Aesopians E9 - Webinar Lead Generation For MSPs Ft. Scott Millar From IT Rockstars

Speaker A: Welcome to the Aesopiens podcast, where the wisest in the channel come to get their MSP marketing insights. Today we're talking about webinar lead generation and featuring Scotty Miller of uh, IT Rockstars. Let's hop right in. Welcome back to the Aesopians Podcast. I'm here with Scott Miller from IT Rockstars, who has been a presence in the channel for a while now and has an interesting story that uh, has ranged across a, a few different things and has now landed on some webinar lead generation for MSPs, which is what we're going to be kind of talking about today. Um, so Scott, let me kick it back over to you here and why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do and kind of, ah, you know, the journey to how you got to this point.

Speaker B: Yeah, cool. Thanks for having me on the show, Hunter. Really appreciate this. So little background on me. I used to work in an MSP. Senior Systems Engineer. This was way back in 2011. I did that for quite a few years and then I switched to like a salesperson. I entered the dark side, um, and I was in that for position for about two years and I was doing really well in it. I. And it's quite a challenge to start with, like figuring out sales and stuff like that. I put two years in. I was like, you know what, I'm going to see if uh, I can get some equity in this msp. Um, the owner was very smart and told me no, so, so I said, okay, I can just go and start up my own msp. And like, I'd already seen, like, basically I started that, helped start that msp and there's only three of us in the door and I already seen how much work's involved in like building an msp. So six months into the journey of my own mspr, I, uh, kind of realized the reality was like, I don't want to do this. Such hard work. I want to follow my, I want to follow my passion. Um, and one of the biggest pain points that I had when I was doing the sales role, um, uh, and when I owned msp, I only did it for six months, but it was finding like people that like were looking for IT services. It was easy when I was like sat down in front of them, but I was just finding them in the first place. So for the last eight years, um, I've pretty much had a mission to help transform the way MSPs do their business. And I have solved that problem for MSPS. I've worked for 492 across the whole globe. And so that's a little background to myself. Hunter.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. So I think the Kaseya report just came out, their annual report and sales, uh, marketing legion were once again top of the charts. I think when you know, the kids kind of booming as it was in the pandemic, uh, hiring and recruiting becomes the top problem. But uh, in neutral or worse business conditions, sales and marketing always seems to kind of bubble to the top. So very timely on the episode today. Um, and you know you, you're doing webinars now, but you've also done kind of some content membership sites and helped MSPs kind of, you know, train on the website and SEO and things like that. So you, you've tried a lot of different things with you know, uh, results in you know, kind of different capacities but which have led you to this. So you know, it's not just like you kind of got into webinars, uh, you know, out of some, you know, divine inspiration or anything like that. Uh, it's been, you know, a road of you know, trying various things and kind of understanding what there are, um, and what they, what their capacity to do is. Um, and uh, I think you know, webinars are pretty classic, uh, mid funnel slash, uh, nurture mechanism. But uh, you've really applied them with kind of lead generation as well. Um, so I guess tell us a little bit more about that kind of, you know, what the offer is, you know, what you're doing with webinars, how you're promoting them, things like that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll go into a little bit more of like how I got to this place, I think if that's okay. Yeah, so, uh, you're right. I wouldn't say I've tried everything. I've accomplished a lot in the market and as I say, I've worked with over 492 MSPs at the time of recording. Um, and it's just been a natural progression. I'm m very focused on the content side of things for a number of years and that worked tremendously well. I've seen with video, I've got books on the top the topics. But if you look at content right now, and certainly as we're recording this, everyone's drowning in content. Like there's, there's so much of it. Um, and like after working with all these IT service providers and even when I was doing it myself, like I came to this realization. One of the first questions that I asked, um, when I work with an MSP or an IT service business is like, how have you grown your business today? Like, how have you got your customers, your existing customers? And usually they tell me, oh, we've tried lots of different marketing. None of it really worked. Some of it has. They're using your service, Hunter. But the majority, the core, um, clientele that they've got is being built up on referrals. It's word of mouth referrals, it's people they know, um, in their business network. Um, and it's just that, yeah, that referral structure, that's how it's worked for like 99% of the marketplace. And I always ask this question because it, uh, allows me to reverse engineer. Because really what I'm trying to figure out is like off. They've got this one marketing tactic that they're using. They just need to do that more. But the answer's always been it's never. Is never the marketing or it's rarely the marketing. And what the answer is is yes, those referrals. So if you boil that down, like first principles, logic, um, like Ellen Musk style first principles, what is a referral? What is your business network? Well, it's relationships. Yeah. And yeah, I mean we, we answer that question. It's all about relationships. It's all these relationships that you have one way or another. So if you, if you, if you apply that, like, if you, you look at all of the digital marketing, um, assets and tactics that are available to you, how do you build more relationships? How can you do that via screen? Um, yeah, sure you can, you can do that. Sure you can do that for video. Um, big proponent of that. Yeah, it's very one way. And the issue with it is there's far more interesting topics than managed it, uh, cyber security. So getting the attention, very difficult for video, getting the engagement on your video posts and things like that. So it's become, if I go back six years, it was really easy when I posted up on LinkedIn a video, but now I'm lucky if I get 10 views on a video. And it's not just because I've got gray hair. Um, it's just the, it's the topic, the subjects. There's such huge competition for that attention. So if you look at all these methods that are available to you leveraging digital marketing, one of the ones that you can use is webinars, because that allows you to spark the relationship. Because in webinars, two ways, it's not just one way. I'm hoping it's not just you presenting a slide deck. It's very much an interactive webinar where you're engaging the audience, you're asking them questions, they're asking you questions. So it allows you to uh, initiate that spark of a relationship that the very first step, like the girl at the bar, just that very first step. And we all know, you know, when it comes to managed it just like the girl in the bar analogy, you can't just go up and ask her, sign my managed service agreement, 36 month agreement. This all comes down to trust. So a webinar is the first step to building that trust, is building that relationship. Does that make sense?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I've seen webinars do kind of big things. I worked at a enterprise content management provider for a company that resold laserfish to the government sector. And they did webinars every single week, you, uh, know, regardless of kind of what the attendance was. And I've seen that company, you know, grow 30, $40 million over the past like 10 years.

