Author Archives for Josh Krafchin

Joint webinars can be a gold mine. Not only do you give your audience added value but you get access to another company’s audience to boot.

Producing successful joint webinars takes some work but is ultimately worth it. Here’s our list of highest priority action items with some reminders to keep you on track.

1. List your webinar partner dream lineup

When we started the Clever Zebo joint webinar series earlier this year, I was skeptical that CEOs and founders would take time out of their crammed days to work on a webinar together, even if we had a relationship. Many joint webinars and hundreds of participants later, I was wrong. Over and over again I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how willing awesome, fast-growing companies are to team up. Start by contacting any friends you have at companies you admire (or ask friends to recommend companies to team up on a webinar with). All you need is 1 or 2 joint webinars under your belt to start reaching out to bigger and bigger companies.

2. Pitch prospective partners with a good topic

The hardest part of a joint webinar is choosing a topic interesting and relevant to both companies. Because we don’t want to invite direct competitors, this can be tricky. In our webinar series, the primary theme is conversion optimization and a/b testing, so I find case studies relevant to both us and the partner (Wistia: does video improve conversion rates?;
Help Scout: how customer service improves conversion rates; ReTargeter: the impact of different banner ads, etc.) The point is come prepared with a great topic when reaching out.

3. All they need to do is invite their people

This is the most important part. The true value of joint webinars is in getting access to your partner’s database (and them getting access to yours). Do everything else for them but make it a condition of joining the webinar that they reach out to their database. Unless they have an enormous social following, social media mentions aren’t enough. Get them agree to send a dedicated email (newsletter inclusion is an okay alternative but usually doesn’t pull as well).

4. Stay on top of your partners

People get busy. Don’t assume anything will get done unless you push. Here’s what I do to keep partners on point:

– Send a check list at least two weeks before the event.
– Send at least 2 reminders/check-ins per action item
– Add Google Analytics UTM parameters to the registration link so I know when their people register
– Do an audio-visual check a few days before and verbally review all their todos

5. Expand your recruiting

Now that you’ve produced 1 or 2 successful joint webinars, it’s time to ramp up your efforts.

– Put together a kick-ass recruiting email that talks benefits of their participation
– Research 25 companies that would be a good partner (regardless of size)
– Email and social media bug those companies

6. Create amazing webinars

Most company’s webinars suck — it’s just a voice speaking over a boring PowerPoint.
Add video and music, ask your audience lots of questions, run polls and show the results, spend a little extra time in
the research process to extract real value-add insights.

Wanna see how it’s done? Register for Clever Zebo’s next webinar.

A week ago during a Clever Zebo retreat with Igor in the remarkably beautiful hills of Big Sur, I came to a few startling realizations pulled together from across my life — they span philosophy of science, cosmology, technology, social interaction, organization systems, and the nature of consciousness to name a few. If you’re interested in these thoughts, keep reading. And if you’re wondering what any of this has to do with online marketing, read to the end.

1. I am conscious of being conscious, and I hunger for experience.

2. To the best of my knowledge, my consciousness cannot (yet) survive without my physical body. Thus, minimizing potential risk to my physical body is of paramount importance.

3. Just as an electron appears a point when measured but is really a field of potential states, my consciousness appears a point in the fabric of humanity but is too a field.

4. My consciousness animates my body but is not bounded only by my physical body.

5. My consciousness, an infinite field of consciousness, can meld with other consciousnesses. Talking, loving, relating, fearing, helping, thinking about are all ways of describing the joint field generated by my consciousness joining with another.

6. My consciousness is limitless in what it can comprehend. It can contain the entire spectrum of human experience, past and present. Thus, every accomplishment another consciousness makes is my accomplishment when I become conscious of it.

7. In all the observable universe, the only other beings I can find conscious of their own consciousness are human beings.

8. Human beings were born on Earth from an ancient process called nature. Although nature (apart from humans) is not conscious of its consciousness, for the gift of consciousness we owe nature infinite gratitude. Thus, I feel a sacred duty to protect and care for nature.

