Step by Step: Create a Webinar Funnel on Your WP Website (without expensive tools)
Setting up a fully functioning webinar funnel can seem pretty complicated. There are so many moving parts and a live audience to witness any 'technical difficulties.' Not to mention the programs you need to run the actual webinar can be fairly pricey.
With Thrive Architect it is possible to build a live webinar funnel from within your WordPress website, using nothing but your YouTube account and an email service provider.
Check out the video for a step by step guide.
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Now Available in Thrive University
For a more detailed tutorial, including how to create live comment boxes and one click register links for your email list, check out the Thrive University course How to Create a Live Webinar Funnel.
What Does the Funnel Look Like?
This funnel will consist of four pages.
- A Registration Page
- A Thank You Page
- A Live Broadcast Page
- A Replay Page
Once a visitor registers for the webinar their details are sent to your email service provider automatically. They will then be redirected to a thank you page confirming their signup.
Before the webinar you a message to your mailing list, containing the link to the live Broadcast Page. From here you can live stream your webinar through a YouTube embed link. After the webinar you can send a follow up email with a link to the Replay Page.
Make sure you have a verified YouTube Account and you have enabled live streaming. Due to recent changes you may also need an AdSense account.
And for easy tutorials on how to connect to your Email Service Provider to your Thrive Themes account search our Knowledge Base for your provider.
Here I'll summarize the steps in the video tutorial for quick reference.
Update
This tutorial show's an older version of Thrive Architect (previously Thrive Content Builder). While the plugin interface has changed, all templates, functions and features mentioned are still available. If you're having trouble finding anything, ask in the comments below.
Step 1 - Capturing Leads
- Create a Registration Page and name it after your webinar (58 sec)
- Create the other three pages in your funnel, using the Registration Page as your parent page (1 min 20 sec)
- Load the Vibrant Webinar Registration template onto your Registration Page (for tips on creating a high converting Registration Page watch this video from Shane)
- Connect the registration button to your email service provider (4 min 15 sec)
- Redirect to the Thank You Page (5 min 27 sec)
- Load a Vibrant template onto your Thank You Page (6 min 24 sec)
Step 2 - Creating a YouTube Live Event
- Create a live streaming event in your YouTube account (8 min 38 sec)
- Allow embedding in the advanced settings (if this is option is grayed out see this article) (9 min 14 sec)
- Copy the YouTube event URL (9 min 38 sec)
Step 3 - The Broadcast Room
- Load the Vibrant Live Streaming Template on your Broadcast Page (9 min 54 sec)
- Paste the YouTube URL into the video element (10 min 8 sec)
- Hide player controls and select autoplay (10 mins 25 sec)
- Add a comments box below the video if desired (10min 52 sec)
Step 4 - Replaying Your Webinar
- Load the Vibrant Webinar Replay template on your Replay Page (11 min 34 sec)
- Click on the video and replace the URL with the YouTube event URL (11 min 48 sec)
Step 5 - Completing the Funnel
- Use your email service provider to send a link to your Broadcast Page before the webinar, and a link to the Replay Page after the webinar
- Start the webinar by clicking the Start Hangouts on Air button on your scheduled event (12 min 26 sec)
- Make sure to test all aspects of the funnel with a dummy webinar before the live event
And there you have it, everything you need to create a simple webinar funnel with Thrive Themes and YouTube.
If you have any questions or comments about this webinar funnel, or you’d like us to create a tutorial on any other funnel types, let us know in the comments below.
“Check out the video for a step by step guide.”
I don’t see the video :(
Alex……
It’s at the very top of the page.
Very timely. I’d been planning on a webinar next month and was unsure of which software to guy. I think I’ll give this a try. Thanks Stephanie, great tutorial.
Hi Brett,
Thanks for the comment. I did a lot of tester webinars for this article and YouTube have made their live streaming platform incredibly easy to use, so hopefully it’s the right solution for you :)
Thank you so much, Stephanie! This was really helpful and interesting. Will the participants of the webinar be able to ask/type live questions?
Hi Bernadette,
Glad you liked the video. The participants can make live comments during the webinar if you add a ‘comment box’ element to your Broadcast Room. If you skip to 10.52 in the video it has a quick note on how to do this. You can reply to the comments during the webinar also, using the same comment box.