Speaker B: Um, wow.

Speaker A: And they've, uh, sold out to, you know, a bigger private equity firm and kind of the business has evolved. But you know, they really got their start selling lizard fish to government organizations and running weekly webinars as part of their kind of, you know, sales and, you know, marketing funnel. Since then have expanded services, deepened relationships with customers and things like that. So, um, and you know, surprisingly there, there was both the, um, you know, cold people who are interested. You know, IT services is not the most interesting topic until it is the most interesting top. You know, you got cyber security problems, you got technology problems, and then suddenly people, you know, you've really got their attention. And the webinar is a great way to kind of communicate, uh, the value and give people a preview into your business. Um, and so I've seen webinars, uh, do wondrous things and know that they can, you know, really help sell deals and you know, shorten sales cycles a lot.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But I go back on that, uh, and say you mentioned something. There is like this $40 million company that you did work with. They would do a webinar. Was it every week? Did you say every week? And it didn't matter on attendance. So that's one of the three big, uh, problems with webinars and something that maybe yourself, Hunter, or maybe your audience have experienced in doing webinars. Um, the biggest issues with webinars is getting people to register on them, getting people to actually attend them like they're registered on. And they say, oh, this looks Cool. You know, and then the time comes around and they forget about it. It's maybe not their calendar or maybe it isn't their calendar, but something else has come up or maybe they just can't be bothered. And uh, I've seen me do this myself. Like I write a song since this webinar and it's like, do I really want to spend an hour in this? Nah, I'll forget it. Um, so that, that attendance problem is real. And then the third thing with it, it's like what do you actually sell? Like what's, how do you sell on a webinar? How does a managed IT service provider, what do they do in a webinar to uh, like yeah, cool. There's so many topics you can talk about and educate on, you know, and there's things that you know, your customers talk about and you know that like you, you, you're passionate about and um, but what's actually going to move the dial to get you to that next step. And I'm going to, you know, if we look at it holistically, it's like we mentioned leads and warming a funnel and it's maybe part of a funnel but I'm going to go back to the relationships where it's actually just park all that marketing stuff. It's just about creating a relationship with someone and this is becoming, it's, it's becoming self fulfilling right now. Because if you look at what's happening in the world in regards to AI people are wanting that human connection more than ever. It's, it's about building relationships. So that, that's, yeah, hopefully that gives you some insight there Hunter. But the three big problems we can hit on them the you want. And I, as I say I was myself when I was doing this. Everyone goes through this do a webinar, no one turns up. But uh, guess what, you're still roing it. Hopefully that can go into your, your content marketing that can be repurposed. Um, but there's three huge problems there that I help solve. That's, that's kind of why I'm sitting here today. And that's the big problem that I solve for many of my clients. Until you've done your first one or even your, your tenth one and you realize maybe you are getting people to your webinar, maybe you are getting people to actually attend. But it's still not moving the dial, it's still not getting that next step and what that next step actually looks like. So yeah, that's why it helps all

