How to come up with a winning webinar topic that will make you stand out

While webinars have been considered a powerful content marketing tool for a long time, due to the current remote-working landscape this form of communication has never been as important as it is now. Since the number of organizations that excel in webinar creation is growing, the question is – how can you find a webinar topic that will attract the right audience and stand out from the competition?

It is not surprising that there has been significant growth in the popularity of webinars and video conferencing within the last 12 months as a response to COVID-19. So, before we move on to finding out how to choose a winning webinar topic that will distinguish you from your competitors, let’s take a quick look at the changes we saw in 2020.

The impact of COVID-19 on the world of webinars

According to the State of Online Events 2021 report on the Polish and global webinar market (published in February this year by ClickMeeting, a Polish webinar and video conferencing platform), the number of virtual events delivered globally by this webinar provider saw a marked increase in 2020 – up nearly 270% compared to 2019. The statistics for Poland are even more striking: the number of online events increased by 953%, and the number of participants in Polish virtual conferences rose by 1037%! Also worth mentioning here is the fact that, according to this report, the most popular types of virtual events held on ClickMeeting were live webinars, followed by online meetings and pre-recorded webinars.

Of course, ClickMeeting is not the only online conferencing platform that has experienced an explosive growth in webinar usage since the outbreak of the pandemic. This trend was discussed in detail in the Webinar Benchmarks Report: COVID-19 Special Edition, which was released by ON24 in 2020: "It’s not only ON24’s data that tells this story. In a recent study, TOPO has identified an emerging tech stack trend since the pandemic started: ‘100% virtual everything.’ This research firm has seen that webinars and virtual conferences are becoming the fastest-growing demand-generation investment because the loss of physical events has been a massive blow to many organizations’ pipelines".

Although the popularity of webinars was already booming before the current pandemic, these numbers are undeniable proof that COVID-19 has notably contributed to the rapid growth of webinars by forcing many organizations to rethink their marketing strategies and quickly move their offline business into the online world. As mentioned in the 11th Annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report (published by the Content Marketing Institute), the biggest changes of 2020 were as follows:

• In-person events decreased from 73% to 42%
• Virtual events/webinars/online courses increased from 57% to 67%
• Livestreaming content increased from 10% to 29%

Having discovered online events and the countless advantages they offer, more and more organizations have decided to fit webinars into their content marketing strategies, and it certainly seems as if this change is here to stay. So, what are the benefits of webinars?

Webinars are a powerful content marketing tool

From a marketing perspective, webinars have many benefits which make them a tempting content marketing tool: wide audience reach, flexibility of time and location, easily accessible data, and relatively low production costs when compared to offline events. From a sales perspective, webinars are also an excellent way of supporting business objectives as they increase visibility and provide value to the target audience through meaningful conversation, which ideally results in business growth on the back of the high-quality leads they usually generate.

As mentioned in The Big Book of Webinar Stats, which was put together by the GoToWebinar platform, 73% of B2B marketers and sales leaders consider webinars to be the best way to generate high-quality leads. Raising brand awareness, engaging and educating potential clients, nurturing relationships, establishing authority and building trust – there are numerous reasons why so many businesses invest in this communication channel in order to enrich their digital marketing strategies.

Now, having discussed the indisputable advantages of webinars and the contribution they make to any business, let’s get to the point and talk through one of the common problems that many webinar-focused marketers encounter these days in the face of growing competition in the digital landscape: being creative with an event topic!

The digital challenge(s) of 2020 and 2021

A number of articles have been written about your worst webinar nightmares: poor attendance, lack of engagement or interest, technical issues, or simply writer’s block while trying to plan content. However, over the last 12 months the growing number of webinars has brought new challenges. For sure, one of them is struggling to come up with an innovative topic that will arouse the interest of the audience and make the webinar stand out from the competition. While this might sound stressful, the good news is that there are proven ways to search for inspiration for a niche webinar topic, and you can find five of them below!

Five ways to find an interesting webinar topic

Let’s get started!

1. Explore the potential of your best-performing blog posts

It is no coincidence that many businesses have a blog in their marketing arsenal. The latest statistics show that B2B marketers who run company blogs get 67% more leads than those who don’t, and they are 13 times more likely to achieve a positive ROI on their marketing efforts. What is even more interesting is that around 60% of marketers reuse their blog content up to 3 times over! (optinmonster.com) But what does this mean?

Simply put, dive into your analytics tool and check your blog posts for the number of views, comments and shares to determine which pieces have aroused the greatest interest and audience engagement. Here is a tip from GoToMeeting: "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".

