After getting burnt out with live launching, Kendra Perry has decided to give evergreen funnel a try. Although it requires less energy to execute, it might not yield the results you are looking for. In this episode, she explains how to prepare recorded webinars to generate leads and attract clients. Kendra also discusses how to make such content truly impactful and engaging, from the optimal length to go for and the right way to shift beliefs depending on your business niche.
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Lessons From The Journey Of Building An Evergreen Funnel And Running My Own Facebook Ads
I’m pumped for this episode because what I’m hoping with this episode is you will see that building a business requires a lot of failures. I’m not immune to that. I fail a lot. The journey I’ve been on to build an evergreen funnel and run my own Facebook ads has been littered with many lessons and failures. I’m hoping what you will get out of this episode is how I have worked through it and how I have stayed the course on something that I easily could have given up on.
Maybe what will help first is to define what an evergreen funnel is. Evergreen means something that is always available. When we think of Instagram content, it is not evergreen. People aren’t going to find your posts years down the line. Technically they could, but that is not how people behave on Instagram. You make a post and after a few days, it usually is gone versus a podcast episode. This lives on forever. People often do go back and listen to old podcast episodes.
When we’re talking about an evergreen funnel, this is the way in which I want to sell my program, Health Coach Accelerator, without having to be physically involved. My goal is to build something called an Evergreen Webinar Funnel as the main way that I sell Health Coach Accelerator. What this looks like is I send traffic or people to a recorded webinar. It is not live. It is recorded. I provide value and give away all kinds of great things. In the end, I present my program, Health Coach Accelerator, offer people a discount, and tell them to buy. That is followed up with an email sequence that helps people make an empowered decision about the program. It helps them get all the information they need so they can decide if they want to join the program or not.
The great benefit of doing this is that you are not live launching, doing a free challenge, or doing a live webinar. It is a lot less energy. A lot of business owners want the evergreen funnel. There are a lot of misconceptions about it. A lot of people think it is easy. They were like, “That is going to take a bit of time, but I need to do this. I turn it on, and it works.” That is not how it works.
If anyone makes you think that this type of selling strategy is easy, I will run because a lot of energy goes into this. This is a lot of work to set up. Even once it’s working, it is not like you walk away, go to the spa, and never look at it. You are constantly having to tinker with it and improve things. For me, it has been a long, painful journey. I haven’t talked a lot about this because I have been frustrated by it, but it is valuable to talk about these things because this is what business can be.
The reason why evergreen is more difficult is that there are a lot of moving parts, automation, and techs involved, but there is a lack of energy. There is something about live events that are more engaging. My recorded webinar could never compare to me hosting a live event. If you watch my evergreen webinar, you would be like, “That is great.”
If you were at a live event with me, it would be an entirely different experience. There would be energy, excitement, and engagement. You would walk away from that event being changed forever. It would be life-changing versus, like, “Is my evergreen webinar going to change your life forever?” Maybe in some ways, but you are not going to be remembering that on your deathbed. I would love for you, but I don’t think that is what is going to happen. It is always easier to sell in a live environment, webinar, challenge, or online event. When there are people there in real time engaging with each other, you can’t mimic that.
When you do evergreen or automated, the conversion is always going to be lower than a live event. For example, I get a conversion for a live webinar of 5% to 10%. For everyone who signs up for the webinar, I can probably convert 5% to 10% of those people. Let’s say 100 people show up for the webinar. I would make 5 to 10 sales. With evergreen, a good conversion is about 2%. You can see how that is significantly lower.
That makes it a lot harder because the conversion is lower. You lack that energy. It is also harder to build trust. When you are live on me with an event, especially in person, you instantly build trust. On a live webinar, it is easier to build trust. When I’m not physically with you, it is harder to build trust, which means that your communication, messaging, and words have to be on point. If you can only get a 2% conversion, you are going to need more traffic.
The big thing with the evergreen funnel that people don’t realize is this traffic piece. An evergreen webinar funnel is hungry. It needs a lot of people to come through it. If you get 100 into your evergreen funnel and you have a 2% conversion, it means you will make two sales, which is great. Maybe you are thinking, “One hundred people aren’t that much, but everyone who lands on a registration page isn’t going to sign up.” A good landing page conversion is somewhere around 30%. You can imagine that in order to get 100 people to sign up for your webinar, I don’t know the exact number, I’m terrible at doing math on the spot, but you are probably going to need 600 or 400 landing on the registration page to get them into that funnel.
This traffic piece is big. Depending on the price of what you are selling, you want to make more than two sales a month. My goal is twenty sales a month. You start to have to do the numbers. Suddenly, you are like, “I need 1,000 people through this funnel every single month to get those sales.” Because you set up the evergreen funnel doesn’t mean you are going to get those sales because there is a lot of tinkering and learning that has to go along the way.
When I first decided I wanted to do an evergreen funnel, I believe this was in 2021 because I was getting burnt out with live launching. I was like, “I’m going to set up this evergreen funnel.” I bought evergreen webinar software. I took the recording, slapped it in, added on an email nurture sequence, and threw it out there. I did make some sales, but I quickly realized that it wasn’t sustainable. I’m like, “I’m not making enough sales for this to be the only thing I do.” I had to continue to live launch.
