In this episode of Craft on Tap, Stephen and Faustin flip the script on webinars. Instead of chasing cold prospects, they show how webinars work as a powerful engagement tool for the clients you already have.
👇 Watch the full discussion below:
Co-Founder Stephen Beach & Strategist Faustin Weber discuss webinar tips.
Craft on Tap Ep 19 Podcast Takeaways & Summary
Key Takeaways:
- Marketing Focus: Clients Over Strangers: Our philosophy is to focus 80% on marketing to your clients and 20% on marketing to strangers. Webinars are an excellent way to drive referrals and gain deeper wallet share with your existing client base.
- Radical Relevance Drives Referrals: Webinars help your firm stay top of mind and become radically relevant to clients, which in turn increases referrals.
- Control the Narrative During Market Events: A consistent webinar process allows you to quickly communicate about urgent market events (like tariffs) or major firm announcements (like launching a new tax practice), helping to control the narrative and prevent "freak out calls" to advisors.
- Consistency Drives Engagement: Firms that commit to a regular cadence (e.g., monthly) and the same day and time will see a significant increase in client registration and attendance.
- Content is King—and Can Be Repurposed: A single 30- to 45-minute webinar can be leveraged into multiple social posts, video clips, and a key takeaway blog article, making it a consistent mechanism for content generation.
Podcast Summary: The Case for Client Webinars
Webinars are a fantastic mass communications tool for advisory firms, especially those in the mid-size to larger range ($300 million to $2 billion in assets). Whether they work for your firm depends entirely on your audience. Pre-retirees and retirees often have more time to attend and get significant value from them, while busy law firm partners may not.
Burney Wealth Case Study
We used Burney Wealth, a $3 billion AUM RIA, as a case study to illustrate success with client webinars. Prior to our work, Burney ran inconsistent webinars about once every three months, averaging 60 registrants.
After establishing a monthly cadence and implementing new strategies, they saw a 250% increase in registration, averaging 150 registrants per session.
-
Proactive Communication: The established process became an implicit benefit, allowing the firm to quickly host webinars the day after urgent market announcements to provide education and context to their clients. This is more personal than an email newsletter because clients see the advisors' tone, inflection, and body language.
-
Advisors' "Secret Weapon": Advisors now use the upcoming webinar to respond to client panic calls, explaining that they'll bring the question to the leadership team during the session. This makes the client feel heard and reassured that the firm is on top of the situation.
11 Tactics to Increase Client Webinar Engagement
- Commit to a Regular Cadence: Don't worry about webinar fatigue. A consistent monthly offering increases the chances for different attendees to find a relevant topic.
- Keep the Same Time and Day: Pick a day and time (e.g., Wednesdays at 12:30 PM Eastern) and stick to it. This regular structure saves time on internal scheduling and removes client uncertainty.
- Involve More Than One Presenter: Two to three people create a more interesting and engaging dialogue for attendees.
- Mix Up Your Team Members: Promote younger advisors, partners, or subject matter experts to increase overall firm credibility and position them in terms of expertise.
- Encourage Interactive Q&As: Use a registration form field to collect questions ahead of time, and use tools like Slido to allow attendees to submit questions live during the webinar via a QR code or web link. This significantly improves the experience and engagement.
- Focus on Top-of-Mind Topics: Blend investment and financial planning topics, but align them with the service calendar: Medicare open enrollment in the fall, mid-year tax planning, or year-end giving strategies. When in doubt, listen to what people are repeatedly asking, following the They Ask, You Answer philosophy.
- Promote at Least Three Times: You're helping clients see valuable content, not annoying them. Use a save-the-date email, followed by a first promotion (1.5–2 weeks out), a second email (5–7 days out), and a last-chance email (two days prior). Filter registrants from future promotions.
- Optimize the Landing Page: Include nice graphics, headshots, credentials for presenters, and three or four clear bullet points on what clients will get out of the session. Think about how a potential prospect who was forwarded the link would view it.
- Provide a Timely Recording and Key Takeaways: Sending a recording with timestamps, bullet points, and a summary in a blog format makes the content highly accessible for those who can't attend live and extends the life of the content.
- Ask for Feedback: Send a survey after the event. While participation may not be high, open-ended responses can provide good anecdotal feedback on the usefulness of the topic and presentation.
- Appoint a Marketing Champion: Limit the number of people involved in content planning to one small team or a single marketing champion. This person should be trusted and empowered to ensure alignment, confirm topics, and move things along quickly.
Experiments to Consider
- Niche Webinars: Targeted segmentation is highly powerful. Consider a webinar focused on a specific company's equity comp benefits or a specific profession (e.g., "Comp Package for Delta Pilots"). The engagement here will be even higher than a broad client webinar.
- Alternative Names: You can experiment with calling it a "live event" instead of a "webinar," especially for younger audiences who may have fatigue with the webinar term itself.
- Exclusivity: If your goal is to drive live attendance, consider occasionally making it clear that the recording will not be sent. (Be careful with this approach, as some firms use aggressive or cheesy tactics like falsely limiting registration numbers to create urgency.)
Shameless plug for Craft on Tap
Supporting your clients with relevant webinars is a proven way to boost referrals and strengthen current advisor-client relationships.
This conversation is only a starting point. For ongoing insights and practical strategies for RIA growth, listen to the new Craft on Tap marketing podcast. Available now, wherever you find your podcasts. Ready to chat? Get in Touch
Listen to Craft on Tap, Growth Marketing for RIAs: