Events to Plan in 2025: How to Host Successful Events that Generate Quality Leads

Well, we have a lot of tips, for you all today on all fronts, promotion, you know, getting more people, getting fresh blood to your events, event ideas for both in person and webinar, and then follow-up as well. So, we would love to know maybe what part of the event do you struggle with the most? Is it coming up with the idea? Is it getting people to attend? Is it converting the attendees to leads and then clients?

You know, where in that funnel of events do you struggle with? We would love to know, and we have some ideas for all of the areas. So stay tuned. What do people say in here?

Getting people to attend, finding new attendees even after sending out the RSVP. Okay. Christine said the follow-up. Got it.

Alright. So we’re kind of running the gamut here from lots of different alright. Well, let’s jump in. And the first thing I just wanted to point out, is that what we’re sharing today is really coming from our twenty twenty five marketing guide that we just launched that we’re so excited about, and this is the first in a five part series.

So if you haven’t gotten your hands on the marketing guide yet, we will drop the link in the chat. We have Aubrey and Elise from our team working behind the scenes. Feel free, to click on that and download it. But you can see over the next few months, every month, we will be hosting a different event, a workshop, if you will, just like this where we’ll dive in deep to one of these topic areas.

So, we’d be happy to have you all join us for all of them, and we’ll put the links below. And then one other thing is that there is a lot we’re gonna cover today, and we want you all, you know, to have the best events ever. So we also put together an event success checklist that everybody who registered will get as well. So keep your eyes peeled for that.

And the recording. We’ve had a couple of the normal questions like, will this be recorded and sent out? Yes. Absolutely.

It oh, yep. There we go. Is it recorded? It is.

Good housekeeping. And, also, on the housekeeping note, I should always remind people, if you want some to ask a question where only Susan and I see it, please put it in the, the question panelist.

Well, yeah. Host and panelist ones too.

That’s two for the for the chat.

Alright. Okay. We just put the marketing guide link in there, so make sure everybody downloads that. We’re really we’re really proud of it, and I think you’ll get a lot out of it. We made sure that it was super actionable, so it just, you know, gives you basically, you know, a checklist for every type of tactic you might wanna undertake this year, but let’s get into events.

Yes. So and, Susan, we’ve heard this so many times. Right? Ninety nine percent of advisers say, if I can just get in front of people, I can close them.

And so events are really an amazing way to do just that.

And when we look at though how many advisors are actually hosting events, so so many of you here are rock stars because They’re all on the they’re all on our webinar.

All twenty twenty one. Webinar.

We found through some different studies we’ve done in combination with wealth management dot com, Michael Kitsis has done one, Nitrogen has done one. The data suggests that only about twenty three percent of advisers are currently hosting webinars. And I was shocked by this.

I was gonna say, like, this stuff smells low, but it could make I think some of this was done during COVID, so it could be, like, a little bit.

Well, there’s a big asterisk.

Yeah. I might need to update it. But, still, I think the idea is that, especially for the webinars because it’s such a low, cost.

You know, it’s it’s got a huge ROI.

So we’re not gonna go through all of this at this moment, but these are really the steps or the timeline to hosting a successful event. So, of course, you’re gonna decide on your topic or format, which it sounds like a lot of you have done already. Then this second part here, I find a lot of people drop the ball on, which is creating a registration page that actually makes people want to sign up.

Yep. And I’m guessing a lot of people just went, ugh, I don’t know how to do that or how then we will talk about that.

We will. And if you are currently an FMG customer, in your dashboard, we have this event success toolkit, which we will show you, that makes it so easy to create these pages.

If you’re not using FMG, you should. But if you’re not, there’s other tools out there that you can use too. And then the third one is to, promote. Obviously, you wanna promote your event, then you’re gonna host the event, then create your follow-up assets, and then you’re gonna add all of the people who registered, not just those who attended to drip campaigns. And when we say drip campaigns, we’re really talking about emails being sent out over time. So this is like a bird’s eye view of what we’re gonna talk about today in the order of which you would do it.

You know what? I just saw a comment, and I think we should put, like, a placeholder to talk about this.

Tom just did a webinar, and he promoted it to fifteen. He sent out fifteen invites and had two clients show up. And I just think maybe we should also set expectations.

Like, what are the typical and maybe we you’ve got this, but typical conversion rates from, you know, number of invites to registrations to attendee because fifteen down to two is actually not that bad in the given the percentages. But Yes.

And that’s a really good point setting expectations. You know, it might seem frustrating to host an event a webinar and only have two people show up, but how excited would you be for two people to book on your calendar? Two fresh leads. Right?

So if they’re already clients, that’s a different story, but, you know, the chance to talk to people and share your expertise, even if it’s just a few, you know, a small number, is still a great opportunity. The other thing about webinars specifically is they can be recorded. So you’re not just talking to the abyss once and, okay, that was it. You record it and then you can repurpose it, which we will show you.

