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I have attended many webinars by financial advisors and while some are delivered very well, I see some common mistakes that can help financial advisors engage more clients, prospects, and centers of influence. There is no perfect formula for financial advisors to use because every market is different and every financial advisor is different. Stop listening to marketers telling you how to run a seminar when they don’t understand compliance.
How to engage more of your audience before a webinar
First mistake, what are your offers in joining, during the webinar or after the webinar? For example, join my upcoming webinar and receive a free ebook on practice management. Find offers that are valuable to your audience. Besides your wonderful content, there must be something valuable that benefits me, regardless if I join the webinar or not. Remember some people will register and not show up. A recording of the webinar usually doesn’t work, since the person decided that there is something more important, so listening to a replay probably won’t happen. Consider something like the estate planning checklist to find out the probability of reaching your estate planning goals out of 100. To learn more check it out here. If you have a few minutes and want to demo this tool, simply click on my link: http://tinyurl.com/yxnvxcda If you want to begin sharing this tool with your clients and prospects, email me at grant@ghicks.com and enter “Willing wisdom, More Information Please" in the Subject Line —that’s it.
How to engage more of your audience during a webinar
Congratulations, you have a webinar with attendees, now how can you engage them to take action during the webinar. Remember, they are sitting in front of a keyboard, so sending an email to one of your offers is easy. For example, during my webinars, I show a slide that says” if you want a copy of the presentation email me at grant@ghicks.com and subject line: presentation slides. I put this slide at the beginning of my webinar, again in the middle, and at the end during questions and answers. I usually get 20% engagement from attendees asking for the slides which are valuable to them. You don’t have to offer your presentation, offer a book, ebook, guide, checklist, or questionnaire. Find something valuable to your target audience. Show the offer three times, and if your offer is valuable to them, you will engage more people.
How to engage your clients
Have a strategy on your invite, to forward to family and friends. For example, by phone or email ask your clients and centers of influence this question “ Can I ask you a favor? I am hosting this webinar and I would love it if you could join. Can you also forward this email to one person you know who would benefit from hearing about a “Go forward plan for the next 12 months” right now? I really appreciate it if you would consider sharing this webinar with family, friends, or colleagues. Just hit the forward button. Thanks, and I hope to see you at the webinar!
How to engage prospects
Your prospects and attendees whom you may not know, who join the webinar can be in the weeds, meaning they can be anonymous. They can listen in and see if there is a compelling reason to switch advisors, which there should be in your webinar. Instead of talking about who you are, show them a fee audit, which demonstrates to people all of the value you deliver, on one page. It reminds clients of all of your value and prospects what they don’t know. They don’t know they are paying for a comprehensive financial and investment plan and don’t have one. They don’t know they are not organized in all 7 areas of their financial life. Heck, they don’t have a clue about the probability of success in reaching their goals, personal or estate. Teach them what they don’t know. Then watch them come out of the weeds by testing out one of your offers, which engages them. Offer a fee audit, estate checklists such as the willing wisdom index, or a valuable guide, checklist, book, or ebook.
Check with compliance or your firm for resources
I understand the compliance process. Make sure you pass your whole process through compliance. The invites, the webinar, your offers and the follow-up. Your company may also have a ton of resources and templates to help you. The challenge some firms have is with landing pages. A landing page is where people can sign up for your webinar. This is the power of webinar software, which I talk about in another blog. You must use webinar software to make your webinar effective. You will also need email software to get your message out to clients, prospects, and centers of influence. Finally, you should have calendar software so people can book appointments with you, all approved by compliance. The biggest mistake is when advisors don’t sign up for webinar software and they look like an amateur, or even worse, people cannot join the webinar. Sign up for Zoom webinar, Gotowebinar, or similar software and you will understand what I mean. Full disclosure, I get no benefit for telling you about this software, just that I use it and it works!
Tell, tell tell
In your offer, you must tell people what your offer is, how to get it, and what will happen once they receive it. The mistake I see is the offers are confusing. For example:
Each webinar attendee will receive a FREE ebook on Practice Management, 5 years worth of research into what the elite advisors do to build their business, from Grant Hicks, CIM “Guerrilla Marketing For Financial Advisors” innovating Financial Advisors Through Practice Management, the book is part of a series, which has sold over 21 million copies worldwide. Start implementing strategies of elite financial advisors today!
Offer two webinars at a time
Most financial advisors I see put a lot of energy into one webinar or topic. Do the same webinar twice and offer people two different weeks or dates to attend. You will see more uptake on registration because you will offer it two or more times, and in two different time slots. This makes your messaging easier and compounds your efforts. Also posting articles ( compliance approved of course) with a link to your webinar sign up page also called a landing page. This gives you an excuse for activity. Emailing your database, sending out articles, and calling people. A webinar is not about content, it is an excuse for activity, and an excuse to reach out and has a deadline. The clock is ticking……….
Lack of or follow up engagement
I see this as the number one reason for failure after a webinar. Lack of follow up. Have your follow up email with another offer prepared before the webinar and engage your audience right after the webinar with another offer such as your next webinar, the willing wisdom index, stress testing your portfolio, a sample financial plan, a goals conversation or other engaging or valuable offers.
Also calling prospects who attended or emailing them and asking for feedback and asking if your offers were valuable or not to them. This will help you refine your process, get the best offer possible to your target audience, and get valuable marketing feedback that no one can give you unless they attended your webinar. That is why I attend the webinars with the financial advisors and teams I work with. Feedback helps you grow and improve and master webinars. Good luck and book your webinars.
Related: How Financial Advisors Can Master Client Acquisition Through Webinars