How to Create Top Converting Webinar Funnel

Webinar Funnel

Webinar Funnel are key to making sales and are the very essence of all business. No matter how hard you work, how many leads you generate, or how many people you get in contact with, it will all be for nothing if you’re unable to sell anything out of it. Of course, though, turning prospective customers into real ones is often a difficult task.

Companies across the globe are looking for ways to improve the rate of their sales. There are a lot of tools and methods which can be used to help with this, but few are as powerful as a top converting webinar funnel.

Let’s take a look at what you’ll need to do to get started with your own webinar funnel; it’s easier than you might expect.

What Is A Webinar Funnel?

Before diving into how you should get started with your webinar funnel, it makes sense to explain what they are and how they work. 

A lot of business owners, especially those working in small and medium sized companies, have never been exposed to this type of sales before. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to find success with one, but you may need to do some learning before you can get started. We’ve kick started this process for you.

A typical webinar funnel can be broken down into two separate entities; a sales funnel and a webinar. Both can be excellent marketing tools, but will truly come into their own once you combine them.

Webinar Funnel

What Is A Sales Funnel?

Sales funnels have been used by businesses for quite some time. They cover a step-by-step set of marketing actions which bring a potential customer closer to spending money with you, turning cold and warm leads into something much more.

A basic example of a sales funnel in action may start with a simple social media advert which brings people to your site. The website will have videos, landing pages, and blog posts which are designed to encourage your users to sign up to newsletters or notifications. Once they have done this, they will begin to receive content which will feel personal and push them towards spending money with you.

These emails may only contain useful information, though the smartest companies will choose to include discounts codes, details about upcoming sales, or their plans to host a webinar in the near future.

In short, a sales funnel gives marketing professionals an opportunity to take control of the route their customers take when making a purchase. This can increase sales and lead conversion, while also making it easier to focus marketing resources into the right areas.

What Is A Webinar?

The term webinar is derived from two words; website and seminar. Defined as an online presentation or meeting, they are usually held in real-time, and enable business leaders and professionals to connect with people across the world.

A lot of different topics are covered in webinars, though most businesses will choose to touch on things which make it more likely for their customers to spend money with them. This could mean explaining the value of your products, exploring topical issues, or even going through a tutorial to teach your viewers something new.

This may sound complex, but you don’t need to go out and get a degree in communications to get started with a webinar. Viewers will usually expect their webinars to be casual, and this means that you don’t need to have a speech worthy of a key-note speaker.

Making Them Work Together

Sales funnels are an excellent way to create a clear path towards sales, and webinars can be a superb option for those looking to teach their customers something. Of course, though, they will provide much higher chances of success if you’re able to get them working together.

In a webinar funnel, the webinar portion of your step-by-step process will usually come at the end. Emails, website content, and online adverts will be used to drive viewers to your webinar platform, providing you with the opportunity to make sales with a live presentation.

Making these tools work together successfully can take some work. Not only do you have to plan and host your own webinar, but you also have to tackle all of the steps which come before it. It shouldn’t take long to get onto the right track once you’ve gotten started, and most people have the skills required to make something like this work for their business.

Understanding how a webinar funnel works and what it is used for will be crucial if you’re going to leverage them properly. The rest of this article will be helping you with this, but it doesn’t hurt to do some further research of your own, and it makes a lot of sense to learn as much as possible before you approach something like this.

Getting Started With A Webinar Funnel

Getting started with your webinar funnel is going to take several different stages. You need to create a funnel, organize your own webinar, and present it in a way which will encourage your viewers to spend money with you.

To make this a little easier to digest, we’ve split this into several steps. It’s crucial that you handle each element of this process at the right time, and a lot of people find it helpful to search around the web to find examples of other people’s webinar funnels. Of course, though, the success you find with a webinar funnel will be down to the work you put into it.

Let’s dive straight in.

Getting Started With A Webinar Funnel

Stage One: Building Your Sales Funnel

The first stage in this process is going to involve building the sales funnel which drives people to your webinar. This stage can be broken down into further steps, making it a little bit easier to start working towards a successful funnel. There are a lot of resources around the web which can be extremely helpful when you’re going through a process like this.

