[Guest Post] The Anatomy Of A Profitable Webinar Funnel

I’m not going to lie…

Converting cold traffic into profit is hard.

But, if you have an awesome funnel and you plan your ad campaigns effectively with a funnel ROI calculator, you can advertise with confidence and seriously change the economics of your business.

More about this in just a second.

Webinar funnels are one of the 7 main online sales funnels that I use in my business and in my clients’ businesses to convert cold traffic into profit.

Here’s what a standard webinar funnel looks like:

To profit from cold traffic, you need to understand the ‘optimization metrics’ involved in your funnel.

Optimization metrics are the ‘micro’ metrics that you can optimize to increase your overall ‘macro’ metrics, like sales and ROI.

For example, if you’re running Facebook ads to a webinar funnel:

• You will have a campaign budget
• You will have a cost per click (CPC) from the paid traffic you’re running
• A percentage of people will register for your webinar
• A percentage of people will attend your LIVE webinar
• A percentage of people will watch your webinar REPLAY
• A percentage of people will buy your webinar offer, which will have a certain price point (generally from $500 to $2,000)

…and each of the above metrics will impact your ROI.

For example, If we plug in the following optimization metrics into my webinar funnel ROI calculator:

…the calculator instantly shows us all the macro metrics we want to know:

Here’s a graphic representation of these numbers:

Other than the all mighty ROI metric, my favorite metrics are:

• EPC (Earnings Per Click)
• EPL (Earnings Per Lead)
• EPWA (Earnings Per Webinar Attendee) and
• ACV (Average Cart Value)

…because they show you, in the context of a webinar funnel, how much you can afford to pay for a click, webinar registrant, webinar attendee and sale and still remain ROI positive.

Now, an 87% ROI isn’t a bad starting point however we want our ROI to be at least 100% so we can finance our ad costs with our sales but what we really want is our ROI to be 200% or more so we can make a handy profit.

One thing you will discover from using my webinar funnel ROI calculator is how small improvements in some of your optimization metrics will massively increase your ROI.

For example, holding all else equal, if we decrease our CPC from $2 to $1 and increase our webinar registration rate from 30% to 40%…

…Our ROI increases from 87% to 233%.

Here’s a graphic representation of these numbers:

In other words, after making these improvements to your funnel, for every dollar you invest in Facebook advertising, rather than making only $0.87 (losing 13 cents), you’ll make $2.33 (profiting $1.33)!

As you can see from the breakdown of the metrics involved in this funnel, if you get decent conversions throughout your funnel, you can get a decent ROI on your ad spend and acquire a lot of leads and customers!

However, a large percentage of people will drop off at each step in your funnel.

For example:

• Some people will land on your webinar registration page and not register for your webinar
• Some people will register for your webinar and not attend
• Some people will attend your webinar and not buy

This is why I recommend utilizing retargeting and email marketing to ascend people through your funnel.

You can ascend website visitors into webinar registrants (by having a specific retargeting campaign that sends them back to the webinar registration page)…

You can increase your webinar attendance rate (by having a specific retargeting campaign and email sequence that indoctrinate webinar registrants and reminds them of the webinar)…

You can also ascend webinar attendees into buyers (by having a specific retargeting campaign and email sequence that overcomes objections and sends them to the checkout page)…

If you are doing live webinars, you can export a report from GoToWebinar which will give you the email addresses of everyone who [1] attended, [2] stayed until your pitch and [3] bought.

If you are doing automated webinars, you can segment your webinar attendees in a similar way with custom retargeting audiences and advanced email automations.

So now that you know how all of the numbers work together, you need to discover the strategies that improve each of your optimization metrics…

For example:

• You can improve your ad targeting, image or copy to decrease your CPC.
• You can make changes such as changing your webinar headline or improving your email sequences to increase your conversion rates throughout your funnel.

When I was in high school, I used to play golf every weekend and virtually every single day during the school holidays – My mum would drop my brothers and I off at the golf course as the sun was rising and pick us up as the sun was setting.

I would play 18 holes, write down my score for each hole and add up my total score.

Inevitably I would have 1 or 2 ‘blow up’ holes that ruined my entire round and I would say things like…

“If I just scored a 5 (instead of an 8) on the 7th hole, I would have scored 79″

Like golf, your marketing funnel is inevitably going to have 1 or 2 ‘blow up’ holes that kill your ROI but without a score card, you won’t know where you need to improve.

However, with a funnel ROI calculator (which is like a marketing funnel scorecard), you can discover the ‘blow up’ holes in your marketing funnel.

