What are Webinar Funnels?
If you’ve just heard the term ‘Webinar Funnel’ and are wondering what the heck it is, then you’ve come to the right place.
The short answer: It’s the process and technology involved in attracting an audience to eventually have them participate in your webinar…that generates LEADS and results in SALES.
The long answer: is the rest of this article.
This is going to be a long, honest, content-filled article that can help bring light to your darkness… hopefully, this will be the ultimate guide to building webinars and creating effective webinar funnels.
In this article, I’ll be covering:
- What are Webinar Funnels
- The 12 Elements of a High Converting Landing Page
- The Indoctrination Thank You Page
- The Pre-Event Follow-Up Sequence
- The Post-Webinar Follow-Up Sequence
- How to Use the ‘Magic Funnel Enhancers’
- Create the ‘Human Touch’ via Phone Calls
- Driving Traffic to Your Landing Page
Ok, wow. That’s a lot.
To break it down here are the 4 Parts to a sales-generating Webinar funnel:
- Pre-Sign up
- Post-Sign up
- Pre-Event
- Post-Event
So let’s get to it!
Firstly, why do you need a webinar funnel?
The leaps and bounds we’ve experienced in technology means you can bring your seminars online and conduct a Webinar instead.
The great part about it is that you don’t have to expend massive manpower, expenses and organise function rooms to host a seminar since it is done online.
You can host a webinar from the comfort of your own home.
And your prospects can watch your webinar from the comfort of their own home without travelling miles to your seminar venue.
The best part is, you can still generate sales.
And you don’t have to travel around the country to conduct your sales seminars.
You can simply create a webinar, record it and set it to play whenever someone signs up.
And yes, it can generate sales for you even when you are not actually on the webinar.
But to achieve all this…it’s important to have a webinar funnel as part of your sales system and you can check our other article on how to design a profitable webinar sales funnel.
A funnel is like a house party
Imagine you just moved into a neighbourhood and are looking to make new friends – so you throw a house party and anyone who’s interested is invited.
So they come knocking at your front door. You welcome them in, say hello and get them to sit in the kitchen while you relax in the lounge room…you don’t talk to them again for the rest of the party.
It’s as if you’re not interested in having them stay. Why invite them if you’re not going to at least engage in a conversation with them?
So yes, put a little more effort into your marketing; build proper webinar funnels that send them to where they should go – because with a proper sales funnel that incorporates a webinar, the sky’s the limit for your business.
By having a proper sales funnel (that sends them to the lounge room and not the kitchen) you are showing that you care about your prospects from start to finish.
You don’t want them to lose interest and leave the party to go watch Netflix at home.
You want to nurture them.
Show them why they are there in the first place and why they should stay… because you can help them solve a pressing problem.
In order to do this, there are several elements in your webinar funnel that you may want to look at… if you want it to generate new leads and more sales.
We have seen many people who were previously unable to scale their business to generating high-quality leads and appointments once they have a proper webinar funnel.
Other clients of ours were also able to scale their business across their national borders and reach prospects that are in other countries.
Some of our clients who have very niche markets have found Webinars a perfect way to attract and qualify hard to find prospects.
Guide to Optimising Your Webinar Funnel
Lucky you, I’ve decided to come up with a guideline to help you create and optimise your webinar funnel, increase webinar attendees and turn those webinar attendees into sales.
I’ll be breaking these into parts to make it easier for you to follow.
Part One – Building a High Converting Webinar Funnel Landing Page
You got your ads running, someone scrolls over and pauses to read.
Then – click.
When people click on your ad, they should be redirected to a landing page.
The question is, what is on your page?
Or rather, what should you have on your page?
The 12 Elements of a High-Converting Landing Page
All the information that the audience would ever need lies on this page.
You’ve gone through the first impression stage – they’re interested enough to click your ad but this page is where the high stakes are at.
This is your chance to let them know that you have more to offer. This is where you get to clearly explain what your webinar is about.
So how do you do it?
We’ve created a lot of landing pages over the years but those that performed well are the ones with these 12 elements.
