Ever since video content became a popular way to engage people in the business world, organizations globally have started using webinars to engage with and educate their audiences in a more dynamic manner.
93% of webinars are delivered live (9 out of 10 webinars are exclusively live) because this format fosters two-way communication, allowing organizations to communicate directly with their audience, address queries immediately, and engage with them in real-time.
Thanks to live online webinars, you can connect with a wider audience pool, expand your reach to international audiences, offer valuable content, and engage and build relationships with them.
In this guide, we will explore what a live webinar is, the benefits it offers, its use cases, the best practices for hosting live webinars, the best live webinar hosting platform, and more.
Reports predict that the global webinar and virtual event market will hit $1 trillion by 2032.
What is a Live Webinar?
A live webinar is an online session in which the presenter shares their knowledge & expertise with a target audience and engages with them in real-time. It runs similarly to a traditional seminar but is held in a virtual setting using a robust webinar platform. A live webinar allows an organization to communicate with thousands of people simultaneously.
Leveraging live webinars, B2B companies can showcase their new offerings, educate potential customers about their products or services, highlight their features, demonstrate best uses of them, collect real-time feedback from customers, and nurture leads. Plus, teachers, trainers, and subject matter experts can deliver live lessons, share their insights with a wider audience, and engage them in real-time.
Since the live webinar fosters real-time interaction between the speaker and attendees, the session becomes dynamic, lively, and highly engaging. It truly serves as an easy and powerful tool for educational presentation, product demonstration, employee training, thought leadership discussions, and lead generation.
Benefits That Live Webinar Offers
1. Direct Interaction and Real-time Engagement
Since webinars are live, the speaker is able to interact and engage with the target audience in real-time. Using a live chat feature, attendees can directly interact with the presenter, ask questions, get instant responses, and clarify their doubts.
The presenter can launch a poll and gain audience responses in real-time, making the session dynamic and increasing audience involvement in the webinar. Live events add a personal touch to the presentation and encourage real-time conversation between the speaker and the attendees.
2. Expand Audience Reach
Through a live online webinar, businesses can reach a wider and global audience. Regardless of the audience’s physical location, live webinars allow them to join the session with a strong internet connection.
No matter what time zone your audience is in, they can participate in live virtual webinars, interact with you directly, engage with your brand, and get the most from the session.
3. Immediate Feedback
Since webinars are live, the speaker receives instant feedback from the audience. You get to observe the audience’s reactions firsthand, which gives you an idea of how the presentation went overall and what topics they were most interested in. Based on that, you can then go deeper into your next webinar.
4. Stronger Brand Presence and Recognition
Live streaming webinars enhance your brand visibility and fortify its presence. It allows personalized communication with guests, fostering trust in the brand. This direct engagement can make attendees feel heard and valued.
5. Practical Experience with Products or Services
You can provide an engaging demonstration of your product or service in a live online webinar, just like you would in a physical session. The only difference is that the speaker and audience are not in the same room. By sharing the screen, you can show your audience how your product or service works and how it solves real-world problems.
Plus, you can allow them to ask questions about its functionality and gain a deeper understanding of its features and benefits, much like a hands-on session
6. Repurposing Opportunities
One of the key benefits of hosting a live-streamed webinar is that you can repurpose it and maximize its value long after the event ends. When you record the event, it becomes a versatile asset that you can use to reach a wider audience.
This recording of the live session can be repurposed into many different content formats, such as blog posts, social media clips, podcasts, e-books, case studies, whitepapers, and more, helping you to extend its value and impact.
7. Instant Lead Generation
Webinars are recognized as powerful lead-generating tools. When you introduce your products or services and give a hands-on experience of them to your audience, it makes them interested in your offering, which helps you gain qualified leads for your business.
The engaging nature of live webinars also helps in nurturing these leads, building trust, and moving them further down the sales funnel. Live streaming webinars allows you to generate instant leads as well as nurture them based on their webinar engagement. This further enables the sales team to convert them into paying customers.
Live Webinar Best Examples
The following are some best examples of a live streaming webinar:
1. Product Launches and Demonstrations
A live webinar is a great way to introduce a new product, demonstrate its features, and give the audience a hands-on experience of it. The real-time demonstration of a product won’t just build excitement but also captivate the audience.
During a live event, attendees are able to ask their queries directly to the product team and experts and clarify doubts, and better understand the value of the product. Businesses might offer special discounts during the launch and generate direct sales at the event.
Indeed, a live webinar won’t just generate buzz around the product but also showcase its true value and attract potential customers to further convert them into customers.
2. Educational Training Programs and Workshops
Thanks to their interactive nature and real-time communication, live webinars are perfect for educating people. Such training programs include—university courses, boot camps, skill-based workshops, or professional certification programs. The instructors can deliver engaging presentations by incorporating—slides, high-quality visuals, infographics, and videos to provide learners with a practical knowledge of the subject matter.
3. Q&A Style Webinar
A Q&A is another great example of a live webinar, as its primary focus is on answering questions from the audience in real-time. The participants are able to express their concerns, ask questions freely, and receive immediate responses from an expert.
