How to Create a Webinar Funnel That Converts: The Complete Guide

You’ve poured countless hours and resources into creating a product or service that you know will change people’s lives. It’s the best on the market, but there’s one problem — you’re struggling to reach your ideal audience.

That’s where a webinar sales funnel comes in. It’s your secret weapon to generate leads, build brand awareness, educate your audience, and convert your prospects into paying customers.

But how do you create a webinar funnel that helps automate your sales process, scale your business, and achieve your marketing goals? In this article, we’ll break down the webinar funnel process and give practical tips to help you achieve your goals.

What is a webinar sales funnel?

A webinar sales funnel is a series of steps for converting potential customers into paying subscribers by using webinars to guide them through the sales process. It typically involves five stages:

1. Awareness. This is the first stage of the funnel, where you generate interest in your product or service through social media, paid ads, and email marketing and get people to sign up for your webinar. New leads at this stage are considered to be top of the funnel (ToFu).
2. Interest. Once someone has signed up for your webinar, they’re in the interest stage. You want to keep them engaged through emails, teasers, or valuable educational resources. These leads are moving from ToFu to middle of the funnel (MoFu).
3. Consideration. During the webinar, your mission is to educate the audience about what your product or service can do for them (and make sure it sounds highly valuable). This is the consideration stage, where potential customers are weighing the pros and cons of your offer. They’re now bottom of the funnel (BoFu).
4. Purchase. Towards the end of your webinar, you want to lead your audience to the purchase stage. You can offer extra resources or a special promotion or discount to encourage them to become buyers. If they don’t take the plunge straightaway, you can still follow up with other resources or webinar opportunities in future.
5. Post-purchase. After the webinar, even if you successfully made a sale, your relationship with the customer doesn't end there. The last stage of your funnel should be reserved for following up with your customers to provide support and get feedback. This makes them more likely to have a positive customer experience and recommend your brand to everyone they know.

Benefits of creating a webinar funnel

When done right, webinar funnels are the ultimate lead-generation tool for sales and marketing teams. A well-crafted webinar funnel helps you:

1. Connect face-to-face with prospects
2. Reach a wider audience
3. Position your brand as a thought leader

1. Connect face-to-face with prospects

Webinars let you connect with prospects in a more personal way than cold calls and emails. You directly interact with your attendees through live chat and Q&A sessions, so you can build relationships and trust with them.

2. Reach a wider audience

Unlike in-person events, webinars can be accessed from anywhere in the world, so you reach a larger audience. This gives you opportunities to expand your brand's reach and attract potential customers who may have never heard of your business otherwise.

3. Position your brand as a thought leader

When you provide valuable insights and expertise through webinars, you establish your brand as an authority in the eyes of your audience. This helps build credibility, trust, and loyalty among your target audience, and you give them the confidence to choose your brand when making a purchase decision.

10 Steps to create a webinar funnel that converts

When you start building your webinar funnel, you must focus on what value the webinar will provide to the audience and what your overall objectives are.

Here's how to get started:

1. Define your target audience
2. Determine your success criteria
3. Pick a webinar format
4. Choose the right webinar platform
5. Create a webinar landing page
6. Promote webinar registration
7. Host a memorable free webinar
8. Add a call to action (CTA)
9. Send follow-up emails and create an evergreen webinar funnel
10. Analyze results

1. Define your target audience

Who’s your ideal customer? What are they looking for? What motivates them? Whether you’re targeting entrepreneurs, marketers, or small businesses, you need to know how your webinar will solve their pain points.

For example, if you’re on the sales team for a project management SaaS tool, you could host a series of webinars aimed at small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), such as “New Platform Onboarding Hacks for HR teams: How to Make Everyone an Early Adopter”. Depending on your target audience, you might focus on delivering entirely educational webinars or setting up deminars that showcase case studies or testimonials from other SMBs using your software.

Use tools like Google Analytics to identify the demographics and interests of your website visitors and social media analytics tools like HubSpot to find who's most likely to be interested in your webinar. Customer surveys — or even a quick LinkedIn poll — can also help you get direct feedback from potential buyers.

2. Determine your success criteria

Defining what success looks like for your webinar will help you create a solid plan and stay on track. Ask questions like:

• What is the target revenue, and what percentage of that do you want to achieve through your event marketing strategy?
• What is the average customer lifetime value (CLV), and how many customers do you need to acquire to achieve your revenue goal?
• What is the cost per acquisition, and how can you optimize your webinar funnel to reduce that cost and improve ROI?

For example, if you're hosting a webinar to introduce a new product, your success criteria can look like this:

• Registration rate: A goal of 500 registrations.
• Attendance rate: An attendance rate of at least 50%, or 250 attendees.
• Engagement rate: At least 50 questions or comments from attendees.
• Conversion rate: Converting at least 10% of attendees to paying customers would equate to 25 new customers.
• Revenue goal: Based on the average value of a new customer, a revenue goal of $50,000 from the webinar.