Your page doesn’t need to be super long but try and incorporate these elements.
We’ve broken down here for you to make it easier to understand:
1. Primary Promise
What’s the one main promise that the participants will get if they attend your webinar? This should be your Headline, the main hero – the big promise accompanied by a persuasive subheadline just right below it.
Your Headline and Subhead should be clear and straightforward. It should compel the reader to stay and spark that curiosity of wanting to know more about what you have to offer.
It should give a solution to a pressing problem…and quickly tell them why your solution is different or better.
E.g Headline: Building a Quality List: Copywriting Strategies Used to Attract High Quality Leads Revealed
E.g Subheadline: Discover the proven and tested copywriting strategies that we used to grow our database with quality leads… and eliminate the ‘time-wasters’.
2. Identify the Problem
Highlight the problem that your audience may be facing. They probably already know this and that’s why they are on your page in the first place. But it’s good to highlight them again to assure them that you have the answers to their problems.
It’s critical to research your target market to understand what are the main challenges they face in relation to what you can offer them.
A good way to do this is via a survey.
We ran a campaign recently to generate leads and found that our market was concerned with 2 things:
- The escalating costs of advertising online
- The quality of the leads they get online
We are now planning to create a webinar addressing these two big issues.
3. Provide the Mechanism
How can you help them solve their problems? Provide them with the answers here; let them know exactly how and why you can help them. Highlight the topics that you will be covering at your webinar.
A mechanism helps you to stand out from the rest of the competition.
Rather than advertise a free download and name it ‘How to run ads on Facebook Successfully’.
We named it ‘The Rapid Facebook Ad System’.
By giving it a name we managed to differentiate ourselves and slashed our cost per lead to a very low level.
Do you have a mechanism that is unique?
A formula, a process, a blueprint or a special ingredient?
Use that to make your Webinar stand out from the rest.
4. Credibility and Expectations
Why should your audience trust you?
Show your credibility; what have you done before, the successes you’ve had by using the strategies you mentioned and how long have you been doing them.
For example, show news articles that you were featured in or tell a story of how you’ve built your success over the years. You want to increase the reader’s level of trust towards you.
You also want them to know what they can expect from you. But be careful not to overdo it to a point where it sounds like you are bragging.
5. Introduce the Solution
Introduce the title of your webinar. Give a clearer understanding of what your webinar is going to be about.
For example: (Free Webinar) How to Double Your Organic Traffic on Instagram
6. Show the benefits
What will your audience get from attending the webinar?
What value would they receive and how would it help them even after the webinar? What will they learn?
List the benefits and advantages of attending your webinar. It also helps to be specific about how they can attain them. So it’s not just a list of vague promises with no clear indication of actions they should take.
Make sure to touch on the ‘after-state’…how will their lives be if they apply what they learn from the Webinar.
Remember one of the biggest things is to make people believe they can achieve what you promise.
7. Make the offer (deliverables)
Here is where you list out the things that they will receive at the webinar. For example:
- Free Facebook Ads checklist
- What Facebook Ad objective should you use
- Strategies on how to reduce ad cost
- How to target the right audience
8. Overcome the primary objection
At this point of the page, your prospects are probably thinking, “Yeah that’s all good but….”
You need to address the “BUT….”
For instance, if I am promoting a Webinar on stock investing, the biggest objection could be:
“…but it’s too risky”
“…but I’ve never invested before”
“…but I don’t understand financial matters”
You need to find out what is your biggest objection and hit it on the head so that the prospect feels at peace and is now willing to continue listening to what you say.
9. Give social proof
At this stage, you hit them with some powerful testimonials, feedbacks and reviews from your clients or past attendees. Everyone needs validation and assurance from other people.
By providing social proof, you are further eliminating the doubts that the prospect still might have at this point.
The best social proof is probably a genuine video testimonial.
10. Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Your audience might have a lot of questions. It’s a good idea to provide the FAQs on your page so your audience can get answers without having to go through your support team.
Your FAQ section is also a good opportunity to address any lingering objections that were not addressed previously.
