Webinars in your marketing funnel

Discover in this blog how you can easily optimize your marketing funnel with the help of webinars with 5 steps.

What is a funnel? 

You can compare a funnel to a route. Your target group goes through a number of steps before they take action. For example, your (potential) webinar participant first sees your advertisement, then has to click on the link to the registration page, register and of course watch your webinar. You don't want them to get off track but get to the goal: watch your webinar! 

Why you should use a marketing funnel 

With an optimized marketing funnel, your target audience moves to action. You direct your target audience via your ad to your registration page and create more conversion. So ultimately it ensures that you get more registrations, sales and warm leads from your webinar.

To optimize your marketing funnel, there are a few steps. Below you can read which steps you take before the webinar takes place:

Step 1: Direct attention to your webinar

To start with, you obviously need to make sure your audience is aware of the existence of your webinar. There are many ways to do this. Depending on your channels, you can put (paid) ads there, such as on Facebook, LinkedIn or Google. Make sure your SEO is optimized to be even more findable. Furthermore, visibility on your own website is always a good idea. To directly approach your target group, use your mailing list. You can also link your own integration to WebinarGeek within a few clicks. The advice is to promote your webinar no more than a week in advance so that participants don't forget they registered and it is still fresh in their minds.

Step 2: Create more interest and generate registrations

Sending an email is easy to do, but unfortunately does not promise instant success. The power of recurrence is good to keep in mind. Just remember that you don't want to be pushy. With a mailing tool or integration you can set up a campaign. You can assume that someone who has opened the mail has more interest than someone who has not read the mail. A second mail to those who have opened the mail will be more effective than to those who have not opened it. With an email system, you exclude groups. 

Step 3: Send emails after registration

To get your participants excited, send a number of emails prior to your webinar. Emails in advance ensure that a larger portion of your target audience will actually watch. Especially with a free webinar, you need to be aware of no-shows. People forget that the webinar is coming up or they have registered because they want to decide later whether they will attend. With reminder emails, you ensure that you generate more interest so that your participants want to attend and don't forget about your webinar. Provide the email with a catchy text or a short video to - again - motivate your target group to action. It is recommended to send the email three days before the webinar.

Step 4: Send emails prior to the webinar

Not everyone is as organized as another. A viewing link does get lost among the emails! To help your participants, send an email before the webinar starts in which you mention the viewing link again. Don't forget to make your participants excited for your webinar! Keep the high attendance in mind. You send this email 1 day before the webinar is scheduled.

Step 5: The day of the webinar

For extra service and high attendance, send a final reminder that your webinar is scheduled with the viewing link. That email doesn't have to be long, a short but sweet email with the most important info is enough. Think about mentioning the time, duration and of course the topic. You send this email 30-60 minutes before the start.

Follow up on new leads

You've given your webinar and gotten your viewers excited. Time to follow up your warm leads! With WebinarGeek you can differentiate between your viewers and non-viewers, often your own mailing tool can do that as well. If you made an offer during your webinar, the follow-up email usually brings in additional sales.

You send a follow-up immediately after your webinar or up to a few days after your webinar. With follow-up emails you can think of different topics. For example, you can repeat the offer you made during your webinar or make a new offer. Also an offer that is about to expire is a good reason to send an email.

Did you receive many questions during your webinar? Then an email with the most frequently asked questions and possible objections is an option. Even though you're not making an offer, you're still reminding viewers of the webinar so you're popping up in their mind again! 

Expert tip: Moreover, you can easily link WebinarGeek to your CRM. Your data then comes directly into your CRM, such as HubSpot or Pipedrive. Want to learn more about CRM systems? View the best CRM software.

Follow up on no-shows

There will probably still be people who didn't watch your webinar despite your hard work. Too bad, but you still have their data! Think about whether to send them the replay. They watch the replay in their own time, but you can limit that time by setting availability to a number of days.

The viewers and non-viewers are not only visible in your live webinar. You can also see who watched the replay. You can make your offer to the viewers of the replay. You export the statistics as a CSV file and filter them into Excel or Google Spreadsheets. With a mailing tool, you can set up triggers for them.

Send invitations for the next webinar

Got a lot of positive feedback? An invitation to the next webinar will for sure be appreciated by registrants of the last webinar! You then don't exclude anyone in your mailing tool or WebinarGeek, but send a follow-up email to all registrants. For the next webinar, you go through the steps again. If necessary, you can test or change some things so that your marketing funnel is increasingly optimized. Do keep the offer you are made in mind . Participants who have already taken up the offer obviously do not need to receive it again.

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