How seminars drive organic growth for financial advisors

Far from the infamous annuity sales pitches made over rubbery catered meals, seminars can play a crucial role in a financial advisor's marketing strategy, helping to boost the client base.

But advisory teams must design seminars that build trust with their target customers, and they need to follow up with attendees in a way that drives conversions and referrals, according to a marketing expert and two registered investment advisory firm founders speaking on a panel at the SER Summit for Latinos in Financial Services earlier this month. The discussion showed why successful seminar strategies look much different from a mediocre steak dinner with prospects whose eyes are glazed over like the marinade.

Advisors and wealth management firms have to drive organic growth to sustain their businesses, yet they may often underestimate how effective many kinds of events can be for lead generation. Hosting seminars isn't about embracing smarmy sales tactics, either. They're much more effective when grounded in empathy, since "nobody wants to be sold" with slick pitches or "chest-beating" at length about credentials, said Greg Bogich, CEO of financial seminar marketing firm AcquireUp.

"If you're empathetic, and you lean in and care about what they care about, that's half the battle," Bogich said. "We do about 70 seminars a day, and you can see the really good presenters are the ones who are empathetic, who understand the audience, talk to the audience about the audience's issue and spend a whole lot less time talking about them." 

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Niche or generalist seminars?

He acknowledged that there is "a credibility aspect that you have to bring to the table," but he added that the "human connection" of a thoughtful, interactive presentation will go much further toward winning clients than spending half of a 50-minute talk running down a curriculum vitae. 

In addition, he suggested that advisors learn how technology tools can help automate follow-up contacts and that they decide whether to be a generalist or identify a niche "large enough to keep your doors open, and you can speak to it." The latter category could include professions like doctors or nurses, client groups like high net worth households or specific sets of products like reverse mortgages. If advisors and other industry professionals aren't fond of aggressive sales tactics for reverse mortgages, they may want to consider how helpful they could be as experts on when those products are actually useful or how they could assist clients in managing one that didn't fit their needs.

Chicago-based registered investment advisory firm Retirement Systems founding president Richard Corral defines his classification as a "niche generalist," in that his team knows a lot about how 401(k) plans and other retirement systems work more broadly but also at a highly specific level, he said. Over time, the company's seminars have turned "a little bit more focused" on topics like estate planning opportunities under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act than on general retirement topics, he noted. That method and his willingness to be interviewed for both large-scale media opportunities like TV and smaller ones such as podcast appearances add to the firm's overall lead generation and conversion strategy.

"Trust goes hand-in-hand with your ability to educate the client. If you are educating the client, then they are subconsciously building trust towards you, right?" Corral said. "The way that we try to establish that trust is we lead heavily with education throughout our seminar. So our seminar isn't just, like, 'So how much money do you have, and let's talk about investment, allocation strategies.'"

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Quality over quantity

Instead, they begin with a "little concept," such as aligning an employee's leave time to the right classifications and figuring out whether they could have days off left over that will result in extra paid time on the job, he noted. 

"Are you overinsured through your group life insurance program, and you didn't even realize that the cost was going to go up in the next five years, and you have outside life insurance?" Corral said. "Just that little tidbit of knowledge got you to save $200-$300 a month. And so little opportunities like that build trust. The way that we design our seminar is, we're not talking about the investment side of things until actually the very end. So, at that point, we've provided so much value to you that, to some degree or another, you've formulated some level of trust." 

Naperville, Illinois-based Left Brain Wealth Management uses "very targeted" marketing methods that have brought up attendance to sessions on "a lot more specific" topics such as income securities that generate yields between 7% and 9% in a client's portfolio, said Noland Langford, president and CEO of the RIA. 

In its fourth year tying seminars into its marketing plan, Left Brain's team is "constantly tweaking" the strategy as it seeks to raise client conversion rates from the events, he noted. And part of that has been recognizing how follow-up messages can aid the outreach, since marketing experts point out how many times businesses usually need to make contact with a prospective customer before they buy a product or become a client. It could take eight or 12 times.

"Very few times the first touch is going to result in a sale. It will be a matter of follow-up," Langford said. "The type of follow-up matters, as opposed to just the frequency. If you meet with somebody the first time on an investment or financial planning or wealth management engagement and then follow up and say, 'Hey, are you ready to get together again?' That's not as juicy as sending them a note saying, 'Hey, I was thinking about our last meeting. In the last meeting, you were talking about X, Y and Z. I've been doing some work on it and I have some thoughts I'd like to share. Are you free next week?' Generally, the more value-add in the follow up, the more likely you are to get a positive response. But you have to absolutely keep at it."