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During the pandemic, advisors seeking to gather and engage with targeted audiences had no choice but to take their show online. For those who studied and implemented the best practices of webinar marketing, the results have been excellent, producing waves of new prospects at a fraction of the cost of in-person seminars.
In this post-pandemic environment, webinars continue to be highly effective when done right. For people seeking financial information, attending online venues from the comfort of their homes or offices has become much more preferable than in-person seminars.
While putting on a webinar can be as easy as creating a PowerPoint, uploading it to a presentation platform, and making a link available, there is no guarantee of success. In fact, there are plenty of reasons why financial advisor webinars often fail. Here are five such reasons.
#1. Lack of clear objectives and audience targeting
This is true of any form of prospecting. If you don’t have clearly defined objectives and fail to target the right audience, your prospecting efforts will most likely fail. If the webinar’s purpose is unclear or doesn’t address the specific needs and interests of the intended audience, participants may lose interest or feel their time is being wasted.
As with any form of prospecting, it’s vital to have a specific objective for the webinar—what you want your audience to take away from it and the actions you want them to take. Webinars that fail to provide valuable and relevant content are likely to fall flat, which is why it’s critical to target your content to a specific audience, such as business owners, retirees, educators, or any audience with shared interests, concerns, and backgrounds you aim to attract.
#2. Poor planning and execution
As easy as it is to set up a webinar, without careful planning and execution, the presentation could come across as unstructured and disjointed, increasing the possibility of technical glitches and participant disengagement.
It takes extensive planning to ensure your objectives, agenda, and content are right for your target audience and that you’ve accounted for any potential technical problems, such as a glitchy internet connection or audio and video issues.
It’s also essential to schedule your webinars at times most convenient for your target audience. Marketing experts suggest scheduling them mid-day (just before or after lunch) and mid-week.
Effective execution includes systematic follow-up from the time of registration leading up to the weeks and days before the webinar and post-webinar follow-up.
As part of the execution, you should ensure you are well-practiced so you can deliver a polished presentation. You should plan on at least three dry runs before going live with a webinar.
#3. Inadequate promotion
Even if the webinar content is valuable and properly targeted to your intended audience, you won’t get good results if the webinar is poorly promoted. Ensuring sufficient webinar attendance requires an “all of the above” multi-channel marketing strategy that should include email campaigns (segmented by desired prospect types), social media, and calls to action placed on your website with a separate landing page for registration. You should also consider online pay-for-click advertising. #4. Lack of Participant Engagement
Webinars that fail to foster interaction through Q&A sessions, polls, and other engagement methods are likely to fall flat with participants. Similarly, presenters who fail to ooze enthusiasm and maintain a dynamic and engaging delivery style risk losing their participants’ interest.
This is why it’s crucial to practice, practice, and practice a webinar to arrive at polished delivery with the right amount of enthusiasm, dynamism, and audience interaction.
#5. Failure to evaluate the webinar plan and execution
Even if you manage to avoid these hazards, there is still a chance your webinar could fail because there are so many variables. The way to improve your chances of success for the next webinar is to thoroughly evaluate your planning and execution. Regularly assessing participant feedback, attendance metrics, and overall performance can help you determine what worked well—to reinforce it for future webinars—and what didn’t work well—to focus on specific ways to improve it. It helps to have an objective opinion and be willing to accept constructive criticism.
By addressing these common pitfalls and taking proactive measures to improve planning and execution, you can increase your chances of hosting successful and impactful webinars.
Related: How Newer Financial Advisors Can Build a Solid Client Base