HOW FINANCIAL ADVISORS CAN NAIL THEIR EVENT MARKETING

One of the best ways financial advisors can connect with existing clients and engage prospects is event marketing. An often underutilized tool, successful event marketing can drive a company’s new business into the stratosphere. 

Of course, the global pandemic forced advisors and their marketing teams to identify new platforms to generate revenue (like webinars) but they still faced difficulty replicating the success of in-person events. Whether an event is in-person or virtual, it still represents a tremendous chance to engage leads; advisors who are not doing event marketing are missing out on a huge opportunity. Why? Because advisors and marketers too often think of events as singular occurrences, rather than an interconnected marketing ecosystem spanning weeks before and after the actual event. 

Digital marketing, particularly with marketing automation technology, is one of the best ways financial advisors can connect with their clients and prospects and build deep relationships throughout the event lifecycle.

PLAN YOUR HOLISTIC MARKETING STRATEGY

Before advisors begin to promote an event, it’s essential to properly plan the key details. The first step is to determine the type of event and the topic. When deciding on a topic, it's important to research and analyze engagement insights to see where the target audience is already showing interest. This way advisors can make an informed decision on what would best resonate with attendees. It's also best practice to review and compare from multiple sources, including the most visited webpages, the most opened and clicked-through emails, and the best performing radio or television commercials.

Next, advisors should determine the audience that would fit best with the specific topic by analyzing the identifying factors of their key clients. What do the advisor’s clients do for a living? Where are they located? This will help to establish an ideal customer profile, or client avatar. Advisors can also identify their ideal customer profile with the “80/20 rule”, which identifies patterns among their clients that produce the most revenue, and determine where 80 percent of that revenue comes from. Typically, about 20 percent of the "best" clients make up a lookalike profile of an advisor's ideal attendees.

Once the event topic, type, and audience are planned, advisors should begin to think about early promotion. What is the budget, and how will the event be promoted? Often, the best promotion processes will leverage digital marketing, particularly database email marketing and digital ad buying, because it is both affordable and effective. Plus, digital ad buying builds first-party data, which can be used in conjunction with technology (like marketing automation) to send extremely specific and personalized communications to an advisor’s prospects and clients.

BEGIN MARKETING THE MONTH BEFORE YOUR EVENT

Ideally, marketing and promotion should commence several weeks before the event so that potential attendees have increased schedule availability, and the marketing team has time to effectively execute the campaign. Plus, this will also allow time to properly qualify and confirm attendance prior to the event.

To begin, it's best practice for advisors to publish a website or landing page where attendees can sign up for the event. The registration page is important because marketing efforts will drive prospects to this page; it will also collect insightful data about attendees that can be used before and after the event.

Next, advisors should promote the event on their social media and their company’s website to kick off the marketing campaign. Email and SMS (text message) marketing are some of the best ways that advisors can connect with their prospects. When leveraged in conjunction with marketing automation platforms, email and SMS can help to not only communicate with prospects, but also track and rank prospects based on how they are interacting with the messages they receive. Marketing automation technology allows advisors to collect behavioral data in real-time and use it to craft curated messages that are personalized specifically to their leads. SMS is a powerful tool to keep event registrants in the loop and drive excitement for the event itself.

On the day of the event, advisors must be sure to send email and SMS reminders, and of course, put on a memorable, valuable event for the attendees. Ideally, advisors will earn a healthy amount of new business from an event, but it doesn’t stop there.

NURTURE LEADS 90+ DAYS POST EVENT

The day after the event, marketing automation platforms should begin post-event automated email and SMS sequences. This could mean a “thank you for attending” email or a call-to-action (CTA) text encouraging attendees to enlist the advisor’s services. Advisors should work closely with their sales team to identify who was the most engaged in the event; the best time to sell is immediately after the event while it’s still top-of-mind with prospects. This is also a great time to get feedback from event attendees so improvements can be made for next year.

For the weeks following, advisors should continue to send ongoing nurture campaigns based on audience behavior. Email marketing automation is an effective way to continuously engage customers after the event. Financial advisors can use behavioral data gathered from these campaigns to gauge where customers are in the buying journey and score them based on their behavior. This score can then be used to cater the perfect outreach strategy to best resonate with prospects.

Takeaway

An event should never be a one-time lead-generation opportunity. Instead, a well-planned event, married with careful planning and a successful marketing campaign, will dramatically improve new business opportunities for weeks and months post-event. Even more, it will help advisors to further cultivate a positive brand image and create stronger, more genuine relationships with both existing customers and prospects. 

NOTE:  

This post was co-authored by Mike Schaffman of Lone Beacon.