11. Guarantee
Think of it as your closing speech. You want to leave an impact and you also want to inspire. This is your final chance to give them the assurance that your webinar is the key to solving their problems. You can go with the classic:
‘You’ve got nothing to lose.’
or
‘Don’t look back and regret not taking action.’
…or something along those lines.
Or if you are bolder you can even say something along the lines of:
“If you feel that I don’t deliver at least 3 new ideas that you can take away to achieve X in the next 90 days, I will be happy to send you a gift voucher valued at $Y”
But with this kind of outrageous policy, you are demonstrating confidence they will benefit a lot from the webinar.
A guarantee will help further convince the audience that it’s worth taking a shot because now they literally have nothing to lose.
So the rest is up to you to deliver a really good webinar.
12. Call to action (CTA)
Finally, the call to action. It’s best to have Call to Action buttons 3-5 in various sections of the page already. Spread them out, make them visible. This CTA button should lead to the Sign Up form. Your CTA button text should be clear and attractive.
E.g Reserve Your Free Spot
But this final section you need to paint a picture of why they need to take action now.
What will they gain and what is their future likely to look like if they sign up now.
Also, give them a clear understanding of what they are going to miss out on…and what their alternate future will be like if they don’t sign up.
By this stage, you have done just about everything you can so they sign up to your webinar sales funnel. Well done.
But hold your horses, you’re not done quite yet.
Now you need to set up the next part of your webinar sales funnel.
Part Two – The Post-Sign up Webinar Funnel
So what happens after they click that submit button? They should definitely be redirected to a Thank You page.
The ‘Indoctrination’ Thank You Page
We all know the lazy Thank You page – the one that only says ‘Thank you for signing up. We’ll see you there,’ and then you don’t hear from them again until the webinar.
Sometimes, you even forget that you signed up for the webinar because nobody reminded you.
Most people forget that this is the part where the prospect is highly excited…they just signed up for a webinar that they believe will help them solve a problem.
So take advantage of it!
Here are the elements that we personally use on our Thank You pages and what you might want to start applying on yours.
A personalized thank you message
By using the Dynamic Text Replacement feature (if your landing page platform has it), you get to personalize the Thank you message with the reader’s name in it.
For example, when they land on the Thank you page, they will see – ‘Thank you for signing up, Jason! We’ll see you at the webinar.’
While this is not that important to have, it’s a nice personal touch.
Audiences pay more attention when they see their names on something and by creating a personalized page, they are more likely to pay attention to the other elements on the page that you want them to see.
So now that you have their attention, here’s what you want them to see next.
Record a Thank You message video
Having a video of the speaker or webinar host on the thank you page gives a nice personal touch.
Here are a few things you can say:
- Thank them for taking action
- Remind them of the big benefits of attending the webinar
- Remind them what problems you will help them solve
- Ask them to whitelist your emails
- Tell them if you are sending any freebies via email
- Give them a short exercise to do if appropriate
- Ask them to pencil in the time and date in their calendar
Provide the webinar details as a reminder
Be sure to include the webinar details AGAIN on the page to remind them the Date, Time and Platform for the webinar.
Attach a calendar widget for good measure. This will help set the reminder on their Google Calendar automatically.
Yes, that’s a lot of work for just a thank you page, but it’s not over yet.
** Reminders are important. You have to remember that not everyone will open their emails or calendar or Facebook on a daily basis (not all at once at least). Your job is to try to reach them in at least one of them.
Bonus – Offer a Free downloadable
If you’re up to going the extra mile – provide more value by giving a Free download on the page. It can be anything;
- Ebook
- Infographic
- Poster
Everybody likes free stuff, but they are more interested in the value that is attached to it.
For example, come up with an ebook with a simple guideline on How to Create Attractive Ads. It sounds interesting; sounds like the audience can benefit something from it.
They’re curious – they click download.
Your ‘freebie’ should be a prelude to help familiarize the audience with the subject that you will speak more in-depth about at the webinar.
Get them intrigued, excited and pumped for the webinar- so you are more likely to generate sales at the webinar itself.