Direct communication at a live webinar keeps the audience engaged and attentive as they know their queries will be addressed.
Best Practices to Host a Live Webinar in 2025
Hosting a live webinar needs thoughtful preparation and execution, whether you’re educating attendees, demonstrating a product, generating a lead, or answering attendees’ questions.
A well-prepared plan ensures that a live event not just provides people with value and engages them but also achieves its main objective. By following the steps below, you can deliver a live webinar that is impactful and produces results.
1. Define Your Webinar Objective
Define what you want to achieve through the webinar, such as lead generation, educating prospects, increasing brand awareness, or something else. A well-defined objective demonstrates that the webinar is purposeful and targeted.
When setting an objective, ensure it is SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) to double the likelihood of its success.
2. Know Your Audience
Once you have determined the goals of the webinar, begin to know every detail of your audience. For this, conduct market research and understand their demographic, needs, pain points, and buying behaviors. Understand what type of content they prefer so you can plan the marketing strategy accordingly.
Research your competitors and identify who they are targeting with their webinars, and the type of audience that their social media pages attract.
3. Prepare Webinar Content
Preparing engaging and visually appealing content is key to capturing your audience’s attention. Design appealing visuals, pictures, slides, and videos to keep the audience engaged and involved throughout the presentation.
Visuals will simplify complex information and help participants understand and remember the webinar content easily, as well as make your message more relatable.
4. Choose the Right Webinar Platform
This is a critical step in the live webinar planning process because you are now selecting a live webinar streaming platform. It is not merely a platform: it is a tool that will determine the success of your event overall.
When selecting a webinar software, ensure that it supports HD high-definition video and crystal-clear audio, can handle large audiences, has real-time engagement tools such as chat, poll, Q&A, powerful analytics and reporting features so you can assess the effectiveness of the live event, and offers 24/7 customer assistance.
5. Promote Your Webinar
Promoting a live webinar is just as important as designing one – so after you’ve defined your goals & audience and prepared the content, start marketing it. In fact, webinar promotion ensures that the event reaches its intended audience.
Run an email campaign and send targeted personalized invitations to your existing audience. Promote a webinar-related post on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Collaborate with an industry influencer and spread awareness about your webinar program to their followers.
Plus, run ad campaigns to target a specific demographic of people and reach out to your audience with your message. Share your webinar link on platforms like LinkedIn Groups and Facebook Groups.
Which is the Best Live Webinar Hosting Platform?
Airmeet is the best video conferencing platform to host engaging live streaming webinars. Thanks to the platform’s focus on creating an immersive and highly engaging experience in a virtual setting—it is an excellent tool to hold these live events. Airmeet supports high-definition video (720p) and (1080p), enabling you to hold premium-quality webinars consistently.
Airmeet offers a comprehensive set of interactive features such as live chat, real-time poll, Q&A, breakout rooms, and networking tools that create a dynamic, immersive experience for a remote audience. It offers extensive branding and customization features, allowing you to create a professional webinar experience for your guests and reinforce your brand identity.
Beyond that, it provides an interactive virtual stage where speakers can present their content and engage with the audience in real-time, mimicking the experience of an in-person webinar. Airmeet is also a scalable platform that can easily handle up to 10,000 attendees at your live event, without compromising speed and performance.
Moreover, Airmeet features robust analytics and reporting capabilities that provide valuable insights into your audience behavior, their engagement levels, and overall event performance—enabling you to optimize your future webinars.
It integrates various CRM and marketing automation tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Marketo, GetResponse, and more to streamline operational tasks and track leads.
Technical issues can unexpectedly occur at any moment during a live event. To prevent or quickly resolve any potential issues, Airmeet offers round-the-clock support through chat and email. Additionally, Airmeet’s AirCare services provide end-to-end support from initial event planning and setup to in-event technical support and post-event analysis—so you can focus on engaging and building relationships with your audience.
Final Thoughts
A live streaming webinar is all about real-time online interaction and engagement. It not only allows you to engage with your audience in real-time but also strategically helps accomplish your webinar goals. In fact, it offers an excellent platform for organizations and individual professionals to educate, influence, and communicate with remote audiences.
Leveraging a live webinar, you can connect and engage with a global audience, helping you expand your brand reach into new markets. Live presentations empower speakers to engage proactively with the audience, encourage them to ask questions, provide them with instant and long-lasting value, and create an immersive experience for them.
FAQs
Late mornings to early afternoons, between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., is considered the best time because it allows participants to take time off work to attend the webinar. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are said to be the best days to host a live webinar because these are the days when employees are at their peak work mindset, so attendance is higher.
A typical webinar lasts from 60 to a maximum of 90 minutes, so the instructor or speaker can cover their entire agenda effectively. However, depending on the complexity of the subject matter, the webinar can last up to 2 hours.
To host a live webinar in a professional manner, you need
- A desktop computer or laptop
- High-end headphone
- HD webcam
- High-speed internet connection
- Good lighting and a quiet place
- Webinar streaming platform
- Video editing software
- Green screen