Alright. So we are gonna talk about webinars first. And, again, with webinars, because it is so informational and people can join from anywhere, it really allows you to scale, you know, your impact and offer wide brand awareness. You can establish authority in being an expert on particular topic, and it is convenient for people. Now that being said, people often will sign up and not attend. So when we host these events, we probably get, what, Susan, about a fifty percent attendance rate.

Yep. Almost, like, every time, it’s almost about fifty.

Right. And so that’s to be expected. And the the more you do it and the more people, learn that you’re gonna offer great information and not just sell them on something, the more you will get repeat webinar, attendees. So, actually, we would love to know maybe in the chat, have you attended a webinar, a workshop live workshop as Susan and I call them, that Susan or I have put on before FMGs put on before? Has anybody here been to one and you’re coming back? Because what Oh, Dominic.

Hi, Dominic. Lots of yeses. Yes.

So and if you’re a customer by I love that.

Yeah. Because all the first timers.

Yes. Absolutely. We’re so glad you’re here.

Oh, you should we should have asked, like, who who is just joining us for the first time maybe.

Yeah. So but I think what you’ll find though is that once somebody comes and they see it’s worth their time, they’ll they’ll not only come again, but hopefully tell some friends that would it would benefit as well. So, topic ideas. Susan, I’m gonna take a drink of water and let you give your two cents on this because I know you have some good ideas here.

Yeah.

I mean, it’s it’s I think one of the things you say is what are clients asking you about or what are you talking to clients about.

Timely topics are always, I think, the most they’re gonna have the biggest draw, but they also don’t have to be financial. So we always are emphasizing the easiest way to do a webinar is to partner with a subject matter expert. You guys, you know, probably listen to podcasts. You know, the interviewer is interviewing the expert.

You don’t have to do all the heavy lifting. You can partner let’s say you’re doing something on like, I think identity theft is a fantastic topic, and you can partner with your local police department. Banks offer, speakers on this this topic, and you will get a lot of people to come probably, I would say, more than if you focus on a really, you know, narrow financial planning topic. So that’s a thought.

Absolutely.

And, inviting somebody else to come and join you is so great because having two people talk is more interesting to listen to, and it also takes the burden off of you to just be the one on camera. It also allows you to help. If you can have someone from your staff as well, a big tip with a webinar, be on the back end answering questions so that you can interact with people in real time. That’s also really, really great.

And, again, if you have people start asking questions, let’s say you’re doing one about tax planning and you have some great blog posts that, you know, are on your website. You can have that person linking to those blog posts or articles from your website. So, again, it just keeps repurposing all that great content that you have. Yeah.

Actually, you know what?

I don’t know that we’ve really called that point out before, but I think, you know, what one of the reasons we have so much fun with our webinars is because we love engaging with the audience. You know, it’s obviously, it’s a webinar, so we can’t see you. But we get really active chats, but you don’t get them without trying to get them. You know, we Right. Ask questions and the kind of questions that hopefully people want to answer. So, another step and I don’t even think we have it on our checklist, but I think mapping like, thinking ahead about where you wanna ask questions to drive engagement takes a webinar from flat and boring, and I start multitasking to I really wanna listen. So I think it’s a really critical to do within the plan.

That’s such a good point. Thinking ahead of time of where can we ask questions that people will want to answer. So on that note, Susan came up with this list of subject matter experts that you might want to invite so you could map out for the next twelve months every month inviting a different subject matter expert to join you and interview them. And, again, remember everyone, when we’re trying to find new people to sign up, when you invite them, you can say, oh, great. You can, you know, post to your social platform or invite your audience as well. So it expands your reach.

And there are just so many great ideas here. So looking at this list, let’s all pick one that maybe you would be most excited to introduce your audience to. I wanna get a feel for the audience of, like, where’s everybody’s mind at in terms of what they think their clients or prospects would most want to hear from? Tax planning is usually at the top of the list, so we’ll see if that continues to hold true. Tax and estate, actually, I would say those two.

Tax, estate, family doctor, cyber, behave we’re getting actually a lot. I mean More cybersecurity. Yeah. If we had a poll, it’d be interesting to see, but it kind of I mean, my gut is it’s kinda even.

Well, and don’t you all think a lot of people are talking about scams and cyber scams a lot with AI. I mean, the AI scams are terrifying what they can do in replicating voices and things.

So hosting an event where you talk about what scams are targeting Oh, you know what?

Like, we just did a blog for do it for me that was about tax time related fraud. There is crazy amount of fraud that happens during tax time, including filing fraudulent tax returns, which happened to me. Somebody filed in my name as all my information, birthday, maiden, everything.

Agree.

And we didn’t find out until we went to file, and our CPA told us that somebody had already filed. But that could be a timely thing too.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Somebody asked a question, Susan, and I’d love to get your take on this. When you reach out to someone, how do you get them to agree to come? Do you offer them compensation? What’s in it for them to join you?