I had to figure out, “I’m going to need more traffic.” The amount of people going through this knowing that I would be lucky to get a 2% conversion is not enough. That is when I hired a Facebook ads manager. I figured, “I’m going to run ads.” I have been to three Facebook ads managers, and I didn’t get the results I wanted.
The problem with a lot of ads managers is they don’t look at the entire funnel. Ads are never going to make up for bad marketing. In that funnel, there’s the webinar, ad copy, registration page, and emails, but the ads manager is just running your ads. The first ads manager that I had was running the ads. I had to give him my own copy and creative. That’s the biggest part. I didn’t know what I was doing with the ad copy and creative. That wasn’t getting results.
I decided to hire someone else who cost a little bit more money and would do the copy and creative for me. I have worked with that person for a year. I didn’t get results, and I hired another one who was more expensive and had a better reputation. It still didn’t work for me. I don’t blame the ads managers for my lack of success. I blame myself. It was because of messaging. I needed better messaging and a better webinar. I was under the impression. I was like, “I will set this up, and it will work.” That is not how it happened. I had to go through a whole bunch of iterations.
The first thing I had to figure out was how to stretch a webinar for evergreen. I realized, “No one has ever taught me how to do a webinar. I saw some other people’s webinars and threw something together.” My mentor for webinars is Colin Boyd, and he is fantastic. What I learned is that you don’t want to teach too much.
What we think is we need to teach a bunch of stuff and give people a bunch of great advice so they see how smart we are and they will buy from us. That is not true because when we overteach, we overwhelm people. We give them enough that they think they can go do it themselves. The truth is we can’t give people everything they need to know in an hour. They have a small picture of what they need, and they go to try to implement it. It doesn’t work because they need more.
Teaching in the context of a webinar and sales doesn’t work. This is true for sales calls. A lot of us think we need to prove ourselves on sales calls and show them how much we know, but that is not the purpose of a call. That teaching doesn’t sell. What Colin taught me to do was to shift beliefs because in whatever niché you are in, there are certain things that people believe. It is those beliefs that are keeping them stuck because they have internalized it for some personal reason or they have been taught that, and they think it is wrong.
What we want to do is we want to shift what people believe is true. We want to shift limiting beliefs and show them what is true. At first, I was like, “I feel like I’m not giving enough value. I don’t know.” The truth is shifting a belief that someone has that is keeping them stuck is incredibly valuable because it helps them see something in a different way and it helps motivates them to take action.
This is way more valuable. I redid my webinar and I did it live a few times. It converted way better. I got way more sales when I did that format. I got way better feedback. I was all self-conscious and like, “Is this valuable?” People were like, “This is the most valuable webinar I have ever been given.” I was like, “Excuse me, I didn’t even teach anything.” What I did was I helped set them free from limiting beliefs that were keeping them stuck. That is incredibly valuable.
I took this live webinar and put it as the evergreen, but that didn’t work because it was too long. What Colin teaches is relevant for live webinars, but it didn’t translate well into evergreen because it typically needs to be shorter. Not always. Everything needs to be tested. That is the big take-home of this. Usually, it needs to be shorter because there is no one live. When we do a live webinar, we engage with the crowd. We are talking instant questions. An evergreen is recorded. You are not there. When people come to me through Facebook ads, they don’t know me and don’t trust me. I’m a talking head so I can’t take up much of their time.
What I had to do was I had to edit it down. When I started working with Rick Mulready, who is my coach, he was like, “What are your numbers?” I didn’t know any of my numbers. That was a big problem. He taught me the importance of tracking my numbers. He was like, “You can’t make decisions without data.” I agree with this. It is something I try to teach my students. We have to look at the data and take the emotion out of it because the data is what will give you the insight that you need.
I had this evergreen webinar software. I used self seminars if you are wondering. It tracks how long people watch the training. What I learned was that people were dropping off at 40 minutes, but I didn’t even get to the pitch until 60 minutes. He was like, “You need to shorten it. You need to get it so that you get to the pitch before 40 minutes because you are not going to sell if people never get to the pitch.” I had to shorten it. I went through five points. I had to move it down to three. I had to shorten it.
When I did that, the first thing that I noticed was that almost everyone was getting to the pitch. Even more importantly, people stayed until the end of the webinar. That was the first test I did. I was like, “This is great. I made that, but it wasn’t increasing my sales. This is where we have to be a scientist.” You asked yourself like, “Am I not getting the right leads to the funnel?” In that case, I have to look at the Facebook ad, copy, and creative, making sure that the ad aligns with who I want to attract into the funnel. I want to get health coaches and practitioners at the earlier stages of their business. I had to look at, “Are these beliefs aligning with what I want to sell? I had to look at the pitch, webinar, and sales sequence.” You don’t know. This is where you have to start looking at data.
