By Nick Nelson

Webinars are one of the most valued and impactful content formats in B2B marketing. At a time where featuring authentic, expert voices is an utmost priority for brands, webinars offer a great way to showcase your brand’s credibility and bring influential expertise (internal or external) to your customers.

In our 2025 B2B Influencer Marketing Report, webinars ranked as the third-most effective content type in influencer programs, after social media posts and in-person events. According to the latest B2B content marketing benchmark research from CMI and MarketingProfs, webinars are second only to in-person events in terms of distribution channels producing the best results.

And yet, many B2B brands and marketers surely feel their results could be better when it comes to webinar lead generation. This is a pain point our marketing agency hears about often: We poured so much of our energy and resources into planning and running this live event, but didn’t get nearly the number (or quality) of leads we were hoping for.

At TopRank Marketing, we’ve helped numerous B2B companies achieve stellar results with webinars, and we’ve also observed plenty of common mistakes that tend to limit overall impact. This guide will help you proactively steer clear of those missteps.

But before you get started, it’s critical to be sure you’re optimizing around the proper objective.

First: Are you sure you want your webinar to generate leads?

Not every webinar needs to be planned with this goal in mind. Leveraging the webinar format as a lead gen tactic is natural — fill out a registration form, share contact info, gain access to exclusive content — but it’s a mistake to view this as the only valuable objective.

Webinars present a unique opportunity to bring an audience together in real time, via a highly engaging and interactive format that welcomes feedback and input. It’s important to note that while gating the webinar with a registration form has obvious lead gen benefits, it also puts up access barriers that can limit audience size and reach. This is a trade-off that needs to be considered.

Beyond lead generation, webinars can contribute to a variety of goals, including:

• Brand awareness and thought leadership
• Nurturing existing leads
• Repurposing and promoting other high-value content assets
• Gathering market research and insights through direct interaction
• Inspiring partner and influencer collaborations

Another effective way to use webinars is for community engagement, and educating or enabling your existing customers. As Laura Ramos, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, shared during a MarketingProfs B2B Forum event a few years ago: “Using webinars for post-sale engagement is an untapped opportunity. Webinar attendees are a sort of community and you can use the event to educate through Office Hours style format.”

In use cases like these, gating your webinar in the name of lead gen can actually be detrimental toward the objective at hand. So that’s a key caveat to keep in mind. But with it out of the way, let’s zero in on best …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog

      

Author: Aaron