Yeah. I I don’t think you need to offer compensation. I mean, people reach out to Sam every day and ask her to be on a podcast, and she’s just like, sure. I’d love to talk.

People love to share their expertise, and they love partnering with people. And, again, what’s best about a webinar, it’s an hour of their time, like, maybe a half an hour prep call first. Like, you put together an outline, which AI can also help you with. So I don’t think you’ll get resistance.

We also as part of our do it for me program, we do something that would help, and and those that aren’t part of that can do it themselves.

We have a series that drips valuable information to your centers of influence. So making a list of the people that you would partner in each of these topics, call them your center of influence list, and just drip on them every month sharing insightful, information for us for our clients. We’re writing that for them, and they can edit it. And at the bottom, we’re basically always saying, you know, we’d love to talk to you about opportunities for us to, you know, partner perhaps for a webinar or whatever, like a really soft close. And then you just, I think, I just, you know, message them on LinkedIn, if you’re not, you know, already personally connected, and I bet you’ll get more yeses than noes.

Yeah. I’m just gonna show what you’re talking about in here for a second, so everybody can see it. But I also think one of the things is to help maybe them if you’re if you’re a little nervous, you can write an email to them and you can say, hey.

Oh, which is the forgotten four zero one k one. Okay.

So there we go.

Great email. And you would be sending this out not just to clients or prospects, but to all of these centers of influence that you would wanna partner with, and it’s just showing that you’re an expert and authority on these topics and somebody, you know, that they would wanna have in their network.

And, like, scroll down because it we write it key areas where we can help our clients. So you would talk about how you can work with them to help their clients too, and you go through and then, you know, collaboration opportunities, we just include some ideas where you could work together. So this is the email that’s going to, you know, the tax you know, the CPA or whatever. So you’re just teeing this up every month.

And then, you know, when you have an opportunity, you wanna do a webinar, I think you just send a personal email out. You know? Hey. I we’re connected.

I’d love to let’s let’s talk about actually doing one of these things, and people just might.

And, you know, what I was gonna say too is when you send the e, the email, feel free to say something like, and when we, you know, promote it, we’ll tag you in all of our posts. You know, we will Oh, yeah. Link to your website so it you know, for SEO purposes. And when you say some of those things, they’re like, oh, yeah. That is gonna help my awareness in this community or or whatever. So just kinda giving them a little tidbit of what’s in it for them. We got a good question about live versus recorded.

And what we do here, and I think I would recommend to everyone, is do it live so that you can interact with the audience and it gets you know, it’s exciting for people to join and be able to ask those questions live, but one hundred percent record it. And then you can decide, do you want to gate it so that someone does need to enter their email to watch it and you can continue to collect leads? Or do you wanna put it on your YouTube channel, put it some other places where you don’t gate it and you use it more as, you know, great content marketing. So you can do both.

Yeah. I think the downside to recording it, not doing it live, is you don’t get the chat.

Right. Which you love.

Which I think truly is a differentiator between a webinar people pay attention to and ones that maybe they don’t. But I just thought, Todd mentioned that he had a family therapist speak about stress management and how to reduce stress in today’s crazy world, and that was really well attended. Again, totally not I mean, we all have financial stress too, but it’s it’s tangential, but super relevant. Like, lean into those topics that are a little bit more on the human interest Yeah. That tied to finance.

So we’re not gonna go through all these at all, but we put some slides together with just ideas for all of you because we wanted to make this as impactful as possible.

But to your point, Susan, like, under this pre retirees one, what I wish I knew about retirement before it happened, hear from a retiree That’s so good.

Or, you know, retirement housing. What should you think about when it comes to downsizing or, you know, health care and retirement, traveling in retirement? You know, you can someone who’s been traveling the world and how they’re doing it. So we broke these down for different types of audiences and just ideas that you can copy and paste.

This is also where, you know, AI can be your friend. Go to AI and say, give me some ideas for webinars for x audience.

Of course, thinking about what people are asking questions about, but, again, think outside the box.

So this is where, again, we can really, really make this much easier for you. So we have both webinar slides, all of the assets you need from the invite to the registration page, the actual slides themselves that are beautifully designed, and then also the system that will allow you to push the registration page out, collect the, attendees, and then follow-up with them afterwards.

So clicked on social, and it’s all compliant approved.

One hundred percent. So I’m just gonna show you where all this is.

And, this you know, the, every the most weighted event, I would say, that we put out every year, Susan, right, is our tax one. Yeah. That is coming February thirteenth if you’re not, you know, a customer. So you have lots of time if you wanna sign up to get it. And we release it every February, and it’s awesome because either whether you wanna invite someone to join you or you wanna present it, it is just so beautifully done with so many charts and graphs that then you can use to talk about tax planning with your clients.

Okay. So if you come in here under events I’m just gonna click on that again. Under events intro, you have the choice to either, you know, use one of your own events or one of our premade ones. So if I go to my events here, I can see any of the events that I’ve already done in the past.

