Blog:
Webinars not converting? You need a funnel.
27 May 2025 minute read
Have you ever hosted a webinar and thought, ‘That was great, but now what?’
You’re not alone.
Webinars are a brilliant way to engage a wider audience, build trust, and generate leads. They let you present valuable content, showcase expertise, and interact directly with potential customers in real-time.
But when it comes to getting prospects to take action – and ultimately driving conversions – the webinar itself is just one piece of the puzzle. What really determines results is what happens before and after it.
And that’s where the concept of the webinar funnel comes in.
What is a webinar funnel?
A webinar funnel is more than just a series of pages or emails; it’s a guided path that takes in curious visitors at the top, and transforms them into loyal customers at the bottom – using a mix of strategic content, interactions, and smart follow-ups.
And with the right virtual event platform, setting one up doesn’t have to be complicated.
Let’s break it down.
Awareness This initial stage is all about generating interest in the product or service your webinar will be promoting. Think email marketing along with social media and paid advertising. The goal at this stage is simply to entice people to register for your webinar, so the messaging is high-level and benefit-led. For example:
‘after attending this webinar you will be able to …’
Leads at this point are considered top of the funnel (ToFu). Mmmm. Vegan stir fry.
Engagement As soon as someone registers for your webinar, they enter the engagement stage. This is critical because (as you’ll know) the number of people who register for a webinar is one thing. The number who check-in on the day? That’s another!
So, maintain their interest through regular emails, teasers, and valuable drips of educational content. Show them the kind of insights they can look forward to on the day (and what they’ll be missing out on if they skip it). Here we’re moving leads from ToFu to the middle of the funnel (MoFu).
I know, I also thought that meant something else entirely.
Evaluation Now we get to the webinar itself. During these precious minutes, your primary objective is to inform the audience about the benefits and value of your product or service. This is the evaluation stage, where potential customers are assessing the advantages and disadvantages of your offering. They are now at the bottom of the funnel (BoFu). I have no childish jokes for this stage.
Conversion As the webinar comes to a close, you’ll want to direct your audience toward the conversion stage. The nature of this step will depend on what you’re selling. If it’s a complex, high-dollar offer the next step could be providing additional resources or connecting the audience with a sales specialist. If it’s more transactional, you might introduce a special promotion or discount that encourages them to purchase directly.
Either way, it’s vital that you set out the action they should take next. Otherwise, it was just another webinar.
Post-purchase The customer journey doesn't end with a sale. The final stage of your funnel should focus on following up with customers to offer support, gather feedback, and ensure a positive experience. Satisfied and happy customers will recommend your brand to others, expanding your reach and reputation.
That’s the theory of the webinar funnel, but what does it look like in practice? And how can you plan, automate and execute a workflow that makes it possible to do this at scale?
Step 1: Decide on your content plan
What do you need your webinar to do to achieve your objective?
Classic goals of webinars include things like:
Lead generation Fairly general content chosen to be of interest to your audience (practical industry challenges, career advice etc, including a pitch for your product or service).
Thought leadership Higher level, strategic discussion that helps position your organisation as an industry expert. Light on the sales content but heavy on trends and big-picture thinking.
Product demos These are aimed squarely at prospects who have shown interest in your product and are evaluating it as a potential solution. Focus on features and benefits.
It’s important to be clear about your content plan from the outset. Otherwise it’s too easy to fall into the trap of saying ‘we’ll do a webinar on how we’re great at email marketing tech!’ and it ends up being a mix of all of the above. In other words, not quite pitched for VPs, or engineers, or product managers – and they all end up leaving after five minutes.
Even if your content is really interesting, you won’t see the results you want from a webinar unless it’s purposely tailored to the specific level of audience you need, and totally clear about the action you want that audience to take.
Step 2: Choose your webinar type
Decide if you want to go live or use a webinar recording. Live sessions are great for urgency and interaction, while automated webinars let you scale without extra work. With AttendZen you can do both – or even create a simulated live session.
Simulated live is great for webinars because it feels live for the audience (it’s broadcast live at a specific time, can’t be fast-forwarded etc) but much easier to prepare in advance and deliver for your team. You can even integrate live Q&A and interactions on top of your pre-recorded content.
Step 3: Create a landing page
A strong landing page is make-or-break in terms of getting the right people to sign up for your webinar.
The best landing pages focus on outcomes – not just the agenda and speakers. What will people walk away with?
It’s often not enough just to talk about what they’ll learn. Try to crystalise what they’ll be able to do / solve / work on as a result of your webinar that they couldn’t quite tackle before.
Dedicated event website builders like the one in AttendZen are specifically designed to build high-converting registration pages like this.
