A discussion came up in a Facebook group about webinars and promotion. Both the profit proof and social proof aspects of webinars were in discussion.

Profit Proof after the webinar is easy to see in the numbers.   You can track your webinar profits with The Webinar Profit Calculator (free). When it comes to promoting to get a decent open and click-through rate before a sale can even be considered, a reputation and connection (relationship riches) has to be built between the marketer and those on the list.  In this example, we do not know about the relationship of the list owner and the list subscribers where the solo ad was purchased.

Here’s an example of the webinar promotion formula that includes an advertisement, in this case a solo ad in the investing niche, for profit proof.

Solo Ad to mailing list of 45,000, cost was $4725  

5,041 opened the email (11%)

541 clicked the link (10.7%)

277 registered for the webinar

16 bought at $997  (Conversion Rate 5.49%)

Revenue $15,952
Profit $11,227

Webinar presenters have long shown social proof after the webinar of what others thought of their webinar presentation with a copy and paste of the remarks onto websites, blogs and in social media posts.  This is basically a review of the webinar as social proof.  But, there is a new trend with webinar presenters to include a live Facebook Group as part of the webinar for social proof.

Using a document side by side the Facebook group during the live webinar presentation, a link to the group is displayed.  Webinar participants are asked to join the group and make comments during the webinar in the Facebook group.  These comments are showing up in real-time as social proof during the webinar and of course will be available to read any time after the webinar.  Author Cialdini states “People are more willing to take a recommended action if they see evidence that many others, especially similar others, are taking it.”

For some lighter reading, see this page that makes fun of social proof and profit proof.  The website owner is happily making money from Google Advertising.