How to Choose an Interesting Event Topic

Everything begins with the topic of your event. And, while some organizers may dismiss it, it is central to your attendees' experience.

The topic of your event signals elements such as the following:

•Understanding your audiences’ needs

•Value your attendees will derive from the event

•Area of the thought leadership you want to build

Your event’s topic should be based on a niche angle that provides in-depth content and knowledge on matters that interest or worry your attendees.

Why Does It Matter?

Coming up with a narrow topic for your event will help you:

•Build your event agenda

•Create the knowledge sessions

•Identify the right speakers

•Design powerful event marketing campaigns  

•Target a specific audience

•Ignite powerful industry conversations

•Position your brand as a thought leader in a specific area

•Address your audience’s needs, questions, and interests

Elements Your Event’s Topic Depends On

To identify the topic of your event, you’ll want to consider factors such as your:

→ Audience’s profile

Your audience will dictate your event’s topic. After all, to achieve high event signup and attendance rates, you must make your event relevant for future attendees.

To achieve that, you’ll have to identify your audience’s profile and decide your event’s topic based on their needs and interests.

You can’t expect to attract marketing professionals if you plan an event about product development. Also, you won’t run a successful event if you’ll settle for a general marketing-related topic without offering new insights or perspectives to your audience.

→ Buyer persona’s stages

Events help you accompany your target audience through their entire buyer persona’s experience. From engaging with people who didn’t even articulate the problem they have to getting customers to advocate your product, events will create the perfect environment for activating your marketing funnel.

Subsequently, the buyer persona stage you’re targeting through your event will significantly influence your event’s topic. Suppose you want to attract high-quality leads, for example. In that case, you’ll want to develop an educational event topic that will help people articulate their challenges and identify possible solutions.

On the other hand, if you want to reconnect with your existing customers, your event topic can stem from new use cases and success stories that will help your attendees achieve better results with your product or service.

→ Industry

What’s your industry? Is your company part of the marketing, SaaS, or luxury goods ecosystem? What’s the industry you want to conquer, and in which area do you want to position yourself as a thought leader?

The answer to these questions will help you identify the topic you should focus on when planning your next event. Subsequently, you can refine your event’s topic by adding specific angles and narrowing it down.  

→ Product

Your product can also influence the topic of your event. For example, you can run an event about marketing. But if you’ve built a content management platform, it would be much more effective to narrow down your event’s topic and focus on discussing content marketing.

Types of Event Topics

We can classify event topics in categories, such as

→ Scope

•For external events: Your event’s topic should be obviously aligned with your industry and product. But, most importantly, your mission is to understand your audience’s needs and interests, along with the particularities of the buyer persona’s stages. This way, you’ll be able to come up with an attractive event topic for your external event.

•For internal events: In most cases, internal events don’t necessarily need a specific topic. After all, if you’re running all-hands meetings, product update events, or team-building sessions, your event’s goal is more relevant than your topic. However, specific topics are great when coming up with new ideas for educational internal events.

→ Depth

•Broad topics: Although we don’t recommend it, there’s no shortage of online or in-person events that run under generic topics such as Marketing in 2022 or NFTs. And there’s nothing wrong with it, except the lost opportunity of using the event to uncover a specific perspective that will help you gain better industry positioning as a thought leader.

•Niche topics: In some cases, companies choose to narrow down their event topic by adding a specific angle or approach. For example, some events may run under topics such as “Leveraging TikTok to Drive Revenue” or “NFT Use Cases for The Luxury Industry.”

•Ultra-niche topics: Finally, some events will focus on ultra-narrow topics, such as: “How the Fitness Industry is Leveraging TikTok to Drive Revenue” or “NFT Use Cases for the US Luxury Brands.”

Ideas on How to Come Up With The Right Event Topic

Idea 1. Conduct active social listening: Make sure you’re up to date with your community’s interests and worries. Keep a log where you can add new topics people like to discuss.  

Idea 2. Listen to your existing customers: Train your sales and customer success reps to identify the main challenges, needs, or interests your customers have. These insights will give you access to a never-ending list of event topics and subtopics.

Idea 3. Run surveys: Ask your customers for help if you are unsure which event topic will work best for your audience. Create and send email surveys, nudging people into choosing the event topic they find most interesting.

Idea 4. Co-create the event topic. Leverage platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn by running online polls. Add multiple event topic ideas and ask your audience to vote for the one they like most.

Idea 5. Look for internal expertise. In some cases, you may identify company executives or employees with extensive knowledge and experience in specific subject matters. Apart from being good speakers, these people may usually provide a strong list of event topic ideas that resonate with your audience’s mainstream interests.

As you can understand, there’s no straightforward way of finding the right event topic. However, an attractive topic for your event is always a mix of your audience’s interests, industry particularities, products’ capabilities, and internal expertise.

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