Written by: Savannah Brunette
In the world of marketing events are a natural extension of your marketing strategy. For financial advisors, events provide a platform to build your brand, educate stakeholders and create meaningful experiences.
So, events might be a great avenue, but how do you get the word out about your event to reach the masses? Enter: landing pages !
Landing pages are an easy tool to direct traffic to your event details, encourage registration and create a sense of urgency. The great thing about landing pages is that they no longer have to be static. Meaning, certain platforms like Twenty Over Ten enable you to capture leads, embed videos, webinars, podcasts and other interactive materials to further entice visitors to attend your event.
Of course there are other opportunities to promote events through avenues like social media , email marketing and paid advertisements but what really makes an impact on the attendee list for your event is your landing page . When all your promotional efforts are linked to a tailored landing page with event information and benefits, your signups can sky rocket! Landing pages allow you to create a user-focused experience with information regarding their interest in your event. Read on to get additional tips on how to create your own killer event landing page.
1. Include a clear CTA (Call to Action)
Think about anytime you’ve signed up for a newsletter , downloaded an app like Dropbox , or joined Netflix for a free trial. Each of those actions you took to sign-up were likely caused by a powerful CTA s. CTAs are buttons or instructions on your landing page that tell your target audience exactly what they should do. Each CTA should start with a strong command verb; great verbiage to use for advisor event CTAs are “Learn More” or “Sign Up!” If possible, using words that provoke enthusiasm increase the likelihood a prospect would click the CTA. “Join!” hits two bird with one stone, being both a command verb and creating a sense of community in the event your offering.
A call to action by definition is designed to motivate visitors to take immediate action. It is important your supporting information provides the reasons why they should attend your event and how it benefits them to get involved now. When the supporting information and the CTA work as a team, the landing page more flow much more smoothly.
Lastly, make sure your CTA isn’t lost in the clutter! Using a CTA that is clear and obvious on the page will direct visitors to take your prescribed action. A CTA with the these attributes can dramatically increase your attendees list and can entice visitors to learn more, join, sign-up and increase event engagement.
2. Add a signup form or online registration
Including an event signup or online registration on your landing page is a very beneficial component to add. By asking attendees to sign up beforehand, you have the opportunity to capture those leads to send information and other reminders leading up to your event as well as follow-up after the event. Setting up an online registration will also help streamline the event process to allow for a smoother event experience. We recommend using free online event registration services like Eventbrite and evite . Free event registration services like the ones mentioned above are not only easy to include on your event landing page but some also allow you to send email reminders, confirmations and even accept payment if your hosting a paid event.
When designing your Signup form on your landing page we recommend keeping the form fields limited to encourage more sign-ups. Most people don’t want to give up too much information so limiting the amount of fields asking for information and the fields you require will make prospects more likely to fill out your event sign-up form. We’ve seen that website visitors also tend to only fill out forms if they are quick so make it easy! We recommend only asking for the necessities when possible – name and email. Think about what you’d want to fill out if you were signing up for a webinar, podcast, or other event.
3. Be direct
The sole purpose of your event landing page should be to persuade visitors to attend your event. Period. Your landing page should be compelling to entice visitors to sign-up for your event yet simple to make it as easy as possible for visitors to understand the event details and value of attending.
Being direct in your event marketing doesn’t necessarily mean you need to include a ton of language or content about your event. After all, a picture speaks a thousand words! Using a list or graphic that includes the date, time, and other event logistics can make your event information very clear and can capture your audience from a single glance. We recommend using a tool like Canva to create graphics with text overlay to include on your landing page to help promote your event.
Related: A Social Media Compliance Guide for Financial Advisors
More importantly, be sure to also highlight the value and benefit one would gain by attending your event. Ask yourself – what would make people want to come to this event and what can they find here that they won’t anywhere else? In our earlier point we talked about how prospects are usually not willing to give up much information so let them know why it’s worth their while to sign up.
Try including an advantage statement, which describes exactly what attendees will receive by joining your event. For example, maybe your hosting a seminar where you’ll share tips on how to save more money on taxes or how to better plan for retirement. Also consider including a substance claim, not only noting what this event offers but additionally who the offering is for and why. By doing this you’ll be able to weed out those who may not be a good fit to attend your event, which can also decrease your turnover rate from signups to attendees.
Overall, your value proposition should solve your prospective attendees’ problems or paint points. When a visitor looks at your landing page, they should know immediately that this event will personally benefit them and that it’s worth their time. By addressing your audience’s pain points, you can show them the value of your event and your business as a whole.
4. Optimize for mobile
Did you know that there are more mobile Internet users than desktop Internet users? As of August 2017, there were 3.5 billion global mobile Internet users. With over half of all website traffic coming from mobile devices it’s obvious that this trend isn’t slowing down. It can be very frustrating for users to land on your page and find the text is jumbled and the images don’t align. Having a landing page that isn’t optimized for mobile will also cause visitors to have to scroll far down to find the information they are looking for resulting a loss of attendees and leads.
Developing a landing page or a website for that matter, that can be viewed and utilized correctly on any device is crucial and will allow you to give every visitor the exact experience you set out to create.