There's never been a better time to jump on the webinar bandwagon. But knowing you want to host a webinar is just the tip of the iceberg—figuring out what your webinar should be about is the next big hurdle.
After moderating dozens of webinars, I've seen a massive range of webinar topics over the years. Here are some of my webinar topic ideas—along with some tips for how you can make the most of them.
How to choose the right webinar topic
Finding the right webinar idea isn't a matter of deciding what you're in the mood for. For your webinar to be a success, you need to be strategic. That means thinking about:
Your webinar goals. Why are you hosting the webinar? Are you looking to generate leads, create brand awareness, drive conversions, or encourage product upgrades? Understanding your goals and KPIs will help you select the right format and topic for your webinar.
Your webinar audience. This isn't just about your target audience. You also need to decide: are you speaking to current customers or to people who've never heard of your brand until now? Is there a specific subset of your audience you're trying to reach for the goals of this specific webinar? Remember that each webinar is just one small part of your marketing, so you can definitely go niche with your audience.
Your webinar platform: Make sure your webinar software offers the features you need, such as multiple hosts, the ability to gather leads, and recording the webinar to share later.
Your existing (and future) content. Do you have any existing content that you could repurpose into a webinar? Or do you have any upcoming campaigns that you know you'll need content for, and the webinar could be a first touch?
Once you have the foundation, take a look at these eight customizable webinar topic ideas.
1. Your product 101
Goal: Educate current customers / Help leads overcome any hesitations
If you offer a complex or unique product or service, a 101 webinar can educate new customers while also helping qualify leads. Talk about what your product or service does, explore unique features or offerings, or even provide a basic demo. As long as your product or service remains mostly the same, this becomes evergreen content that can be delivered on-demand or sent out by your sales team.
Here's an example: Leadfeeder, a sales and marketing tool, hosted a webinar about its core features. The presentation walked users through customizing the dashboard, offered tips for reaching out to leads, and provided product updates. At the end, they hosted a Q&A, so attendees could get answers to direct questions. Originally hosted live, the webinar now lives on their YouTube Channel, where users can watch it anytime.
Leadfeeder's tool is a bit complex, so a webinar covering the basics helps users feel more confident signing up and can reduce churn by educating leads on how to make the most of the platform.
How to reuse this content: Add the recording to your knowledge base.
2. Address industry pain points
Goal: Build brand awareness and trust / Generate leads
By directly helping your audience solve their problems—without focusing on your product or service—you'll establish yourself as a trusted resource. Think about significant industry pain points, and share solutions: what's worked for you, what's worked for your customers, and how your attendees can replicate the success of others.
Amplitude, a product analytics platform, uses this angle regularly in their on-demand webinar series. This one, Optimize for Retention, addresses the challenges of customer retention for digital companies.
Remember: this type of webinar is educational. It's not a sales pitch, which means you can get away with longer signup forms. That makes it a great topic for lead gen.
How to reuse this content: Include it as part of an online training course for your industry. Or, if it's an SEO-friendly topic, post the recording to YouTube (and optimize it for SEO!). You could also turn it into a blog post.
3. Discuss industry trends
Goal: Build brand awareness / Establish trust with customers
Sharing industry trends and insights establishes your brand as a thought leader and helps your customers stay on the cutting edge of industry changes. For example, a small marketing firm might host a webinar to educate customers about switching to Google Analytics 4. It provides value for the user, shows off the brand's expertise, and allows the host to say, "If you need help with the switch, reach out to our team."
Zapier's recent webinar "Managing your business in economic uncertainty" is a great example.
By covering topics important to their target audience, Zapier stays top of mind with prospects and customers, without offering a hard sales pitch.
How to reuse this content: Turn the content into a blog post. (Zapier turned theirs into two! 3 business leaders share their predictions for the future of small businesses and How to survive a recession: Business leaders weigh in). You could also pitch the thought leadership for media placements.
4. Celebrity interviews
Goal: Expand brand reach / Generate leads
You might not be able to afford Zendaya for your keynote, but it's likely there are plenty of industry celebrities your audience would be excited to hear from. It might be an influencer, author, or other popular figure—and if it's a big enough name, you might even be able to turn it into a paid webinar.