Hope this helps!
This is excellent! I’ve been thinking about setting up an “evergreen” webinar to generate opt-ins/leads for my full-time job but they won’t reimburse for GoToWebinar and I didn’t want to have to spend my own money. This is a very simple and elegant solution. Thank you!
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the comment. Yeah GoToWebinar can get pretty pricey! It’s great that YouTube have made the live streaming available to everyone.
Don’t you need additional software like OBS to have a YouTube Live Event?
Yes, Henning, you do. But OBS is quite straightforward to use once you get the hang of it. Wirecast is better, but not free.
Hi Henning,
You don’t actually need any additional software if you’re using YouTube live streaming. It integrates with Google Hangouts on Air, which is a free web based recording program. Once the webinar has finished YouTube will add it to your videos on your account.
Excellent Post. Thank you!
Thanks Eric!
Great information! Question: To make an evergreen webinar, would I simply only send the “Replay Room” link to new subscribers, or is there a way to have a pre-recorded webinar appear “live” again? Thank you!!!
Hi Joanne,
Once you start getting into evergreen webinars it gets a bit tricky to hide the fact it’s a prerecorded video. You can make the webinar seem live by hiding the play buttons and putting it on autoplay, but if the viewer clicks anywhere within the video window it will pause.
You could use a signup segue link to only allow visitors access to the Broadcast Page at a scheduled time, and use the comments box to reply to questions during the webinar to make it seem live, but again, it’s quite easy for the visitor to stumble on the fact that it’s not really live.
It’s often just easier to let new visitor know there are no webinars scheduled in the near future but you do have a replay available. Hope this helps!
This is great however 9/10 webinars are screencasts and not live presentations…Not sure if it is revenant
Hi Tripp,
Thanks for bringing this up, I should have mentioned it in the video. Google Hangouts (which is what YouTube records the webinars through) allows you to share your screen during the recording, so you still have the ability to do screencasts. YouTube also allows you to integrate with more advanced screencast and broadcast software if you did want something a little more complex.
Ooopppssss!!!!! Found it. Excuse my daftness Stephanie :)
Hi Alex,
Glad to know you found it in the end :)
Will this allows for asking questions during the webinar, have polls and other interaction? Collect the dialogue?
Hi Anders,
Thanks for your question. You can add a Facebook Comment Box below the video which allows viewer to ask questions and comment during the webinar (I go through this briefly at about 10.52 in the video). You can also add a Disqus Comment Box but this takes a bit more setting up (and a Disqus account). For more details on the comment box features Shane has a post about it here: https://thrivethemes.com/tcb-comments-element/
As for other interactive features you can add buttons and any other elements available in the Thrive Content Builder. At this stage we don’t have a poll feature, but it’s definitely something I will suggest to the team!
ok i’ll say it..that was Brilliant! I’ve never actually thought about using ThriveTheme for webinars but now i will.
Thanks Gregory!
It’s always nice to get good feedback. Let us know how it goes :)
Thanks!
Thanks, glad it helped!
Thank you Stephanie, this was great and very helpful! Can you recommend a chat add-on or plugin for live chatting during the webinar – one that’s works well with Thrive? Thank you!
Hi Valeria,
Thanks for the comment. While it’s not a dedicated live chat feature our Facebook Comment Box does allow visitors to leave real time comments and questions. You can also moderate and reply to these questions during the webinar. I briefly go over how to set this up at 10.52 in the video.
Another inbuilt comment element is the Disqus Comment Box but this takes a bit more setting up (and a Disqus account). For more details on the comment box features Shane has a post about it here: https://thrivethemes.com/tcb-comments-element
Hope this helps!
Great article. So easy to follow steps.
Thanks for the feedback Wim :)
Thanks Stephanie. An easy step by step to implement it.
Thanks Alexandra!
Bookmarking this. Thanks!
Hi Josh,
Glad it was useful :)
Excellent. This is what I wanted.
Hi John,
Good to hear, you’ll have to send me a link to the finished webinar funnel!
Brilliant. We have been looking at options for Webinars and the cost has been causing us to pause. This will be a brilliant option to start with. Thanks Heaps.