Consumer Research: Any marketing process should start with some consumer research. Knowing about the customers who are most likely to need your products or services can make it much easier to create content which will encourage them to spend money with you. In the case of a sales funnel, you will be using this information to determine how you should talk to your customers, how they will like to view your content, and the sort of content you’ll be using to draw them in.

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  • Choosing The Steps: Once you have a solid idea of the demographic you’ll be selling to, it will be time to choose the steps in your sales funnel. The first step should always be used to raise awareness about your product, with social media posts, adverts, and landing pages giving you the chance to do this. The next step can further this process, going into more detail once you’ve caught their attention.

From here, it will be time to start making your customers more interested in your product. This is best done with content which shows them the strengths of your offering, with testimonials and reviews from other customers providing you with an excellent resource for this. This can be achieved through direct emails, newsletters, and other content which is sent directly to your potential customers.

Once you get to this point, it will finally be time to swoop in and make some sales. This is where your webinar will come in. Using special deals, discount codes, and other tools which incentivise fast purchases, you can use your live presentation to persuade people to start spending money with you. Some companies will also use this opportunity for some upselling.

  • Creating Content/Building Steps: With your sales funnel planned out, it will be time to start creating content and building the steps which will drive your sales. Hiring professional writers to help you can be a good idea, and most people will need some help from their web developer to start building landing pages, newsletter sign-ups, and other content which will help the process along. It’s crucial that you keep both your objective and demographic in mind when you’re going through this stage.
  • Deploying Your Sales Funnel: Deploying a sales funnel isn’t as hard as it might sound. Once you’ve completed the steps above and have a set of marketing tools which can all work together in a funnel, it will be time to put it into action. Your whole funnel should be prepared before you launch any element of it, or you could find yourself wasting potential sales when users can’t find their way to the next stage. This might take some ongoing work.

Stage Two: Planning & Preparing Your Webinar

The next stage in this process focuses on the webinar itself. Planning and preparing something like this is crucial before you try to get started with it, and it can often be worth practicing this before you do it live. There are several steps which go into planning an excellent webinar.

  • Choosing A Topic: Picking a topic for your webinar will make it much easier to create a cohesive plan for it, and this makes it an essential step in this process. Your topic should be related to your products or services, with some companies choosing to make their presentation focused on sales, and others choosing to provide information. For example, if you are a business finance broker, you could create a webinar about starting a business and the products you offer which can make the process easier.
  • Building An Outline: With a topic in mind, it will be time to create a rough outline for your webinar. It’s usually worth avoiding a scripted speech for this, with organic-feeling content being well-received across a range of demographics. Your outline should serve to keep your webinar moving forwards, including all of the areas you will be touching on, along with any crucial information which you don’t want to forget about.
  • Practice Makes Perfect: Talking on a webinar isn’t too different to public speaking. Most people don’t have much experience with it, and it’s surprisingly hard to talk about a single topic for a long time without having to collect your thoughts. This makes it well worth practicing your first webinar before you beam it across the web.

Stage Three: Marketing Your Webinar

With your webinar planned out, it will be time to start marketing it. You will be using your sales funnel to drive people to your webinar, and this means that you need to have at least one step which will let people know that you are hosting this presentation. This can come in the form of an email invite, but you should also support it with social media posts, blog articles, and any other content which you can place online for customers to see. Your aim will be to get as many people watching your webinar as possible.

Stage Four: Hosting Your Webinar

Hosting a webinar is one of the most crucial steps in this process. Not only do you need to make sure that you’re on time and presentable for your livestream, but you also need to ensure that you have all of the tools you need to handle it properly. People expect to see high-quality content coming from businesses, and this should be reflected by your webinar.

