IAPs are a useful way for distributors to educate their clients, spread awareness about mutual funds and connect with potential investors. Many MFDs have acquired large number of clients through these knowledge sessions. Given the current scenario, webinars have emerged as the preferable mode to conduct IAPs.
Here are a few tips on conducting IAPs through webinars.
Reach out to corporates
Reaching out to different sets of audience can be challenging in an online IAP. Hence, it is better to approach corporates and organisations. This way you only need to convince the management, not individual investors. Moreover, you can customise your session as the audience will be homogenous to a large extent.
Step up engagement
Engage with the audience before the webinar; conduct some polls to understand their financial pain points. Instead of guessing the topics that would interest the audience, upload a Google sheet on social media asking your audience to select their financial issues of their choice from the given options.
Such surveys would help you understand their main issues as well as spot prospects.
Compelling landing page
With the information you have gathered about the audience, you can now create a webinar registration landing page. Use content that targets their challenges, pain points, needs and wants. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Come up with a compelling title and short description
- A short video to explain the event and generate excitement
- Easy-to-read description that highlights the benefits of the webinar
- Social proof like social media comments or testimonials to reinforce your value proposition
- Create urgency and scarcity. For instance, a countdown timer or a note on limited spaces to encourage visitors to take action
- Brief bio of the speakers to build credibility
Simple registration process
How many times things such as typing a captcha dissuades you from signing up for things! Most of the times, right? Remember, the purpose of this registration landing page is to get potential attendees to sign up for the event. So, keep it simple by asking minimum yet useful information such as name and email address.
Extensive promotion on social media platforms
Social media platforms can be useful in promoting the webinar with the help of hashtags, likes, comments, shares, retweets and so on. You can run a campaign on social media by using catchy hashtags like #PowerOfCompounding and #DiversifyToWin.
Further, you can upload photos, infographics, videos, snippets about webinar on social media handles like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp.
Ask your friends, well-wishers and some close existing clients to share and promote your webinar for better reach.
Time it well
It is important to select a suitable timing to draw maximum people to the webinar. Essentially mid week is the best time to hold a webinar. In general, people prefer attending webinars that are held in the middle of the week i.e Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays. This is because on Mondays, people are likely catching up on work, and by Friday, everyone is trying to get things wrapped up for the weekend.
Secondly, select a timing that fits the type of audience. Like the best time for investors could be after 6 pm.
Event reminders
Your audience is busy and most people won’t make a point of remembering the date and time of your webinar. Therefore, you need to schedule a series of reminder emails or text messages
Utilise all free sources for live streaming
Now, as you start the webinar, make use of live streaming options on Facebook and YouTube. Live streaming sends a notification to all your followers and friends on social media. This might help in getting more attendees. People scrolling on social media platforms might get interested to attend as well.
Post event activities
Despite all your efforts many will miss the IAP. The beauty of digital events is you can always replay and follow-up with emails. Therefore, after the event ends, upload recordings of the webinar on YouTube. Share insights and tips by experts on webinar through blogs and articles. You can also share audio files from the webinar and create a podcast to share with clients.
This will help you capture people who prefer to consume the content when and where they want to.
Last but not least, take feedback from clients about the event to get better next time.