So let’s click on this financial scam senior should know about. This is one I created on my own. So I just put the event name in, describe what it’s gonna be about. If you do have someone joining you, you can put their information in there and, again, link to their website or add their headshot, put a little picture in to make it look nice, and then you can preview what that page is going to look like.

Are you seeing this in real time?

I wanna make sure I’m on the right We are.

Okay. Good.

So here. Right? So it says the date, the location, all of the information, any images, and then you would put your Zoom sign up link in there so that or whatever platform that you’re using so that people can sign up directly from that landing page. If it’s an in person event, instead of having the Zoom link, you would be able to collect the registrations directly from that page. But let’s say you don’t wanna create one on your own. Up here, you can select one of our premade events. So, Susan, why don’t you explain what we do the state of the markets and then the halftime report twice a year.

Yep. Those are I’d say the tax strategies is the probably the most popular, and then second would probably be the state of the markets. And then the halftime report is just you know, I think we put it out in June for advisors to give a update, you know, how things are going year to date in the middle of the year. And then shred day, I hear, is maybe one of the easiest to execute, most popular ones.

Yes. And everybody’s got those back.

You know, in the beginning when we heard, like, people were doing events and what they planned, some of them were doing open houses. Some of them were doing client appreciation events. So we have that template. And, basically, it’s just a wizard that makes it like, it asks you the questions like, where is it? How many people? Blah blah blah. You just answer all that, and then it creates, it creates the landing page, the email invitation, and the social post, which you can edit, change out the picture, but it basically creates it for you, and then you just tweak it.

Yeah. And so, look, everything from down to allow guests to register additional attendees or limit the number of sign ups, it it really gives you all of everything you need to create an amazing event. So you’re not having to go and use other technology to set up all your landing pages, all that good stuff.

Yes. And there’s a question. I don’t know if we have a Social Security oriented, presentation, but it probably is within the Secure Act two point o. There’s probably something in there, but we can get back to you on that.

Yeah. And I know we have a lot of other content around Social Security.

And when another thing I’ve seen people do is in our I’ll just show you. In our downloadables, we have or just in the content in general, if you go to if you see something else, you can always turn that into a presentation. Right? You just take a screenshot of it or copy and paste it, and you can make that into a presentation.

I just remembered our January blog for do it for me was ten facts you may not know about Social Security. So There you go.

So that would be great.

Did, we did a, you know, we do a video script and podcast script and could easily turn into the podcast script basically could be your webinar outline. Maybe I should even name it podcast slash webinar.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Absolutely.

Okay. So that’s where you would go to, find all of those. Alright. So let’s keep going because I just showed that. Actually, why don’t we run a quick poll, while everybody’s, you know, thinking about this and some of the tools we have because I’m seeing some questions. Aubrey, if you put our poll up, if you’re interested in learning more about how our team can help you with your events and just broader marketing in general, let us know, and then we’ll know who to prioritize follow-up with, because so many people are asking specific questions about the event toolkit that we have, other kind of content, our do it for me program where you we actually we pair you with a concierge, and we do actually do your marketing for you.

So let us know. Just answer this poll, and then we’ll know who to follow-up with after the event is over.

And while people are voting, somebody asked what is shred day?

Okay.

Have have you ever seen somebody put on a shred day?

I have, my own adviser, and it is amazing. So, basically, what happens is you’re able to bring any of those financial statements, legal documents, anything you have that you don’t wanna just throw away that has sensitive information. And people come and you have your big shredder out and they you shred away. And the one that I went to, they had wine and snacks and everybody was sort of just hanging out.

Other Typically typically right after tax time too so that, you know, you’ve just pulled all these sensitive, you know, personal information documents for your taxes, and then you filed them, and it’s time to shred them away.

Yes.

That’s a good point. I forgot about that point.

Okay. So so many people talked about promotion and getting new new bodies, new blood into the pipeline. So we are gonna dive into that. So remember we said creating a registration page where people want to sign up. So here’s an example of one of our amazing FMG customers, this advisor. They do so many great events. So if you wanna go to Ellen Becker Investment Group and click on their events page, it’s great inspiration.

But one of the things that I like is you see how descriptive it is. It really gives you a sense of if you come to this, this is what you’re gonna learn. And I also love they say before you attend, you’re gonna learn how to use the my Social Security online account and other services. So in advance, go here, create the account so that, you know, it’ll make sense when we’re walking through it. So giving people, you know, everything they need to maximize their time at the event, but that also tells people coming, this is not gonna be fluff. I am actually gonna get some tangible takeaways from this event. So that you know, again, when you’re thinking about your registration page, having a picture and it being as descriptive as possible is really, really important.

The second thing is you want to send at least three emails about your event. Now I know we always are worried we’re over emailing people, but there is so much data that shows that the if you wanna get the highest number of attendees, it’s really three emails. If you start sending more than three, you have a risk of people getting annoyed and unsubscribing, but three is sort of the magic number. And you don’t need to actually promote it that far in advance. Right, Susan?

