Joshua Chelmo, Colette

A Hello. My name is Joshua Chelmo. I am the Image Campaign Manager at Colette. Colette is a travel company. We provide tours to 160 different destinations that we have for our wonderful consumers to to enjoy going on tour to all these different locations. So I've been involved in webinars for seven years now when I started at Collette, and there's been a huge, really, the evolution of webinars has definitely changed a lot since we began, and when we started, we were using a different company than we are here at Webinar World, and to see how much that has grown in terms of being able to use video, being able to do interaction with your clients and your guests that are joining you is completely different than what it was when I first started. We didn't have that opportunity to put in video. Our PowerPoint decks weren't as creative as they could have been. You really learned a lot over the past seven years, and have really grown that platform a lot. So at Collette, when we talk about webinars, it's a mixture of marketing and sales. So it's really a sales-driven for maybe 70% of it, and then that content for the marketing channel itself is maybe the other 30%. So what we do is we have monthly webinars where we discuss a new topic, and that's gonna be the educational aspect, where we're gonna teach our agents, our travel agents, about our product, and really get them on board in learning how to sell it. And we also do value-add for them as well, because we don't wanna just be so sales-focused. We want the opportunity to showcase that we are the experts and we're knowledgeable in many different fields. So it might be a social media value-add or a photography value-add. We like to sprinkle those in as well. And then for the sales portion, we usually do those where we're trying to sell and close a deal, where we have members that really wanna go on a tour. They don't know which one they wanna go on or they wanna know more information about a specific destination. And we use webinars to really close that deal, to showcase what they're gonna do on tour, why there is that value for them to purchase a guided, escorted tour versus going on their own. So when it comes to our webinar program, we do about 500 webinars every single year, between 400 to 500. And success for us is gonna be different maybe than for other companies. Obviously, when it comes to success of our consumer ones, it's about who have we gotten to purchase a tour? So when we do about 70% of them, we wanna see those numbers grow. We wanna see that once they've done a webinar, within a couple of days, have they gone and made that purchase? But then when we also look at our travel agents, we look at success and who's actually joined? Are they joining us every single month? Are they coming back? And when we look at them within our system, are they then selling our tours? If they've been on our webinars maybe two or three times, are they going out there and are we seeing numbers come in for them as well? So when it comes to webinars with Collette, it's a very tiny budget. We really have enough just to utilize the platform and then a little bit that we put aside to go to Webinar World or to maybe purchase just a few little pieces of equipment. And one thing that we tried new in 2018 was a studio version of our webinars. So we didn't want it just to be the PowerPoint every single time. We thought, let's try something new. Let's try something innovative. So we thought, well, we don't have a studio because we know sometimes studios can be expensive. And I thought, how can we do this without having maybe one or two cameras or multiple monitors? And we went to Webinar World last year and people were talking a lot about the excitement of having interview webinars, interview style. So we were relaunching a product and I thought, this is the perfect time to try that. Let's just go out there and do it. Let's see what we can do. So what we did was we just purchased a little Nikon camera, a little microphone right in the condo. We just had that with the background of a wall and some little bowls that were on the wall as some scenery. And it just goes to show that as long as you try and you're innovative, you can do something. You don't need to have budgets of tens, 20,000s of dollars just to do a studio type webinar. And it was the most engaging webinar that we had because it mixed in that interview style. It mixed in a little bit of the PowerPoint and it also mixed in video as well to get people excited about that relaunch. So when it comes to marketing, I believe that marketing has really grown a lot over the past 10 years with webinars. I know that when I started seven years ago, it was so different and we didn't utilize it as much as we do now. And I think for marketing, you need webinars. You need to be able to get out there and really talk to your clients or your guests or your different businesses in a different way. And webinars are the way to do that. And it's a great way for you to get them excited about your product, to share videos, to be able to take that content and then utilize it later with on-demand snackable pieces. So I just think that the webinars themselves are something that's here to stay and here to really grow into the future. And I think the advice that I could really give to somebody when they're thinking about a webinar program is to just do it, to just go out there and try it. And I don't think you're going to be disappointed with the results that you get. So here at Collette, when it comes to video itself, video is such a huge portion of Collette because video really sells. And we're an inspirational travel destination company. So it's all about the visuals. It's all about connecting with your audience. So video has definitely grown. And I would say in the past five years, we've really started to push video through TV, through our Facebook, and then also through webinars. We want to utilize those videos to get people excited about Collette, about the destination, about what you're trying to really showcase and share with them. So when it comes to working with our sales team here at Collette, we really are trying to get them more involved in a video strategy and a webinar strategy. And that's one thing that they have really tried to grow over the past couple of years, is to get them more involved in really being on the webinars, putting a face to a name, and becoming a trusted, really a trusted salesperson that when you see them, you know them, and you're excited to talk with them. So now that we are starting to look at working with different Facebook networks that we do have, or they'll give some sales tips, and they'll be on video. Because I think when you see somebody, you have that connection, and it really does help you really propel your marketing that way.