9. Although the knowledge upon which my consciousness draws is spawned from my physical body and thus its immediate environs, the field of my consciousness is, at a nearly incomprehensible level, joined by the consciousnesses of all other humans. Because I do not know if their consciousness perishes when their body dies, I have an incentive not only to prevent human death and not only to foster the birth of new human beings, but it is deeply in my interest to foster the expansion of the consciousness of other humans.

10. Because my consciousness is precious and because my consciousness comprises and expands with the totality of human being, the assured future flourishing of my consciousness depends on the well-being of humanity.

11. Humanity is too vulnerable. Life-threatening disease, weapons, collisions with extra-terrestrial objects, high energy bursts from dying stars are capable of greatly diminishing or even destroying human being. Thus, it in my interest to expand humanity’s potential for survival.

12. Human survival lies in our ability to live more harmoniously together on this planet and colonize additional planets inside this solar system and without.

13. Everything permissible by the laws of physics (known or unknown) is accomplishable by consciousness.

14. Everything we need to survive and flourish in this universe is abundant. There is enough hydrogen, oxygen, metals, and other materials in this solar system to support hundreds of billions of conscious beings living harmoniously together and expanding our reach outward.

15. Accomplishment is a networked system familiarly represented by a figurehead but existent in reality only in the fabric of consciousness (Einstein’s equations are meaningless without others to interpret, modify, contemplate, and use them. Jobs’ iPhone would be trash without its consumers.) Thus, accomplishment is fundamentally and necessarily a shared phenomenon.
16. Communication methods among consciousnesses is infinitely diverse, and new methods are constantly invented.

17. The rate of consciousness expansion is accelerating. Every consciousness knowingly or unknowingly contributes to this expansion. While the lessons of history frame the paths forward, the future can be anything, even the most lustrous vision of our most brilliant dreams.

Imagine for a second a world with unlimited access to unlimited energy, food, information, and materials.

This is the world we live in.

The seeming scarcity flowing about us (poverty, starvation, etc.) is not a necessary feature of our world. Scarcity is the by-product of poor human systems and ignorance.

Through the explosion of democracy and capitalism, we are witnessing an unprecedented explosion of coordinated creation. The fabric of this explosion is communication, knowledge transfer, dispelling ignorance.

While communication can be a weapon for maintaining the stranglehold of scarcity and perpetuating ignorance, we have the power to use this tool for something more wonderful.

Our businesses are the outpouring of our consciousness, and we can choose how we’ll spread the knowledge we create. Sure, you can see an online marketing program as just a way to make a buck, or you can see it for what it is — a key catalyst for the inter-connection, exploration, and collaboration of consciousness. When we see our businesses as critical constituents in the infinite expansion of consciousness and align ourselves with a dedication to tapping the reality of abundance, how can we not succeed?

(Note: Recent influences for this post include David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity, Brian Green’s The Hidden Reality, and a keynote speech by Robert Verzola.)

It’s really easy to get frustrated, discouraged, stressed out, and/or upset building a business online. In any given week, I experience all of the above …

… but I don’t give up.

If you want success and think communicating online will somehow achieve it, then I have two words of advice: “Keep Trying!”

When we started Clever Zebo, we made a commitment to grow our business the way we help our clients (through online marketing!). So just as we advise clients, we’re going after it.

Partnerships, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, retargeting, webinars, a marketing automation program, SEO, social, etc. At first, it was slow-going:

At many points along the way, it’s been tempting to throw our hands in the air and give up on marketing ourselves. But A) we’re committed to growing this business and B) we want to do it the way we preach.

So we keep trying, keep testing, keep giving it our best. As a business person and as a human being, there just isn’t more you can ask of yourself.

If you feel like you’re about to give up but know there’s more you can do if only you could get that second or tenth wind, call me — I’d love to get you pumped up.