Maybe you’re stuck for new ideas. Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones with a handful of webinar topics rolling around in your head at any given time. Either way, the real trick is coming up with a webinar topic that will deliver value and drive action.
It’s not always easy, but we’re here to help with our six go-to methods for generating new webinar topics that will accomplish your goals AND satisfy your audience.
1. Talk with sales
Sales reps are a goldmine of customer insights. They talk with customers all day every day, know their biggest pain points, and know how to move them along the buying cycle. They also know what types of leads will help them meet their sales quotas.
In a radical act of sales and marketing cooperation, set up a 30-minute meeting with your sales team to pick their brains. Here are a few questions that will help you uncover insights and new webinar ideas:
- Where are prospects falling out of the funnel? How can this be fixed?
- What do you find yourself explaining over and over again to prospects?
- What are prospects’ top pain points and challenges?
Look for recurring themes in their answers. If you keep hearing the same concerns over and over, a webinar could be a great way to address those issues.
2. Explore popular blog posts
Your blog is a great way to test webinar topics. Look through your blog analytics and determine which posts have the most views, shares, and comments. Also, take a look at the average time spent on the page to determine if people are reading through the entire article or bouncing after the intro.
Past blog posts can also help you choose a format for your webinar. As you determine what topics get consistently high views, you may also find certain blog formats are more popular than others.
To help you brainstorm, here are some common blog post formats and how they translate to webinars:
Thought leadership panel webinar =
- Guest posts
- Interviews
- Controversial posts
- Newsjacking post
Best practices/tutorial webinar =
- How-to posts
- Tutorials
- Checklists
Live Q&A webinar =
- FAQs
- Q&A posts
- Review posts
Product demo webinar =
- New product/feature announcement posts
- Product tutorials
- Use case posts
3. Search past webinar questions
Take a question that has been asked in past webinars and create a webinar around it. What’s great about this approach is that you’re using an actual question asked by someone who has already shown a certain level of interest. Therefore, these types of topics will resonate with your high-intent leads.
When looking through webinar questions, you can either take one frequently asked question or use several questions that could be covered under one overarching topic. The one-question approach could be covered in one webinar, while the multiple-question approach naturally lends itself to a webinar series.
4. Consider information black holes
Is there information your prospects aren’t getting, or information you’d like them to have prior to talking with your sales team? This could be a topic that you feel isn’t being covered industry-wide or a topic specific to your product or service.
To determine where information is lacking, talk to sales about what they wish prospects already knew, look through blog posts for recurring questions in the comments, or ask your support team what questions they get most frequently from customers.
Finally, map your existing content to stages in the buyer journey and see where you’re lacking content.
5. Anticipate trends
What’s everyone talking about in your industry? Are there any new developments or technologies that require explaining? Is there a larger topic that’s important to your audience that you could make into a webinar series?
With these webinar topics, you have to predict your audience’s needs.
For example, if you are an online school, you may want to consider creating a webinar that focuses on upcoming changes to student loan policies. This topic can be confusing so you can give students a head start by explaining difficult concepts and how policy changes could affect them.
6. Convert an ebook
Too often we create great marketing and training pieces only to have them sit on the shelf a month after launching. Find new ways to extend the life of valuable collateral by repurposing content.
In this case, you can take one of your high-performing ebooks, or a report you’ve already created, and convert it into a webinar. You already know people are interested in the topic and you have all the required content. All you need to do is create some eye-catching images, or steal some infographics from your eBook, and choose your presenters.
With the benefit of audio, video and visual elements, you can really put a whole new spin on old ebook or other written assets.
Bonus tips
Great topics don’t always make for great webinars — the topic has to fit the format. Remember to choose a topic that:
- Offers real value and key takeaways for your audience
- Easy enough to digest and remember, but complex enough to warrant a 30-60 minute webinar
- Relates to your product and drives appropriate action
- Hasn’t been done a hundred times before
Finding the right webinar topic is all about staying informed. You need an open dialogue with sales so you can understand customer concerns. Keep your finger on the pulse of your blog posts and ebooks so you know what’s working. Listen to customer questions. And stay up-to-date on all industry trends so you can educate your audience.
Do you have tips for generating successful webinar topics? Please share your tips or your most successful webinars topics in the comments below!
Photo by Richard Clyborne of Music Strive