Question from a subscriber: “I’ve been giving seminars the local library. How do I get people to book an appointment with me at the end?” Here are some seminar marketing tips for financial advisors who want to get new clients and develop relationships with their community.
Financial advisor seminar marketing is not that simple
You may be prohibited in some cases from saying anything to actively solicit leads. Make sure you ask what their policy is.
Instead of standing up there at the end and saying, “Hey everybody, by the way – I’m a financial advisor. Here’s my business card, call me to talk about your Roth IRA“, do this.
Weave your pitch into the seminar in a natural way through stories.
Tell fun, relatable humorous stories about your clients.
Don’t just talk about how to create a spending plan in retirement. Talk about how a husband from NY and his wife from Boston had a row about including his season tickets to the Yankees in their budget which resulted in him ultimately becoming a Red Sox fan.
LoL?
Okay maybe that wasn’t funny but you get my point…
Don’t just tell them you’re a great financial advisor. Tell lighthearted stories that put them there with you. Do this right and they will ask you for a meeting.
Boom – and there’s today’s marketing tip for ‘ya!
How financial advisors actually get leads from a seminar
Question from a subscriber: “I spent $8,000 on a dinner seminar and not a single lead from it. What did I do wrong?” Sorry…what a bummer. Financial advisor seminar marketing is more than it appears at first blush. Here are the three most likely reasons why you came up empty:
#1 Too product-focused
It may be great to have your wholesaler or the ETF sponsor pay for the steaks, but let’s be real: having them present is a real drag.
Was the talk really that inspiring? If you were in the audience, would you have felt fired up to jump out of your chair and ask for a meeting?
Or, did the attendees walk away feeling like you were trying to sell them something?
Remember at the core of it, a dinner seminar is an opportunity to lift people up and touch lives – to inspire them to be better with their money for the good of their family. If they wanted to be pitched, they could have stayed home.
#2 Insufficient qualification of leads
Did you vet the attendees beforehand? If you just sprinkled everybody in a certain (wealthy) zip code with invitations, what work did you do beforehand to find out if they were really the right type of buyer?
Did you ask them to fill out a questionnaire prior to registration?
Did you call any of them, even?
How realistic is it to expect total strangers that you know nothing about to want to meet you?
#3 Not enough interaction before, during, or after the seminar
Recognize that only about 2-3% of the attendees are going to want to meet with you right away. Look at the event as a long term opportunity to build your network and brand.
Did you collect email addresses?
Did you make an effort to personally speak with every single attendee, even if for only a moment, during the event? Or to have someone from your organization do so?
Did you make an attempt to connect with the attendees over social media? Did you at least mention how to follow you on Facebook or LinkedIn during your talk?
Yeah?
Yah.
In general, I witness a grand underestimation of the effort required to treat people the way they really need to be treated during these seminars. Get fired up about the chance to touch somebody’s life, and do that – for every single attendee in every way you can.
Having that overall goal will dictate the interactions you have at all points in the process and improve your seminar lead results.
Get them asking questions
The most telling sign of a good presentation is the number of questions asked. A good presentation will have the audience overflowing with questions and a bad presentation gets…crickets.
You are running and racing against the three minute clock.
Longer than that, and they will tune you out unless you harness their attention back – and you have to make strong moves.
Take this action TODAY:
- Send the group a request for questions prior to the talk. Get them on the agenda. This will tailor the presentation better to what is on their minds.
- Open the talk like this: “The topic of my presentation today is how to reduce your taxes by 35% in retirement. Before I get started, what questions do you have?” Write them down on a piece of paper and answer them as you present. This gets them engaged right away.
- When somebody does ask a question, repeat it to the group. The people in the back of the room won’t hear someone in the front with no microphone.
- Ask them to turn off their phones at the beginning of the presentation. Not everyone will do it, but at least they will get the message that you expect them to pay attention to you instead of their phones.
The more you engage the audience, the more influence you have. People retain a very small percentage of what they hear during a presentation.
The only way to get them to remember more is to get them to interact with you.
Ready to go get ’em?
Alright that’s all for now. Hope these tips about how to market a financial advisor seminar were useful.
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Or if you want more…
Learn what to say to prospects on social media messenger apps without sounding like a washing machine salesperson. This e-book contains 47 financial advisor LinkedIn messages, sequences, and scripts, and they are all two sentences or less.
You could also consider this LinkedIn training program which teaches financial advisors how to get new clients and leads from LinkedIn.
Thanks for reading. See you in the next one!