One question I have is how do we see the comments during the webinar? I would love to see a short webinar run using this option and seeing what is possible. Great work, well timed for me.
Hi Andrew,
Glad to hear you got some value from it. This video from Shane explains the comment box functionality in a bit more depth: https://thrivethemes.com/tcb-comments-element
Basically the Facebook comment box allows your viewers to write comments in real time. You can moderate and reply to the comments during the webinar. It uses basic information from their Facebook profile but doesn’t post on their actual Facebook pages (unless they select that option). You can also use Disqus as an alternative. Shane’s video covers each comment box type. Hope that answers your question!
Thanks for the detailed post AND video Stephanie, this is a brilliant way of using Youtube live stream! Looking forward to test this out for teaching live French classes.
Thanks for the comment Abigail, it’s always interesting to see how the tutorials get put to use. Live French classes is definitely a perfect scenario for this type of funnel. I hope it goes well!
That’s a great tutorial, very clear, extremely practical, and a real money saver. Plus, it allows us to stay in the Thrive Themes environment – which shows the power of Thrive as the Swiss army knife of business websites and conversion optimization. That’s a home run!
Thanks for the comment Randal!
I love the Swiss army knife analogy :)
Love this! Talk about pure value.
Thanks David!
Oh boy. That’s a great, great tip on webinar hosting. It’s incredible how a lot of things in this day and age are within our reach. We just need to assemble the pieces together in a coherent manner.
Hi Thomas,
Yes I agree. It’s pretty amazing that YouTube (and other companies) give us access to this kind of stuff completely for free. And not many people know it’s available!
I have bought this plugin 3 months ago but when I know this I am so glad because I can make my webinar without extra cost more…
Hi Caraspot,
I glad the tutorial was useful for you. It’s good to know that you’ll make use of it!
HOLY CRAP, Shane, I love you and your staff. This is soooo awesome. Now I just need to go do it. You guys always send the best information. Yay!!! Ok. climbing down from my initial excitement. This is wonderful and so nice for shoe-string budgets. My Thrive Theme membership is the best thing I’ve done. You always rock it. Thanks so much. :)
Hi Dorothy,
Thanks so much for the kind words! It’s really nice to get this kind of feedback on these kinds of tutorials. We aim to be as helpful as possible so it’s good to know we’re providing some value :)
Could I do it with a life event on google hangouts? I need to create the webinar with 2 people talking at the same time. Thanks a lot
Hi Francisco,
You can have more multiple presenters from different computers. Once you click the Start Google Hangouts button within YouTube you’ll be taken to the Google Hangouts window. Before starting your broadcast you can invite another presenter by clicking the person icon with the + symbol next to them. This can be found on the top menu in Google Hangouts.
I found this video tutorial which walks you through the process, this should make it a bit clearer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kljOI45m6Z8
I hope this helps!
great job guys, and very timely. I was wondering how to setup a funnel.
Perfect, glad we could help!
Thanks, Stephanie – great webinar.
Hi Fiona,
Thanks for watching :)
Brilliant!
Thanks Pete!
I tell my friends, ThriveThemes is where it’s at!
A friend let her buddy design her site for free, but it was a huge headache and he made mistakes, like that it’s not mobile responsive. I told her at the start she should go with you guys — you cost more than free, but you’re well worth it and keep giving value!
Thanks!
Thanks for the great feedback Chad!
Cool!
Thanks Glenn :)
Thanks for the information on webinars Stephanie but I’m ery disappointed that none of the questions in the comments have been answered.
Show a little patience, please. These questions have come in over night, in our timezone.
This is so useful. I learned a couple of things:
– Setting the parent for the thank you pages (makes organization easier)
– Livestreaming from YouTube (never used it before, makes it much easier)
– Having a webinar replay page (great idea – videos auto-saved for future opt-ins)
Only thing that wouldn’t work for me is that my ISP is Sharpspring, and you don’t yet have an integration for them. When will we get Thrive – Sharpspring integration?
Hi Yusuf,
Thanks for the summary, I’m glad you got some use out of it! Sharpspring is definitely on our list but we are still working on creating an account with them. Thanks for being patient with us so far and hopefully it wont be too much longer.
Thank you Stephhanie :) , very nice and simple!
