You may already know webinars are one of the most effective marketing strategies utilized by high-quality financial advisors.
Why are financial advisor webinars so effective? Because they are a great way to educate large numbers of investors and promote your firm at the same time.
However, it should not seem like a promotion to investors who attend the webinars. That’s because you are displaying your financial advisor firm’s knowledge in the webinar when you describe a solution to a financial problem that impacts millions of investors.
A webinar is also a great way to get investors comfortable with your firm’s style. How financial advisors communicate in webinars can be a great introduction to their firms.
Following are some financial advisor marketing tips that help financial advisors produce high-quality webinars that generate new prospects for their firms.
What About Attendees?
This is another major advantage for financial advisor webinars. The attendees can be anyone you want them to be:
- Produced by paid advertising
- Names on your drip list
- Current clients
- Centers of Influence
- Friends, family, associates
- All of the above
The key is to invite the right personas that are based on the topics of your webinars. For example, you would not invite millennials to a webinar that is based on post-retirement planning decisions.
Invite a Friend
If your webinar is good enough and the topic is something that impacts the financial well-being of millions of people, then the people you invite should be encouraged to invite other people they know who may also have an interest in the topic of your financial advisor webinar.
Depending on the topic, this may be an effective marketing strategy if your webinar solves a major financial problem. Then they could be encouraged to invite people they “care” about. This is a stronger message than just inviting people they “know”.
This will require some serious trust on the part of people you know to invite people you don’t know to attend your webinar.
Many financial advisors reassure the people they know that the webinar is for information purposes only and there will be no solicitations of any kind. Of course, people will have to register to attend the webinar so it will be possible to follow-up and answer their questions.
What About the Topic?
You are going to need an exciting topic that creates substantial interest in large numbers of investors. Bland, generic topics will not create the interest financial advisors need for well-attended webinars.
An example of a generic topic might be a webinar that is tied to retirement. There are literally millions of pages of content that have been written about this all-important topic. You will need a new twist for this topic otherwise producing a significant number of attendees may be an uphill battle.
A more effective strategy is to query your current clients about their biggest financial concerns and/or fears. They may come up with a topic that did not occur to you.
Once you have your topic and content nailed down you should invite these same people to the webinar that was based on their input. They should be interested in learning about the solutions you came up with.
You should also recommend inviting a friend, family member, or associate to learn more about this topic. After all, if it is a serious concern for them, it could a serious concern to people they know and care about.
What About Retention
Getting the right people to attend is challenge #1. Keeping them on the webinar for its duration is challenge number two.
People may sign-up with every intention of attending the entire webinar, but there can be a number of distractions that would cause them to leave the webinar early.
You should anticipate this challenge and develop strategies for overcoming it. For example, make sure you dazzle the attendees in the first five minutes. You can do this by describing the problem you are going to solve in enough detail that they can relate to it. The more they relate to the problem the higher the probability they will stick around to hear the solution.
Another strategy is to promote a free eBook that will be provided to attendees at the end of the webinar. In fact, the content in the eBook could be a summary of the webinar so they do not have to take notes. This could motivate them to stick around, but you might be better off with something more compelling.
Live or On-Demand
You should only use live, scheduled webinars if it is your intent to make the event interactive. There are serious pros and cons to live webinars for financial advisors. But if you want investors to be able to ask questions and hear the answers during the webinar then live is the way to go.
On the other hand, you may want to choose to produce on-demand webinars so investors can attend them at their leisure. If you do everything else right, you will get more attendees for on-demand webinars that can run for as long as their content is relevant (evergreen).
What About the Cost?
There are two primary expenses when you produce a webinar for prospects and clients.
First, is the cost of producing a professional-looking webinar that will be marketed to everyone you know. Your reputation is on the line if you produce an unprofessional webinar that does not fit the image that you want to project for your firm.
The good news is webinars are relatively inexpensive to produce and you can use them over and over again. You may want to select timeless topics for this reason. The webinars should become a permanent fixture on your financial advisor website and you can link them blog articles and social media posts.
Second, is the cost of producing attendance for the webinar. This expense depends on who you want to invite. As noted, you could invite current clients and ask them to bring a friend. Or, you could invite names on your drip list, another example of a low attendance expense.
The cost of attendees gets more expensive if you use advertising to initiate content with strangers. For example, you may advertise your webinar on Facebook, Google, or some other medium to produce attendees.
Conclusion
Webinars are an ideal way for financial advisors to introduce their firms to investors who do not know them. This introduction is an excellent way to convert strangers into qualified prospects. Plus, done right, the webinars will create a competitive advantage for the firms that sponsor them.