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely more demand for a human connection. Uh, I know we talk to prospects, you know, that are MSPs, and I'm not going to name the agency, but, uh, you know, we talked to several prospects that are, you know, frustrated with their marketing, you know, efforts, and they, you know, are looking for a marketing solution. But they find a lot of value in kind of the peer group and the connection that. That, you know, agency has. And they're. They really want to hold on to that kind of human connection and be a part of those, you know, uh, essentially friend groups of their peers. That's kind of one of the stickiest parts of, you know, working with them. So that just kind of goes to illustrate the demand for, you know, some people value the kind of human connection over some of their primary outcomes, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's not even about human connection. It's about. It's like just. You go back to, like, tribal, how tribes worked. It's like social proof, social evidence, and just how all that human psychology works. That's just such a. I totally understand why. Oh, yeah, there's these peer groups and they have marketing solutions in them that maybe aren't that effective. But you know what, it doesn't matter because this is my tribe. And that's not. I'm not trying to reference anyone with that name. It's just, it. It's just that psychology, if you look back 12,000 years ago into the past.

Speaker A: Okay, yeah, yeah, totally. Now let's, uh, kind of dive into maybe some of the meta ads component that you have with promoting webinars. Um, you know, like you said, getting that initial attendance and registration and things like that is, you know, one of the first challenges. Um, you know, webinars do take a little bit of time to kind of put together, uh, and run. So you want to have as many people join them as possible. Um, so maybe tell us a little bit about kind of how you're, you know, fueling some attendance with, you know, meta ads. And then I think you're also doing things with outreach to kind of prospect for attendees, uh, as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, cool. I'll give away the golden stuff here. That's cool. So, like, you know, I've got a huge email list. I've got a big audience. I've got, like, over. I finally got over a thousand subscribers on YouTube. It doesn't sound like a lot. That's a lot for me. Yeah, I've got this huge audience. But, um, you can only tap that so much. So if you've already got a CRM and a list. Um, you can only tap that so much when it comes to webinars. Like you can't, you can't be like just saying every, you know, couple of weeks another webinar come along. Gonna get sick of that. Um, so how do you fill that uh, top of funnel And I've experimented with many types of ad platforms. I know Hunter, you're obviously Google Ads is your thing. Um, and I guess it's a little bit different when it comes to webinars because it's not. People aren't looking for a webinar about IT security or um, the AI topic. It's not the type of thing people would be searching on the search.

Speaker A: It would be too expensive.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because Google pretty high cost.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's just like the volume would be really low and you know there'd be much big players in that space. So think about, there's really only two sort of channels that you could go after from the paid and that would be LinkedIn or Meta. And you mentioned meta there. I'm a big fan of it. Um, maybe not so much Mark Zuckerberg but I've experimented with both LinkedIn and meta multiple thousands of dollars and um, meta is far more powerful than LinkedIn for the average small business. Doesn't matter, doesn't even matter if you're an IT business. LinkedIn seem to me seems to be more geared towards the enterprise and certainly when I'm, if you look at your feed on LinkedIn, um, if you like what to go on it right now and if you look for the first promoted post and who's on there, it's probably not a small to medium sized business. The reason for that. Yeah so for me I'm looking at right now, um, it's insurance, ah company called Hiscox. It's the first ad that comes up. Um, LinkedIn is for the big boys. You need achieve like four to ten times the ad budget to advertise LinkedIn to make app active however.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: And that, that's why I've experienced with like my own like money in doing this. I haven't used any client money for doing that because it's just crazy. So, so uh, because of that I just, you know I, I really dialed it down into meta and Meta is very good at uh, finding your ideal type of client. Okay. So if you're a generalist IT provider and most of us are okay we admit it or not, there's maybe a few that are in dental or you know Healthcare specifically, bigger guys. Most of us say we're into one vertical, but we're probably generalists. They'll take any business and that's cool. But when it comes to advertising on Meta, if you can dial down to a very specific, uh, industry, very specific niche, you will find that you can get exactly who you want to your webinar. And I do this all the time for my clients and for my own business, um, over time the cost goes down. So if you're brand new to Meta or if you potentially been burnt in the past, um, you'll find that you will pay more. But over time, the algorithm, the way it works, you no longer have to put any targeting in, not even the age or the sex or uh, any demographics or any interests. All the targeting is done in the ad creative and the landing page. Meta basically figures out through machine learning who to show the ad to, who's most likely to click on it, who's most likely to go to the landing page, and who's most likely to actually convert on that landing page and fill in the form. So with machine learning and the audiences it has, because it has Facebook groups for like every type industry that already has all that data, uh, it can go right down into that specific article. So the, the point you need to be doing here is doing, using dog whistle copy. So in your ad copy and your ad creative, calling out specifically who it is you want to come to the webinar, okay, that is the target scene right there. Um, same on your landing edge. And then you actually want to, on your landing page, you want to, you want to filter out who it's not for. Okay, so there's types of like, you know, uh, we were speaking just now, Hunter, I was doing this for you. There's types of IT businesses. We don't want to come along to this, to our webinars. We don't want potentially the break fix, you know, providers. We don't want the guys that are service and residential it. We're looking for, you know, the guys that you know and girls that have a, you know, a managed IT service businesses. So you want to, you want to specifically say who it's for and you want to basically spell out who it's not for. And if you're into the Dan Kennedy side side of things, um, he's, that's what he's all about. I mean he, in, in all of his content that he did over the years. You look at the really big MSB marketing companies, um, who actually their whole, their whole business is Actually modeled on Dan Kennedy.

