The internet is abuzz with them. Interviews with gurus. Words of wisdom from whimsical wonders. Make a million through Teleseminars! So what are they? Who thinks them up? And how can you make some money with them, too?

There are many types of teleseminars. My topic today is an Ask campaign. I learned about the Ask teleseminars from Alex Mandossian. He says that the best marketing genius you can have is your customer. If you want to know what they want, just ask!

The Ask campaign does just that. Say you are a public accountant and you want to acquire more business. So you set up an Ask campaign with the question, What is your biggest question about your 2006 tax returns? and you send out emails to all of your clients and prospective clients. The email has a link to your Ask page, and they fill out the question, along with their name and email. Then they are taken to a Thank You page that has some sort of little gift, like a free report on the top ten deductions that people often forget about. If it is something really good, theyll tell their friends about it and some of them will sign up too.

Then all of those questions go into your database. When you have enough questions, you read them to find out what questions keep getting asked over and over again. You pick out 7-12 of them, depending on how long you want the teleseminar to last, and you create your top questions about tax returns.

Now you send out another email to all the people who asked questions (and anyone else you can thing of) and tell them when the teleseminar will be, and what the top questions are. They click on another link to sign up for the teleseminar. In exchange for their name and email address, they get the call-in number and the secret passcode.

With the most common type of Ask teleseminar, the expert (thats you!) gets interviewed by someone who is good at doing teleseminars (like me!) The interviewer asks the same questions that you got from your ask database, and you answer them as thoroughly as you can in the time you have.

The point of this example teleseminar is to get more accounting business, so you want to be knowledgeable and honest. If someone wants to know how to get the best deductions for the house they bought this year, you would go over points and the interest they paid on the house, and what forms they have to fill out. Anyone who was thinking about hiring someone to do taxes for them will know that you really know your stuff, and anyone who bought a house this year and was planning on doing it themselves will have to think about all that paperwork!

It is always a great idea to record your teleseminar. Afterwards, you can send an email to all of your current and prospective clients telling them that if they missed the call or want to hear it again, they can listen to it on your web page. This will bring them back to your website, and get them thinking about what a headache it is to do taxes every year.

This particular form of Ask campaign and teleseminar has many possible uses. You can do several different teleseminars on different but related topics (like real estate taxes, home business taxes, etc.) then create a set of CDs that you can give away as a special gift to your clients, or even sell. You can also have them transcribed and put together a book.

Teleseminars can be a great way to market your business, product, or service. If you have a product that you can sell on line, you can make a great deal for it during the teleseminar and create a feeding frenzy by telling people how many orders you are getting while they are still on the phone. Or you can use a free teleseminar to give your prospects a preview of an in person seminar you will be holding later on. You can even teach a class or sell a content only teleseminar.

Teleseminars are a way to really connect with your customers. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. Giving them a content rich teleseminar lets them get to know you from the comfort of their own home. The Ask campaign will let you find out what your customers greatest needs are for much less than a marketing survey, and you can address those questions directly and immediately.

So consider adding teleseminars to your marketing toolkit.