What do we usually do?

Learned that it it the less well, we’ve learned that the less time promoting, the better. I think you would would probably play around with this given the topic, and definitely, you know, this is a webinar. If it’s a live event, obviously, you need more time.

But, yeah, we do it, like, the week before, twice, and then the day of.

I think for advisers, it might be a little bit I I would I would on doing it a little bit more in advance. It feels too like, if I’m a client and the adviser is sending out a a webinar invite a week, and I I don’t know. I think I’d play around with it, but probably not more than two weeks in advance.

No. I wouldn’t say more than two either. And, also, remind people in your registration, have a little asterisk that says, even if you can’t make the live time, sign up anyways, and we’ll send you the recording. That rule goes a long way because, you know, it you can send everybody the recording and you’re still collecting, that information.

So we’ve shared this tip before. I just wanna repurpose it again here, which is if you’re doing something, this would apply a lot to in person events, but it can be from webinars too. And you know it’s gonna be something that a lot of people want to do, but you don’t wanna just say invite your friends and family. Right? So let’s say you’re inviting someone to talk about these scams that are really, targeting seniors.

You instead of just saying, hey. Invite everyone you know, send the invite out, then wait a couple days, and then send a step in your follow-up email, say, and, oh, by the way, thank you so much for registering.

We’ve had a lot of people ask if they could bring, you know, somebody else along or or forward this.

So because we have limited space, you can each person can send it or invite, you know, two people or three people.

That just air it makes it sound so exclusive and not like you’re desperate for people to ask more people to come.

Totally.

So if you don’t have a big email list, again, we’ve already talked about how partnering with a center of influence or subject matter expert can bring more people in. But here’s another, trick that you can use on social media. So you can create an event page on LinkedIn for any online or in person event, but this is really great for webinars. So you go to LinkedIn, whatever image you’re using on your landing page, you can upload it. You put your description in, and then you can let’s say you did have a CPA joining you or an FBI agent. You can invite them to be listed as one of the speakers.

And then using LinkedIn’s advanced filtering tools, you can go in and targetly invite people you don’t have the email for. So this is huge. I know an advisor who works with a ton of tech, employees in Silicon Valley, and he does every quarter, you know, a different webinar that’s on topics whether it’s RSUs or, you know, capital gains, like, all different things. And he will go in and search for different tech companies that he’s really familiar with, and then he filters out and will send invites with this link to those employees. And he’s getting over a hundred people attending each one. So, again, the more specific in targeting you can be, the better, but this is such a great way to invite people who you don’t have their email for already.

This could be a good thing where maybe you do a, like, a quick video showing how to do it. It it it might sound more intimidating than it was. Like, advanced filtering might sound it’s super like, this is that that actually is a really easy to execute strategy, and and I bet people would love to see that. So maybe we’ll we’ll work on that.

That is something as easy as I can make a tutorial in two seconds online. So if you’re listening and you’re like, yes, send me the instructions how to do that, tell us in the chat, and we’ll send the we’ll have a little link to it for everybody who wants to see that, two minute video that shows you how to do it. But it’s really as simple, yeah, as in LinkedIn, you filter by company name or location, and then you can invite all those people, And it’s awesome.

Let’s do we’ll do a tutorial and then just let’s we’ll add it to the email that we send out with the replay. Perfect. Extra bonus for attending.

That’s right.

Okay. Another thing that really, really works well, and if you follow me on LinkedIn, you’ve seen me do this, maybe you could tell us, have you, you know, had me do this to you before, which is when you post the when you post about your event, rather than just saying, hey. We’re having an event this Friday. Come.

First, you hook people in and being interested. So don’t start your post by just promoting your event, but start by talking a problem people have and, you know, why it’s a pain point. And then you offer some quick wins that they could get even if they never attended just by reading. Right?

So now they’re really invested. Oh, wow. This is a problem I have. This is something I wanna improve upon.

Then you say, we’re gonna do this event to teach you even more about this. But instead of giving them the link, you say comment, and you give them a word, and we’ll send you the link to join us. The reason this is so effective is because it gets people commenting. And the more comments you get, the more the algorithm says, show this post to more people.

And before you know it, you’ve got a ton of people commenting for it. So you don’t wanna do this every single time, but let’s say you’re only doing one webinar a quarter. You could absolutely use that this strategy each time, and it really, really can go a long way. When you first do it, invite your colleagues or other people you know to type, you know, the whatever keyword is, Social Security or Medicare, and that will kinda help get the ball rolling.

So another tip. Okay. Now we’re gonna talk about in person events. So we talked about a lot about webinars.

In person events, you know, obviously, they really fell off during COVID, and now they’re making a huge comeback. And we’re seeing more and more people do them. So we are gonna go through some of our top ideas, of ones we’ve seen work really, really well. And the idea here really, we always want everybody wants more referrals. In person events really allow you to create some remarkable moments that people go and talk about. They, you know, they love it. It’s fun, and they wanna go talk about it.