3. Pick a webinar format

Once you’ve defined your target audience, it's time to decide the format of your webinar. Think about the success criteria you just listed, whether it's generating leads, educating customers, or selling a product. And then, use a free editing software to put your clips together and create a compelling visual presentation.

Some common webinar formats include:

1. Lead generation webinars
2. Thought leadership webinars
3. Product demo webinars
4. Customer onboarding webinars
5. Customer success webinars

1. Lead generation webinars

Lead gen webinars aim at attracting potential new customers by providing educational content on topics relevant to your target market. Depending on the content, your webinars could be introduced to different funnel stages (i.e. ToFu, MoFu, or BoFu) and may include elements of pitching or selling your product or service.

2. Thought leadership webinars

These webinars are typically ToFu webinars and help position your business as an expert in your industry. Here, you focus on providing valuable industry insights, trends, and best practices. Panel discussions, interviews, fireside chats, or even solo presentations from industry leaders are great formats for dynamic conversations.

3. Product demo webinars

Also known as “deminars”, these webinars are usually MoFu, as they’re targeted towards prospects who’ve already shown interest in your offering and are evaluating it as a potential solution for their needs. Here you showcase a product or service, highlighting its features and benefits and helping your audience decide.

4. Customer onboarding webinars

These webinars typically fall under the post-purchase stage of the webinar funnel or bottom of the funnel (BoFu). These webinars aim to educate new customers on how to use the product or service they have just purchased. You can host Q&A sessions, step-by-step demonstrations, or showcase case studies to help new customers learn about your product.

5. Customer success webinars

These are also BoFu webinars as they help build customer loyalty and advocacy. A customer success webinar aims at providing value to your existing customers by helping them make the most of your product or service through demos, success stories, product updates, and feature releases.

4. Choose the right webinar platform

The next step is to identify the best webinar platform that works for you and your attendees. Livestorm, Zoom, Webex, and GoToWebinar are popular choices.

To help choose yours, think about:

• Number of webinar attendees
• Compatibility with your existing tools and systems
• Engagement features like polls, Q&A, and chat
• Customization options for branding and design
• Security and privacy measures
• Analytics and reporting capabilities
• Technical support and resources available

You also need a tool that supports your entire webinar lifecycle from lead generation and audience engagement to post-webinar follow-up. For example, can you create custom landing pages and promote your webinar during the awareness stage? And does your webinar platform integrate with CRM tools like HubSpot and Salesforce or marketing automation software like MailChimp or ActiveCampaign to automatically send follow-up emails or schedule sales calls after the webinar?

5. Create a webinar landing page

Your webinar landing page is the first impression of your event. So what do you put on a webinar landing page?

• An eye-catching headline that explains what attendees will learn from the webinar.
• A brief description of the event and a list of topics that will be covered.
• The date, time, duration of the webinar, and time zone.
• A registration form for attendees to fill out.

You can use data collection tools like Typeform to build your registration form from scratch. Or use Livestorm's registration pages with 14 default fields and custom fields to capture just the data you need for your event. Plus, with Livestorm, you can customize your branding and add social sharing icons to increase your reach.

6. Promote the webinar registration page

It's time to start promoting! The more people you can get to register for your webinar, the higher your chances of achieving your goals.

Here are our top webinar tips for a successful promotion:

1. Leverage your social media following
2. Push web traffic to your webinar landing page
3. Use email marketing
4. Retarget audience with paid ads

1. Leverage your social media following

Whether you have a large or a small following, you can use social media to attract your existing followers and get them sharing among their networks. Use a mix of media to create posts that capture attention. You can even create a dedicated event page or event hashtag to create a buzz around your webinar.

2. Push web traffic to your webinar landing page

Promote your webinar through your website by creating a banner or pop-up that directs visitors to your landing page. Use timers and countdowns to create a sense of urgency and drive registrations.

3. Use email marketing

Use your customer relationship management (CRM) systems like Salesforce or Hubspot to segment your email list based on their interests and engagement levels. This way, you send targeted messages to only those interested in the topic. With Livestorm, you can set up automated email sequences from confirmation to webinar reminders and even follow-up emails after your event.

4. Retarget audience with paid ads

Platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads are an effective way to retarget people who visited your webinar page but didn’t register. You can also create lookalike or custom audiences based on their behavior and demographics to make your ads more relevant.

7. Host a memorable webinar

A memorable webinar engages the audience, provides valuable insights, and leaves a lasting impression. And that’s the best way to get attendees to share their webinar experience with others and generate positive word-of-mouth recommendations for your brand.

Here’s how you can create a memorable webinar:

• Plan ahead and prepare for the webinar by creating an outline, practicing your presentation, and testing the webinar platform you want to use beforehand.
• Keep your audience engaged throughout with interactive features like polls, Q&A sessions, and chat.
• Use visuals like slides, videos, and images to help illustrate your points.
• Keep your presentation concise and focused on avoiding overwhelming your audience with too much information.
• Use Livestorm’s Handouts plugin to share free downloadable resources like e-books, infographics, or checklists.
• After the webinar, follow up with attendees by sending a thank-you email or providing additional resources.
• Ask for feedback from attendees to learn what worked well and what could be better next time.

