We are living in a world that connects virtually. Webinars and virtual summits are important parts of our everyday professional life now.
Here you will find 31+ surprising webinar statistics and benchmarks you need to know.
What We Did?
I analysed stats from top webinar companies like On24, live webinar and easy webinar to bring the latest benchmarks for 2021.
I also blended my experience of running hundreds of live and automated webinars to give this webinar statistics to the soul. Here is what I found...
Paying Attention to Webinar Stats is a Wise Decision
Webinars are proven to be the highest ROI marketing systems for most B2B and SaaS business. Also, solo-entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants are using webinars to sell their online courses and programs.
Through webinars and virtual programs, you can easily build relationships with your target audience and scale your marketing without missing the personal human touch.
I mentioned the top 5 webinar tools for small businesses in my recent post. Here you can read it if you are looking for a better webinar software for your business.
One of the world’s leading webinar platform conducted a survey of 22,922 webinars with at least 100 attendees held between January and December 2018 with an average and came up with some surprising analytics.
ON24 analysed 35,477 webinars in this case study with at least 100 attendees per webinar.
Webinar Statistics and Benchmark Summary
The following stats shared below lead us to important conclusions. So you can improve your webinar marketing efforts in 2020 while saving your hours of efforts.
- 54% of the registrations happen 7 days before the webinar in 2018. So longer the promotion, better would be the registration ratio in the webinar.
- I found highest number of registrations through emails on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. So mid-week is the best time to send webinar registration emails.
- Maximum people turned up to attend the webinar on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by Thursday. While weekends were the worst performing days to run webinars.
- The best time to run webinar is early noon and mid-evening. In the study by On24, they found 11 a.m (PST) is the best time for maximum show-ups for the webinar.
- 38% of attendees preferred to watch only on-demand version of the webinar while 10% preferred both live and recorded. Important point to note is, this data is 2% higher than what recorded by On24 in 2018.
- More than 60% marketers use webinars as their integral marketing strategy. And all marketers agreed to increase webinar efforts in the upcoming year.
- Training and communication webinars see highest attendee rate of 66% while marketing webinars see 36.6% according to the data. This stat is followed by on-boarding and customer webinars with 42% registrant-to-attendee rate.
Webinar is clearly here to exist, as this is the logical replacement of offline seminars and workshops. Taking a wonderful note of following benchmark will help you create an effective webinar marketing plan that brings more leads, sales and business.
31 Advanced Webinar Facts to Know
Industry Webinar Statistics
- 55% business owners said they are more likely to increase number of webinars in 2020.
- Over 60% of marketers use webinars as part of their content marketing programs
- 73% of B2B marketers and sales leaders say webinars are the best way to generate high-quality lead
- Further industry studies find that over 40% webinar attendees ends up converting into qualified leads.
- Software, Financial services and education are the most popular and fastest adopting industries for webinars.
- 60% of webinars are designed for an entire buyer's journey from an unaware prospect to a converting customer. source
- Unlike the popular belief, the new study reveals, 84% of B2B customers opt to watch replays over live webinars
Promotion Webinar Statistics
Webinar promotion is changing slowly.
No more "email only" communication is an effective strategy and you need to have multiple touch-point according to recent webinar studies.
- Social media and email marketing are the most popular places to promote your webinars.
- According to our survey with over hundred webinar organizers, we found the average webinar costs between $150 and $3,000 in 2020 depending on promotional and technological costs.
- Tuesday and Wednesday are the best days for running webinars for highest show up rates, followed by Thursday and Monday.
- 69% marketers revealed they prepare their webinars at least three months in advance.
- Less than half of registrants (43%) register up to one week before.
- Most registrants (56%) sign up for a webinar at least eight days before the event.
- Number of people who sign up on the day of the event has halved from 2017 to 2020. i.e. from 23% to 10% now.
- Mid-week promotional emails perform best. Most people who received emails on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are more likely to be present in the webinar.
Webinar Registration Statistics
Since webinar registration is one crucial factor, it is important to look at this stat.
- According to On24 benchmark reports, 55% registrants for the webinar convert to attendees in a B2B environment.
- 68.78% registrant-to-attendee conversions were seen in communication webinars, followed by 43% attendees in training.
- Marketing and education webinars see around 36% registration rates.
- 83% of webinar hosts said they used some kind of custom branding in their webinars.
Live Webinar Statistics
Registration conversion is an important thing for a successful webinar. However, one of the KPI of a winning webinar strategy is registrant-to-attendee ratio.
- Average attendee show-up rate in 2019 was around 55%. And it is higher than 2017.
- 10 am to 11 am is the best time to attract most attendees according to Megameeting studies.
- 93% of webinar attendees said they use desktop for attending a webinar, while 6% prefer mobile and 1% on tablet.
- According to GoToMeeting survey, average attention span in webinars was around 56 minutes, including a 10-15 minutes of polls and QnA session.
- Webinars with 1000+ registrants only attracted 6% attendees. While the rate jumped to 51% in the webinars with 100-199 registrants.
- 70% of webinar hosts offer some kind of resources to download and engage for attendees.
- 81% hosts responded, they use QnA box to engage with their audience making it the most popular webinar engagement tool.
- 50% webinar hosts use webcam for recording videos according to the survey on over 35,000 events.
Automated Webinar Statistics
- 50% marketers say they are very confident in creating "simulating" experience for their audience.
- According to experience everywhere case study live, webinar attendee rates are continuously falling as people prefer more to watch at their own time.
- Average On-demand webinar watch-time was 38 minutes in 2019, according to the research.
- A singnificant 38% attendees only watch on-demand webinar.
Further Crucial Webinar Marketing Statistics
- 75% brands agreed that webinars help to lower their cost-per-lead and it positively impacted their marketing efforts in overall.
- Most popular ways to use webinar were educational webinar courses (60%), demos (53%) and technical discussions and support (50%).
- 35% brands also accepted they used customer success stories in their webinar presentation.
- 50% markers record their webinar first and then use simulated features to intaract live. Making Hybrid webinars and live automated webinars one of the preferred choice.
Conclusion
Webinars are here to stay and the above stat clearly explains more and more businesses are adopting webinars as their integral part of marketing.
Considering some of the above webinar Statistics can be significantly useful while building your promotion strategy.
I used several resources to create this case-study for you. Here are the honorable mentions:
Picking up the right webinar platform can be a challenge. I have put together my personal experience of using half-a-dozen webinar tools you can get access right now HERE.
[…] It has gone crazy since the time Corona lockdown was announced in multiple parts of the world. Webinars, virtual conferences and online meetings have become new norms. If you are still wondering if webinars are useful for your business or not, you can check these eye-opening webinar benchmark and stats. […]