Q: Greg referred me to you for assistance with pricing our one-hour webinars. These are ILT. In the past, we have offered some for free and others that cost $89. For Spring 2014, I am doing a Workforce Wednesday Webinar series whereby we offer a webinar every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month. I don’t necessarily want to intermingle them, so I’ve decided to charge for all of them this next round. We get great response on our free ones, but hardly any registrations for the ones that we charged $89 for in the past. I’ll paste a sample below for you. I’d like to find a reasonable price whereby people are willing to pay individually if their companies will not cover. But, I don’t want it to sound cheap whereby they don’t think it has substance.
What are your thoughts and/or what are other workforce divisions charging?
BUSC 2432: Leading Effective Meetings Fee: $89
Improve your awareness of meeting management skills. Enhance your effectiveness in planning and leading meetings resulting in better decisions and more efficient use of time.
W SEPT 11 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM WO
BUSC 2591: Solving Tomorrow’s Problem Today! FREE
Have you ever gone through your day with a constant stream of problems or issues that need immediate solutions? We've been taught that switching into problem solving mode relieves our anxiety about the problem, but remaining in this mode can cause more problems than it solves! In this webinar, you will learn how to align problem solving to your personal values. You will practice setting goals that will help solve problems with minimal stress, learn how to enjoy more of your day, and most importantly - break the problem solving cycle and increase personal satisfaction.
W AUG 21 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM WO
COMM 2102: Grammar Refresher Webinar Fee: $89
This webinar is designed to provide a review of the parts of speech, subject verb-agreement, verbs and their tenses, strong sentence structure and pronoun usage.
W SEPT 25 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM WO
W NOV 13 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM WO
COMM 2104: Netiquette Webinar Fee: $89
This webinar explores the rules for proper online communications.
T DEC 3 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM WO
COMM 2105: Basics of Public Relations Writing Fee: $89
This webinar reviews the basic components of public relations with emphasis placed on writing press releases and pitching to the media.
W OCT 2 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM WO
BUSC 2588: Tablet Talk FREE
Tablet computers are changing the world around us. These devices are helping us communicate better and be more productive at home, at work and on the road. Gain an introduction to these exciting devices; learn about the core features and functionality of the devices and how they can help you be more connected and productive in your everyday life.
W AUG 7 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM WO
M NOV 25 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM WO
A: Thank you for your question. It is intriguing. LERN has had a similar kind of situation. We offer both free and paid webinars. The free webinars are very well attended, and the paid webinars have struggled. That said, Suzanne Kart, our Associate VP who handles our marketing has had some excellent success this year in getting better attendance at our paid offerings--and she raised the prices from $49 to $89. Not only did enrollments not go down--they went up!
I think there are a couple of things going on here:
1. The topics for the webinars she has offered as paid have been topics that are very compelling and which attract participation because they are areas where people are looking for more information, and that information is hard to get easily elsewhere.
2. She has selected top-rate presenters. The people who are presenting these webinars are accomplished experts, and that is critical to people who are making a decision to attend.
3. She had a solid marketing strategy to promote the webinars and to continue to followup with people who were good targets to attend. This is a critical point, and something you might want to know more about. I think it is the promotion, more than the pricing, that has been the difference. I am going to cc Suzanne on this email, and if she has any suggestions for you on promotion, I will ask her to send those along.
All that said, it is also true that it is difficult to make money with webinars. They are offered for free by so many organizations as a way to generate sales leads that there is a reluctance on the part of some people to pay for them. As you examine your webinar strategy, you might want to explore ways that you can use them as a promotion tool to generate income from other aspects of your program, rather than looking at webinars as a solid revenue stream.
I don't really have much information on what other organizations charge for their webinars. I will post that question in LinkedIn and see if we can get some response. If you are not a member of our LinkedIn group, let me know and I will add you.