Last month we brought you our top 10 tips for running the perfect webinar.
As we said, webinars are a fantastic way of adding value to prospective clients, demonstrating knowledge and showcasing your expertise.
They are also cost-effective to run and a very efficient way of communicating with large groups of people.
Of course, every successful webinar needs an audience, so this month we thought we’d take a more detailed look at the key ways to get prospective clients to attend.
1. Invite people from your existing prospect database
We recommend that financial planners keep a log of every new enquiry that they receive. Over time, those who follow this advice will build up a database of people who haven’t yet engaged but would like to.
Everyone in this database should be invited to your webinar so you can continue to demonstrate knowledge and add value until the prospect is ready to engage with you.
2. Invite existing clients and ask them to bring a friend
Even if your webinar is primarily aimed at converting prospects into new clients, the content might still be relevant to your existing clients.
So, invite them and ask them to invite others for whom the content might be useful.
3. Build databases
The firms that succeed with webinars are those who’ve spent time building databases of prospective clients. As we said in tip #1, this includes everyone who’s enquired.
However, it’s important we also find ways to grow the database more quickly.
The best way to do this by running lead magnet campaigns on social media.
These types of campaign see the consumer exchanging data (usually name, email address and telephone number) for an informative asset (guide, quiz, scorecard etc) which adds value.
This process is proven to build databases more quickly than simply recording new enquiries and gives you a larger pool of people to invite to your webinar.
Consequently, lead magnet campaigns should become a key component of your webinar strategy.
4. Use social media – but don’t pay
Promoting your webinar via your social media channels will help you reach people who aren’t on your existing databases.
We all know social media is a noisy and fast-moving place. That means your promotion must be eye-catching and repeated regularly.
It isn’t enough to simply post once, and hope people see it. You need to post multiple times across all relevant social media channels pushing people to your webinar registration page.
Be careful though; social media presents huge opportunities, but also a massive threat.
We’ve seen financial planners spend (with other agencies I should add!) significant amounts of money and be incredibly disappointed with the results, with only a handful of people signing up for their webinar.
Even worse, fewer than 50 per cent attended.
We’ve thought long and hard about why social media advertising is generally a poor way of attracting people to webinars.
We believe it’s because you have no pre-existing relationship with the consumer, and asking them to a webinar is too great a leap for them to take.
In our experience, it’s far better to start the relationship with a high-quality lead magnet, nurture the consumer over time with additional information and only then give them the opportunity to sign up for the webinar.
It might be slower, but it’s more effective. Remember, the tortoise beat the hare.
5. Partner with professional connections
It doesn’t just have to be your data you use to fill your webinar.
Your professional connections will have databases of clients and prospects, many of whom would make ideal clients for you.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) means professional connections can’t simply pass this data to you. However, there are still options:
- You could ask your professional connections to invite their existing clients or people on their database. If you’re going to do this, make life easy for them by offering to write the invite and setting up a dedicated registration page, so you can easily see which delegates came from them
- It might be more appealing to your professional connection for them to invite people to a webinar on which they’re appearing, so consider running joint webinars with solicitors and accountants
- Finally, ask your professional connections if they’d be happy to promote your webinar on their social media channels. This could be done by them writing posts themselves to promote your webinars, or by using content you produce for them. They could also share your posts with their connections.
6. Remind people to make sure they show up
Getting people to register on your webinar is only half the battle. They also need to show up!
In our experience only 50 to 60 per cent of people who register for a webinar actually attend.
You can maximise this number by sending a reminder. If you use Zoom you should set up automatic reminders to go out before the webinar; our preference is reminders 24 hours and one hour beforehand.
As we’ve said many times, webinars can be an incredibly low cost (assuming you don’t advertise them on social media!) and efficient way of turning prospects into clients.
However, they take careful planning. Hopefully, this blog, and last month’s, will help.
This article was first published on illuminate from Nucleus: https://illuminate.nucleusfinancial.com/blog/author/phil-bray