Webinar metrics: what to measure at each funnel stage

Ask most B2B teams how their last webinar went and you'll get one number: signups. It's the easiest figure to pull and the first one in the report, it also tells you very little about whether the webinar did its job. The webinar metrics worth tracking depend on what the webinar was for, and most teams never decide that up front.

That was one of the central points in our webinar with Livestorm, where Casper Rouchmann, our founder, and Benoit Leggieri, Head of Growth at Livestorm, broke down how B2B teams use LinkedIn across the full webinar lifecycle.

Signups are the easiest number to report

Signups matter, if nobody registers, nothing else happens, the trouble starts when they're the only number on the slide.

"I'd rather have a hundred people sign up and actually show up to the webinar than 200 people who sign up and don't show up or show any engagement."

A registration is an intention, and attendance and engagement are the evidence. Two webinars with identical signup counts can produce completely different pipeline, and the signup number can't tell you which one did.

Match the webinar to the funnel stage

Casper's core argument: most teams treat every webinar the same, when webinars serve at least three different jobs.

• Top of funnel. Reach people who have never heard of you and get on their radar.
• Nurturing pipeline. Help accounts already considering you reinforce their decision. Someone weighing Livestorm against an alternative, for example, gets real answers before they commit.
• Educating existing customers. Help current clients get more value, which protects retention and expansion.

"It's about having the right webinar at the right funnel stage. That's essentially the core of it."

Each of these jobs needs its own definition of success. Once you've named the job, picking the webinar metrics gets straightforward.

Webinar metrics for the top of the funnel

At the top of the funnel, people consume your content where they find it. They watch the video ad, read the thought leader ad, and keep scrolling. Casper calls this the zero-click mindset.

"People don't actually click on things that much anymore. What that means is that when you run webinars in your top of funnel, you have to measure it differently."

Most LinkedIn users never like, comment or post. Casper's rule of thumb is that 99% of people on the platform lurk, and those lurkers are often exactly the buyers you want. Measure only clicks and comments and every top of funnel campaign looks like a failure.

So for cold audiences, track:

• Video views and view rate: did people actually watch?
• Engagement and cost per engagement: did the content earn attention?
• Reach and impression share: are you showing up often enough in your target audience?
• Registrations: useful, as a secondary signal

We go deeper on choosing KPIs in Metric mastery.

Webinar metrics for retargeting and pipeline

Once someone has seen you, the goal changes. In the retargeting layer, the audience needs to trust you, learn from you and come to like you. This is where clicks and conversions start to count.

Here, the right webinar metrics look like this:

• Show-up rate from registration to live or replay
• Clicks and conversions from retargeting ads built on webinar content
• Engaged accounts that match your ICP, and what they do next
• Pipeline created or influenced by attendees

Topics change at this stage too. A customer story webinar is a good example. It's niche, and it might not get many signups.

"But the people who sign up for that one, those are going to convert."

Audience size shapes the setup. Casper's guideline is that above roughly 40,000 people in your target audience, you can run a multi-layered approach with separate mid and bottom layers. Below that, a top and a bottom layer is usually enough. For the bigger picture, see our LinkedIn demand generation strategy.

What the live session tells you

The live session produces some of the most useful data you'll get, and most teams barely read it.

• Attention time. In Livestorm's benchmark, attendees stay connected for 26 minutes on average. If your best content sits in minute 40, most people miss it.
• Questions asked. Every question is a signal of intent and a ready-made topic for follow-up, a blog post or an FAQ.
• Chat and poll activity. It shows who is engaged enough for a personal follow-up from sales.
• Registration timing. For this session, half of roughly 250 registrants signed up in the final week. Knowing when people register tells you where to put your promotion budget next time.

Takeaways

• Signups are a starting point, and they say little about impact on their own
• Decide each webinar's job (reach, pipeline or customer education) before you pick metrics
• At the top of the funnel, measure views, engagement and reach, because most buyers never click
• In retargeting, measure show-up rate, conversions and pipeline from ICP accounts
• Use live session data (attention, questions, timing) to shape the next webinar

How we measure it

At SparkForce we track webinars as part of the full revenue picture: what they cost, which accounts they reached and what pipeline they touched.
If you report webinar success on signups alone and want a clearer view, book an audit with us.
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The full session with Livestorm is on the replay
https://app.livestorm.co/livestorm-marketing/eventtype-92517711