6 minute read
SALES AND MARKETING
How to run an online educational event
It’s hard to stand out from the crowd with traditional forms of promotion. Paul Watkins argues that running a live, online event is the way to go – and explains exactly how to go about it.
What is your advertising message?
“We search out the best rates”; “We have access to over 20 lenders”; “We take the hassle away from you”; “We do the hard yards”.
These are all real headlines I have seen in adviser advertising. Do they work? Maybe, maybe not.
One thing is certain: they do not set you apart from the rest.
Prospects want to be educated on the challenges and opportunities around mortgages, particularly right now with the markets and interest rates not behaving very predictably.
So what’s one of the best things you can do? Offer an interactive education event – online. These go by various names including webinars, online seminars, educasts, webcasts and webisodes.
Whatever you call them, online events are booming right now, and the freely available technology makes them a piece of cake to run, as I will explain.
The how-to
The basic idea is to advertise that you will be running one and they click your ad to register.
They then attend at the nominated time, usually evenings, say at 7:30pm; and as these kinds of webinars are interactive, participants can ask questions by voice or in the chat.
Typically, events like this would run for around 30 minutes.
How do you run them? First pick your target group. These only work if you are very specific in who you want to attend.
It could be first home buyers, aged 25 to 35. Or perhaps those wanting to change houses in their 50s, or those about to enter retirement but who still have a mortgage.
Then come up with a topic headline that is aimed directly at this group.
For first home buyers it could be, ‘How the rules for first-home buyers have
changed and how to take advantage of them.’
For an older target group, it may be, ‘What if you find your perfect new home before you sell the old one? How does bridging finance work?’
Get the idea? A motivating headline to a very specific target group.
If you have multiple target groups, then run multiple live online events.
Pick your platform
Next, pick your platform. The technology is at your fingertips.
Live, Facebook Live, Vimeo, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Easy Webinar, WebinarGeek and Zoho are among the many on offer.
Some cost a small amount, while others are free. Note that the free ones limit the features, so don’t let the cost dictate the platform you use.
Pick an easy-to-use one which will do exactly what you want it to do.
The sessions are recorded of course, and then edited into smaller specific topic video bites for your blog, Facebook and LinkedIn pages, or your own YouTube channel.
The recordings can be hosted on YouTube or your preferred video host.
Get your tech adviser or web developer to help you set it up initially so there are no glitches, otherwise you could look amateurish.
Advertise the event
As well as obviously scripting your presentation and preparing graphs, slides or other supporting material for the event, spend time preparing the advertising for social and perhaps traditional media as well.
For social media, it could be a 20-second teaser video explaining why this is a critical, live, online event to attend if you are _____ (refence your target group), asking them to click the link to register.
You should also email an invitation to prospects who didn’t complete with you, or who were declined, or those you know might be looking to change houses. Pick the right group for the topic.
To register, they give their first name and email address. Few have an issue with doing this, as it’s so common now.
You then send a “registration confirmation” email to them, followed by a reminder email 24 hours out, and again one hour out, and finally an “it’s starting now!”
The event itself should be presented in a chatty manner, as if it were a oneon-one conversation, devoid of too much jargon.
Make it visual, with slides of graphs, pictures, or basic calculations if appropriate. And end with a call to action, such as, “Call tomorrow”, or, “Click the link to make a time to see us”.
Practise, practise, practise!
If you are not comfortable on camera, live events may not be for you. Being recorded can be daunting for many.
But you can set up and test the technology, as well as your presentation skills, with workmates or friends in a different room.
Follow up
The event then runs. Shortly following its conclusion, you email the list thanking them for their attendance and advising that a link to the recording will follow as soon as you have processed it.
You may want to edit out some of the irrelevant questions or shorten it first, so give yourself 24 hours to do so.
This email would include a link to a downloadable, one-page PDF summary for them to keep.
Some who registered will not be able to attend, possibly due to simply forgetting or because other things came up in their lives. Depending on the platform you used, you can identify this group.
To them, you send an email saying, “Hey, we saw that you couldn’t make the event – don’t worry, here’s a link to the recording.”
More emails then follow at regular intervals, or you can join them to your newsletter list.
Each one should have the obligatory, easy-to-find ‘unsubscribe’ button, so they don’t see it as spam.
Each time you’ll learn more
Don’t be discouraged if you only get a handful of people tune in for your first one. Just remember that anyone who did is a very warm prospect.
I know of someone who used a webinar as a lead generator and had only six attendees the first time, yet two became clients.
Each time you run one you will learn more.
Analyse the results and see where they can be tweaked. A better ad, better email prompting, better presentation, better follow up and so on.
The value - over and above the opportunity for immediate clients - is a greater awareness of you and your knowledge as the mortgage guru, generating a higher level of trust when it comes to picking a broker.
Remember, don’t be too general with your messaging, like, “Everything you need to know about mortgages.”
That’s meaningless. Be very, very specific in your target group and message.
A short online event can be a highly effective lead generation tool, as it’s not asking any more of prospects than half an hour of their time.
Participants will feel semi-anonymous, unpressured, and can attend from the comfort of their own homes.
Critically, it means they can judge your apparent level of expertise and get a gauge on your personality, which is almost impossible through any other medium.
Prepare once, then play it again, Sam
It obviously takes a bit of planning, some tech knowhow, practice, and researching who you want to watch it and what your key message will be.
While the initial process can mean you may have to buy in some technology expertise, and spend time setting it up, that’s a onetime cost. It then becomes a ‘play it again, Sam’ for future similar live events.
In the overcrowded homogeneous marketplace in which you trade, it’s very hard to stand out in any other way.
And with confusion, anxiety, houseprice changes and rising interest rates abounding, 2022 is the perfect time to give this style of promotion a go. Try it! ✚
