Secrets Revealed: Best Time for Webinar to Maximize Attendance in 2024 [Data-Driven Guide]

September 6, 2022

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Nupur Mittal

You’ve put a lot of effort into choosing the best webinar format , the perfect webinar topic, preparing the content, promoting your webinar and collaborating with guests to host your webinar.

But, you feel confused about the timings and duration of your webinar. To help you out, we have written this article where we will discuss the best time & day to host your webinar to maximize attendance.

 

Table of contents

Why is picking the right time and day important?

Here are a few advantages of hosting a webinar on the right timings and duration:

  • Attendees tend to be more active and engage with others in the webinar.
  • When you conduct a webinar at the time when your audience is likely to attend, it helps maximize attendance.
  • The chances of capturing leads are higher as most of your ICPs might join if the timings are as per their need.

 

What is the best day to host a webinar?

There is no single answer to finding the best day for a webinar because webinars are a new content format, and historical data is developing. So, we have taken inspiration from similar marketing initiatives.

Host webinar in mid-week

Mid-weeks, i.e Wednesday and Thursday, are the best days for webinar. The reason is the higher availability of people and the higher propensity towards learning sessions.

Avoid hosting a webinar on Monday, Friday, and weekends.

  • Mondays are the first day back to work, and people are still adjusting to the work, catching on to their do’s. So, avoid hosting webinars on this day.
  • Fridays are often not a good day to host a webinar because
    • People in the corporate and banking department are off after their working hours, looking to take some rest.
    • Students also get relief from hectic schedules and might not be willing to attend a session.
  • Saturdays and Sundays are the worst days to conduct a webinar because people tend to enjoy weekends away from work.

While selecting the best day, consider the upcoming holidays because if the holiday falls on any of the preferred days, chances are your webinars won’t have high attendance.

 

What Are The Best Webinar Times?

Timing is trickier to get right than the day of the week. It happens because your audience might be active during different times throughout the day. So, you need to experiment a lot to get the timing right.

Consider the different time zones.

If your audience resides in different countries, you must consider their time zone while selecting the best time to host a webinar

No surprises here, considering that webinars are professional events, the best times for a webinar – as backed by various studies and observations – are indeed between 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm in your target audience’s time zones. When it comes to finding the best webinar times, it’s a smart move to sidestep common break periods like lunch, tea, coffee, and especially dinner. And evenings? Let’s just say they’re perfect for unwinding, not for work-related webinars.

Host webinars between 10 a.m – 12 p.m. PST (1 p.m. and 3 p.m. EST)

  • The hour of 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) accounted for 29% of all attendees, closely followed by 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) with 24%. – GotoWebinar
  • The best time to run a webinar is 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST). Other timings that work best are 10 a.m. or 12 a.m. PST (1 p.m. and 3 p.m. EST) – On24
  • As per GoWebinar’s research, 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST is the best time to host a webinar to accommodate people in different time zones.

Offer on-demand webinars

Record your webinar and share the link to the recording with the attendees via email or within your mobile event app . This tactic works if your audience belongs to different time zones and cannot attend the webinar at a specified time. 

Besides, you can use these recorded sessions as a lead magnet too. Create a compelling landing page and ask people to share their email addresses to access the recording.

 

How Long Should A Webinar Be?

The length of a webinar depends on the topic, types of the webinar, the goal, the target audience, and the industry you operate in. 

Majority of the webinars that we have attended often last for at least one hour. It’s the sweet spot for webinars, and statistics also support this.

Host webinars for at least 60 minutes

  • The average marketing webinar is 52 minutes, corporate communications are 55 minutes, and training webinars run on average 61 minutes. – GoToWebinar
  • The average duration for webinars is between 39-60 minutes – WorkCast

 

Takeaways

These data points should be treated as benchmarks and not rigid rules to host webinars. As every company might follow the same time frame and duration, chances are you’ll be competing for your audience’s attention if you also use the same timings and duration. That will defeat the entire purpose of finding the right timing.

So, figure out the right time through experimentation and use webinar promotional strategies to enhance the performance of your upcoming webinars.

 

FAQ

What is the best day and time to hold a webinar?

While it depends on the type of webinar, our research shows for maximum attendance the best day to host webinars would be Wednesday & Thursday. The best time to hold webinars would be either between 10AM – 12 PM or 3PM – 5PM your local time

Are Fridays good for webinars? 

Friday is NOT a good day to host B2B corporate webinars. But if your webinar is focused on health, wellness or skill-improvement it could be worth exploring to host between 6PM – 8 PM local time

How long should a webinar run for?

To avoid webinar and zoom fatigue, don’t go beyond 1 hour for total time. If your webinar is an educational webinar , please ensure you leave at least 15 minutes for Q&A. 

Are Webinars still effective 2024?

Absolutely. Webinars are here to stay forever. It has become an integral part of marketers given the numerous benefits it provides like reach wider audiences, high quality leads, nurture online communities amongst many other benefits.

 

We are the Webinar & Virtual event Experts.

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