  • The Equipment: Video and audio quality will be instrumental in your success, with many users simply tuning out when presented with poor-quality content. Most modern smartphone cameras are good enough to stream video on the web, but having a camera set up on a tripod will be a much better idea. Alongside this, you will also need to think about a microphone. An option which can be worn on your body will be best for this, ensuring that you come through loud and clear. Of course, you may also need to get your hands on some lighting to make the video look better.
  • The Location: People expect to see a professional environment when they tune into a business webinar. You should never host something like this from a bedroom, kitchen, or other private place in your home, instead looking for an office to handle your presentation from. If you don’t have a space like this, you can easily set one up by simply having a desk behind you when you’re speaking.
  • The Presenter: Performing a quality presentation can be harder than you might expect. You need someone who can confidently speak to handle this for you, and this might mean that you have to find someone in your business who is willing to do it on your behalf. You can go ahead and do it yourself if you feel confident enough. The person presenting your webinar should be well dressed, groomed, and speak clearly so that viewers understand what is being said.
  • The Plan: While it can often feel natural to follow your mind’s train of thought when you’re presenting something like this, it’s crucial that you stick to the plan. You will have a lot of content to cover, and giving it to viewers in a digestible manner will only be possible if you follow the outline you’ve made for yourself. In most cases, this will mean giving users an incentive to buy your products or services as you get towards the end of your presentation, though you can talk about this earlier if you want to.

There are a lot of different platforms which can be used to host webinars, though it will usually make the most sense to use your website for this. Platforms like WordPress make it incredibly easy to add live streaming functionality to your website. Of course, though, some people will prefer to host their webinar on platforms like YouTube Live, embedding the stream on their website so that users have more than one place to find it.

Hosting Your Webinar
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Stage Five: Following Up On Your Webinar

As you’ve already been working hard to attract customers to your products and services, it makes sense to follow up on your webinar once it is over. A basic email which covers the topics you spoke about can give users the final push to make a purchase, and posting on social media can encourage other users to view the webinar or tune into your next one. This will give you an opportunity to give viewers one final push towards spending money with you.

Finding success with something like a webinar is unlikely to happen overnight. It can take a lot of work to build this into something which brings reliable sales to your business, but it isn’t worth giving up. Each time you host a webinar, you can work to improve your methods and approach for the next one, ensuring that each is more successful than the last.

Webinar Funnel Key Industry Terms

Understanding something like webinar funnels can often be made a lot more challenging by the terms used in the industry. Even articles which are designed to get you started will often use confusing language, and it can feel as if you’re expected to be an expert in the field before you even begin. It’s easy to see why this would be frustrating. You can find some of the most commonly used terms from this field below.

  • Purchase Funnel: Purchase funnel is another way to describe a sales funnel, and it means the same thing. There are several different terms which serve this purpose, often leaving users feeling confused.
  • Landing Page: A landing page is a web page which is designed to help with marketing. They can surround a single product or service, and are usually designed to be easy to be found on search engines, while also providing multiple routes for customers to buy things from you or sign up for more information
  • PPC Advert: PPC stands for pay per click, and this is the type of advert you’ll typically find on sites like Google and Facebook. You pay a small amount for each of the clicks the advert receives, with popular topics tending to cost more.
  • Conversion Rate: This is a term you will often hear in reference to leads. Your conversion rate is the number of leads which you’re able to convert into actual sales. This can help to determine how successful the whole process has been.
  • Referrer Tag: When your users click links to get to your webinar, it makes sense to include referrer tags in the links they use. This will give you an idea of where your users are coming from, with the tag being unique for each of your platforms or posts.
  • Livestream/Webcast: There are a number of ways to describe a live broadcast which happens over the web. Livestream and webcast are two of the most popular, though you may hear other descriptions being used.
  • Polls: Getting users to interact with a webinar can be a great way to make them feel like they are part of the action. Polls are one of the best tools for this job, giving you an extremely simple way to get people’s opinions out in the open.
  • Full Service Webinar: Planning, organizing, and hosting a webinar can be a time-consuming job. A full service webinar provider will be able to help you with this, providing equipment and expertise which will make the whole process much smoother. In many cases, this is what companies need to set their webinars apart from the others which are found on the web.
  • DIY Webinar: Having a strict marketing budget doesn’t have to be a massive limiting factor in your ability to host a webinar; you may just have to do the work for yourself. This will mean dipping your toes into marketing, content creation, and a little bit of web design.
  • Live Event: A live event is something which views can tune into on the web and watch in real-time. Most webinars will be handled like this, saving you from editing your content, while also making it possible to interact with users as you talk to them.
  • On-Demand: All of this work would be a waste if you didn’t make your webinars available for on-demand views once they’ve been live streamed. You can host these videos on your website, on YouTube, or even make them available for purchase.