Speaker A: Okay, familiar with him, but ah, apparently I'll have to take a look.

Speaker B: Magnetic marketing. Direct mail. Three pieces of mail, stamps, envelopes. Who copies that in the MSP space or who did copy in the MSP space? Yeah, so, but if you look at their content, it actually has a political angle to it. So it actually filters out a specific political view in the content. This is what Dan did all the time. Now I'm not saying we apply that here to us because like yeah, I'm happy to take on any customer. I don't care about your political views, but that's how dialed down it was. Um, so if you can think about. Okay, if you're working, let's say we're working with accountants. Yeah. What type of accountants do you guys love working with? There's like, there's obviously the one man bands. Yeah, probably you don't want to be working with them. You want to be working with 10 plus, you know, bigger organization. But there'll be certain types of accountancy practices or tax and practices that you love working with and then there's ones you can avoid. So you can spell that out in your landing page. It works well. So because you need to have that filter in the copy avoid lead forms, make sure the ads go to landing page. Meta will try and tempt you into getting a higher amount of people to your uh, conversing leads. Uh, the issue with that though is the leads will be really rubbish. Will be crap. Especially in meta where like your grandma or your uncle can, can be looking in the timeline and they'll accidentally click the form that auto populates and fills. So make sure you've got that little filter stuff in there for um, um for a landing page that's important. Otherwise you will get a lot of junk. Um, you'll pay a higher cost per lead, but it'll be a much better type of lead. Um, so that answers question one, question two, the organic piece. What I found is working really well at the moment on LinkedIn. This is, this is a new tactic to me. I've only tried it, I've tested uh, it actually just this week. The theory was put to me by a girl called Sam here in the UK. She's like one of these LinkedIn experts and but if you create an event on LinkedIn for your webinar and then like have your URL to your webinar, your team's link or whatever it might be, um, when you create that event on LinkedIn, you can actually um, invite up to a thousand of your connections every single week to the event. So when you go into the event to edit, to manage it, there's an option to invite and there's like, like a list of all your contacts you can invite to this and um, you can filter it by industry, location, all those types of filters. And as soon as I sit at my desk I go through a hundred um, invites. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Um, so the one that I'm running on Tuesday next week, um, I've had five days of doing this um, and I've got over 50. It's like, it's almost at 60. So 57 I think attendees coming to this webinar, um, because I've done this invite request thing on LinkedIn and the only issue with it is people will see the notification to say, oh yeah, Scott's invited me to this webinar, it looks cool, I'll press the attend button. So they basically just have to press a little button, say they're going to attend. The issue with that though is it's on the LinkedIn platform. So unless um, they're on LinkedIn at the time the webinars happen. Happening, they're not going to remember. Yeah, luckily you get a list of all the attendees. So as part of my morning ritual once I've done my invites I, I'll go to see who said that they're going to attend and I just send them a little message say hey, I see you are going to, you know, you registered onto the, onto the event uh, for Tuesday. Can you just send me your email address so that I can um, send you the teams invite? Simple as that. Uh, and that means I can actually put them in to my, onto my, my team's meeting or my team my webinar depending on how I'm doing it. And it means there's a much higher chance of them actually coming along and because they have the actual meeting calendar link in their, in their calendar. So that's a little tip there Hunter. Um, on and it's working really well. The um, issue with it though is that it's manual like you have to do this, you know, every morning and then do these follow ups as well. So I'm baking this in. I've got a VA that's going to be doing it for my clients basically so that if I manage their webinars they have this LinkedIn organic push as well. So you can have both the ads, um, and I'm happy to talk about some of the results from the ads and the organic push. But yeah, the one that choose is purely organic and it's looking good.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a kind of a good lesson from the fitness industry. Ah, kind of reaching out to your engagers. I don't know if you follow any, you know, fitness influencers or anything like that on Instagram, but if you like one of their posts, they're definitely going to reach out to you and, uh, say, like, are you trying to, you know, lose any weight or, you know, you know, it as kind of silly and it is silly as it kind of is, and even, you know, maybe a little frustrating, it does get you on people's radar because, like, even if you don't necessarily want to be pitched like that, it, it, you know, I know it subconsciously helps me remember people if they've, you know, reached out after I've engaged with their posts and kind of, you know, has a little bit of a stickiness to the relationship because just getting invited to something is something that, uh, in itself, uh, helps strengthen a relationship, even if you don't necessarily. Even if your prospects don't take, uh,