After using my webinar funnel ROI calculator, you will be saying things like…

“If I just had a webinar registration rate of 40% (instead of 30%) on my last campaign, I would have had an ROI of 233%″

How To Double Your Webinar Funnel ROI

If I was to tell you that you that I get a higher conversion rate selling a $2,000 product than I do selling a $7 product, you would think I’m crazy right?

Well I do and here’s the secret…

Selling over the phone.

In fact, I have a secret strategy for adding phone sales to webinar funnels…

Between your webinar registration page and thank you page, squeeze in a strategy session (consultation) registration page.

Here’s what that looks like:

I’ll give you an idea of what these pages should look like by showing you a funnel template I created inside my Clickfunnels account that I use for new clients or whenever I’m running a webinar myself…

Webinar Registration Page

Here’s the webinar registration page…

Here’s what you see when you click one of the ‘Claim My Spot Now!’ buttons:

Strategy Session Registration Page

If you opt-in, you’ll then be taken to this strategy session registration page…

In the video you should thank webinar registrants for registering for your webinar and get them excited to attend.

You should then transition into talking about your free strategy session offer and how they can book in a time to speak with you or one of your team members (if they qualify).

I recommend that you state very specifically in the video who it is that your business helps (your ideal client) and what criteria the prospect must meet to qualify for a strategy session – This removes the majority of the freeby seekers and time wasters.

For example, I only consult with established information product based businesses that invest in paid traffic and care more about building a sustainable business with recurring revenue than trying to make some quick cash and I let people know that upfront so I’m not spending my quality time on the phone with someone who would never be a good fit for one of my products or services but rather spending my time with the people I can serve at the highest level.

You also need to frame your strategy session as valuable AND actually make it valuable! What a concept, right?

For example, in my strategy sessions, I get the prospect to show me their current marketing funnel and their current results in terms of traffic and conversions, then I identify the ‘ROI killers’ and come up with a plan to boost their funnel’s ROI. Then, more often than not, they’ll be so impressed with the level of expertise I show on the call that they’ll say something like:

“Sounds like you really know what you’re talking about. Can you just do it all for me?”

…In which case, I’ll recommend one of my products or done-for-you services.

Booking Software

My favorite booking software is ScheduleOnce.

They integrate with your calendar, allow you to choose what times throughout the week you are free to make calls and give you the ability to embed your calendar into your Clickfunnels strategy session registration page so people can book in a strategy session straight into your calendar, right there on the page.

Here’s the process prospects go through on my strategy session registration page to book in a call:

Firstly, you need to select your time zone…

…then you need to pick a day…

…then a time…

…then you need to answer the questions that I choose to ask you:

If you’re a marketing consultant of agency, you may want to ask what the prospect’s monthly revenue, monthly ad spend or number 1 business challenge is to gain some quality insight of where they’re at in their business prior to the strategy session.

After people opt-in for their strategy session, you can take them to thank you (homework) page…

Thank You (Homework) Page

A homework page is a simple page with a video of you or someone on your team that gives the prospect some homework to complete before their strategy session:

There are a few reasons to give prospects homework:

• It positions you as an authority
• It gets prospects more invested in you and your process
• It weeds out the prospects who aren’t fully committed to their success

Back To The Numbers

If you’re sending quality traffic to this type of funnel, you should get at least 10% of webinar registrants to book in a strategy session and at least 60% of those people to answer their phone or jump on Skype with you at the time they booked in.

If you then provide a lot of value on the call and really showcase your expertise, you should be able to convert around 50%-80% of people into one of your offerings (the one most suitable to their situation).

If you do a terrible job, you should convert 20%…

Much higher than what you would expect from a killer webinar or VSL, right?

Let’s come back to the ROI calculator I outlined before for a standard webinar funnel and see what happens if I add the strategy session registration page and the following conversion rates:

• 10% strategy session registration rate
• 60% strategy session attendance rate
• 20% strategy session close rate

Here’s the new results:

As you can see, by adding phone sales to this webinar funnel example, the number of sales and ROI has doubled.

Here’s a graphic representation of these numbers:

So, now that you know the power of optimization metrics and funnel ROI calculators, let me ask you a question:

Are you going to keep overlooking your optimization metrics and struggle to turn a profit or are you going to monitor your optimization metrics like a mad man and create scalable funnels that get a solid ROI from paid traffic?

The choice is yours.

To download my webinar funnel ROI calculator, click here.