All of us today know what a web seminar, popularly called a webinar. A lot of us have been aware of this marketing strategy for quite some time now, due to the pandemic that all of us have been facing for the past more than two years.
What a lot of us also learned during this time, is the fact that these webinars can be used for business purposes very effectively, and are great tools of communication that enable us to have full-fledged meetings without going through the hassle of having to commute.
Let’s go into more detail about one of the newest and, for the lack of a better word, cooler ways of marketing. Webinar Marketing is the use of an online seminar as a tool to connect with a wider and varied audience in order to promote one’s business.
Marketing webinars work on the principle that when you offer relevant, timely and unique upfront value, your prospects will have more trust in your brand and your products and services.
Even though webinars can get participants interested in buying your products and/or services, a webinar is not essentially a sales pitch. It is supposed to focus more on providing value to the participants, rather than just being centred on your products or services.
The upfront value that you provide the attendees will, in turn, make the webinar a perfect opportunity for your products and/or services to be sold as a solution to a particular problem that you’ve been talking about.
The Use of Webinars in Content Marketing – Numbers Don't Lie
Companies use webinar marketing mostly for three purposes – to demonstrate their products and services amongst the potential buyers, distribute the content published in a certain blog post, and showcase their expertise in their field of operations. Here is some data about the usage of webinars in marketing:
- According to the Content Marketing Institute, 58% of marketers use webinars for promotion.
- Webinars are good at retaining their attention, said 40% of the viewers, according to MakeSocialMediaSell
- ReadyTalk says, 20% to 40% of the total people who attend the webinars transform into qualified leads
- Between 2% to 5% of the total webinar participants end up buying the product/service they are being pitched, according to Branded Solopreneur
- As unfortunate as it may sound, not more than half of the people who register actually attend the webinar
What is a Webinar Marketing Funnel?
In simple terms, a webinar funnel is a marketing process that is used by marketers to attract potential webinar participants. Creating one such funnel is considered one of the most effective ways to get people to participate in your webinar.
Without a webinar funnel, it’s not easy for webinars to get noticed or attended, rather the opposite, meaning that all your effort can go to waste.
The funnel works by inviting people on a webpage or social media platform to attend a webinar. The process that follows is also called the funnel, and it leads the person towards the objective of the webinar.
This objective could be about providing training with insights or encouraging the viewers to just purchase a product – the range is immense.
When you desire to make sales with your webinar, you need quite a lot of leads coming to you which you can then convert into customers. More importantly, these leads must be real people, as in, must be genuinely interested in your product or service. If the leads are not of this nature, they are of no use.
This is where you will also notice the funnel showing one of its true meanings because not everyone will get through. The number of people continuing to engage with your webinar is almost sure to go down as the leads move through the webinar funnel.
This is not a worrisome sign, though. As you move along, you will realize that it’s not necessary to capture every lead, but to capture the right leads for your business to grow. The webinar funnel has the ability to achieve both the jobs of a marketer – get leads and transform them into customers.
How Does a Webinar Sales Funnel Work?
The process of working of a webinar funnel can be divided into three parts –
The first part begins with the effort to gain leads about people whom you can invite to your webinar. Here, you focus on the traffic sources so that you can understand your audience.
This stage of the working process of the funnel has two more important parts – getting the maximizing the webinar registrations, and sending them reminder emails to maximize the attendance rate.
The second phase of a webinar funnel is during the webinar. This is about the engagement of your attendees and creating a personal and positive experience. You must keep them hooked throughout the webinar.
You can do this by providing them as much value as possible, and in the end, give them a clear call-to-action – encourage them to take the next step. This could be a signing up for a course, ordering a product or just giving you feedback.
Third, and last, would be to send thank you and follow-up emails to all the attendees. At this stage, you can clearly mention something in the emails that encourage sales. Since you have already provided the attendees with all the value they were looking for, you can now aim directly at sales.
What is an Automated Webinar Funnel?
An automated webinar is just a webinar that is run on autopilot, without the person responsible having to go live and conduct it.
A sales funnel, as explained above, is a path that you would want an interested participant to take with the expectation of eventually having a sale since you now consider them your potential customers.
An automated webinar funnel is a compilation of the two, where you will use a series of steps to lead the potential customer through the process of making a purchase. The most important step of this whole process, naturally, will be the automated webinar.
What are the Benefits of Automated Webinars?