Speaker B: you up on it.

Speaker A: Um, so, yeah, you know, the invites to the engagers or the, the outreach to the engagers, like, you know, in itself is a, uh, warm outreach.

Speaker B: You know, it's a huge, it's a huge lever that I've only just learned.

Speaker A: Yeah, I, I would love to do more of that, and I can definitely see how it has some value. And, uh, I think maybe two of it might be good just to set some context for these, uh, meta ads and things like that that you're running. Um, uh, so, so I think you're helping people get, you know, roughly like $8 cost per lead, I think is

Speaker B: what maybe you've told me in the

Speaker A: past or what, what's, what's like kind of a ballpark cost per lead for these webinar attendees and registrations.

Speaker B: That sounds like a sales call because it's always the question. It's like, oh, what's my fee for managing the webinar? And it's, oh, how much should I be spending on the ad scuff? And that's something that we plan out as part of the, uh, engagement. And the, it's the reason you can't just like, usually just pull. I can't just pull off. The tip of my tongue is there's quite a few factors that come into it. The first factor, or the biggest one is if you've been running meta ads at all or if you've done them in the past. Like if you've got an ad account or if you're starting from fresh, you're going to pay. If you're starting from fresh or if you haven't, like run a meta ad in a number of years you're going to be paying probably around about $45 per lead. And um, that's kind of, you know, at the time recording May 2026. And I've got a few managed clients like this where I'm managing their webinars and their ads. Um, they're paying 45 bucks per click. But over time, over a 90 day period that uh, comes right down once we pushed enough through the algorithm. And the algorithm basically the way it works, like it has to get over a learning phase. The learning phase lasts maximum of seven days and it has to have 50 uh, conversions within that first seven days. If we can't meet that criteria then it does not get past the learning. So it's important when you first start out with this that you get past that learning phase because then the machine, ah, learning behind the scenes can figure out exactly who to show your ads to. And it just gets better over time. Um, so they vary completely. Like I've take, I've take, I've got work for my client right now. He's, he's been doing webinars for the last, he's been following my content, he's in my school group and he's been following my system and he's been doing it for you know, the last three or four months. And so his lead costs 25 bucks at the moment. So it's like half almost of that 45. And that's because he's, he's been doing it for a few months. Um, I've been doing it for two years. I haven't, you know, I've learned a lot of lessons in the last two years of doing this. Um, and within those lessons, one of the things that I've learned when it comes to the cost is that it does vary. But speaking from experience, and this is internal results, this is not results I've got for my clients yet. But this is where I'm going to be getting some of my best clients too. Your um, lead costs can get as low as five bucks, which is great. There are a few facets, it's really good. But there are a few things within them. So the first one is that even though the low you can get, say for example like the web, the best webinar did was in December 2025. I had 81 people registered onto it. The cost for me was like 350 bucks. Um, 30 people turned up to it. So I usually get around about 30% attendance to my webinar. Um, and then I got five from it. So like five people took the next step. None of them bought. None of them bought. However, there was one that registered on and didn't attend. He became a customer. So it's not always about who actually attends the webinars, what you do with the people that registered on, the contact information. And you have to, you have to like look at, okay, if you're getting $5 a lead, like am I scrutinizing this list? Yes, I did. I'm like, realistically, who in here is actually a business that I want to work with? You know, looking at their website, looking at how many employees they have in the LinkedIn, the amount of revenue they're probably generating. So from uh, that five bucks per lead, it was probably more like 15 bucks per lead. Um, because about a third of the, it was probably only about one third of the people that registered on were actually, you know, the right type of the business for me. But to me, 15 bucks per lead for the ideal business. That's a warm opt in. It's not just like a list that I've downloaded are scraped from somewhere. These are people that are wanting to hear from me and they want to spend like an hour with me. Alan, um, will pay that all day long for 15 bucks, you know, so. Yeah, hopefully that answers your question. Yeah, sure.

