The Definitive Guide to Webinars for Financial Advisors (68+ Tips & Real World Examples)

After selecting the type of webinar you want to run, it comes down to execution. 

And while we’re going to cover plenty of best practices in this article, we want to begin by calling out some of the common obstacles that advisors frequently make in their webinars.

As you launch your own 7-figure webinar framework, you’ll need to avoid issues like these:

• Obstacle #1: Boring presentation
• • People will leave if you don’t grab them within the first 5 minutes. There’s no room for a long-winded introduction. Be engaging and interactive from the very start.
• Obstacle #2: Poor presence
• • Specifically a poor personal presence. You don’t necessarily need to wear a suit and tie, per se, but you should be in professional attire. Take a look in the mirror before going on camera and make sure you’re good to go.
• Turn on your camera before going live. Pay attention to what’s in your background and declutter. If you don’t have a sleek physical background, you can always use a green screen and virtual background.
• Obstacle #3: Dated content
• • Having content that’s outdated (either the material or the style)
• Slides should be 16×9 NOT the old school 4×5 size
• Stop using Arial and Times New Roman fonts…pick something more contemporary, like Lato, Roboto, or Montserrat.
• Obstacle #4: Compliance issues
  • Stop viewing compliance as the enemy and make them your friend.
• Shoot for a date in the future and get on the phone with them to explain what you’re trying to do.
• Obstacle #5: No database
• • Don’t ignore your existing database – you can invite your current list of prospects, clients, and connections to your webinar. (This includes your email list and LinkedIn connections.)
• Obstacle #6: Paid Only
• • You don’t have to pay to get people in seats. There are plenty of ways to generate free attendees without paying or hiring an agency.
• You’re going to spend $2k – $5k per webinar if you hire an agency, which usually isn’t necessary. Taking a DIY approach and keeping it simple will work.
• Obstacle #7: No clear CTA
• • Must be simple, clear, and singularly focused. If you have no CTA, even the most engaging webinar will fail to convert attendees into appointments/clients.
• Obstacle #8: No testimonials
• • Having someone else vouch for you is WAY better than self-promotion!
• The SEC has paved the way for financial advisors to leverage testimonials. Grab them beforehand and integrate into both your marketing for the webinar and the webinar itself.
• Low energy
• • If you’re not excited about what you do, then why should anyone else be?
• People don’t buy on logic, they buy on emotion! (They justify with logic, however.)
• Be authentic and don’t worry about being someone else
  • Trick: Bring on guests and other people to add value. Banter makes it easy to feed off someone else’s energy.

How to Win With High-Converting Webinars

All it takes is a Zoom account, a basic web cam, and a few hours of planning and execution to host a webinar.

Literally anyone can do it.

But there’s a difference between hosting a webinar and hosting a high-converting webinar.

The difference between the two usually boils down to four key elements.

High-converting webinars are:

• Unique
• • Don’t call your event a webinar. Most people associate webinars with boring. Nobody wants to spend 60 minutes looking at mind-numbing pie charts and news analysis. Instead, call it a “masterclass.” It implies authority and communicates a high-level of value.
• Special “wow” factor
• • There has to be some sort of unique mechanism that gets people to actually attend your webinar (instead of the four other ones they’ve registered for over the past couple of weeks).
• Look for unique ways to spin tired topics. For example, you could call a basic tax seminar something like, “Leave the IRS in the Dust”
• Induces curiosity
• • This is fairly self-explanatory, but there has to be something that induces a level of curiosity. You want to share the benefits of attending without actually giving away the unique mechanism in the pre-webinar promo.
• Curiosity also comes into play with the webinar itself. If your goal is to book appointments, there has to be some level of unsatiated curiosity at the end of the webinar. Add value, but don’t give away the entire enchilada.
• Meets a need
• • A high-converting webinar can’t simply be interesting or theoretical. It must meet a very specific need in order to (a) get people to show up, and (b) turn registrants into appointments.
• The webinar should meet a specific financial need (like getting out of debt, saving for retirement, navigating Social Security, saving on taxes, etc.), or a timing need (such as new legislation, evolving tax laws, or an approaching tax deadline).
• Compelling
• • There has to be a compelling reason for someone to attend. In other words, it’s not enough that you’re a financial advisor, or that you have experience helping other people, there has to be a specific benefit that the attendee will get from showing up live.

