A webinar is a live or pre-recorded presentation delivered online to an audience who register to watch, usually with slides, a speaker on camera and a chance for viewers to ask questions. Businesses use webinars to teach something useful, show expertise and start conversations with people who are not yet ready to buy.
How a webinar works
A webinar has three stages, and most of the value sits in the first and last.
Before: promotion and registration
You publish a registration page explaining what attendees will learn, who it is for and when it runs. People sign up with at least a name and email address. Promotion comes from your email list, social posts, partners and sometimes paid ads. Reminder emails go out a day before and an hour before, because a large share of registrants forget.
During: the session itself
The session runs on a platform such as Zoom Webinars, Microsoft Teams webinars, Livestorm or a similar tool. A good format is a clear problem, a practical method the audience can use, an example, then live questions. Polls and the Q&A box show what attendees care about. A webinar differs from live streaming on social media mainly in the registration step: you know who attended.
After: replay and follow-up
Everyone who registered gets the recording, including those who missed it. Attendance, questions asked and minutes watched help sort contacts, so someone who stayed to the end and asked about pricing gets a personal reply while a casual registrant receives a short sequence of useful emails. The recording can then become an on-demand lead magnet, short clips and a written article.
Why it matters
Webinars suit UK businesses with a considered sale: B2B services, software, professional firms, training providers, financial and property advisers. An hour with a prospect who chose to give you their time is worth more than many ad impressions, and the questions they ask are excellent research for your website content.
There is a data protection side that matters here. Registrant details are personal data under UK GDPR. Your registration page needs a clear privacy notice explaining what you collect, why and who receives it. If a partner co-hosts and wants the attendee list, you need a lawful basis for sharing it and must tell registrants plainly on the form, before they sign up. Marketing emails afterwards are covered by PECR as well, so ask for marketing consent separately rather than assuming registration covers it.
Common mistakes
- Turning the session into a 45-minute sales pitch. Attendees signed up to learn; they leave when they realise they are being sold to.
- Asking for too much at registration. Every extra field reduces sign-ups; job title and company size can wait unless you genuinely need them.
- Sending no reminders, then blaming the topic for poor attendance.
- Ignoring the replay. Many registrants only ever watch the recording, so a late or missing replay email wastes most of the effort.
- Passing attendee lists to co-hosts or sponsors without telling registrants first.
- Treating every attendee the same in follow-up, rather than responding to what each person showed interest in.
How to act on it
Choose one specific problem your best customers had before they hired you, and build a 30 to 40 minute session that helps solve it properly. Write the registration page around the outcome, keep the form short and include your privacy information. Schedule reminders, rehearse once with the platform you will use, and keep 10 to 15 minutes for questions.
Afterwards, send the replay within a day, reply personally to the most engaged attendees and turn the recording into supporting content. If webinars are going to be a regular part of your plan, decide where they sit alongside your other channels before booking the first one; that is the kind of question I work through in a digital marketing strategy.