Yeah. And that’s sixteen percent. I think we’ll, update that with the next study from twenty twenty four. That might show that a little bit more. Even in the beginning when people were entering their events that they’ve planned, I’ll I’d say half of them were in person.

Yeah. That’s very true. So this, this the other thing about in person events is so many people are telling us and, you know, this the research is showing that people wanna, you know, meet more of that next gen. They wanna know their own clients, you know, extended families, and in person events is also another really great way to tap into that. So some of the ideas we have are specific to that as well. Well.

As would webinars for sure, especially, like, honing in on a topic that isn’t you know, that is targeting the next gen and asking your clients if they wanted to share it with their kids. That’s an easy way to do an intro too. Oh, and the other one.

Very good point. So this one, we’ve talked about it before, and it’s really, really popular, which is a family picture day. This is great to host anytime of year, but, really, you know, around August, September when people are starting to think about the holidays and pictures, everybody has get family pictures done on their to do list, and it’s such a great way to do it. So, you know, often a good setup is you find the venue or the space and you pay for the photographer, but then you allow the clients and their families to pay for the photos that they actually want to purchase. But, you know, you could have snacks on hand, make sure they’re not snacks that will stain little kids’ clothes.

And, you know, you can have a sign up genius. People pick a fifteen or twenty minute slot, but it is an event that people will one hundred percent come to. Absolutely.

And that’s one where you actually might I mean, I think they would gladly, you know, refer a friend.

I mean, I people are always looking when they have children or grandchildren. They’re always excited to get new family pictures.

So Todd just said we did this in the fall, and it was a big hit.

And Julie said she has this planned for April, which is amazing. Oh, and, Bruce, thank you. He said he loves seeing that picture.

I know. And, you know, it we’d I’d love to hear from Julie. Like, when you put you put this event together after April, please email us and let us know how it goes. We love sharing stories.

Oh, thank you. Very, very good good point.

And then I just wanted to say, if if you are doing something where you’re having the next gen, we have this amazing resource in the FMG downloadable. It’s called Family Wealth Conversations, and you can download it, and it allows you to you could hand it out at an event like this where you have multiple people. It doesn’t have to be something you talk about. You don’t give a discussion, but you just say, hey. Since there’s so many generations, a lot of times people wanna know, you know, how do I talk to my kids about this or we’re all coming together. Where are important documents? So this is a great downloadable we have in the content library that you can utilize as you’re bringing different generations together.

Okay. The Galentine’s event, people already mentioned this one, but especially I’ve heard of a lot of people who work with women or or widows especially, but this can really be for anyone. Just a fun way to bring people together and to host something that, you know, again, is fun. When the thing about the in person events, we really find the webinars, you’ll get people for educational ones. For the in person, a lot of times, the fun is what drives the attention.

Absolutely. Yeah.

I think there was a question earlier about, you know, I I think if I read the question correctly, it was, what do we think about events for you? You know, you there’s a, you know, a mutual fund company or asset management company that partners with you, and then they shoulder the cost. And my answer is it I totally it’s it’s a great opportunity. Obviously, compliance gets involved, but you do have to keep it fun. Like, it’s still, like, should be fun, not salesy.

Okay. Yeah. One hundred percent. I mean, it’s the the the thing is making the connection. And the the people you know, you can have an event and have fun and then let the follow-up that you do afterwards, which we’re gonna talk about, be where they learn more about how you can help them.

Sybil just said, I did a virtual Galentine’s Day and we played never have I ever, and it was a blast.

That’s such a good a great idea.

I love that.

So another one that this one actually was, I learned about this from another advisor. He’s in a retirement community in Tennessee, Telico, and he started noticing that all of his clients were obsessed with pickleball, and so many people in the US are right now. So he sponsored a pickleball day, a tournament day. He brought in a pro to play with everybody.

He had some banners up with his, you know, company info on it. But then what I loved was for some of the follow-up, he did it around health care information that you need to know because you know you wanna keep playing pickleball. And so it was just such a fun way to, you know, make those connections for people. But, again, thinking outside the box.

And then, again, thinking about events that bring people together, I talked about this adviser before, an FMG, a client of ours who’s using both our premade events and their own, but they offer a widows group where they call it Wisconsin widows connected.

And I loved this landing page just because again, you know, sometimes it’s kinda like, oh, do I wanna go I’m a widow myself. I’m it’s like, do I wanna go to this widow’s group? But look at how great the way they described it. And this one they’re talking about, they’re bringing on a director of community relations to talk about how you can get involved volunteering, how you can, you know, contribute to your community. And then they said, oh, and we’re also gonna make fleece blankets for a local nonprofit. So it’s like they have an activity, which I think keeping people’s hands busy, having an activity come together, but also bringing people, you know, similar clients together is such a nice thing if you notice that you have a bunch of clients that have shared interests, passions, or time of their life. Totally.

And clearly, they know their audience. I mean, that’s it just Right.