A Swipe-Worthy Webinar Outline

There are dozens of different webinar frameworks you can follow to plan out the content and delivery for a webinar. 

However, there’s one simple and streamlined approach that we’re seeing perform very well right now.

So rather than give you a bunch of theoretical ideas, we’re just going to show you one that’s working.

In fact, this is a method that Jim M. – a SHIFT Accelerator graduate and member of SHIFT Nation – is personally using to turn 90% of registered attendees into booked appointments on his calendar.

It involves a 5-step power play that goes like this:

1. Educate: Give high-value information that helps people
2. Ask: “This information is good, but how are you going to apply it?”
3. Disarm: Eliminate the sales pitch by letting them know that you’re not here to sell something. (“It doesn’t matter if you work with me or someone else…you need to do this.”)
4. Show: Give them a glimpse of how you would help them apply the info/solve the problem if they worked with you. (Jim shows them the software in action.)
5. Offer/CTA: Offer a 30-minute no-pressure call to learn more. (Send your direct calendar link.)

There’s no need to overcomplicate things. When you can keep it simple and still communicate clear value, people will stay engaged and they’re more likely to follow through on your call-to-action.

Developing a Clear Offer & CTA

The CTA is what you say at the very end of a webinar that makes people get up off their seats (psychologically) and say…I’m going to buy that service, book that meeting, or call that person.

As you develop your offer, focus on:

• Scarcity
• • Time-based scarcity (Act before the webinar ends.)
  • Numbers-based scarcity (You can only work with a limited number of people.)
• High Value
• • Humans at a core level don’t respect time or information (ubiquitous and free). This means you have to create value. Tell them why this is valuable. 
• Associate the amount of hours you’ve spent doing something and multiply it by the dollar amount. This is an easy way to create value around something. (For example, if it took you 100 hours to figure out a system, and your time is worth $100 per hour, you could value the system at $10,000.)
• Personalized
• • Make people feel special (not part of a herd). Speak to a very specific niche in an exclusive way.
• Incentive
• • Offer bonuses as part of the offer.
  • Offer your services for a discounted fee (exclusively for webinar attendees…and for a limited time).
• Qualified
• • Make sure people are actually qualified to become a client before giving them a chance to take advantage of the offer.
    • Net worth
    • Age
    • Psychographic 

Testing Your Webinar Offer

What is the offer? Put simply, it’s what you say at the end of your webinar in order to get people to enter into a follow-up conversation with you.

When most people do a webinar, they have their deck and their teaching…then at the end they give a teeny tiny amount of attention to the offer. 

Big mistake!

Most of the time is spent on the presentation and almost no time is spent preparing for the offer. 

But it’s the offer that people remember! 

People remember the ending most, so you’re actually short-changing yourself. They remember how you made them feel at the beginning and the end.

Principle: People hate to be sold to, but they love to buy.

How do you make an offer that people will love to buy? You make it all about them!

Everybody is tuned into WIIFM Radio (What’s in it for me?)

How can you make people feel like they absolutely have to take advantage of the offer?

One way is to use a unique mechanism.

Doing so will help you stand apart.

(It doesn’t matter what marketing system or webinar funnel you run – if you look like everyone else, you won’t get the results you want. You need a USP and a unique mechanism.)

What is a unique mechanism? Put simply, it’s the name of a system, method, process, or framework that explains why you’re different.

Your unique mechanism can fit within your USP.

If this is the USP: “I use a SMART Retirement System to help clients accumulate $2M-$5M in assets for retirement.”

The unique mechanism is: “SMART Retirement System”

There’s no secret in today’s saturated marketplace. The power is putting the prospect’s problem into a unique context. By adding and assigning value to what you do, people will want to show up to your webinar.

With testing, you don’t have to be perfect!

When a scientist goes into a lab and he’s testing a theory, he knows that most of the time the theory will be wrong. So after he does one test, he makes a change and tries again…over and over again. 

