Have a look at the performance of these two webinars I ran recently:
The only difference!? How well my topic matched the interests of the audience. (I had my reasons for the mad cows – I regret nothing 
)
7.8x more registrants and 12.2x more attendees – just by having a better topic 😲.
Email list, promotion, reminder emails, time slot – everything else was comparable.
Right, so now that we’ve established that YOUR WEBINAR TOPIC IS REALLY IMPORTANT, how do you find a great one?
Glad you asked. Here’s how…
Step 1 - Define your audience
If a simple description of your audience springs to mind instantly just skip this step. If you immediately think “software engineers”, “hairdressers”, “single moms” you’re done. That’s absolutely good enough.
Otherwise, think in terms of which end of a spectrum your target organizations and individuals fall:
Are you targeting businesses or consumers?
If it’s a business, is it…
- small or big?
- local, national or global?
- formal or informal?
- non-profit or for profit?
Plus, think about what industry they’d typically fall in.
What about the individual buyer? Are they…
- male or female?
- young or old?
- urban or rural?
- Income high or low?
- Level of education?
Not to forget, what’s their job title?
Step 2 - Identify their main challenges and pain points
With your audience defined there are two quick hacks to use to generate dozens of content ideas in a heartbeat:
The Google search
Oh, you’re wondering what kind of expert I am that I recommend something obvious like a Google search?
Well, stop sniggering, I’m the kind of expert that tells you what works – and this works 
Google [“job title” + challenges] or [industry + trends].
Scan the search results for a list of top challenges, or try the “Images” tab for research data. You’ll probably find good research results pretty quickly. Here’s one of the first image results that came up for the search above. A chart from a 2016 research study by the Content Marketing Institute (great study btw.):
Here’s another example from a different industry:
Pretty good, right? Definitely some topic material to work with here.
But what if a Google search produces no results? Try this hack:
Lifting hot webinar topics from conference agendas
If you come up empty-handed after the Google search, find the key event for the job role or industry you’re targeting and lift hot topics straight from the conference agenda.
I had that problem when I tried the search query above for electrical engineers. It didn’t bring up much.
Finding conferences targeted at electrical engineers was easy, though.
I know nothing about electrical engineering, but if I did I’m sure the agenda above would be a goldmine of content ideas.
Here’s another rich search result, this time for the Healthcare space:
Step 3 - Understand the motivators for consuming content
I’ve always been curious about what motivates people, especially business people, to consume content. To that end, my team ran a survey of over 3,000 professionals.
The top three motivators for B2B business consumption according to that survey:
- Learning new knowledge or skills for work
- Staying up-to-date with industry trends
- Getting fresh ideas to try
The topics professionals consider most valuable exactly map to those motivations:
- Best practices and educational topics are considered the most valuable
- Followed by work-relevant statistics and research findings
- With industry news ranking in third place for most valuable topic
You’ll find the best possible webinar themes & topics at the intersection between your audience’s challenges and their content motivators.
The challenges are the meat of your content, the motivators are the angle you take on it.
Let’s stick with the content marketer example above and come up with some permutations:
Challenge 1 + Best Practices
The proven 5-Step Process for Creating Engaging Content
Challenge 2 + Statistics
New Research: How the best marketers teams measure content performance
Challenge 3 + Industry News
How to Evolve Your Content Production for 2019
Bonus tip: If you have at least one engaged social channel, test the topics as social or blog posts first to see which of them work best for your audience. Then turn the top performers into webinars.
Step 4 - Focus on what you can do for them
Now that you have plenty of topic ideas to choose from, consider how you can best add value for your audience. Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself what they’re looking to learn. Then create content that fills that exact need.
Here’s a simple template to get to a quick answer. Simply fill in the grey blanks.
What’s in it for them
Example:
After this webinar [new 1st year students at Hogwarts] will [be able to brew a basic pepperup potion] because they have learned [how to handle a cauldron], [what the key ingredients are] and [the precise timing to brew the potion].
Let’s apply this to the content marketing example above. Let’s say I want to help my audience with their challenge of producing content consistently. Here’s what I might fill in:
After this webinar [content marketers] will [be able to produce content more consistently] because they have learned [that writing content is a skill that can be learned rather than a talent you’re born with], [how to set up a writing schedule to turn content production into a daily habit] and [why producing content in batches increases productivity].
Your turn. Take a moment and use the template to nail down your next webinar.
Step 5 - Make your topic irresistible with an arresting title
Analyzing more than half a million webinars I found five simple title formulas that consistently outperform. Use them to make your webinars irresistible and drive more people to your webcasts:
- Making the content timely, usually by including the current year. Example: “Content Marketing Trends For 2020” or “How Content Marketing Will Change in 2020”. In our sample data, this type of title led to 12% more attendees compared to the average.
- Simply including the word “New” Example: “This New Content Marketing Tactic Changes Everything”. This simple tweak resulted in a 16% increase in attendees.
- Titles that clearly target a beginner audience saw 31% more attendees than the average webinar. Examples: “Content Marketing 101” or “The Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing”
- The undisputed king of content hacks: Every title is better with a “How to” in it 😉 Indeed, webinar headlines starting with “How to” performed 36% above average.
- At 43% lift the absolute best webinar title formula turned out to be the list. Many variations exist but they all have one thing in common: they start with a number. Examples: “5 Ways to Produce More Content”, “101 Tips for Attracting Top Talent”, etc.
Over to you
I’d love to hear about the results you achieve with this 5-step process. Let me know how it works out for you as you implement it (no guarantees for a 12.2x increase but I’d be surprised if you didn’t see a meaningful impact.
Share your thoughts & results in the comments below or tweet them to me @DanielWaas.
Already have your title ready? Read this post for advice on how to create great webinar content. Need a shovel-load more advice? I offer webinar consulting packages in several sizes that are sure to please 😉