Came out as I wanna make sure we get to the follow-up, but this just again, we’re just trying to give you as many ideas as possible.

Events for young professionals. I found that a lot of, the high net worth families especially love it when their advisors will put on events that benefit their kids. And so this one was a know your worth, and so they offered professional headshots. They talked with the young professionals about how much should you ask for for like, if you’re asking for a raise, how do you negotiate for salary? Or if you’re starting your own consulting business, you know, how do you price things? So this was such a great event to really drive value for that particular audience.

Okay. Why don’t you tell us in the chat since I feel like I’ve been talking a lot, what of those ideas stood out to you as something fun of all of all the things we’ve talked about or something that you think your clients would wanna attend? And then we’re gonna talk about post event, how you really convert those attendees into actual leads that you can hopefully turn to clients.

Susan, you muted yourself.

Oh, okay. I thought you were talking to me.

Somebody asked if you need to have the premium LinkedIn to be able to do those advanced filters, which I don’t believe you do.

The sales navigator? No. So you do need sales navigator for certain things, like if you wanted to start direct messaging people.

But if you just want to invite them, you can actually add a link now in your connection request.

So that makes it really, really easy where you don’t need premium.

Alright.

So filtering is just, you know, you’re just filtering, searching for a company, filtering by titles. That’s available.

Good filter. But I think what they’re saying is if you’re gonna send them the link, would you need to have navigator because you can only send so many messages, but you can get around that. You can send up to a hundred invites with a link in your invite per week.

There you go. We’ll put it in the tutorial.

Okay. So, I’m just looking at everybody’s ideas. A lot of people are saying they love the picture day, and a lot of people are saying they absolutely love the idea of just bringing on a divorce attorney or a CPA or somebody to help cohost.

But I’m also seeing a few shout outs for the pickleball.

And I think, William, you hit the nail on the head. The idea is thinking through your target audience and creating ideas that they will be interested in that. He used the term that will bless them. But, yes, that will help them in wherever they are, that that will be of interest to them. These are just ideas to get the creative juices flowing, but really it’s about knowing your audience.

Absolutely.

Okay.

So as a follow-up, here are the steps you’re gonna take. And this depends on if it was in person or webinar. If it was a webinar, first, you wanna make sure that you have the video ready to go to send as a replay. So you not everybody will, but if you do, you wanna transcribe it, which really just means grab all of the words because because when you put it up on your blog or anywhere else, search engines cannot read a video. They can’t crawl it the way they can crawl words on a page. So you just wanna make sure you include the transcript, wherever you’re putting that replay.

And then whether it was in person or webinar, you’re gonna create a page where you’re gonna recap the event. So you could have photos if it was in person. If it’s a webinar, you can have the replay. And then just like today, we’re talking about we’ll link to this resource or we’ll send, you know, we’ll have this event checklist. If you have something that’s a follow-up, you can link to it on that page as well. So maybe you have a retiring in the next year, the five, you know, financial checklist that you need, you would wanna include that as well on that recap page.

And then the next step is to email everyone who registered. So we suggest breaking it into one email for those who both registered and attended and then another email for those who registered but did not attend. So you can have two separate messages. Right?

So if they attended, you could say it was so great to see you. Thank you for being there. If they didn’t attend, you could say, we’re sorry. We missed you.

This is what you, you know, we presented. So you’d have two different emails, one for those who attended and one for those who registered but did not attend.

And then easy is, like I mean, it’s changing a sentence, so it’s not twice the work.

No. And then just one quick tip that we’ve learned, so learn from from us over time, is that a lot of these tools like Zoom will actually allow you to identify the best leads during the presentation if it is a webinar. So you can look at how long somebody was on, how engaged they were, how much they responded in the chat, or what questions they asked. So then you can actually go back and send a follow-up email very specific to them saying that was a great question or a great comment you left in the chat, just to really personalize that follow-up interaction.

And, also, I mean, you’ve seen us do it. Polls are a great way. It’s it’s sometimes it’s difficult to get the chat going, but a poll almost always gets you know, people can be anonymous and just, you know, click a button. So adding polls is, I think, a great a great way to gauge sort of interest from those that are attending. Yeah. And and get people kinda woken up and engaging too.

You’re right. And I think you’ve been asking you can ask fun questions, you know, in the beginning session if you have a lot of people on you could say, who’s everybody rooting for this weekend in the Super Bowl? Or, you know, what’s your what was the best thing that happened over the weekend while we’re waiting for people to get sign on? Any and then, you know, look at the name of the person who wrote in the chat.

So Kelly said, and then repeat it so that people feel seen and heard, which is what Ohio State Buckeyes on Monday.

Yep.

Tom knows I’m from Cleveland. Lived there my wife growing up. Thank you, Tom. Okay. So then repurposing the content.

So, you know, once you because we you we didn’t even ask the question, and we’re getting all people are responding to their football team.

I think an icebreaker, for sure, that’s about something that’s of human interest is is a worthwhile tactic.

