Jorge's Thoughts: How to Build Connections through Data

We volunteer a lot of information about ourselves to the digital world, and marketers know that. Good marketers make effective and appropriate use of data that will allow them to:

1) create messaging for products, services and solutions to target interested audiences

2) begin building relationships with prospects and clients 

With the vast array of marketing that arrives in the inboxes and mailboxes of our target audiences, it's crucial to the success of our campaigns to break through the noise. How do we do that? 

Build your connection based on data. 

For prospects: 

1. Use critical data points when prospecting. These include age, income, zip codes, IPA and net worth. This is the core set of information you need to ensure you market to those who will be best served by you. 

2. Obtain data on an audience 15-25 miles within your office. Those within this range are more likely to attend your seminars and visit your office. 

3. Identify 7,000-15,000 households that meet your criteria for a target audience. 

4. Use your selected data points to craft your message. Your messaging should speak directly and effectively to the audience profiled by the data. 

5. Stay top of mind. This requires you to send messages frequently and over a long period of time. Develop a strategy that includes messages delivered in a variety of ways for the next 8-10 months. 

Remember: Competition can be fierce. You may have 300-500 advisors within the 15-25 miles who market to audiences similar to yours. 

For clients: 

1. Dig deep within your data on existing clients. In building relationships with your clients, you learn more about them. Use that data when crafting your messaging. This includes data points such as hobbies, habits and affiliations. 

2. Create personal and individualized messages that do more than sell your products and solutions. Acknowledge your clients' birthdays or ask them about their children's softball teams. 

3. Use social media to complement data you've obtained from lists, but use data gathered there responsibly. Craft messages based on social media information in a respectful tone and with content that provides value to your clients. 

Remember: Clients often rely on emotions when making decision. Establish a solid emotional connection with them as you build your relationship. 

Tweet me and let's chat about using data to connect with your target audience:

 @JorgeVillarRME

By: Jorge Villar, President and Founder 

#connectdata

Jorge's Thoughts: Debunking the Top 3 Seminar Marketing Myths

This week, we're taking a look at seminar marketing across our social media. Take a look at these top 3 seminar myths and let us know what you think in the comments below!

1) Feeding at the events 

This is a must to create that social event environment and not that antiquated lecture, workshop or sales pitch scenario. Also, the obvious: it allows time for you and/or your team to make appointments; otherwise, attendees would just leave after your presentation. The restaurant setting is neutral and familiar to your attendees. They probably go there many times on their own, and it's not suffocating or compromising like the other closed door venues. They know they can just leave the crowded restaurant if they wanted to.

 Something is bothering them financially, which is why they originally responded. If there are a few couples who appear to be there just information shopping or just gathering ideas, then so be it. They help fill the room and give you that emotional dynamic that makes people feel comfortable. You are going to get a 20% to 30% appointment ratio from the people who are attending whether you feed or not. You need the numbers on your side. Top producers do not worry about food costs because the ROI takes care of that. Ironically, not offering food does not change the appointment ratio nor does it mean that the attendees are truly more interested in what you are presenting . It will just end up being 30% appointments of less attendees. 

 

2) Converting attendees to appointments 

The amount of appointments you make at your seminars is 100% in direct proportion to the following factors:

• Did you have enough attendance? 

• Did you connect with your audience socially? 

• Did you tell stories that were relevant to the attendee's financial concerns? Could they relate? 

• Did you give your local background and tell your own story?  

• Did you intrigue your attendees with potential solutions and options and not a product pitch? 

• Was your topic current? Did you have too many slides?  

• Did you inspire the audience to feel like their confusion and worries about many financial issues were normal? 

• Did you explain and clarify what will happen at their first office appointments, include that nothing will be sold even then? 

• Did you have an effective and professional process to ask for the appointments during the dinner session? 

• Did you pre-sell appointments during their presentation and not just at the end? 

• Was the event feedback form explained and handed out? 

• Were you diligent in calling attendees who could not commit to a time and date the very next day? 

• Did you ask if a better or a later date would help them commit?  

• Did you offer the option of a private complimentary phone call review session if they were not willing or ready to meet face to face yet? 

 3) Saturation in marketing 

The real saturation is not in the marketing; rather, it is in the amount of advisors who are in direct competition in the immediate area. In one city corner at a business district intersection there could be 10 to 30 advisor offices. Many advisors ignore that fact and decide to blame bad seminar results on the amount of marketing that they perceive is happening in their backyard. If that were even remotely true and it was not working, then why would so many others send out invitations? 

The reality is that a very high percentage of those who are even doing seminars are doing them wrong. Wrong invites, wrong lists, wrong venues, wrong dates, wrong messaging...on and on. They may want to cut corners, save pennies, not take the time to understand marketing and end up usually partnering with local printers instead of experienced direct marketers. Good marketing is based on good data. Understanding and following the 10 to 15 critical variables that create successful outcomes is challenging. 

To wrap this up, everything we do here at RME360 is intended to create predictable marketing and sales processes that will continuously drive prospects and results for advisors over and over, all year long. We have 20 years of data. Let us show you how we can generate a continuous flow of prospects for your business. 

Tweet me and let's chat about seminar marketing:

 @JorgeVillarRME

By: Jorge Villar, President and Founder