Online events can be a great way to connect with your customers, expose your brand to new audiences and increase your monthly sales. Selling during your live event can be slightly intimidating to some, who may feel that it doesn’t feel “natural” to them as the host to start pitching their product during the event.
Even if you are comfortable with selling at your live event, there are a few ways to increase your sales while making sure your audience feels that they’ve gained a ton of value from your event while scoring some hot deals on your awesome products. So without further ado, below are a few tips that will help you drive more sales during your online event.
The live chat is your direct channel to your audience
Any good sales person will tell you that selling works best when you have a personal connection with your customer, and they feel that they can trust you to answer their needs and concerns. To that extent, the most important element of your event is the live chat, which is home to your audience’s feelings, questions and concerns.
During your live online event you must connect on a personal level with your audience through your live chat. We’ve talked about the importance of interacting with your audience and making them an active part of the event in other articles, and when it comes to selling this is extra important.
A few ways to interact with your audience and make them feel that they matter is asking them to write where they’re watching from, what they’re hoping to see in the event, what questions they have for the host and influencer, and so on. You then need to acknowledge what your audience is writing in the chat, answer their questions, mention what they’re saying in the event with their name and make them feel that they are the star of the event – not you.
When it comes to selling, beyond building a personal connection and trust between you and your audience, the live chat is your direct channel to what your audience is thinking, feeling, and wondering about your products.
Through their questions and comments you can often understand their pain points and concerns and solve them on the spot, to make them comfortable buying your products. Which brings us to the next tip.
Answer as many questions as you can
Questions are your best friend when it comes to driving engagement and ultimately more sales during your event. The questions your customers are asking during your live event may not all be about your products, but they ALL matter.
When you and your other hosts answer the audience questions it makes them feel that they matter and that they heard, which as mentioned in the previous tip, builds trust.
Once you start talking about your products and highlighting them in the event, your audience will feel comfortable asking you questions about them because they know you will answer them just like you answered their other questions. And once people’s concerns regarding a purchase are answered, they buy.
Explain why they need your product
This may sound obvious but it is still important. You need to make sure your audience is able to make an educated decision on why they are buying your products. Buyers today have so many products and services offered to them through every possible media, so whatever products they decide to purchase have to be something they feel they need.
As buyers, to feel like we need something we have to understand its values to us, what sort of problem or desire it solves for us and how it will make us feel when we buy it and receive it.
During your live event you need to make sure to bring your products’ value to the front and explain what sort of problem or desire it answers. Tell your audience everything they need and want to know about the product you’re talking about, and (again) answer as many of your audience’s questions as possible.
When your audience feels that they need it, understand the value of it and desire it, it is much easier for them to purchase because they feel that they made an educated decision about it, one which they won’t regret later on.
Grab attention and create a sense of urgency
As interesting as your event may be, it is still about 20-40 minutes during which your audience has to watch you while existing in an over-stimulated environment (fancy way of saying we all have 1000 other things happening just on our phones or laptops during any given time, not to mention real life happenings). To ensure your audience is focused on your event and on the products you are highlighting and offering, you need to grab their attention.
When creating your event you need to have different elements spread throughout it to ensure you don’t lose your audience’s attention. These elements can be interactive elements like giveaways, as well as content related elements like a big reveal or a crazy story your influencer is going to expose for the first time.
Once you grab the attention of your audience, highlight a product and offer a crazy discount on it that will last only for the event’s duration. Do that with a few products throughout your event. This will activate FOMO in your audience and make them feel that they really don’t want to miss out on that crazy, limited time deal.
Don’t be scared to sell
To wrap things up I would like to emphasize again something we talk about in other articles – being “scared” to sell. Some people might feel like their audience doesn’t want to be sold to, or that they didn’t attend the event for a product pitch.
Although the second one is true, it does not mean they don’t want to buy your amazing products. People love buying stuff, especially awesome stuff. It makes them feel good and happy, so why not make people happy?
You obviously need to provide other value in your event aside from selling your products, but if you follow the tips here and in our other Academy articles you already know how to provide value both through interesting and fun content, and through awesome deals on your great products, so let’s do this!