Part Three – Pre-Event Marketing
Going back to the House Party metaphor – you have now introduced yourself and engaged in an interesting conversation with them.
You even got them to go out to the backyard and drink beer with you while you tend to the barbecue grill.
They agreed to attend your next house party but they’re not 100% sure they would.
There’s still doubt – they’re still thinking, ‘Do I wanna be friends with this guy?’ (the ‘guy’ is you by the way).
So when they leave your party – your job next is to keep in touch. Let them know that you want to keep them as friends and you do want them at your next house party.
BUT, be careful not to appear too clingy or you’ll chase them away instead.
The Pre-Webinar Email Follow-Up Sequence
Sure, they’ve signed up for your webinar but keep in mind that it’s easy to forget about you if you don’t try to make yourself visible (hurts but it’s true).
Your goal here is to be a caring friend who wants to keep in touch, not a stalker who is overbearing.
Create a follow-up email sequence with at least 3 to 5 emails. Don’t bombard them with reminder emails for the whole week – set them with gaps between each other.
So how should you write the emails? Here are 4 simple guidelines to help you.
Email 1 – Personal Gain
This email should tell them:
- What they can expect to gain from attending your webinar.
- List out the topics and subjects that you will be covering
- Remind them how they can help solve their problems.
- How their lives could be like if they attend your webinar and apply the information
A good way to do this is to tell your personal story.
How you were in the same position as they are right now…and what challenges you encountered.
Highlight how you overcame the challenges with the techniques/tools you will reveal in the webinar.
And finally, reveal what your life looks like now after overcoming the challenges in your way.
Email 2 – Logic
What problems will you be helping them solve at the webinar? Why is it so important for the registrants to hear what you have to say?
Here are a few guidelines:
- Lay out the logic – the whats and the whys.
- What are the challenges that they think they have versus what they actually have?
- Why are they experiencing these challenges?
- Why should they listen to you?
- What topics exactly you will be covering at the webinar
This will appeal to those people who are highly logical.
It will also appeal to the logical side of your prospects’ minds.
Address the questions that they may have and let them know that you will try your best to answer them at the webinar.
Email 3 – Social proof
This email is all about building more trust and handling objections.
Some things you might want to include here are:
- Show testimonials and feedback from your clients
- Give a case study or two
- Mention publications/awards/qualifications you have
- Screenshots or videos of results
Don’t look at it as showing off (well you are a little bit).
But what you’re doing is important to further convince that you have done this before. Providing social proof shows that you are credible and can be trusted.
This is your chance to tell them that you have the goods and they can trust you.
Email 4 – Fear/Urgency
This email should be sent the day before the event or a few hours before the event, wherever you see fit.
Remind them the webinar is happening soon and that they can get ready for it. Inform them to click the webinar link 10 minutes before the webinar starts.
Let them know that you will begin right on time and those who are late will risk missing out on important information that could change their life.
Remind them of what kind of future they could be missing out on if they miss out the webinar.
Here’s the good news. You can use these 4 guidelines in any type of email series – pre-sign up, post-sign up and even post-event. They are relevant wherever you use them.
Part Four – Post-Event Follow Up Email Sequence
So the webinar is now over and done – now what?
Webinar funnels do not end here.
Your party is over, some friends dropped by, some didn’t.
Now you want to keep them as friends and to do that, you need to keep in touch once again.
You text them the next day saying – ‘Hey, thanks for coming,’ and proceed to talk about that interesting thing that happened at the party last night. They’re reminded of how great the party was and said, ‘Can’t wait for the next one!’
It’s a good idea to text people who wanted to come but couldn’t make it saying – ‘Hey, sorry you missed an awesome party… here are a few things that happened. Maybe next time?’
Let them know that you still care even though they failed to show up.
Mentally this will ingrain in them the idea, ‘I’ll try my best to attend the next one!’
This is the part that if not done right will result in missing out lots of sales.
But how do you make it happen?