So, bear in mind that the best-performing articles, e-books and white papers may turn out to be outstanding ideas for webinar topics!

2. Talk to your audience

As the saying goes, the darkest place is under the candlestick. Who said you can’t just reach out to your audience and ask them directly what their current challenges, goals, needs and problems are? What webinar topics are they particularly interested in? Ask them anything – it’s as simple as that. This can be done through your social media channels or in the form of a survey distributed via e-mail. The possibilities are nearly endless – just choose what best suits you and your communications strategy.

This method, which can be called “co-creation”, is a powerful marketing tool that’s worth mentioning here because it lets you and your customers create value together. This is a win-win situation for both sides: you get ingenious webinar inspiration and the audience is happy too – they feel valued and listened to, and they’ll definitely be interested in your webinar topic!

3. Engage your work colleagues

Sales and marketing teams have a great deal in common as they both play a crucial role in customer engagement and revenue generation. Yet, they often fail to cooperate, which happens for many reasons: ineffective or lack of communication, misunderstood roles, unaligned strategies, or simply a lack of understanding about what the other team actually does.

It’s time to bridge this sales and marketing gap! To start with, let’s ask ourselves a couple of questions. Who maintains the relationships with your customers and talks to them every day? Who do your customers reach out to when they want to address their needs or share what their current business struggles are? Who can give you… Okay! You get the point! The answer is… your colleagues from the Sales and Customer Success teams! So, why not liaise with them to get the latest customer insights that will help you come up with a webinar topic that’s perfectly tailored to the needs and interests of your customers? It’s all about listening carefully to identify recurring themes that are relevant to your target audience. One of these themes might be a brilliant webinar topic!

4. Review questions asked by the audience during your previous webinars 

The Q&A feature is integral to any popular webinar platform. It is an indispensable engagement tool that makes it possible to interact with event attendees by allowing them to ask questions, which are then answered by panelists and the webinar hosts. The numbers speak for themselves: statistics indicate that not only are Q&As used in 81% of webinars, but also 92% of webinar attendees actually expect a live Q&A session at the end of an event. (99firms.com)

While many webinar-focused marketers make use of this feature during events, they tend to underestimate its post-webinar potential. As soon as a broadcast is over, Q&A results become a distant memory as the marketing team quickly moves on to making the webinar recording available on the website, filtering the marketing qualified leads, scheduling follow-up e-mails and, of course, promoting the next webinar.

What a waste! The questions asked by attendees can be a goldmine of valuable insights, especially those related to specific topics. All you have to do is to extract the right post-webinar report and carefully read through all the audience’s questions. It is up to you which strategy to use: you can focus either on the unusual questions or those that were asked most often. This might lead to more superb inspiration for your future webinars!

5. Discover new ideas with social listening

Last but not least, let’s not forget about the power of social listening. Not only does social listening help you to track, analyze and respond to discussions about your brands on social media, but also it lets you explore real conversations and industry insights that can then be turned into opportunities – such as a winning webinar topic!

As explained by HubSpot, “By performing social listening, you can create the kind of content your followers actually want, come up with new ideas based on industry trends, improve your customer experience by interacting directly with customers, and continuously shift your customer strategy to fit the current need”.

Being up to date with the latest trends and industry news is key when identifying unmet customer needs and interests. More often than not, with patience and careful observation you’ll find an outstanding idea for a webinar topic that will arouse interest and make you stand out. So, keep your eyes open and use the power of social listening tools to get inspired when searching for another cutting-edge webinar topic!

So, what next?

These are just five examples of how to get inspired while searching for a creative webinar topic, but in these challenging times there are certainly many more that you will come up with along the way. In this dynamically changing digital environment, creative marketing tools give rise to new opportunities that we can all benefit from every day if we approach them with openness and a little bit of unconventionality. At the end of the day, "What works in marketing is the same as what works in the military: the unexpected!". (Ries & Trout, 1993)

Sources:

• 99firms.com, 2021 Webinar Statistics
• clickmeeting.com, State of Online Events 2021
• contentmarketinginstitute.com, 11th Annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends
• gotomeeting.com, 6 Ways to Come Up with a Winning Webinar Topic
• gotowebinar.com, The Big Book of Webinar Stats
• hubspot.com, What Is Social Listening & Why Is It Important?
• on24.com, Webinar Benchmarks Report: COVID-19 Special Edition
• optinmonster.com, Ultimate List of Blogging Statistics and Facts (Updated for 2021) 
• Ries A., Trout J., 1993, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing