A live, online presentation or seminar delivered to a remote audience, often used for education and lead generation.

Why do marketers use webinars?

The live format creates urgency and engagement, generates registered leads, and produces a recording reusable as on-demand content.

Why do some webinars fail?

They're disguised sales pitches, too generic to be worth attending live, or under-promoted so few people register.

Growth Marketing Glossary

Webinar

web·i·narnoun

A seminar over the internet — part teaching, part demo, part lead magnet, with the pull of "live and interactive".

Schematic — a live online presentation

Term: Webinar
Part of speech: Noun
Field: Content / Demand gen
Syllables: web·i·nar

Forms & parts of speech

webinar · noun

A live online seminar.

"The webinar drew 400 registrations and a stack of qualified leads."

Definition in plain terms

A webinar (a blend of "web" and "seminar") is a live presentation delivered online to a remote audience. It usually combines a talk or demo with interactive elements — Q&A, polls, chat — and is widely used in marketing to educate prospects, demonstrate a product, and capture leads via registration.

The mechanics

People register (handing over contact details), attend live, and engage through questions and polls; the recording is then reused as on-demand content. The format's strength is the pull of "live" — a scheduled event with a real person creates urgency and attention that a static download rarely matches. Value depends on teaching something real, not just pitching for an hour.

When it matters

Webinars work for educating mid-funnel prospects, launching products, and building authority, especially in B2B. They generate engaged leads and reusable content from one effort. They fall flat when they're a thinly disguised sales pitch, when the topic is too generic to be worth an hour, or when promotion is too weak to draw an audience.

Worked example. A software company hosts a webinar teaching a genuinely useful workflow, with a short product demo at the end. Four hundred people register, the live Q&A surfaces real buying questions, and the recording becomes an on-demand asset that keeps generating leads for months. A competitor's hour-long sales pitch, by contrast, loses most viewers in the first ten minutes.

Failure modes to watch. Running an hour-long sales pitch instead of teaching; a topic too generic to justify attending live; weak promotion so few register; and never reusing the recording as on-demand content.

Synonyms & antonyms

Synonyms

webinarweb seminaronline seminar

Antonyms

in-person seminarstatic download

Usage trends

Search interest for this term over the last five years:

View interest-over-time on Google Trends →

Common questions

What is a webinar?: A live, online presentation or seminar delivered to a remote audience, often used for education and lead generation.
Why do marketers use webinars?: The live format creates urgency and engagement, generates registered leads, and produces a recording reusable as on-demand content.
Why do some webinars fail?: They're disguised sales pitches, too generic to be worth attending live, or under-promoted so few people register.

Related tools & calculators

toolFunnel drop-off analyzer

Resources & people to follow

referenceContent Marketing Institute — webinar research
bookThey Ask, You Answer — Marcus Sheridan
thought leaderContent Marketing Institute

Curated, non-competitor resources verified per term.

Related training

moduleGrowth marketing foundations

Disciplines

Areas of marketing where webinar is a core concern:

Content marketingBrand strategy

Sources

trendsGoogle Trends — "webinar"