One hundred percent. One hundred percent.

So when it comes to, you know, actually, again, repurposing or dripping on people, the idea is that if it’s so let’s talk about this, Susan. How would you make the connection if you have an in person event and you have people that are new to your lead list? How do you then start dripping on them? Like, what would that first email you send them be?

Well, I think I mean, unless I’m missing something, I think it’s the follow-up to the webinar. I mean, that gives you the excuse to thank them for coming or thank them for registering and, you know, if they didn’t attend and include the takeaways from the webinar and tee up that, you know, you’ll continue to share valuable content with them over time. And then you put them in a drip series, which we recommend emailing, actually, you know, twice a month with you know, as long as the content is super valuable, at least once a month, and just continuing to drip on them, and that is how you convert.

So, you know, we’ve seen the question in the beginning. The biggest challenge is, a, getting people to attend and, you know, broadening you know, getting prospects to attend. But the the next, I think, biggest challenge was getting them to convert. And the way you do that is you have to drip on them.

They are not necessarily ready to buy, quote, unquote, that day. But if you stay top of mind with valuable information, you will earn their trust, and they will contact you.

One hundred percent. And so I’m just showing here one of the big benefits of FMG, again, is you might be thinking what how am I gonna come up with all this content to drip on them? We have all this in the library so that if especially if you segment people into, you know, some groups, it makes it even easier. And then you can pick relevant content, whether you wanna choose a keyword up in here and then filter that way.

But you will have content right out of the box that you can send to people that’s relevant to either the event or the stage of life they’re in, many different things.

Okay. We have Matt Halloran fan. They like the picture.

Oh, I love it.

Seminar. I’m thinking like, oh, that was a bad moment. I’m like, what?

Oh, sorry. That’s probably my fault. So I don’t care. As we’ve shown you, if you really, really wanna get started with more events, we really make it easy both from the registration page to the sending the invites out to hosting the event itself to doing the follow-up.

All can be done here within the dashboard. I would love to know before we go today, because we already asked the poll. And, obviously, if you have any other questions, let us know. But is there anything we can show you in FMG’s dashboard that would help you make your events more successful in twenty twenty five, whether it’s type of content you would love to be able to see and and follow-up, social media posts.

We have Elise on, and she’s our FMG demo guru. So if there’s any specific questions we can show them, or if you have questions just about events in general that we didn’t cover, we are happy to answer those. But we’ve been trying to make these forty five minutes instead of an hour to be cognizant of your time. And we’re at forty seven minutes, so I’m proud of us, Susan.

We did very well. Probably talked a little fast. Everybody always says at the end, they’re like, ah, it was a lot. But we will send we’ll send the replay.

We’ll send the slides. We’ll send the checklist. We’ll add the assets that you guys asked for the test the tutorial on LinkedIn, and somebody else asked for that family meeting thing. We’ll include that too.

So it’ll have a lot of attachments.

Campbell con Conard said, do you market these events through paid ads? You absolutely could.

LinkedIn specifically because you could be so targeted. You can I’ve had a I’ve heard of people having really good success, doing it on LinkedIn.

That expensive on LinkedIn. It is expensive.

Yeah. I think I’d try. I think you’re gonna get a higher ROI partnering with somebody that that invites their audience, depending on you know, are there a lot of depending on if you already have a huge following in LinkedIn and you really know who and you have a list of people you wanna target, then it might be worthwhile, but I’d probably try without first.

Yeah. I mean and you can get creative. So we look thinking back to, like, that pickleball event that was more open to anyone, I remember that adviser telling me he there was local Facebook groups, and he told all his friends. If you see anybody who says, like, what’s going on this weekend?

Or they even had, like, a what’s going on in Telico, Tennessee this weekend. And people would say, oh, there’s a pickleball tournament happening, you know, and here’s the link if you wanna go. And he made a Facebook events page. So, you know, you can get creative in, like, how you get the word out if it’s more open to the public.

If it’s obviously, more for a specific group, then I think the more niche it is, sometimes the easier it can be. But really relying on the people you’re partnering with can go a long way.

Somebody asked the best day and time.

For webinars or events?

We we have found for webinars Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays, like, around lunchtime, so we do them at two PM often on Wednesdays and Thursdays, is best for working professionals.

So for you, it depends on whether people are working or not, I think, but you got so you kinda have to play around with the time, but that’s what we have found works best for working professionals.

And, let’s see. How does our well, you know what? How does our customer service team interact with advisers? I mean, we will end with that one. We have both phone and chat, and we’d be happy to send us an email afterwards. We’d be happy to tell you more.

Absolutely.

But let’s, let’s let everybody get back to their days ten minutes before the next meeting probably. And, Sam, like, as always, you just bring so much information. I love listening to you, and I know everybody here does too. Thank you so much for putting this together, and thanks everybody for joining us.

Yes. Thank you, everybody. See you for the next one. Hope you sign up for the next one too.

Take care.