The $18,000 Untapped LinkedIn Event Marketing Strategy for Nabbing Insurance and Financial Advisor Leads

What if I told you there was a way to drive more insurance and financial advisor leads to your next event (virtual or otherwise) without spending a dime?

I’m talking FREE.99…

Better yet, what if I told you it’s only going to take you maybe 10 minutes to add to your existing event marketing SOP?

Kind of curious…eh?

Well, in this blog post, I’m going to walk you through a powerful event marketing tactic that I recently used to get 44 out of 100 people to accept an invite to one of my webinars. 

Yet despite its effectiveness, I’ve only ever seen 1 in 25,000 insurance and financial advisors leverage it.

Want to be the second?

⬇️⬇️ Read on to find out how you can tap into this undiscovered technique ⬇️⬇️

5 Types of Events You Can Market on LinkedIn

Each Wednesday night, I host something called the Virtual Advisor Power Hour.

We launched it just a few months ago, but it’s growing VERY quickly.

We have hundreds of advisors show up every single Wednesday at 8pm EST…

We discuss tactics, host Q&As, and feature interviews with folks that are using the latest methods to generate insurance and financial advisor leads with less friction. 

But this isn’t a promo for the VAPH. 

Instead, I want to tell you about a tactic I recently tested to boost attendance at a recent VAPH.

Short Version

I created an event on LinkedIn 30 minutes before the start of the Power Hour. 

I sent 100 invite connections.

44 accepted.

That’s 44 potential attendees without spending any money (and just a few minutes of my time).

Longer version:

There’s a little-known strategy within the LinkedIn platform that lets you promote an existing event to the LinkedIn platform.

And if you understand how to leverage this strategy, you can BOOST registrations, attendance, and even engagement at your next event.

While the options are virtually limitless, I see this approaching working well with five specific types of events (at least for insurance and financial advisors).

Here’s a brief look at each:

1. Webinars

It’s the year of webinars, right?

In-person seminars are out, for obvious reasons, and webinars have quickly replaced them as the go-to options for engaging prospects and driving people to your calendar. 

Interestingly enough, if you talk to the advisors on the front lines – those who’ve hosted five, 10, maybe 15 webinars over the past six months – you’ll find that the engagement and conversion rates are actually fairly consistent with live seminars (if not better).

So if you’ve been hesitant to try webinars, I’d encourage you to give it a shot. 

And when you use LinkedIn like I’m going to teach you in this article, you’ll discover that driving registrations to a webinar like this isn’t as impossible as most advisors think. 

College planning…retirement….401(k) and IRA discussions…

These are all viable topics for webinars. 

You don’t have to get too fancy with webinars. The key is to be hyper-specific with the subject matter, audience, and how you find your attendees.

In regards to that latter point…

I love the strategy that financial advisor Robert S. shared with me on a recent Virtual Advisor Power Hour.

Robert has been watching the VAPH since the start (and encourages his team to do so as well). 

His office manager watched one where I discussed the concept of “giving not taking.”

So they decided to get creative.

A local publication, the Orange County Business Journal, had just come out with their “Top 50 Fastest Growing Companies” list.

And get this… 

They included their contact information in the list (email and phone number).

Robert and his team got to work.

And here’s the method he used:

Step 1: Robert’s team went through the list and congratulated each of the businesses on the list. (They let them know that they wanted to connect with other successful companies in the community.)

Step 2: When contacting these companies, Robert’s team did so from the angle of learning more about their business so that they could possibly refer their clients to them. The majority of the phone calls were spent talking about the other companies. Then at the end, the people on the other end of the line would naturally ask about Robert’s company. 

Step 3: With this “give not take” approach, Robert’s team got 25 new connections and 2 conversations. And both conversations resulted in them wanting Robert to conduct a training about retirement planning for their employees.

One of the businesses has 300 employees. And the owner thinks he can get 150 there for the retirement planning training!

An event of that size typically costs Robert $8,000 to $10,000 in marketing dollars.

Then the cost to get an attendee to an appointment is roughly $1,000 to $1,200. 

So if he gets 15 appointments, that could equal another $18,000 in free business.

I love it! 

And there’s no reason that he can’t use LinkedIn event marketing in the future to run similar types of webinars and workshops with other businesses.

By the end of this article, he/you will know exactly how to set this up.

2. Live Casts

Live video – also known as live casts or live streaming – has EXPLODED this year. And it’ll continue to do so over the next five-plus years.

Here’s some data for you statheads:

In 2019, internet users voraciously consumed 1.1 BILLION hours of live video.

By the end of this year, live casts are expected to account for 82% of all internet traffic.

Did you get that?

82% of ALL internet traffic. 

And when it comes to social media, 4 out of 5 users prefer live video from a brand over traditional social posts.

LinkedIn Live, while still relatively new, is expected to become the next big live casting platform – particularly for service professionals, B2B brands, and insurance and financial advisors.

But regardless of where you’re live streaming (Facebook Live, YouTube Live, etc.), LinkedIn is a great place to market that sort of event. 

3. Interviews

I love the idea of interviews (in terms of events).

Do you have partnerships with CPAs, attorneys, or other businesses that cater to the same audience as you? 

Or maybe, for example, a lot of your clients enjoy wine and you know a Sommelier or

restaurant that needs business. 

Why don’t you invite them to do a live webinar on fine wines that prospects can have shipped to their home, and you market it to the affluent? 

Retirement is always a hot topic. 

Here’s an idea for you: Surgeon discusses his retirement strategy to help other surgeons prepare for life after retirement.

(Do you see how many options there are for engaging insurance and/or financial advisor leads – if you’re just willing to get creative?)

Find somebody in your client base that knows, likes, and loves you – then schedule an interview!

