4 Tips to Simplify Planning Your Next Financial Seminar

Financial planning seminars can be a great way to engage new prospects, grow your financial advisory business, and hit annual business goals. Whether you’re hosting seminars in-person or online, we want to help you grow your business through these educational events.

Whether you’re a well-established firm or an upstart venture, educational seminars are a great way to build visibility for your brand. The key to success is all in the planning of these events, and finding ways to streamline the planning process to generate as much value as possible from financial seminars.

To help organize the planning process, we’ve put together four key steps to create a successful seminar and put your annual business goals well within reach.

1. Select a focused seminar topic.

To resonate with your audience, identify a very specific topic that is important to their financial well-being and challenges their prior assumptions. Topics like Social Security, retirement incoming planning, and managing taxes in retirement are a great place to start. Because many of these topics have complex considerations for clients to keep in mind, it’s smart to choose topics for which you can offer an easy way to approach and understand the subject matter.

2. Make education the objective of your seminar.

The goal of a financial planning seminar is not to make sales, and this event is neither the time nor place for a sales pitch. (Converting attendees to clients happens after the seminar.) As you develop your presentation, focus on education and position yourself as a subject matter expert and industry influencer.

If you deliver value through your seminar, your expertise will serve as its own sales tactic. Seminar attendees who learn a lot from your presentation will be all the more likely to enlist your services on a permanent basis.

3. Partner with a trusted community resource.

Since the objective of your seminar is to educate attendees, you should find an educational venue. Reach out to a local university or public library. A partnership with a well-known educational entity in the community will give you credibility.

Additionally, universities and libraries will often help promote and market your seminar on their social media pages and website.

4. Promote your seminar in your local community.

Initially you may need to do more aggressive promoting, especially if your business is young and doesn’t have a large email list or social media following. You will certainly want to mention the seminar on your website and any client communications you send, such as newsletters or emails. (Learn more about marketing strategy for financial advisors.) You should also promote the event on your social media channels (LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter).

You can also ask the host venue to put up flyers or share information about the seminar on their social feeds. Consider offering a grab bag or prize for anyone who brings a friend with them to the seminar—this is an easy way to expand your audience and maximize the value of your event.

Hosting educational financial planning seminars can be an effective way to grow your business and get you back on track to reach your goals. Are you looking for additional resources to gain clients? Download our marketing plan template.