Webinars are essential platforms for attracting people. Typically, webinars are online meetings, but unlike regular remote meetings, they require some invitation and registration to attend.
When you can get vast numbers of people to participate in any webinar, you have access to a goldmine of data that may be effectively used to attract potential customers if you know how to retain them.
That’s where webinar funnels come in.
Webinar funnels operate like the typical sales funnel, and a marketing model focused on the consumer shows how potential customers move to become real customers, from being aware of a product to the stage of actual purchase.
In-between, there are phrases like opinion, consideration, and preferences.
Businesses can plan a sales funnel as a step of well-defined actions to help push potential clients from one stage to another until they make purchases. It is called a funnel because it involves stages in which the number reduces before the real customers are retained. Thus, a sales funnel represents prospective clients’ process before becoming customers.
That is precisely what a webinar funnel does. Let’s look at it more closely.
Contents
What is a webinar funnel?
A webinar funnel is an example of a sales funnel. This time, a webinar is used as the primary tool for attracting potential customers.
Using webinars as a magnet is a very effective tool because remote meetings are very effective in reaching many, or should we say, an unlimited number of attendees. So, how is that done?
Since we are using a funnel model, we expect the number to decrease, so why don’t we rather get as many people as possible from the onset? No tool is as effective as getting a large number of potential customers like a webinar.
Webinar funnels are developed by using a webinar as the attraction. You’ll need a webinar landing page where those interested can get more information and register. On the webinar landing page, you can collect information from the registration that will help you attract customers as the funnel plays out later on. That gives you your first breakthrough.
Remember, people won’t be willing to give information just anyhow. That’s why a webinar remains an effective tool. Most webinars require a kind of invitation or registration to attend.
Especially if there would be benefits for attendees, people will willingly register for webinars because it puts some stamp of exclusivity on the event. So, webinars can be a great way of receiving information from potential clients. Their personal information and email addresses are the essential details you’ll harvest.
So, in summary, a webinar funnel is a typical sales funnel that uses webinars as leads to attract clients in the hope of retaining them for sales.
Why is it important?
So, why is this important? Sales funnels help sellers win more customers, and using webinars is one of the most effective ways of achieving this.
A typical sales funnel for your business can be created when you start by creating a landing page where the customers you want can be offered something.
Your webinar can create lots of valuable information relevant to customers. You should offer something useful to them. Also, you should nurture the prospect until you can make sales out of them.
Naturally, every sales funnel will decrease prospects as the stages progress. Still, the good news is that you can use webinars effectively to produce great content that will retain as many people as possible.
For example, webinars are easier to gain prospects’ data. This would not be easy otherwise. But because people can willingly give information to attend a valuable webinar, you can easily use this strategy. Indeed, this is the second stage of the webinar funnel. The third stage involves sending out the webinar details to all the registered contacts after directing them to a thank you page for registering.
Then the webinar process should be engaging, educative, interactive, and interesting enough to win them over. They should be able to watch it again, and you should be able to make sales if the process goes smoothly.
As you proceed in the webinar funnel from the beginning, some people will not show as much interest. The number of people you can convert will show how successful you are, but you should know that the number of people remaining in your funnel will decrease with each stage, just like any typical sales funnel. However, the process is expected to end in sales when you have succeeded.
Webinar funnels involve the presentation of topics, products, or information relevant to what you offer. You can use the webinar to create genuine interest and build relationships with prospects or new leads. Once you can build relationships with prospects, you can build a loyal customer base.
Creating a webinar funnel
Now that we know how vital the webinar funnel is let’s look at how to create one and how to use it to drive sales.
Webinar funnels are used to attract potential webinar participants, so the process begins with getting traffic to your webinar landing page and getting people to register.
The webinar funnel works by inviting people online to attend a webinar. The funnel then leads the prospect(s) through the process, in which the objective, in this case, is to purchase a product or create awareness about it. This would require a lot of marketing and promotion on social media, as we would soon see.
The process starts with inviting leads to your webinar. This involves driving traffic and targeting your audience to secure their registration. You’ll need to send reminders to get enough people to register and attend. You’ll also need to invest heavily in email marketing, promotions, and social media marketing.
To attract prospects, you create webinars around issues they feel concerned about, like creating solutions to problems that already cause them pain. Use webinars to solve problems, and it would be easier attracting people.
The next phase is the webinar, which should be engaging enough for participants to want to participate further. The more value you provide for prospects, the easier it is for them to make purchases.
Explain the solution enough for people to get it. Don’t be in a hurry to make sales without letting people understand what you are offering them. Never underwhelm your participants.
Ensure your webinar is relatable, involves personal stories, and is authentic.
Also, make sure your webinar is free, and the value the participants get is worth their time. Also, make it evident during your webinar marketing that it will be free of charge. But while free, you may add some hints of exclusivity by setting a deadline for registration or claiming you’ll limit attendance to a certain number.
However, before you get to the last stage, find a means to engage them with thank you emails and reminders that call for an action to follow through till the end.