I was looking at my email open rates. I was like, “Email open rates are good. People are opening emails. That is great. People are staying until the end of the webinar.” At this point, I was making sales but not at the amount that I wanted to. This was this year in January 2023. I decided that I was going to get rid of my ads manager and start running my own ads. I was intimidated, but luckily, I had good mentorship. Rick Mulready is an ads expert. We also get ads to a Facebook ads coach within his program. I knew I wasn’t going to do it alone.
I was paying $2,500 a month for this ads manager. What I will tell you is that it is typical of what you will pay for someone to do your ads who also will do your copy and creative. It is expensive. I was like, “I’m going to run these myself. It can’t be that hard.” I was intimidated, but as it turns out, it wasn’t that hard. I picked it up quite quickly and anyone can. The thing with evergreen webinars is they are more expensive than running ads to a freebie because it requires more people’s time. I can quickly go through that checklist versus a webinar which is 40 minutes. You are asking for way more people’s time so naturally, you do spend more money on those.
As of now, my webinar is converting at about 1%. It’s not the 2% that I want so I still have a little bit more work to do. I am running my own ads, which I enjoy. It has been a valuable exercise for me because, with the way the online world is going, I’m going to be bringing Facebook ads into Health Coach Accelerator. Historically, it has been all organic marketing. I primarily built my business on organic marketing. Organic marketing is effective. It is necessary, but there is so much more competition these days.
There have been many more business applications. It can be hard for newbies to get ahead. It is something that I’m witnessing. We will be bringing Facebook ads into Health Coach Accelerator with the next update, but I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I hadn’t learned them myself. I will never teach anything that I haven’t mastered personally. I have done all the right things. I have a good conversion for my ads and a good opt-in rate for my registration page. People are watching the webinar all the way to the end. They are opening emails and I’m still not getting the results I want. What is the thing that I need to work on? It is messaging. Messaging is communication.
Messaging is key. It is something that you will always be working on and always be refining in your business. It is the way that you communicate what you do and you communicate your offer to your audience. If that communication doesn’t resonate with people and doesn’t align, they are not going to buy. When we are talking about an evergreen webinar funnel, your messaging is important and key because you are not there in real-time. It is got to be on point.
This was one of the big lessons I learned. With evergreen webinar funnels, messaging is key. I decided to bring in an expert. I hired Brittany McBean, who is an amazing copywriter. It was not a cheap investment. She is doing the copywriting and the messaging on my entire evergreen webinar funnel from the registration page to the webinar, emails, sales page, and everything. While it was a big investment, it will be one of the best investments that I have made. I will keep you updated.
The other big lesson I learned is ads are not affixed to bad marketing. I was under the impression when I started working with the ads manager. I believe it was 2020. I was like, “I need more traffic. I will get ads going.” It didn’t fix the problem because I had a lot of deficiencies in my marketing. This is why I believe that we have to get our organic marketing and messaging dialed before we pursue ads.
With Health Coach Accelerator, it is relevant. It is everything you need before you start running ads. Now I’m going to bring the ads into Health Coach Accelerator with that next update. The good news for you as a health and wellness coach is ads in the health and wellness space are cheap. For my space, not so much. I pay a lot for ads and I hate that but for you, no problem. Your ads are going to be inexpensive, which is cool. You can spend $5 or $10 a day and build your email list quickly.
The other thing is it is better to run your ads to yourself. That was the big thing. Ads managers are great. I do believe, at some point, it is great to bring them in, but they are expensive. They don’t always get you results, and they did not get me results. Even though it might feel intimidating, with a little bit of training, you can run your own ads, and you can take that $2,500 that you would typically spend on an ads manager. You can give yourself a raise.
It also keeps you more engaged in your marketing. Something that was happening to me is I was passing over my hard-earned money to someone else to spend because ads managers are spending your money. I kept getting disconnected. It was hard for me to stay engaged in the process. I had no idea what was going on with my marketing or my ads at any point. I like that I have increased control over my ads right now, and it has been a lot easier than I expected, which is why I’m bringing it into Health Coach Accelerator, especially with tools like ChatGPT. There are also AI Facebook ads creative tools. You don’t have to do any of this stuff yourself anymore, which makes it so much easier.
The final lesson I learned is evergreen is the ultimate test of your patients because I have been working on this for several years. It is still not where I want it to be. They take time and testing. I have done a lot of testing and tried a lot of things that haven’t worked, and a willingness to constantly be changing things. I’m always having to change things.
Once I get all my work done with Brittany McBean, my copywriter, I’m going to have to rerecord the webinar. You always have to be switching things up. They are not something that allows you to turn it on and walk away. That is not how they work. You are always going to be working on it. Even when it is working, you are going to have to continually swap out the Facebook ad creative and copy. You are going to have to switch up your webinar. You are always going to need to be tinkering because it is not like you turn it on and it works forever.
It has been a long journey. I hope that one day, in the future, this is something I would love to teach you because there is nothing better than getting clients without a lot of effort going into it and having to be the one out there in people’s DMs. It is a great tool. Once I master this, that will be my next program. It is not happening anytime soon, but stay tuned. I hope you enjoyed this episode. It has been fun to hang out with you. If you love this show and want to support me for free, you can leave me a five-star review on iTunes. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/Wealthy. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I will see you next episode same time and place where I help you become wealthy AF.
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