ActiveCampaign hosted well-known author and speaker Ann Handley on their webinar. Ann spoke about webinar strategies and shared her thoughts on how the rise of remote work had impacted digital events.
How to reuse this content: Sometimes celebrities will have contracts saying you can't reuse their content, so keep an eye out for that. If you're allowed to, turning it into a series of social media posts is a great way to keep people engaged after the event.
5. Topics from your sales team
Goal: Generate and qualify leads
Your sales team is a gold mine of ideas for webinar topics. They talk to prospects all day and deeply understand why customers hesitate and what pain points they're trying to solve. Even better: they know which leads are most valuable and can suggest topics that will attract those folks. That's all to say—if you're not sure what topic to host a webinar about, start with your sales team.
Pipedrive, a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, builds webinars around topics gleaned from the sales cycle. For example, one webinar explores features of their (upgraded) Professional Plan.
While I can't say for sure the sales team suggested it, it's likely a conversation sales teams have as they try to upgrade customers from lower plans. Explaining how the higher-tier plan can improve performance in a webinar means Sales can spend more time following up on leads, reaching out, and moving prospects through the funnel.
How to reuse this content: This is perfect sales enablement content: the sales team can use the webinar recording as an asset to send to prospects. Consider breaking the video up into smaller pieces, if it makes sense.
You can also pull topics from your customer support team. Usually these topics are better suited for shorter how-to videos, but if there are webinar-worthy themes in there, use them.
6. Expert insights
Goal: Increase brand awareness / Educate customers
Hosing an expert in your industry offers three benefits: your audience receives valuable insights from a trusted expert, co-marketing helps you reach a wider audience, and hearing the benefits you offer from a third party establishes trust.
ServiceTitan used this strategy by hosting Brandon Doyle, the Director of Marketing at Blue Corona, an inbound marketing and SEO company.
Brandon shared his insights, which establishes him as a digital marketing expert, and one of the topics he covered was how ServiceTitan helps users perform better on Google. Because it's an industry expert talking about the benefits of ServiceTitan, attendees are more likely to trust the information. And anyone who's attending because of Brandon's expertise is now introduced to ServiceTitan's brand.
How to reuse this content: This is the stuff podcasts are made of. Turn the audio into a podcast; if you do a series of expert insights webinars, you might back your way into a full podcast series.
7. Live audit or demo
Goal: Generate leads
Live audits are just plain exciting—and there are lots of ways to go about it.
A digital marketing agency might do an SEO, social media, or website audit. They could take submissions before the event from leads and users who want their content to be featured, and then the experts would do the audit live during the webinar. This shows off the agency's expertise.
An automation company might ask folks to submit the processes they wish they could automate, and then they could build those automations live during the webinar. It highlights how powerful the tool is while also serving as a demo.
A career coach might pick an attendee and do a 30-minute coaching session live, showing off the coach's insights and giving a better look into how deep they can go in just half an hour.
Semrush does live content teardowns. Here's what it says on their registration page:
Interested in having one of your blog posts analyzed live on our webinar - with recommendations for how it could be improved?
Submit it in the registration form below, along with topics and keywords you're trying to optimize.
These kinds of webinars can draw big audiences because attendees hope their example will be selected for some free help.
How to reuse this content: Add the video or transcript to your knowledge base.
8. Case studies
Goal: Offer social proof / Push users down the funnel
Case studies establish trust with your audience and highlight how your solution solves their biggest challenges. In my experience, these webinars work best in an on-demand format, so customers can watch when it's convenient.
Have your customer lead the webinar. They should tell their story, but with a focus on how your solution helped them. Citing exact numbers and offering actionable strategies will highlight how attendees can replicate the customer's success in their own work or life.
Zapier has a whole series of "Customer spotlight" videos that do just that.
How to reuse this content: Post a quote on your homepage as social proof, and link to the longer case study video. You could also turn these into written case studies.
Focus on the content
As you put together your webinar, focus your human powers on the strategy and content, and let webinar automation take care of the rest. Less time on registration and follow-up means more time engaging your attendees.