Speaker A: And I think it's you know, good to also kind of set some context. Like you know, if you're running Google Ads, you know, you might be paying a thousand dollars per lead at the very, very low end. Um, and that's with like everything dialed in and you might be more in the 2,000 to 2,500, you know, per ah, range per lead for like high intent kind of, you know, sales ready leads. So like, you know, it's one of those things, but those are all inbound and it's kind of almost a cultural thing. So like if you're an MSP that's a little bit more of an outbound focused organization and have the tools and the you know, str outreach or you just want to kind of be working on a more high volume basis. Right, right. You know, because there, there's a lot of pressure on those leads that come in from kind of Google Ads to you know, you know, bring those home because of the cost. Um, so you know, I, I do think like you know, there, there's a, a lot of benefit to getting that higher volume, you know, lower cost, sort of, you know, growth in contacts through this sort of webinar, uh, advertising type approach. You know, even if, you know, like they don't attend the webinar, you've got people that at least have some form of intent and it's, it's what you do with those contacts because there's a long tail. Even if people attend the webinar and don't buy immediately, that doesn't mean they're not going to buy over a 12 to 18 month time frame. And you're keeping in contact with a good way to kind of, you know, get the pipeline, uh, a more robust pipeline kind of scaled up.

Speaker B: Exactly. It's all about the pipeline. That's exactly what this is. Building pipeline infrastructure. That's what this is.

Speaker A: Why don't you maybe tell us a little bit more about kind of, you know, some of the SDR slash, uh, outreach stuff that, you know, this, this is part of your offer. If, you know, if I'm sure that you can work with MSPs if they have their own outreach people. But if those MSPs don't necessarily want to do the outreach, y' all have an outreach component as well, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, I can, I can go into that a little bit. So I don't do SDRs, I don't do outreach. I never have, Never have. I've always been about inbound, always been about people coming to me or people coming to my customers. It's never about pestering people, trying to, you know, interrupt their day. Okay, um, so it's never about that. It's like, that's not a good way to start off a relationship. You just don't want to do that. And that's why like you look at the cold call side of things. And I mean, I think a stat that Mr. Gillette was talking about, one of his podcasts, is like something like, uh, yeah, you'll pretty much do cold calling for an entire month to get one, like proper, you know, someone in the diary that's actually going to buy from you. And going back to your point on the uh, you know, the search side of things, the Google Ads side of things, that's obviously a much bigger intent. That's when people are in pain, that's when they're wanting to, uh, when they need a new IT provider, they're looking for that fix. And so that's much further down the funnel. So um, from the webinar side, it's Very much about. It's a digital networking tool. Um, but it's building that pipeline. But from an SDR perspective, the way that. So to kind of take it 180 degrees from interrupting someone's day is that basically they're interrupting my phone or one of my VA's phones and they go, oh, no, someone's registered onto our webinar. Guess what we're going to have to do now? I'm going to have to text them to say, um. So you'd register onto the webinar. Um, just interested. What, you know, what's, what's, why did you register? What was the, uh, interest in this topic? It's about starting that conversation and it's very much manual. It's a text and it's just to basically find out why they registered on to personalize the webinar for them to warm them up so that there's a much higher likelihood that they actually attend the webinar. So that's the SDR function. Um, here. So we've got a resource based out in Cambodia. Um, siem reap m that as soon as someone registers onto the webinar and if you follow Alex Mosey, he says, speak to lead. You know, within five to ten minutes they get just a little message back saying, hey, thought you're registered on. Interested in why you. Why you're registered on. How can we make this cool webinar for you? So, yeah, that's that. Yeah, so that's, that's the, the, the, the pre, um, STR approach and the post one got a framework that we use again in the texts where we've got. Basically you've got different types of contacts M. So you've got the guys that. And girls that attended the webinar. They're obviously going to be warmer. From an attendance report in teams, you can see how long we stuck around for. And you've got the guys and girls that missed the webinar for one reason or another. They've got basically a chat framework on the text just to say, hey, you know, you know, how did you find the webinar? You got any feedback for us? And then we just go through a little bit of a chat with them. I feel like maybe you're, you're, uh, your fitness influencers, um, where they're, they're, they're reaching out, unfortunately. I mean, if you look at me, I don't follow any fitness influence, so I haven't experienced that myself. Um, but to say it's one of these huge levers like in doing content for so long, like, yeah, it's like, silly. Why would I not be reaching out to the people that engage in what I'm doing? So, yeah, hopefully that answers your question, Hunter.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, hey, there's a lot of lessons to be learned from the fitness industry because it's brutally competitive, uh, high volume and all that other stuff. But so I think maybe, uh, one thing I want to touch on is like. Like what, what sort of frequency are you recommending for these webinars? Because this isn't something you just want to like, let's build up to the one big webinar and then do the one big webinar. This is something that, you know, you want to be hosting these regularly and kind of keep the pipeline and the flywheel turning. Um, so what sort of frequency are you recommending for these webinars for your clients? Um, tell us a little bit more about that.

