Measuring the results of your webinar should not be an after-thought.
When we are planning for a new webinar, “how will we measure this?” is a must topic of discussion. Most webinar platforms give you some sort of reporting feedback on your webinars, but I would also include Google Analytics and any other tracking tools you have available.
Planning for measurement is key to getting the right answers. Planning to measure starts by asking the right questions. Mainly, ‘How will we know if this webinar is working?’. Then put the analytic tools in place to give you that information.
I will say it again because it’s so important. Getting good measurement reports starts by asking the right questions in the planning stage.
- Why are you running this webinar?
- What is the outcome I expect to get out of it?
- How many people are needed to see your landing page to make it all the way through
Whatever your goals, having a straightforward way to measure your webinar success is critical. Here are a few things we measure in every webinar we run.
Registration Page Views
Whether you send traffic to your registration page from paid ads, email links, or social media, you must measure your page views.
Your webinar platform should have this reporting feature. If it does not install Google Analytics code on your registration page.
I recommend adding Google Analytics to all of your webinar pages to show you the success of your funnel.
If you are sending traffic from many sources, you will want to track lead sources too. You can easily do this with UTM parameters or lead source tracking codes from your webinar provider. If you hit your registration goal, it is essential to know which of your traffic sources helped you reach that goal. Then do more of that.
How many views do you need to reach your registration goals?
For example, if you have a 15% registration rate and your goals are 500 registrations, you will need 3334 page views.
Registration page views tell you if your lead sources are working or not. We will talk about registrations next, but the first level of measurement is are people clicking to see your registration page. If they are then your lead sources are working.
Registrations
When people register for your webinar, it is a sign that the traffic you sent to your registration page resonates with your message. They like the idea of learning the content from your webinar.
The opposite is also true. If you were to get 3334 page views on your registration page and low registration, there is something incongruent with your message. What attracted them in the ad or email they received did not match the message on your registration page. Correct the copy on your registration page, and your registrations will increase.
The registration rate can vary depending on how much traffic or leads you to send to the page and what type of content they want at this level.
How many registrations do you need to reach your attendance goals?
In our example above, if 500 people register, you may expect 40-50% to show up. That will mean 200-250 people will show up.
Registration numbers are an indicator that your lead source message matches the registration page message. Your avatar is ready for more.
Attendees – Show up rate.
Have you ever hosted a big party with many invitations sent out and right before it begins you wonder… will anyone actually show up?
Attendees showing up to your webinar is a commitment. A commitment to you and to themselves. They desire to receive the ‘big promise’ you made when they registered. It’s time to deliver.
Many different things can impact webinar attendance:
It is important to remember that your attendees are real people with real lives. They don’t care about you or your webinar. They are showing up for themselves and how they will feel at the end of your webinar.
Your attendees only care about the value they are about to exchange. They are giving you something of value, their time. In exchange, they want something of value from you, great content.
The most significant impacts on attendance show-up rates are the time of day, work, and family obligations.
Knowing this can help you make your webinar more successful by planning for these obstacles that may be in their way!
Consider the time of day your event is scheduled. Is it convenient for the people you’re targeting?
Life gets in the way: Somewhere between registration and showing up, they forgot why they wanted to watch your webinar in the first place. Never stop reminding them of the value of showing up.
Properly measuring attendance or ‘show up’ rate will tell you your message is attractive to your avatar and the timing of the webinar is just right for them.
CTA & Conversions
Conversions on our webinars are really what we want. The pot at the end of the rainbow. The real numbers that matter to our bottom line.
Measuring your conversions on many webinar platforms will probably involve some form of tracking on an external sales or check-out page. Google Analytics is free and my go-to for most of my tracking. Install analytics tracking on your conversion page.
People vote with their wallets. Please don’t rely on a friend to look over your offer and tell you it’s good. Put it to the test. Someone at the end of a webinar pulling out their credit card is the real measurement of your offer.
Your CTA, call to action, at the conclusion of your webinar doesn’t have to be a sale. It can be booking a call with you to talk about your coaching services. Regardless you must plan for measuring when a conversion happens.
Factors that improve your offer:
- Your offer must be the next logical step in their relationship with you at the conclusion of the webinar
- Clearly explain how the offer benefits them
What are your conversion goals?
At a minimum, you should want to break even from your paid traffic efforts. Breaking even is always your first goal.
Your next goal is to become profitable even at a small percentage. We all want to make tons of money on our webinars, but the reality is webinars season with age and improve as time goes on.
If you spent $1000 on paid traffic, you would want to earn at least $1000 on your offer.
From there, the math is simple. Your product is $97; then you need to sell 10. $497, you need to sell two, and so on.
Now let’s discuss the actual conversion rate versus what is shown on most webinar platforms. I measure the conversion rate based on how many attendees are still in the room when I start my offer. I don’t base it on total attendees.
Why do I measure this way? Consider giving a presentation in a live conference hall. 200 people are there at the beginning.
That’s 200 opportunities to sell my course or services. But what if, for some reason, 100 people get bored and leave. At the time I give my presentation, there are only 100 people left. If I sell 20 units of my product, I see that as a 20% conversion rate.
Your webinar platform should have the ability to tell you when you gave your offer and how many people were present during that time. That is your actual offer conversion rate.
Measuring the conversion rate tells you whether or not the scripting of the webinar addressed the pain points of the attendee and they are ready for more.
Drop-off Rate
The drop-off rate is measured by how many attendees are still on your webinar at the end.
As you saw above, attendance at the time of the is the true way I measure my offer conversion rate. How valuable is your webinar content from start to finish?
Webinar presenters tend to languish on and on long after the real value is given, causing your attendees to get bored and leave. Remember they are trading their valuable time to watch your webinar. If you stop the value trade 1/2 way through your webinar, they will leave.
How long should your webinar be? As long as it takes to bring the value and correctly position your offer as something they can’t live without. No longer, no shorter.
Most webinar platforms will allow you to measure attendance at intervals during the webinar. Looking at your attendance in 10% increments is very helpful to see when your audience gets bored. It’s a great measurement of how your message is hitting the mark.
The key to stick-rate is to deliver the promise you made on your registration page.
Conclusion
You must measure your webinar at all points of the funnel to know if it’s working correctly. Is your webinar a functioning funnel or a pinched hose?
Measurements your webinar platform should provide:
- Registration page views
- Registrations
- Webinar Attendance
- CTA Conversions
- Attendance Drop-off rate
The good news is you don’t have to fix the whole thing. Improve it one step at a time.
What if you could improve each funnel step by 1%? Pageviews, registrations, show up, sale conversions, watch rate. If each of those improves by 1%, what would that do for your bottom line?
When it comes to evaluating your webinar, don’t just look at the final stage and declare, “Webinars don’t work”! But rather, use this entire funnel approach and continue to improve your webinar at each step of the way.