A/B Testing

If you change too many things when testing, you lose the integrity of your results. By changing just one element, you get immediate results.

With A/B Testing you only have to test two versions (changing one variable: the close/offer)

Try this method: Do 2 webinars in one day. Keep everything the same except for the close at the end.

• Invite 1/2 to a 9 a.m. session
• Invite 1/2 to 1 p.m. session (change the close)
• Study the results and move forward with the one that works best.

Driving Traffic to Your Webinars

Unless you’re a household name – and most advisors are not – you’ll probably have to incentivize people to show up.

But how you incentivize is key.

When you incentivize the wrong way, volume goes up but quality goes down. You get people who are just there for the bribe. In other words, you attract plate-lickers.

You have to do this elegantly, and you have to test. It also has to do with your psychology. 

There are two elements in play: quantity vs. quality

You as the advisor have to decide what’s most important to you.

Quantity of Attendees

This approach builds a long-term database, which gives you a solid group of people that you can eventually nurture and lead to clients. However, you must have really good marketing chops, copywriting skills, etc. in order to nurture them into qualified prospects who ultimately become clients.

Quality of Attendees

If you don’t have patience, time, or experience, then naturally you’re going to make a play for quality. This provides the easiest and shortest path forward. However, it costs a lot more money.

What can you do to get people to attend?

PDF’s and other downloadable content assets always work well.

• Workbook. Create sheets with blanks. This gives them value but teases them with open space. The open spaces are what you teach in the webinar.
• Checklist. Retirement readiness checklist? 401k rollover checklist? 

• Report. Statistics and relevant data that your target audience would find valuable.

Paid Ads 

Facebook ads are an advisor’s best friend. While YouTube ads can also offer a beefy return on investment, we recommend starting with Facebook ads (if you’re interested in going down the paid traffic route).

Here’s an example of a Facebook ad that an advisor is currently running (and a few reasons why it works).

Why it Works

• Notice how it’s not a stock photo. It’s a casual, yet professional image. Organic, natural looking content will usually perform better than a highly-stylized shot of a couple holding hands on the beach. (At least with this type of ad.)
• It doesn’t call out the audience (e.g. “Hey, retirees!”). Doing so will make it hard to get your ad approved by Facebook.
• It’s very safe and compliance-friendly. (Notice how many times the advisor hedges in the opening paragraph.)
• This ad is running several weeks in advance of the webinar, which gives plenty of time.
• Uses bullets to grab attention and simplify the copy.
• Has a very clear call-to-action.

C.O.I. Joint Webinar Strategy

Here’s another powerful way you can take your webinar strategy to the next level.

The C.O.I. Joint Webinar Strategy is a simple technique that leverages the power of partnerships to help you get in front of more people.

Here’s how it works…

Let’s say you have an attorney connection who has their own database. They have plenty of relational capital, but they don’t have any marketing skills. 

You can help them monetize the relational capital they have in their list.

Reach out with something like this:

“I’m hand selecting some partners to put together a joint webinar that specifically discusses XYZ. Based on your profile, you might be a good fit for me to expose my audience to discuss your expertise.”

Have a standard. (Make sure you’re working with someone who has a list of several hundred or several thousand people that they regularly nurture.) But don’t be afraid to reach out to people that might be slightly out of your “league.” You never know when someone will be willing to partner together.

The two of you promote the webinar together and invite everyone from both of your lists. 

You basically cross-pollinate. 

This is a free way to exponentially increase your authority and grow your list. It gives you a transfer of trust from that individual to you.

You Can Do This!

There’s a TON of info in this blog post.

Whatever you do, don’t feel overwhelmed. 

Pick out a few techniques that resonate with you and put them into action.

You can’t get results if you don’t ever start.

Longevity is the key. Don’t give up on yourself. If you do a terrible webinar, fine. 

Get over it. Step up. Shake it off. Keep moving. 

Don’t wish for webinars to get easier. Wish for yourself to get better. Wish for yourself to become a better presenter. Wish for yourself to get the skills. 

Don’t complain about the tech, become a master of the tech. 

Do not let these small obstacles turn into mountains, because you can do this!

Unpack More Advisor Prospecting Strategies

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