#16 - Palash Soni

Hey all,

This week, I caught up with Palash Soni, co-founder and CEO of Goldcast, an event marketing platform that makes it easy for B2B marketers to host live events.

Goldcast emerged from a simple but powerful belief: webinars and virtual events don’t have to suck. In fact, they can drive serious business results when they’re done right.
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Palash's argument for putting webinars at the center of your content strategy.

​​Let’s be honest: B2B webinars can be pretty forgettable. Palash is more than familiar with the reputation. But he’s also seen what happens when marketers treat webinars like a real content channel.

Here’s why Palash is bullish about live events:

• You get intent data in real time. Unlike podcasts or blogs, webinars let you see exactly who registered, who showed up, how long they stayed, and what they interacted with (polls, chats, questions, etc). That’s marketing gold for both your team and sales.
  
  
• You don’t just talk. You listen. Poll results and audience chats give you ongoing, structured customer research baked into your content machine.
  
  
• They’re repurposing engines. One good webinar can become a gated asset, a blog post, and a dozen LinkedIn clips — especially if you’ve got a repurposing system like Goldcast’s in place.
  
  
• They foster real community. Palash made a great point: most Slack communities quietly die without constant input. But a recurring webinar series produces sustainable engagement. You create space for conversation and value without requiring 24/7 participation.
  
  
• They’re human. In a world where AI is generating oceans of mediocre content, live and unscripted interaction is becoming even more valuable. Audiences can attend webinars with zero doubts about whether a bot created it.

But you only get these benefits if your webinar is great — and Palash says a lot of B2B marketers aren’t meeting the bar. Here are the two biggest pitfalls he sees folks making when it comes to webinars:

1. They underestimate the prep.

Too many teams trust their tool to do the work for them, without thinking much about what an audience will take away from the webinar. The result is a webinar that feels like a poorly executed sales pitch.

Palash says you’ve got to put in the work upfront.

“I’m not talking about tooling prep — I’m talking about thinking through what will deliver value. Webinars of the past were essentially demos, and to have an impact now, there needs to be a lot more thought behind it.”

2. They expect instant results.

Palash compared webinar hosting to SEO. It takes time to yield results.

“You need to iterate on a lot of things. How do you get people excited about registering for your webinars and how do you get people to attend? What do you do with the content after there? There are lots of things to get right in order to see the full value of webinar hosting, and it takes time.”

When they’re done right, webinars can be a goldmine for audience engagement, content creation, and conversion. 

(Don’t be surprised if you see The Good Content Series popping up as a live event sometime soon.)

Bonus: If Palash were starting as a Series A VP of Marketing today…

Before we got off the call, I asked Palash what he would do if he was suddenly the first marketing hire at a Series A startup. Honestly, I expected a light push for webinars — but he gave me something so much richer.

He’d diagnose the current state of the company’s marketing by looking at three variables:

• CAC payback
• Conversion rate at each stage (lead to discovery, discovery to demo, and demo to close)
• Where demand is actually coming from (not just what Salesforce says)

Then he’d build a strategy built around what he discovered.

• If the CAC payback is too high and the demo close rates are strong, they’re wasting budget. He’d make things efficient and take some quick wins by cutting down spend.
  
  
• If the CAC payback is fine and they’re getting demos, but not closing, the product lacks differentiation. He’d hire a product marketer.
  
  
• If the CAC payback is fine, the win rates are fine, but they’re not getting demos, they’re in a small market. He’d spend some time figuring out how to expand the market (while running some campaigns to get some quick wins in the existing space).

This was an awesome conversation. To get the full story on Palash’s POV (including details about how he’s built his LinkedIn presence w/ memes), check out the podcast recording below.

Next Guest:
Adam Robinson, CEO @ Retention.com & RB2B
Thursday, May 22nd

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Thanks for stopping by, folks. As always, feel free to reach out with questions, feedback, suggestions, or anything else that’s top of mind for you.

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Peter

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