Can I change between screencast and live video? I would like to use my interactive textbook so it would be indispensable to show the screen views too.
Thank you ;)
Hi Chili baa,
Thanks for the comment. You can change between screencast and live video within Google Hangouts. You can also choose to show certain windows rather than the whole screen which is pretty handy.
If you did want some more advanced screencast capabilities YouTube Live also integrates with a number of other screencast and broadcasting systems, but many of them aren’t free. You can find the full list here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2907883
This is excellent content, thank you!
Thanks Paul!
Thank you Stephanie :)
Awesome. However the hangouts and youtube live events i’ve attended were a horrible experience with delays and so…Never ever have a watched it till the end. Nevertheless a great addition from Thrive
Hi Gio,
Sorry to hear that you’ve had that experience. The test webinars I did for this article seemed to run quite smoothly but I guess if they’re streaming from somewhere where the internet isn’t the best there may be interruptions. Some of the things to consider with a free solution I guess.
With lots of us abandoning gotowebinar for Zoom, any chance you can hook Thrive up with Zoom’s process?
Hi David,
I’ll send this one through to Shane and see what he can do. Thanks for the suggestion!
HI is it possible to sell tickets to webbinar? I mean with thive leads plugins?
Hi Peeter,
Unfortunately none of our plugins have in built payment integration at this stage. You can use external plugins such as WooCommerce or Stripe, and then only send the webinar link to those who have paid, but the system wont not be full proof, and registrants could share the link with friends. At this stage we don’t have a complete solution for paid webinars.
Hey guys awesome tutorial! I’m also wondering how to have comments auto-update since Facebook comments require the presenter to keep refreshing the screen to see the comments close to real time. Chatroll works but is expensive beyond 100 viewers. Looking for a free option.
Hi Chris,
An alternative to the Facebook comments box is a disqus comments box, also available within the Thrive Content Builder. For more details on both check out this video from Shane: https://thrivethemes.com/tcb-comments-element
Welcome aboard Steph great first video. The bar has been raised….love this content. Something I can go out and apply immediately and get more value from my Thrive products. Win/Win/Win!!!
Hi Michael,
Thank you for the welcome. I’m glad to be part of such an amazing team :)
I’m happy to hear you found it useful!
This is pretty awesome, Stephanie! Thank you for the great tutorial :)
P.S. Awesome accent!
Thanks Ricky. Sometimes it a bit hard to keep the full Australian accent in check, so hopefully you could understand it all!
How do you guys read minds so well? Just last week, I was looking for some cheap webinar services to use. Now, I’m thrilled I don’t necessarily have to since I’ve got TLP at my disposal! Thanks so much for this post and for always staying ahead of the curve with your amazing content and products!
A couple questions regarding the email list. When it comes to emailing subscribers about the webinar, is this process automated via an autoresponder or do you send it manually? Also, what do you recommend to avoid having to create multiple mailing lists, for each new webinar event, especially if it’s an automated mailing funnel?
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the kind words, I’m glad it came at a good time for you.
As for the email list side of things it really does depend on which email service you use. I’d recommend setting up an autoresponder with three simple reminder emails before the event (with the Broadcast Page link). Probably one day before the event, one hour before the event and then 5 minutes before the event. An then of course one or two emails after the event with the Replay Page link. You can even make a template for these emails and just swap the links out each time (for multiple webinars).
To keep the lists to a minimum I’d recommend just making one other list (or a group within the existing list) for past webinar registrants and just move them manually or automatically into that segment once the webinar replay email has been sent.
Hi Stephanie! Great video, thank you! Come to think of it, I think Thrive Themes should build a webinar solution to do automated webinars… Half of the infrastructure or more is probably already in place.
Hi Martin,
Yes that’s very true, especially now with all the functionality of Thrive Ultimatum and it’s evergreen countdown timer. I’ll bring this up with Shane and see if it’s a possibility. Thanks for the suggestion :)
Perfect! I will be using this for my first big webinar with my new brand! Thanks!
Great to hear Jennifer, I hope it all goes well!
Great video tutorial. I loved it. Can you reuse the 1st live streamed video, again, without redoing the live streaming?