Mentioned below are the many benefits of automated webinars which make them very business-friendly:
- You don't actually have to be present on every single webinar - it will free up your time
- Automated webinars can start every 15 or 30 minutes, and they can be starting like that 24/7, 365 days
- Eliminates all stage fright in case you get nervous when presenting to many people
- Can pre-record the webinar video and fine-tune it to be just perfect
- The final missing piece of a fully automated sales funnel
Automated webinar funnels buy you a lot of extra time since you do not have to spend as much time on your webinar once it has been created. This extra time can then be utilised by putting more effort into your business, which will in turn scale the business up and lower your customer acquisition costs.
However, if you prefer the live interactions between you and the audience. If you want to put emphasis on the dialogue and questions, then we recommend hosting live webinars. For live, automated and hybrid webinars, use the best webinar software.
6 Tips to Create an Effective Webinar Funnel
1. Make your webinar free – Try to remove as many barriers as possible to make sure maximum people register for and enter your webinar. More the attendees, more the customers.
2. Be relatable – The best webinars are those which are personalised, and even if they are not, are still able to make everyone experience personalization. That is, after all, one of the major points of a webinar. Building relationships is as important in business as it is in personal life.
3. Make the audience realize your importance – If you understand what your participants need, emphasize the ways in which you can fulfil that need of theirs. Be useful with your product/service.
4. Thank everyone – It is important to thank everyone for their participation, so make sure you do it in the beginning as well as when you finish. Pleasantries can take you a long way.
5. End with a CTA (Call to Action) – The point of a marketing idea idea for a webinar, after all, is to attract customers and gain sales. End your webinar with a simple, to-the-point, short and clear call to action. People will not mind this little dose of sales pitch after an interesting and useful session, and it can gain you some sales.
6. Use the best automated webinar software – The webinar platform you use to host your automated webinars can really make or break you. Some of the most important features to look at is the webinar registration page, the engagement options (including automated offers) and the follow-up email sequence.
4 Steps to Create an Automated Webinar Funnel
Step 1 - Prepare the Topic of Your Webinar
First, clearly establish your target audience you are going to present to before you decide your topic. What is their job? What’s the best way to reach them? What are their main professional or personal challenges?
A small survey of this type can save you a lot of trouble. The topic should, naturally, also be aligned to the product or service that you are trying to sell. This helps in increasing the webinar sales conversion rates (number of successful sales per attendee).
Step 2 - Create the Presentation and Talking Points
Doesn’t matter if you use PowerPoint, Prezi or Keynote, just make sure you get you main idea across. A fancy presentation is no good if it can’t deliver a clear message. A usual structure used by most people divides the webinar into 5 parts:
- Introduction of the topic and you as a presenter – why should they listen to you? What gives you the expertise?
- Introduction to the problem – make the problem really relatable. Your audience has to get into the space of remembering and feeling the problem
- Your proposed solution to the problem. This is a key piece. Explain and show how your product or service completely solves the problem.
- Encourage your attendees to take some action. The call-to-action in this case should be crystal clear. What action do you want them to take?
- Anticipate and alleviate doubts. Attendees might still be on the fence about your solution. Some of the most common doubts are – What do the previous customers say? Can I get a discount or refund?
The time that you divide between each of these sections depends completely upon your personal choice, but try and stick to the timings that will have the best impact on the minds of your participants.
Step 3 - Record the Webinar and Export the Recording File
While automation does reduce the hassle of presenting again and again, it creates a focal point in the recording part of the webinar. This will be really helpful for you. As mentioned earlier in the same article, you can ensure the clarity, conciseness, and just the total perfection of the webinar.
You will need to record your screen, for which there are tools like OBS, Camtasia etc. These tools will not only allow you to record your presentation and voice but also to edit out the bad parts.
Since automated webinars are here to stay, and our readers are planning to work upon them for a long time, they can buy dedicated microphones which will further improve the quality of their voices, in turn improving the quality of the complete webinar.
After being done with the recording, export it into the file format that is suitable to the tools that set webinar automation.
Step 4 - Use an Automated Webinar Software to Set Up Your Webinar
This is the part where it all comes together. You’ll upload your webinar recording file into the webinar platform, create an attractive registration page and set up all the engagement actions.
One of the most critical parts is timing the automated offer and making sure all the links work. You might also want to set UTM tags to your links so you know exactly how many clicks you’re getting through the webinar.
The best automated webinar platforms also feature rich analytics and reporting, so you can learn how to improve on your webinars.
To create automated sales funnels with webinars, we recommend using an automated webinar platform
12 best autowebinar platforms rated and compared
