As you plan your funnel marketing efforts, hosting your own webinars makes sense. Webinars are one of the top five most effective tools in funnel marketing for lead generation because they attract people and engage them when they attend.

When it comes to running a successful webinar, it helps to know what the competition is up to. This is especially true if you’re new to digital marketing and your competitors are experienced.

Hacking your competitor’s webinar in order to study their funnel marketing process is a great way to learn about their lead generation efforts. Knowing what makes them successful can provide insight into techniques that will bring success to you, too.

Where To Start

Creating webinars to use with your other digital marketing efforts might require a webinar automation package like JetWebinar. JetWebinar functions as a webinar recorder, and its webinar automation makes it easy to set up registration pages, too.

Instapage shows most webinars lasting around 56 minutes when average attention span is ten seconds, with surprising results: webinar attendees are engaged in the conversation.

Since webinars play a success role in lead generation, there are two things you’ll need to look into when you’re ready to hack your competitor’s webinars.

First, I strongly recommend that you read up on how to ethically steal your competitor’s webinar traffic.

Second, you’ll need to discover how competitors are setting up their webinars and getting traffic. It’s time to go undercover…

Let The Investigation Begin

Make a list of your competitors. Browse their websites and landing pages for webinars they offer, and pick two or three you’d like to study. Set aside the time in your schedule to attend the webinars.

Keep in mind that attendance varies depending on the day of the week and the time of day. The second and second to last days of the workweek are the best times to catch a webinar. In the United States, attendance is highest between 11 AM and 2 PM.

If you’re not sure where to start looking for competitor’s webinars, take a moment to check out JetWebinar, which also gives statistics on the webinars run through their software) or a company like TellOnline that lists webinars and online seminars.

Since you’re spying on the competition, you’ll need to be picky about the email address you use. I recommend using a personal or secondary email that doesn’t include your company domain name.

Set up at least two email addresses to use in your undercover work. For a free email provider, I often use mailinator.com.

Registering To Attend (Or Not Attend) The Webinars

From the list you made, choose a few webinars from companies you’d like to study. Make sure you’re comfortable with your screenshot system, because you’ll be snipping a lot of images.  

Organize your folders so you have a place to save the images. You’ll also want a folder for emails you receive before and after the webinar event.

Later on, you’ll analyze the email messages and the screenshots you take. Right now, your focus is to document everything you see.

Sign up for the webinars twice. Use one email address to register with the intent of going to the webinar. Register with a second email address to track what happens when you don’t attend.

This gives you an opportunity to collect emails that will be directed to both attendees and non-attendees. Later on you can compare them to see how your competitors handle the process for people for both prospect and customer journeys.

Once you get to the registration page TAKE SCREENSHOTS of the registration page and every page you are redirected to after it.

This includes the confirmation and thank-you pages.

Document free giveaways and the free value you receive for both attending and not attending, as well. Keep an eye open to see if you get a replay when you don’t attend the webinar.

While you’re waiting for your webinars, take a look at what makes a successful webinar landing page.  You can compare your competitor’s landing pages to these ideas once you’ve gathered all your material.

Check out this info on landing pages from Crazy Egg

Compare Everything

Attend the webinars that you’ve signed up for with your ‘attending’ email address. Take notes of anything that seems relevant, such as upselling techniques.

When you’ve attended a few webinars, compare your notes for each webinar. Pay close attention to the differences between the information you got from attending and not attending.

Then compare one or two of each of the selected webinar’s information against each other. You might see digital marketing trends that will help you design your own webinar flow.

Focus on answering these questions:

• How do I drive more traffic to my registration page?
• What should my registration/thank you pages look like?
• How many emails should I send and what should they say to help increase attendance rates?
• What should my follow up process look like?
• How do I increase the number of people taking action at the end and after my event?

Taking Your Next Steps

Now that you know what your competitor’s webinar funnels look like, you can create your own webinar flow. Sketch out a visual image that walks through the entire process, from your registration page to your call-to-action page.

Your webinar sales funnel could look something like this

Or this

There are a lot of different ways to approach a webinar funnel. Consider what you’re trying to accomplish at the end of your webinar event. Pick out the elements that are used by your most successful competitors and use them in your own funnel.

To decide what elements to use, start your webinar funnel hacking!