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Where have all the prospects gone?

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Are you seeing the results you expected from your direct marketing campaign? Or are you frustrated because not enough people are attending your events? Many advisors spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on direct mail to promote their seminars and other events. However, only about 3 percent of recipients are actively looking for a new advisor seriously enough that they’d actually consider attending. Which means the other 97 percent are slipping through your fingers, simply because they’re not ready to commit to an in-face connection. But all is not lost. By simply executing a proper lead capture strategy, you can engage some of the other 97 percent, which is critical to feeding prospects to your future seminars and sales.

As a recap of last week’s blog, we talked about the importance of having a lead capture strategy for your website. Advisors often have no clue that hundreds of prospects are visiting their website and grabbing their information for free. If you have a lead capture strategy in place, you are able to capture the visitors’ information before they receive your valuable free resources, such as a report or video. 

How does lead capture work with seminar and direct mail marketing?

For years now, advisors have depended heavily on direct mail. The downside of this is that you are asking a lot of someone who has never heard of you or met you before to respond to an invitation for an in-office appointment, or even to attend a public seminar. And if this is the only option you’re giving them, chances are you’re missing out on a large number of potential qualified prospects.

Let me clarify by using the example of buying temperature. Let’s assume that every prospect falls somewhere on the scale of 1 to 10. The 9’s and 10’s are the ones who are ready and looking to make a change; they are “in the market” so to speak. The 1’s through 8’s are those who are not ready to buy today, but will be at some future date. While most of us have made a living off of the 9’s and 10’s, this is really only about 3 percent of the market. Many advisors are missing the boat by letting those who are in the 1 to 8 category, or the other 97 percent of the market, slip away.

What if you could capture and then nurture a portion of the remaining 97 percent as well? How do you do this? Well, instead of just having one call-to-action, what if you had an additional offer that was less threatening? Most people don’t like to pick up the phone and have to speak to someone. Many fear that “calling in” will mean being tricked into a sales conversation with a salesperson who will try and talk them into something they’re not ready to buy. But what if you had a second offer that allowed them to simply visit a landing page on your website and download a free helpful report? This would be much less threatening, and would align more with where these 1-8’s are in the buying process.

As noted in last week’s blog, the sale begins when a visitor gives you their information on your website in exchange for a free resource – value for value. On a seminar invitation, it’s always good to reach out to those who aren’t ready to commit to a live meeting by giving them the opportunity to learn more from an arm’s length. Offer them a resource relative to your seminar – in exchange for their information of course, so you can follow up

Five important questions that will help you attract seminar prospects through lead capture:

  1. Does my invitation match the look, style and contents of my website?
  2. Do I have a secondary offer on my invitation?
  3. Is my message consistent with my invitation, website, videos and free resources?
  4. Is it easy for people to do business with me?
  5. Are people able to RSVP online?

Remember, not everyone is ready to attend a seminar today. Think about the hundreds of people that are slipping away because you didn’t give them the opportunity to accept a second offer. If you send 10,000 pieces of direct mail and only 2 percent of visitors request your report – that’s an additional 200 people you now have access to and are able to nurture with good information, which will allow you to feed your future events.

Some key points:

  • Don’t overload your marketing offer with too many different offers. You don’t want to confuse prospects and have them choose nothing.
  • Don’t just drive everyone to your homepage on your website. Create a landing page within your site that is customized with the look and feel of the invitation and event. You want everything to be uniform and consistent. You don’t want to create brand “disconnect” when they arrive on your website.
  • Offer them a valuable resource that supports your goal – your seminars. This will allow you to create a pipeline of prospects willing to learn more and fill those future events.

In the upcoming weeks, we will continue to expand on the different elements of lead capture. We’ll explore how to fine-tune this concept and how it works with different marketing mediums.

For more information on lead capture, check out our free videos at: http://www.automatedadvisor.com/.

For more from Brandon Stuerke, see:


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