Hi Catherine,
You sure can! YouTube automatically saves a recording of the webinar to your YouTube account. It also stays under the exact same URL which can be handy, so you can set up the Replay Pages ahead of time.
Great info! I may need it someday and I’m glad it can be done with Thrive Theme tools.
Great tutorial on setting up your own webinar. Thanks
Excellent tutorial on WP and Setting Up a Webinar Funnel:-)
Hi Stephanie. Thank you for this tutorial. How do we do a test run of the webinar before we do it live? I’ve only ever used Go to Webinar and I’ve been nervous to trust google hangouts to run smoothly.
Hi Sheila,
I just scheduled a test webinar for about ten minutes in the future and loaded the broadcast page in an incognito window to see what the viewers experience would be like. I also go through the whole process of recording a few minutes in Google Hangouts just to test the quality, to get familiar with the workflow, and to see if I’ve set up the replay page right (it should automatically generate with the replay video). Hope this helps!
How do you create an offer page, and how does it connect?
Hi Dale,
You can either add a button on your Broadcast and Replay pages that links to a payment plugin on your WordPress site, or an external payment system. The other alternative is to mention the link to the offer during the webinar, so for example yourdomain.com/webinaroffer, that your viewers can navigate to in order to take advantage of the offer
There is also the option to reveal an offer or button after the visitor has been on the page for a certain amount (through the Content Reveal option in Thrive Content Builder) but this gets a bit tricky if your visitor turns up early or late, or pauses the webinar on the Replay Page. For example if your visitor pauses the replay but has been on the site for 45 minutes (or how ever many minutes you enter when setting up the Content Reveal options) the offer will pop up before it is mentioned in the webinar.
I hope that makes sense?
Great job on this video. Having the parent page with the sub pages makes it much easier to keep track of multiple funnels on the same domain.
Nice and quick while even covering the tricky parts. I probably would’ve tripped over the [embed] and [autoplay] settings :)
Great tutorial. Very well made. Thank you!!
I watched the tutorial and appreciate how easy you make it look. However, I’ve been struggling with the formatting and automating of everything. I taught myself a lot by watching these videos but I would love it if I could hire an expert who could probably set this stuff up for me in 1/4 of the time it would take me. Is there someone I could hire to help me? Or at least answer my questions when I have them? Thanks for your help.
Hi Maureen,
I’m sorry to hear you are having trouble. Unfortunately we can not make any specific recommendations.
If I want registrants to pay for the webinar – how do I integrate that in the smartest way?
Hi Kjell,
Paid webinars are a whole different kettle of fish. Probably a bit too much to go into here but generally you’d integrate with a payment plugin or external site and then only send the link to those who had paid (which you’d automate through your email provider). It’s a bit difficult to guarantee the registrants don’t just share the link with other people though.
If your business involves paid webinars it might be best to start looking into dedicated webinar platforms.
Wauw – thanks :-)
Thanks for the post Steph, I will try this. Love yer accent too, you sound like an Aussie.
Thank you so much for this! I would absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE it if Shane & Thrive Themes could take it one step further and allow us to create an evergreen/ automated/ recurring webinar funnel so I could record my webinar once and then allow new users to sign up for it and watch it as if it were live. That would be a dream come true!
Thanks again.
This is a game changer! I’ll keep you posted on our results when we implement this.
Great webinar. Thank you for all these hints. Do you see any way to create recuring webinars (video-replays) with Thrive Themes? Is there any way to give the visitor the chance to choose between different dates and/or hours? Can the wordpress-plugin “wpwebinar” be combined wiht ThriveThemes? Or the “WP webinar system”-plugin? Greetings from Berlin, Germany. Tomas
Hi Tomas,
Unfortunately there’s no way to create recurring webinars based on the time/ day a visitor goes to your site. The closest you can get to this is emailing out a link to the replay page a certain number of days after a visitor signs up to your list.
As for the webinar WordPress plugins, our themes are built to be compatible with any well-coded plugin. I don’t have any experience with the plugins you mentioned, but based on my understanding they both use YouTube live, so they do very similar things to what you can do with Thrive Landing Pages.
This is great. You guys always give the best tutorials I plan to use this. One question…Can you do a tutorial on how to set up a social challenge using thrive and mailchimp? That would be great.