Post Webinar Follow-Up Sequence
You can follow the same 4 email structure – Personal Gain, Logic, Social Proof and Fear, to construct an email sequence, but this time, include a link to the webinar replay.
To create urgency, you may want to limit the replay availability to a certain period of time.
Here’s a quick guideline on how to write your Post-Event Webinar funnel sequence.
Email 1 – What do They Stand to Gain
Once again, remind them why they would benefit from watching the webinar.
- What are some of the common benefits people get after watching your webinar
- How people’s lives are improved/changed
- What challenges and pains your webinar will help solve.
Give them the webinar replay link that will be available for a limited time.
Email 2 – Appeal to their Logic
You might want to:
- Remind them what are the consequences of not getting help with their problem
- Remind them why are the topics you covered
- If you discussed some cool topics in the FAQ, tell them about it
- Where possible, use statistics and studies to appeal even more to their logic
Email 3 – Use Testimonials and Proof
Since you just ran the live webinar you can now add more social proof:
- Get screenshots of what attendees said
- Introduce more testimonials
- Introduce another case study
- Address any objections that are stopping them from watching your replay
Once again, attach the link to the webinar replay with a reminder that it will be taken down.
Email 4 – Create Urgency to Act
You’ve reminded them in the previous 3 emails that the replay will be taken down soon. In this email, you should urge them to watch the replay while it’s still available.
Remind them of what they will actually miss out on…or if they will have to pay to watch the webinar in the future.
Maybe they didn’t care that they missed out on the live webinar, but they probably would care if they miss out on it for good.
Attach the webinar replay link again for the last time.
Webinar Sales Funnel Bonus Stage – Tools & Tips
Guess what? You are finally done!
You’ve gone through all 4 stages of building your Webinar funnel so give yourself a pat on the back. This system is applicable just about any industry. Just be sure to tweak them accordingly and you’re good to go!
But since we want to overdeliver, we’re going to let you in on my secret stash of ‘funnel enhancers’ as I’d like to call it.
These enhancers will easily boost your Webinar sales funnels to new levels like you won’t believe it.
But because it deserves its own blog post, you can read more about it by clicking the link below:
<Read Next> Level Up Your Webinar Funnel Game with these Magic Funnel Enhancers
Next Step after Building Your Webinar Sales Funnel?
Your funnel is all set up and all you need now is to actually get people to visit your landing page.
How do you do it?
Paid advertising
Word of mouth and organic traffic works too, but if you want to truly scale your Webinar Funnel, you need paid ads.
The internet provides a ton of advertising platforms that you can use.
We mainly use Facebook and Instagram – but depending on the target audience, Google, Twitter, Linkedin and Youtube can also be good avenues.
All you need is to set up your ads, come up with a killer copy and publish it.
Sounds fairly easy right? Truth is, it’s not that straightforward.
But, fret not! I’ll show you the step-by-step guidelines on how to do that on another blog post.
So why use Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Google, Twitter and Youtube?
Simple. It’s where people are spending their time.
These are the top ad platforms out there with millions of active users – daily. New accounts are created every day. The number of users just keeps on increasing.
According to a study by Oberlo, there are 3.5 billion daily active social media users.
That’s a heck of a lot of people that could be interested in your webinar. So if you’re not already taking advantage of those numbers, it’s time to consider it.
We hope this article has shined a bit of light on building your Webinar funnels. Check out our other post on why webinars are effective persuasion tools or how to build an effective webinar marketing campaign.
If you find it too complicated to do it yourself and are open to engaging an experienced team of webinar consultants? Then why not reach out to us for a friendly chat about how we can help you make use of webinars for your business? Just click the button below.
Finally, we’ll have more blog posts like this in the future so be sure to come back and read them when they’re up. Or you can click this button to get reminders on Facebook Messenger.
See you at the next blog post. Stay radical!
Reference articles:
– https://raelyntan.com/automated-webinar-sales-funnel/
– https://neilpatel.com/blog/build-profitable-webinar-funnel/
– https://supplygem.com/social-media-statistics/
– https://my.oberlo.com/blog/social-media-marketing-statistics