Remember, don’t be eager to get personal information. The email addresses should be enough. You may not worry about phone numbers as people may be reluctant to release this. Don’t make it too obvious you’ll follow up with reminders and thank you emails. But, sure do!
So, the procedure looks like this:
CREATE TRAFFIC > WEBINAR LANDING PAGE > THANK YOU PAGE > ATTEND/REWATCH WEBINAR > THANK YOU EMAILS > MAKE PURCHASE
Let’s highlight the points a bit more.
Promotion
Let’s be quite practical. How do you promote your webinar?
Since it’s a webinar that involves online meetings, you need online platforms to do so. Thankfully, the easiest way to drive traffic is via social media marketing. You need the traffic to get the number.
Since it is free, participants may want to take it less seriously, so you should endeavor to market it aggressively and show what people stand to gain by attending. As we said earlier, work on addressing the pains of people. No one ignores a solution to their problems.
Here are three ways to reach your audience
Social media
Your webinar registration link should be ready. Once it is, incorporate it into social media platforms with compelling messages.
Ensure you include links to the webinar registration page on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, and more. Use clear, straightforward messaging. An example could be:
“How I moved from being broke to earning a six-figure income in six months working from home: learn more in my free webinar. Limited participants. Register for free here: www.attendmywebinar.net/12334455 (we’ve used a hypothetical link).
Such a compelling message on social media will surely draw responses. But if you already have massive followers, that may just be enough. You can also promote the message by paying for advertising on social media platforms.
You can also use graphics and well-designed pages with all the details. But always ensure the link to the registration is included.
Email marketing
If you don’t have a subscribers list, this may not be very effective, although you can still try it out. You may be missing out if you’ve never tried email marketing.
Also, you may get emails from prospects and then send newsletters to them, although we believe this is more effective if you’ve been hosting webinars and already have subscribers.
You should have a compelling newsletter explaining the webinar’s benefits and why the participants would gain from it. Also, include the link to the registration in the mail.
Website traffic
This is important for those who already have websites and have excellent site traffic. All you need to do is use a pop-up on the site to invite people to your webinar registration page.
You can use a CTA button as well to invite people to the webinar registration page. You may also promote the link to the webinar registration page on your website.
Attracting people to your landing page is essential, but retaining them afterward is more important. Make sure your landing/registration page is very attractive and welcome. You should also thank people for the registration. Let’s look at how to do that.
Thanking people for registration
The landing page is excellent. But you know what is greater? A thank you page!
Simply use this page to thank your registrants. Also, add some new information, like requesting them to add the webinar to their calendars or inviting others.
The thank-you page is a thank you page, so it shouldn’t contain much information or any new information. By thanking them, you create a relationship with the prospect that will be useful later.
Hosting a webinar
As we noted, make your webinar as interactive, engaging, and interesting as possible. This is the significant step in the webinar funnel.
Never be in a hurry to extract gains from the participants without first offering them value. Don’t offer less than you promised; always include personal stories of how you succeeded and why you want them to.
If you have proof of your former struggles, be very generous in showing them and be as relatable as possible. Use lots of slides and visuals. If possible, show short videos. Be very engaging and let the participants know that if you made it, then they can too. Offer hope and answer all their questions.
Be sure to make the participants know what you are offering and what it costs. Also, don’t let them feel you are trying to exploit them; instead, you’re offering solutions at a cost.
To have a great webinar, you should know how to use the excellent practice of hosting webinars. Anything less, and you may waste all your hard work.
Remember, you can record a webinar and make it available on-demand, especially for those who may want to catch up on it later.
You can easily learn how to record a webinar for those who may miss the live date and make it available on-demand to be rewatched as often as possible. Recording webinars may even be a better option as you can edit them to produce the best content possible.
CTA
You hope to draw loyal customers from webinars. That’s the whole point.
The end justifies the means, so a clear and compelling CTA is essential. By now, you have offered value, so don’t be afraid to make an effective call to action.
It should be short, straight to the point, and simple. That means you should provide the route to make the purchase right there and then. Make it extremely easy for the prospect, and your sales will show for it.
Follow up
In a webinar funnel, some will reach the webinar stage and may not be interested in making purchases. Try to follow up on those prospects.
You may even follow up with those who didn’t eventually attend the webinar and provide them with slides, so they know what they missed out on. You can then allow them to make purchases still. However, don’t be intrusive in your approach.
Finally, you can send out follow-up emails to all the participants and remind them of the benefits they stand to gain by making purchases.
Mistakes to avoid
Mistakes to avoid include being intrusive or not preparing well for your webinar. Once the prospects get bored with a webinar, they won’t follow through to the critical stage of making purchases.
Make sure the participants have their questions well answered. Follow up with those that missed out, and don’t forget to thank them for attending the webinar.
Conclusion
If you want to generate leads and improve sales with new sets of customers, webinar funnels are the way to go. You should know the steps to take and mistakes to avoid to drive traffic to your webinars and make sales.
All the steps listed above are effective and have helped so many businesses. However, the bottom line is conducting an excellent webinar. You must have the right content that will interest clients and drive sales.
You should also know how to follow up with everyone that registered and thank those that attended.
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