Hi Vanessa, thanks for the suggestion. We’re always looking for new content ideas.
Awesome Stephanie! I’m working on my first webinar. Question on workflow during webinar. I thought I needed broadcasting software but I read comments stating I can use google hangouts (not there yet). Regarding workflow – can you detail how to present information and have the website live page open for my viewing so I can reply to FB comments (I’m going to use a power point presentation on my desktop and speak into a microphone)? Am I right to say, I need to have the googles hangout webpage open on part of my monitor screen and my website live page open (split screen), correct? And I can control googles handout to only capture the power point presentation? Of course I will not be able to use full screen power point but I guess I can select the area of my monitor where the pp presentation is opened so it is the only thing captured in the live video, correct? Thanks!
Hi Chris,
All correct! And for a more detailed tutorial we’re just put up a new course in Thrive University. The information in the University tutorial makes monitoring comments a lot easier than using Facebook comments, so it’s worth checking out.
Hi. Will ths live webinar page show up in Google and be available publically? I want to create a webinar that is invite only and cant be shared.
Hi Lij, the live webinar page will not show up in Google if you set the page “noindex” and “nofollow” – one of the ways you can do this is by using the Yoast SEO plugin. Once installed, under the Edit Page menu for the live webinar page you can set the page to be no index and nofollow. You can not keep the page from being shared though, for that kind of functionality you have to start looking into paid solutions.
Genius! Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
Thanks for the post Steph, I will try this. Love yer accent too, you sound like an Aussie.
Sure am! Thanks Ruang
Thank you Stephanie. I have a question though.. I did a test webinar on YouTube live marked as unlisted yet it emailed all of my YouTube followers. At 10:39 in your video you explain some of the YouTube set up.
Wouldn’t it defeat the purpose of having a webinar be private if everybody on my YouTube subscriber list gets emailed?
I have been searching for hours and can’t figure out how to D activate the notifications my subscribers would get. All I see is that I can make it public unlisted or private.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I would love to use the Thrive landing pages for my next webinar. I purchased the thrive content builder and love it .
Thank you .
Hi Adam,
That sounds frustrating! Since it’s a YouTube function unfortunately I’d just be Googling the same question. If you want truly private webinars it may be worth investing in dedicated webinar software, there is a limit to this free solution. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help!
Do you have a webinar page that will allow a redirect URL when the countdown hits zero?
With the Thrive Architect countdown timers you can display a message after the countdown timer hits 0 with a URL in there. Otherwise if you’re using Thrive Leads you can use a Signup Segue link which depending on when the visitor click will send them to different URL. For example if they click it after the webinar date you can automatically send them to the replay page instead.
HI Stephanie, great webinar. I struggled with linking the registration page with the thank you page though. I checked back and didn’t miss a step. How does the thank you page pop up after they complete their details? Thanks
Hi Lara,
When you are setting up the lead generation element you need to select the action after signup. Here you can choose ‘redirect to URL’ and choose the thank you page. This way after they enter their details they’ll be sent straight to the thank you page.
Hi Stephanie, what parts of the thrive themes suite do you need to be able to use this? As I was planning on buying parts of thrive themes individually, not the whole suite. Also Is their an option to add pop ups for people to be linked to a checkout at the end to buy a product perhaps with a countdown timer like you can in other webinar suites? Thanks
Hi Jamie,
You just need Thrive Architect for this, and if you want to use the one click signup link for your subscribers you’ll need Thrive Leads too.
For the button reveal: You can do a similar thing with countdown timers and the content reveal element within Thrive Architect, then link the button to a payment processor, but it’s no where as streamlined and fool proof as paid webinar solutions. Basically on the live webinar page and the replay page you can add a countdown timer and also use a content reveal element to reveal a button once the visitor has been on the page for a certain period of time.
Where this gets a bit less ideal than webinar solutions is that it’s purely based on how long they’ve been on the page, so if you’ve set it to reveal half an hour into the webinar, if a viewer is late they’ll have to wait long than when it’s mention in the webinar to see the button, since they would have only been on the page for 15 minutes. I hope that makes sense!
where is event manager in thrive architect?
Hi Anastasia, All the functions of the event manager can be found in the Animations & Actions drop down the element’s sidebar settings.