFA marketing net. Let me just spell this because it’s not spelled regular Ryan at IFA MKTG net. If you’re friends of Steve, let me know and I’m happy to do like a quick consulting call on specific actions you should take to get your webinars rolling. If you are an independent financial advisor and you’re listening to this.

Steven Schwartz (29:22.682)
for how can people reach you

Ryan Ross (29:50.095)
There’s a lot more you can do with your content marketing and I’ll take a look at what you’ve got going on and we can start the conversation there.

Steven Schwartz (29:58.372)
Ryan Ross, wonderful speaking with you today. Thank you for being a guest on our Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast. You’re a great guy. I’m so glad to know you and we’ll sign off for now. But hey, man, thanks for your time. I really appreciate you.

Ryan Ross (30:11.32)
Thank you. You too.