Pro tip: Livestorm integrates with design tools like Visme, Miro, and Mural so you can create stunning visuals and present them directly within your event room.

8. Add a call to action (CTA)

Adding a CTA to your webinar can help you gently nudge attendees toward the next stage of the funnel. But you need to time CTAs right. Typically, it's best to include your CTA towards the end of your webinar, after you've provided value and built trust.

Your CTA can lead your audience to:

• Join your mailing list
• Subscribe to your premium content
• Take a survey
• Sign up for a free trial
• Book a demo

If you're using Livestorm, you can directly send clickable CTAs within your meeting room so attendees can act on them immediately. Plus, you can customize the CTA text, button, and URL to meet your needs.

9. Send follow-up emails and create an evergreen webinar funnel

Just because the live event has ended doesn’t mean the conversation should too! You need to keep nurturing your leads and convert them into customers.

Thank attendees for their participation and include key takeaways from the webinar. You can offer additional materials, discounts on related products and services, or even free trials.

Or you can create an evergreen webinar funnel — a series of automated webinars that run on a schedule, allowing you to continuously generate leads and sales without manually hosting live webinars. This can be done by pre-recording a webinar and setting it up to play at specific times or on-demand, depending on the lead's behavior.

So if you use Livestorm, you can set your live webinars to be recorded automatically and then use the instant replay feature, to share the webinar recording with all your registrants — not just attendees. This shows that you’re invested in their experience and are willing to provide them with the content they need, even if they didn't make it to the live event.

10. Analyze your results

A good webinar platform will give you access to an analytics dashboard with metrics like attendance rate, engagement rate, and conversion rate. This way, you gather valuable insights and can make data-driven decisions to improve your future webinars.

For example, if your registration rate is low, you may need to re-evaluate your promotion strategy. If your attendance rate is high, but your engagement rate is low, you may need to adjust your content to be more engaging. If your conversion rate is low, you may need to strategize a better offer and CTA.

Webinar software like Livestorm can help you measure your KPIs. You can also track other metrics like the number of sessions, creation date, average duration, number of replay viewers, and number of messages/questions/polls to make data-driven decisions.

Attract, Engage, Convert

​​The key to a successful webinar funnel is to create a personalized and engaging experience for your audience. Here's a quick recap of the steps you need to take:

• Identify your target audience. No one-size-fits-all.
• Create a webinar registration page. Spread the word like wildfire.
• Leverage social media. Get social, get seen.
• Drive web traffic. Make them click.
• Email marketing. Your secret weapon.
• Retarget with ads. Keep 'em coming back for more.
• Host a memorable webinar. Make it a party!
• Analyze your results. Learn, improve, repeat.

Creating an effective webinar funnel takes time, effort, and a lot of trial and error. You need an all-in-one live webinar platform like Livestorm to simplify the process. With Livestorm, you can rely on one platform to create registration pages, host dynamic webinars, and nurture leads with follow-up emails. Plus, you can analyze your event KPIs all in one place.

With the right approach and tool, your webinar funnel can help you generate more leads, convert them into customers and boost your bottom line.

Frequently asked questions about creating a webinar funnel

What are the 4 areas of creating an automated webinar sales funnel?

The 4 areas of creating an automated webinar sales funnel include:

1. Lead generation. This can be done through social media marketing, paid advertising, and content marketing. Tools like HubSpot can help automate your social media and content marketing efforts, while tools like Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager can automate your paid advertising campaigns.
2. Landing pages. Here you want to drive leads to a sign-up page for your webinar. Tools like Leadpages and ClickFunnels can help you create effective landing pages and automate the process of sending out reminder emails to registrants.
3. Evergreen webinar. You can deliver a pre-recorded, automated webinar to educate and persuade potential customers to take action.
4. Sales and Follow-up. Tools like ActiveCampaign, and Mailchimp can help you automate email marketing campaigns and follow-up sequences, while tools like Calendly and Google Calendar can automate the scheduling of sales calls with potential customers.

What is the webinar funnel process?

The webinar funnel process involves using strategies and tactics to attract potential customers, engage them through a webinar, and ultimately convert them into paying customers. It involves five stages:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Consideration
4. Purchase
5. Post-purchase

What are the steps for creating a webinar funnel?

The steps for creating a webinar funnel include:

1. Identifying your target audience
2. Determining your success criteria
3. Choosing a webinar format
4. Choosing the right webinar platform
5. Creating a webinar landing page
6. Promoting webinar registration
7. Hosting a memorable free webinar
8. Adding a call to action (CTA)
9. Sending follow-up emails and creating an evergreen webinar funnel
10. Analyzing results

What’s the difference between a webinar funnel and a landing page?

The difference between a webinar funnel and a landing page is that a webinar funnel is a multi-step process that takes a prospect from being aware of your brand to becoming a paying customer through a webinar. On the other hand, a landing page is a standalone web page designed to capture a visitor's information and convert them into a lead or a sale.