All insights
MarketingContent · 4 min read
Webinars that aren’t a waste of everyone’s afternoon
The webinar format gets blamed for low attendance and low conversion. The format isn’t the problem. The webinar is.
Most webinars are a 45-minute slide presentation by someone who hasn’t done a Q&A in years, followed by ten minutes of leading questions from the chat. Of course attendance is bad. Of course conversion is bad. The format isn’t broken, the content is generic.
What works in 2025
- 30-minute max, ideally 20.
- Two people in conversation, not one on slides.
- A specific question worth showing up for, not "intro to X."
- Live Q&A as the main event, not the appendix.
The promise to the attendee
If you can’t tell them, in one sentence, what they’ll know at 8pm that they don’t at 7:30 · and have that be specific enough to be interesting, don’t do the webinar. Send a Loom instead.
A webinar should be the rare format that beats the recorded alternative. Anything less is a meeting in disguise.