Speaker B: So, yeah, um, going back to the health and fitness guys and girls, um, it's very much like a muscle webinar. The more you work it out, the better it'll get. Um, and I've been doing this, well, I can say two and a half years now. Um, I've been doing webinars for 12 years, but I really zoomed in two and a half years, and I'm still learning things, um, about webinars. And because of that, a lot will depend on where you are with your business. So, you know, for most MSPs, it's going to be the owner more than likely, or it's going to be the head of sales that's going to be doing the, uh, webinar. So a lot's going to say, how does that schedule m your business? So what I try and do with these is for my clients, the managed webinars is. It's almost like a black box. So they basically start work with me. There's going to be two or three hours worth of work where we've figured out what the presentation is going to be, what the topic's going to be, um, who we're looking to get to the webinar. And then we go through that a couple of, couple of times. My colleague Anne Marie does all of that work where we actually develop the content. And she, she translates it from basically the, uh, you know, from that techie speak in our heads, um, and through our teams to actually what our customers get, our products can actually understand. And so she helps develop the presentations. But this black, this black box, black box approach is once we're over that initial hurdle, um, you literally just have to turn up. No matter how busy your schedule is, there is at least an hour either every month, every two weeks, every quarter, where you're actually coming up to the webinar and doing it. A lot will depend on where the business is. Um, I would start with this monthly. That's what m. I suggest for this. I was doing it weekly, and it was too much. And the focus there was. There wasn't enough focus. It was more like too much of a routine, if that makes sense to start. Monthly is where I place this. And there's obviously going to be seasonal components to this as well. So are you going to do a webinar in December? Well, I actually have my best webinar in December. Um, so I probably will be doing one in December again, just based on that, um, based on that experience. But I was looking not to objectively. I'd be like, no, um, so you're going to have to test. I know some of the clients that I'm working with right now. You're like, yeah, July, he's out. Scott can't do July. You know, for obvious reasons. That's cool. But in the back of my head, I'm like, I'm thinking, like, what to me in December. And I'm also thinking when I was doing it sales back in 2012, um, I was still sat at my desk, I was still in the office, and I was having to try, you know, get the business in, you know, have that pipeline there. And it was really difficult. So in my head it's like, yeah, July is probably not a great month to do a webinar. But actually, there's a really good reason why I should, is because of that lack of pipeline or lack of real world activity that's going on, you're going to capture people through the organic piece or the ads piece. You capture people there. So, yeah, I would stick the monthly. And don't give yourself excuses in regards to seasonality because the market's the market. And the only way that you're going to know what the market wants is if you actually go and do one.

Speaker A: Hey, I've gotten some of my, uh, better leads over the years in July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. And those, those seasons are slow because everybody is kind of taking vacations, things like that, during those time frames. But the people who aren't taking, uh, vacations over those time frames have big problems that they're willing to spend to get solved. Because they want to go take vacation.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. So you just never know, so yeah,

