It’s Time to Kill the Webinar

I know this is sacrilege, but I hate webinars. I hate that they start five minutes after their scheduled start time. I hate that we have to sit through ten minutes of “housekeeping” slides. I hate that they save the only interactivity until the last ten minutes. I hate that they are used selfishly by too many marketing teams. I even hate the term ‘webinar’ from a purely linguistic standpoint.

Webinars are a favorite tactic of marketing teams to generate new leads or move leads through the funnel. They’re easy to measure and easy to execute. We’ve modeled them after seminars, which are essentially sales pitches disguised as educational content. They’re recorded for re-purposing on YouTube, and there’s no real incentive to attend live, as it will all be recorded anyway. Marketers can track attendance but lack insight into who was truly engaged. We spend most of our time talking at potential customers, and this is a huge mistake.

I suggest that instead of webinars, we create forums. Forums imply that interaction is expected. We will present information but fully expect and welcome questions along the way. These wouldn’t be recorded, as each session would be unique. Perhaps I’d even charge for them. No housekeeping slides – just straight to the discussion. You can learn about the company and presenters through emails or our website if interested. Today’s tools make real conversations easy, and it’s time marketing teams started harnessing them.

One aspect I enjoy when leading demo calls is getting interrupted with questions. I encourage it, as it shows me what the audience is most interested in, allowing me to add relevant details I may not have initially included. This back-and-forth is invaluable, as people bring up points that might not have occurred to me, and others on the call likely have similar questions. This level of engagement offers critical insights that brands should be collecting. Drift has already transformed lead generation by replacing gated content with real conversations. It’s time we do the same with the webinar.