The future of large in-person events is unknown as this pandemic stretches on and on. According to Simplicity Lone Beacon’s recent nationwide study where over 1,200 people were asked the question, “What would best describe your attitude toward attending a public gathering over the next three months?” nearly 50% would likely not attend or only attend with the highest level of caution.[1] Rather than waiting for everything to go back to normal, advisors now have the option to offer high-quality webinars. Webinars have many advantages, but in order to fully take advantage of them, webinars must be marketed correctly. Simplicity Lone Beacon gives as much thought to how to promote our content as the content we create so that our advisors can see maximum ROI. We believe that if you’re going to do a webinar, you should do it right.
Webinar Promotion and Nurturing
When promoting a webinar, we focus on lead generation across multiple platforms such as social media ads (paid and organic), email, broadcast, and customized content. This is a large break in tradition since in-person events have routinely been promoted with direct mailers. Typically, an advisor might send out as many as $10,000 mailers and only receive about 100 responses and end up with 80 attendees – for a relatively high cost per lead. Considering that Baby Boomers are active on social media and respond well to email marketing, it makes sense to allocate more resources towards those platforms rather than mailers for any event, but especially for webinars.
For advisors with a significant email database, we can promote the webinar with a custom email template explaining what they’ll learn in the webinar and a sign-up button. Our paid and organic Facebook ads feature compelling, compliant copy, and bring users to a custom landing page where they can sign up for the webinar in exchange for their information. From there, we have nurturing systems in place (from email to text) to help increase attendance and engagement from the time of signup to the time of the webinar, after which we follow up with additional content and calls to action.
Additional Content
Our written content is created in concert with our webinar content, so that important information can be reinforced and overall themes remain consistent. For example, our Social Security webinar package includes a downloadable, branded Social Security guide to further engage viewers. This gives them something to “take with them” after the webinar if they want to look back on a particular topic or missed an important number. It can also engage those who show some interest in the webinar but did not attend.
We offer webinars on a variety of subjects and continue to create more on subjects relevant to the 50+ demographic. Whether it’s a traditional evergreen topic such as taxes strategically positioned around tax season or after a change to the tax code, or a timely topic such as the election, Simplicity Lone Beacon provides regular content on an ongoing basis and gives advisors access to a wide array of options through an online portal to best fit individual firm’s needs.
Simplicity Lone Beacon knows that it is imperative to create an integrated approach to marketing because marketing elements are more effective when they work together and are part of a larger ecosystem. It’s not enough to solely hold a webinar, it must properly engage viewers before and after so that advisors can continue marketing to their prospects. If you’re going to do a webinar, let us help you do it right – get in touch to find out how we can help!