Speaker A: yeah, I like the monthly cadence. We're trying to do a few webinars every here as well. And I think a webinar is also like a really good way to kind of like you know, uh, create a little bit more process and structure in your, in your sales um, process. And I think that government contractor, that was one of the you know, best things that they had about their sales process was like, you know they're, they had a clear next step of like let's not try and get people to a sales conversation right away. Like when we've established contact, our main goal is to get them to a webinar. Um, and you know that helps kind of and then like you can you know, do a little bit more m. Measurability from like establish contact, attended the webinar sales demo booked, you know, whatever it is and then close deal from there. Whereas a lot of people kind of don't, a lot of MSPs really don't have a material mid funnel. Um, they you know, have the outbound outreach, the first touches, the cold touches and they might have the bottom of funnel stuff but there really is no kind of mid funnel like relationship building phase things like that. Um, and you know the webinars are great for that.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I would, I would say onto that like this is going. We've kind of, we've covered some of the registration piece and how to solve that. We haven't really touched on the attendance piece. But that third piece where it comes to what you're actually doing in the webinar, is it going to be a sales call? Um, what's it going to be and going back to your government ah, client and what they were doing. There's a few ways that you can play this. What I'm finding that's working well quite now in the webinars for my clients. Um, and uh, yeah we're aware that the people coming to the webinars are probably not in a position where they're ready to switch MSP immediately and it's just not going to happen. Um, you might get really lucky but you know it's one of those things where it's part of your nurture. What we are finding is working quite well and this is the, obviously the AI opportunity where a lot of the MSP market, the guys and girls haven't actually seen the opportunity. They don't understand that this is a huge opportunity right now because they're under the desks turning something on and off. There's this big AI opportunity So the smartest clients that I've got, what they're doing is they're not actually selling managed IT services in their webinars or cyber security. The hot topics AI that gets people to the webinar because they want to see, you know, what the cool thing is with AI. Every is on everyone, tip of everyone's tongue. But more importantly, it's the Trojan horse for the managed IT services. So they go in the webinar.

Speaker A: I like that.

Speaker B: Yeah, they have like a, it's basically, it's three, it's three options, it's like a packet, three different packages. They've got three offers. There's a free offer, um, there is like a, you know, a low ticket offer and then there's a higher engagement offer all around AI, um, and that is getting a lot of, um, what's the word? It's working very well. And it basically because they're putting this offer in their webinar and they're taking up, you know, a small Trojan horse AI project. That one project at like three grand or whatever is paying for the ads. It's paying for Scott and Anne Marie IT rock stars, it's paying for the whole pipeline and it's also their foot in the door. So once they've done, when they've done a great job on that AI project, the Trojan horse, that's when they can start the conversation about, let's have a look at what your IT people are actually doing. You know, are you actually secure? That's, that's what's working right now. So it's, it's not, it's not selling the managed IT services. Um, it's very much taking a different approach and looking at what people are actually what they want, not necessarily what they need, but what they want. Um, and then giving them what they need later on.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. And it solves the problem a lot of, you know, MSPs have and that, you know, they just kind of can't afford to grow. In some cases, you know, they, this kind of pipeline that's like multi channel and full funnel, uh, is just not something that they can kind of afford. So like having a, you know, uh, way to build these relationships, way to generate these leads in a way that can recoup the cost of generating them in the near term is one of the, you know, biggest challenges many businesses face. Not just msps, um, but certainly in the MSP sector. I think that's one of the reasons, you know, Hormozi has been very popular is because he's a big advocate of kind of taking, you know, that approach with like, a larger, ah, fixed fee kind of upfront projects that you can, you know, you sell that and recoup your customer acquisition costs.

Speaker B: So, yeah, you're good. You give them an offer that's too, you know, they're, they're. They would be stupid to refuse. Yeah, that's why they feel stupid refusing. So. Yeah, that's exactly what it's about.

Speaker A: Okay, well, I know we're kind of, you know, running up on our, our time here, so we might have to get you back for a future episode to tell us a little bit more about, you know, running the actual webinars. But, uh, I think it's, uh, you know, covered some good stuff here with how to kind of acquire the leads and, you know, follow up and kind of get the, you know, pipeline element full. Um, so definitely reach out to Scott here if you want to talk with him and brainstorm a little bit more about, uh, running your specific webinar or coming up with content. I'm sure he's got a lot of great things to say there. We'll definitely get his information, uh, in the show. Notes for you. Uh, Scott, anything else you want to add before we sign off here?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's not about the webinar. It's about building a sales pilot room for you guys and girls out there. So, yeah, um, check me out. Uh, we've got a book hunter you're in. Should maybe mention it.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: You do have that citation in the book. It's called Virtually Irresistible. You can find it in all good bookstores. Um, but it's all about. It's the MSP's guide to webinars. So that's where I would start with this. It's the mechanics, though. It's like all the things that we've kind of already covered. The thing that we haven't covered is what you do in the webinar and how it's delivered. But that's for another episode. Okay.

Speaker A: Yeah. Awesome. Take a look, uh, at the book again. Virtually irresistible, MSPs guide to webinars. And check out Scott with it. Rockstars, Scott, for. Thank you for joining the podcast. Uh, we'll see you next time.

Speaker B: Thanks.