There are a lot of terms which float around in the professional world which often lead to confusion. You might not have any trouble understanding a concept, but without the knowledge to attach the right words to it, using online resources to learn about marketing can feel just impossible. If you ever find yourself too confused about a word you’ve found, it’s worth taking the time to search for it on Google.

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Measuring Performance With A Webinar Funnel

Being able to measure the performance of your marketing efforts is crucial if you are going to find success with them. This is no different with a webinar funnel, and you need to pay close attention to several different areas to determine how successful this whole thing has been.

Like the other areas in this article, this can be measured in stages, and each of the metrics you look at will tell you something different about your webinar funnel. You can begin working on this before you even host your first webinar, with the funnel which drives people to it being measurable from the day you start using it.

Mailing List Sign Ups & Social Interactions

Once your sales funnel is up and running, you will have an opportunity to begin measuring its success. The first step in your funnel will usually involve social media, mailing list sign ups, and other tools which users can interact with. If you have loads of mailing list sign ups, for example, you will be able to tell that this element of your funnel is successful. The same can be said for social media interactions, with the more you get, the better your posts are doing.

If you’re not getting what you expect from this, it can be worth changing your tactics a little bit. You can be more forceful with mailing lists, serving pop ups to customers which will encourage them to sign up. Along with this, you can also offer discounts or other incentives to get people onto the first stage of your funnel. You don’t have to worry about quality leads at this point, as the next stages of your funnel will reduce them down to only the good ones.

Webinar Viewership

Once you’ve had the chance to host a webinar, you will have loads of information available which will show you how successful it has been. The amount of people viewing your webinar will be crucial when you’re trying to figure out how successful the steps which came before it have been. If you have a lot of people tuning in at the right time for your live presentation, you will have been successful with your emails, social media posts, and other tools which have told them when it will be held.

It’s uncommon that a webinar will get thousands of live viewers when it first airs, especially when the company presenting it hasn’t done one before. Even if you only have a handful of viewers, this will still be a positive sign, and it might just be that you need to wait a little longer before you find success. If you’d like to speed this up, you could consider expanding your marketing reach, using PPC adverts and social media promotions to make sure that as many people as possible are aware of your webinar.

Post-Webinar Action

Your webinar should be used to encourage your viewers to take action, and measuring this action will give you an idea of how successful this whole effort has been. If you get loads of sales using the discount codes you’ve provided in your webinar, you will know that it has been a great success. Otherwise, though, you may have to look at improving the way that you handle your webinar.

Asking for feedback about your presentation can be an excellent way to do this. People will be happy to tell you if they have learned loads from you, but need more information before they buy into your business. Of course, though, there will always be the chance that your viewers simply didn’t find the webinar to be relevant to them. If this is the case, it will be time to go back to the start of this process, changing your strategy based on the information your views give you.

Being able to measure your marketing efforts is crucial, and many people find themselves struggling with this. Sales funnels are designed to make this process simpler, though, providing you with plenty of opportunities to measure and improve each of the stages you go through. Many people ignore this side of their marketing, making it incredibly difficult to make improvements.

The Power Of Webinar Funnels

It’s all too easy to ignore tools like webinar funnels when you’re running a business. Companies will often use a range of marketing tools to sell their products and services, but it’s never worth ignoring something like a webinar funnel, even if you’ve already found a lot of success with the marketing strategy you’re already using.

Webinars enable you to provide information, discounts, and other incentives to spend money with you with other marketing tools simply can’t match. In the competitive world of modern business, it makes sense to use whatever you can to make yourself stand out. Of course, even if your webinar doesn’t generate many sales itself, the rest of the funnel will still serve to bring new people to your doors.

We encourage you to learn as much as you possibly can about this type of marketing before you take it on for your business. This can be a complex approach to marketing, and a lot of people struggle to take the right steps when they approach it for the first time. It never hurts to spend time learning when you are first dipping your toes into something like this, though.