One day I got an email, a company I worked with before was ready to take the next steps and get started with marketing automation. At the end of our previous project I created a plan for them on how they can take their marketing to the next level whenever they are ready for it. And with a new product ready to launch, the time was now.
Over the span of about a year we designed and launched a new website using Webflow, implemented HubSpot, started building the foundation for marketing automation, successfully launched a new product (doubling the number of signups we set as a goal for the launch event) and built a lead generation funnel bringing in more than 677 high-quality leads over this period.
In this article I want to take a deep dive into this last part, the lead generation funnel we built.
Building a highly automated webinar funnel using HubSpot
Let’s first sketch the broader idea here. When you are a B2B SAAS company, chances are your product is a bit more complex than just buying a new sweater. This usually means you need to educate your target audience about the benefits of your product, and one great way to do this is through webinars!
Launch a webinar campaign targeting your main audience using the best message you can find that resonates with them, usually this is either the biggest advantage or their biggest pain. Persuade them to sign up for your webinar and follow-up with them afterwards based on if they attended the webinar and how engaged they were.
Sounds like a lot of work? Well with HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Professional we automated this entire process.
Let’s go through the different steps!
Determine a subject for the webinar
The first step is also the most important one, determining the subject for the webinar. We need something that is interesting enough to persuade our target audience to take some time out of their day to actually attend our webinar. One thing I usually do and highly recommend is talking about a specific case for a smaller segment of your target audience.
Let’s say we have a financial B2B SAAS company and our product is a platform to manage business finances. This is a pretty broad target audience, so we want to reach a smaller subset. A good webinar subject could be: “Better cashflow planning for FMCG companies”
Immediately we created a smaller audience, making it a lot easier to come up with great, convincing messaging.
To get started your briefing should include:
- Webinar subject
- Time, date and timezone
- Duration
- Short description
- Host
- An enticing promotional image
Creating an inbound ad campaign
Once we have our briefing it is now time to find the right people to invite. For B2B webinars I have found that the best way to do this is through LinkedIn Ads. Of course when you already have an established database of marketing contacts in your HubSpot account, you want to invite these as well. And if you have done things right, these should convert even better than your LinkedIn Ads campaign.
While setting up your LinkedIn Ads, this is also where the power of the target audience subset comes in. Let’s build on our example subject of “Cashflow planning for FMCG companies”. Now we can build a target audience for our ad campaign of only CFOs of FMCG companies. This allows us to really drive home our USP for their specific needs.
Imagine you are a CFO working at an FMCG company seeing this ad message: “Free Webinar: Improve your cashflow planning while saving time”
Now imagine being the same person seeing this: “How we improved cashflow planning accuracy at an FMCG company by 37%”
Which one do you think will perform better? Chances are the second one will perform significantly better because it’s way more relevant.
And you should know that relevancy is the key to success in marketing.
Using HubSpot for marketing automation
Next we want to use HubSpot Workflows to achieve two things: Add important data to our CRM, automate tasks based on this data.
Let’s have a birds-eye view on how our webinar flow will work:
- Lead clicks on our LinkedIn ad and subscribes on our landing page.
- We automatically add the lead to HubSpot (or update their existing record), add them to the right Zoom webinar and send them a confirmation email with all of the webinar details. We make sure the contact is updated with information like the company they work at, their role, the industry, etc.
- We automatically send them a reminder email on the day of the webinar.
- Webinar data, like if they attended and how long they watched, for each specific lead is automatically synced from Zoom to HubSpot. We automatically update the contact’s lead score based on this data.
- After the webinar we send an automated, tailored email based on if they attended or not. We include links to additional resources and a fitting call to action.
- In case the contact is already being worked by a sales rep, we skip the automated email and create a task for the specific sales rep to personally follow up with the lead instead.
- Using HubSpot’s reporting tools, we measure the impact of this webinar on our revenue.
When people are in touch with your company, they are expecting an experience tailored to their needs. This is where the power of HubSpot lies.
Through powerful automation, HubSpot helps you save time while providing better experiences for your leads and customers, driving more revenue as a result.