Turn it into an event, and voila!  

4. Market Update

You could also do things like a market update where you do a little bit of research and share the current state of things with your audience. 

Spend 30 or 40 minutes on Bloomberg Kiplinger, Forbes, Fortune, etc. and read some different analyses or market recaps… 

Then do a 15-minute summary in your own words.

Add a little commentary, include a soft CTA, and call it a day.

That’s a great way to add value.

And as you know, there are more millionaires on LinkedIn than any other social media platform.

So imagine if you did that every Monday, for example.

After a few months, your audience starts to see you as their most informed connection on what’s happening in the markets.

5. Community Events

I believe there’s a huge opportunity for virtual community events.

This is an excellent time to build your reputation in your community and you can include LinkedIn in this strategy. 

I’ve told you about the virtual dance party that Elizabeth L. hosted back at the start of quarantine.

She knew that her clients and their kids were getting restless from being cooped up inside for weeks on end.

So she had the brilliant idea of hosting a virtual dance party.

She sent out invites, flipped on Zoom, found some fun YouTube videos, and let loose for an hour.

There was no sales pitch…but it was probably one of the most effective things she’s done all year.

I found that to be incredibly clever. (And if I’m still talking about, you can bet some of her clients and their kids are, too.) 

What you can do in your community?

Dance parties might not be your thing…but I’m sure there’s something.

Publishing Your Event to LinkedIn

Hopefully your creative wheels are spinning.

But in order to execute, you need to understand how to publish your event on LinkedIn so that you can attract more prospects to your webinar, live cast, interview, market update, community event…

I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible….like 9-step simple…

  1. Create Event
  2. Create a beautiful header using Canva (or your existing profile cover image)
  3. Choose Your Event Image (Probably best to use your headshot.)
  4. Enter Event Name (Try keeping keywords near front – it could get truncated when displayed.)
  5. Choose company
  6. Online event> Yes (insert link)
  7. Choose date and time
  8. Description (Be really strong. Take your time here.)
  9. Event Availability (Make it a public event.)

But the magic is not in creating the event. 

But in order to execute, you need to understand how to publish your event on LinkedIn so that you can attract more prospects to your webinar, live cast, interview, market update, community event…

I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible….like 9-step simple…

  1. Create Event
  2. Create a beautiful header using Canva (or your existing profile cover image)
  3. Choose Your Event Image (Probably best to use your headshot.)
  4. Enter Event Name (Try keeping keywords near front – it could get truncated when displayed.)
  5. Choose company
  6. Online event> Yes (insert link)
  7. Choose date and time
  8. Description (Be really strong. Take your time here.)
  9. Event Availability (Make it a public event.)

But the magic is not in creating the event. 

The magic is in sharing the event on LinkedIn.

While you can definitely share your event in a post…that’s simply going to push it out into the news feed like any old post.

You might get some traction, but not much.

Your best bet is to personally invite connections.

This is where it gets fun. 

You can filter your connections by location, company, etc.

You can go through and invite everyone, or you can hand pick which connections you want to send an invite to. 

Remember what I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

I recently tested this EXACT strategy with the Virtual Advisor Power Hour and got a 44% acceptance rate.

So before you shut down this idea as being impractical or too complicated, consider what you might be missing out on.

Why not use LinkedIn as an extra traffic source for a webinar or virtual training that you’re already using?

You can do it minutes, and I’d almost guarantee you’ll get some traction.

Reserve Your Step-by-Step LinkedIn Event Marketing Guide

I know that was a quick sprint through the process of publishing and sharing an event on LinkedIn, so I’ve also put together a more in-depth guide on the process.

It goes step-by-step – including 21 screenshots – to show you precisely where to click (and in what order).

And I want to give you a copy of the PDF.

But here’s the deal…

We’ve been giving away guides like this for the past few weeks and have had an overwhelmingly positive response.

So much so that we’re tempted to start selling these guides. 

I haven’t made that call yet, but I’m just letting you know that it’s something that’s being tossed around.

I have, however, instructed my team to LIMIT downloads of the Step-by-Step LinkedIn Event Marketing Guide to the first 100 people that fill out the form below.  

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Go and CLAIM your LinkedIn Event Marketing Guide TODAY and get it while it’s still FREE.

Reserve Your Free LinkedIn Marketing Strategy Call

If you’ve been reading the Advisorst Blog over the past few weeks and/or attending our Virtual Advisor Power Hours, then you know just how TRANSFORMATIVE LinkedIn is for today’s most successful insurance and financial advisors.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I told you about how my friend Chris Gaddis was able to generate 408 using LinkedIn prospecting…in his first year using the platform.

And out of those 408 leads, he quoted 62 prospects that ultimately produced 28 groups, resulting in $150,000 in recurring revenue.

The year prior to that, he had just $24k in recurring revenue.

So within 12 months of implementing the LinkedIn tactics that we teach, he increased his income by a cool 625%.

Imagine doing the same….all while going 100% VIRTUAL. 

Thousands of advisors are doing just that – and they’re utilizing LinkedIn to make it happen.

Want to find out how dozens of advisors like Chris are going from just four or five meetings per week to 19+ with warm insurance and financial advisor leads…in a matter of weeks?  

We would love to walk you through our proven and proprietary SYSTEM.

Click here to schedule your no-obligation LinkedIn Marketing Strategy Call.

Jeremiah Desmarais

Jeremiah Desmarais

Jeremiah is the founder and CEO of Advisorist® and is a 23-time award winning financial marketer, a TED speaker and philanthropist. He’s been featured on Forbes, CNN, and Worth. His work has generated over $2 million insurance leads and helped advisors in over 51 countries generate over $300 million in sales commissions. He is the author of the best selling book, SHIFT.

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