Start at the top with a hero section that combines your best visual imagery with a clear and compelling headline. Tell people what this webinar’s going to do for them:
‘5 proven strategies to get more leads’
‘Half the number of no-shows at your event with these techniques’
‘7 fresh content ideas to triple your email conversion rates’
Keep it short, specific, and benefit-led.
Follow up with a sub-headline that makes the headline seem more tangible:
‘A 60 minute masterclass on how to drive traffic to your landing page with practical examples’
Next, you can give people a more detailed overview of what to expect when they attend your webinar. But still keep it short and sweet. Resist the temptation to set out everything you’re going to cover on the day. Instead, stick to an overview of the key points you and how they’ll benefit your audience. Make sure it is easy to scan. Use short paragraphs or bullet points rather than lengthy prose and use graphical devices (icons work well) to break up the text and make your messages more punchy.
If you can, consider a short teaser video (60–90 seconds) talking about the challenge your webinar will address and mentioning a few of the pain points you’ll cover.
Finally, remember to add a strong call-to-action (CTA).
Your CTA should make it immediately obvious what the prospect needs to do next.
Example CTAs that perform well for webinars include:
‘Reserve my spot’
‘Save me a seat!’
‘Register now’
We recommend repeating the same CTA several times throughout your landing page. If you just have it at the end of your content, some visitors might have clicked away before seeing it. Try including it in the hero, in the middle section and at the end of the page.
Avoid adding it to every section as this can look spammy. And only ever use the same CTA text everywhere on the page. No mixed messages or confusion about the action you want them to take.
When it comes to the form itself, shorter is better. AttendZen has a simplified registration flow specifically designed for webinars that can be completed and confirmed in seconds.
Ask too many qualification questions at this stage and you risk losing a chunk of valuable sign-ups. The less friction, the better.
Step 4: Promote your webinar
Having built your landing page, it’s time to drive traffic to it landing page through channels like:
- Email marketing
- Paid social media ads
- Your website or blog
- Affiliates and partners
AttendZen’s built in email marketing engine lets you create stunning emails and schedule them to go out at the perfect time. It’s designed to make it fast and easy to segment your contact list and personalise your messages at scale using simple merge tags and conditional logic.
People respond far better to messaging that recognises their own particular circumstances (industry vertical, geography, company size etc) than they do to a generic, one-size-fits-all approach.
And by using the same platform to manage outbound email, registration, landing pages and the webinar itself – you’ll find it much easier to track signups, clicks, and conversions in one place.
Remember: promotion for webinars doesn’t stop when the prospect registers!
Life gets in the way and (chances are) when the day comes around, some of your registrants will be blown off course by other more urgent priorities.
Minimise the chances of this happening by sending them pre-scheduled teaser emails to build a sense of anticipation about your webinar – so it stays front-of-mind and becomes a high-priority on the day, even when other competing demands creep in.
Step 5: Deliver actual value
Once your attendees show up, don’t waste their time. Share insights. Solve a real problem. Be human.
AttendZen gives you powerful engagement features – like Q&A, live chat and polls – all of which can be shared on-screen to keep the session dynamic and interactive.
Here’s a simple (but effective) structure that we often see working well in webinars under 60 minutes in length:
- Quick intro and what they’ll learn
- Story behind the problem
- Your solution
- Real results (proof!)
- Your offer
Step 5: Follow up automatically
This is where so many promising webinars fail to live up to their potential. The real magic happens in the follow-up.
Be prepared to send personalised emails based on registrants’ actions:
Didn’t attend? Send a link to the webinar replay.
Attended but didn’t convert? Send copy answering objections or making an exclusive offer.
Again, in an ideal world, your webinar platform should be able to automate all of this – without the need for third-party tools.
Step 6: Analyse and optimise
Not sure what worked and what didn’t?
No problem. AttendZen gives you deep analytics – like who attended, how long they stayed, how they interacted and what they clicked. Use these insights to tweak future webinars, adjust your offer, or test new content.
So, there you have it.
The webinar itself is the main attraction, but if you want results you have to put equal thought and strategy into the before and after. That’s the funnel mindset.
Define your objective, pick a platform that can integrate all the moving parts and be ruthless with the brevity and clarity of your content.
In our experience of hosting lots of webinars for lots of clients, we’ve seen that the webinars that convert best always do this one thing:
They connect the content to a clear next step.
This sounds simple, but you’d be amazed how many hosts don’t actually do it.
The most successful webinars don’t just deliver information – they guide their audience toward action. Whether it’s booking a call, enrolling on a course, or benefiting from an exclusive offer, every part of the webinar points to that one outcome.
When your content and your offer are aligned, trust follows naturally. Get this right and the conversions will take care of themselves.
