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Event Check Off List for Seminar Success

You’ll be more relaxed and do a better seminar when you use a check off list for your event.

Before your event, make a list of everything you’ll need for your event. This can include items for your literature table such as brochures and business cards. You’ll have equipment like your laptop computer, your pointer, and your projector. How about an extension cord? You’ll also want things near you at the podium such as a glass of water and a pad and paper to take notes.

During your event, jot down items you wish you had so you’ll remember to bring them the next time. After the event, update your list so you’ll be a bit better prepared the next time.

Advisor Marketing By Writing Articles In Your Local Newspaper

You build a lot of credibility writing articles for local publications. Many publications are hungry for quality content that their readers will read. When you have this opportunity, you get chance to get in front of hundreds or even thousands of qualified prospects. You demonstrate your expertise and build credibility over time. Plus people can get to know you over time as you blend in personal stories which bring investment and economic principles to life.

So where should you look? First look at your local newspaper. Depending on the size of your area, your paper may or may not have an investment writer. Is there a financial columnist? If not, call the editor and ask to set up a meeting to discuss the possibility. If there’s already a columnist, do you offer a different perspective? Maybe there’s room for a second columnist who offers a different investment philosophy. Or just focuses on pre-retirees and retirees.

Should you expect to get paid something? Probably not unless it’s a large and successful publication and they can afford it. You don’t really care because you’re getting free advertising in a format with much more credibility than a paid ad.

How should you prepare for meeting the editor? Of course you need to bring in a package of your marketing materials so he can learn a bit about you. You need to have a few columns already so the editor can judge your writing ability.

How should you write? You must write in a lively, engaging, and informative way because a boring column won’t get read. My number one suggestion in this area, is to write the way you talk. Remember you’re writing to individual readers not a classroom. Don’t use industry jargon, help readers understand industry jargon and improve their investment and planning abilities.

So what should you write about? Let’s assume you’ve been asked to write a weekly column. How could you possibly fill 52 weeks of columns? There are lots of ways.

First, you ask your readers to email their questions to you. You answer reader questions every other week to fill 26 weeks. You write a seven-part series on “The 7 Most Common Retirement Planning Mistakes and How To Avoid Them.” This gets you down to 19 weeks left. You write one column per quarter on taxes which gets you down to 15 weeks. One column per month would be an economic and investment update. You only need 3 columns to fill out the year. You could do a column on “Retirement Resolutions” in January, a “Financial Independence” column in July, and a “Back To School” column every September on the importance of saving for your children’s college education. And you’d have 52 opportunities to get in front of prospective clients and build your reputation as knowledgeable, plain-spoken, and down-to-earth.

What if you can’t get a column in your local paper? Look at the various “Senior Times” publications in your area along with regional magazines. Any publication will allow you to promote yourself as the “retirement columnist for the Senior Times.” Over time, you’ll attract new prospects and assure existing clients that you’re an expert in your field.

Richard Emmons Interviewed About Living Trust Seminars

This past Tax Day, I was interviewed by Jobie Summer, CFP® of Resources For Advisors about the Family Living Trust Seminar system. Her questions included:

  • Why are Family Living Trust Seminars so important for our listeners to achieve greater success?
  • Why did you create the Family Living Trust Seminar system?
  • How do advisors typically get started with Living Trust Seminars on a step by step basis?
  • Why do you need to “coach” the estate planning attorney?
  • What if any of our advisors got started today with Family Living Trust Seminars what would their life look like in say, 30 days? 90 days? 1 year?
  • What are the specific roadblocks that typically prevent advisors from getting started?
  • What are the specific strategies that are like keys to unlock “roadblock doors” to achieve wild success?
  • What’s the first action step you’d want an advisor to take to get started with Family Living Trust Seminars?

You can listen to the interview by going to the Family Living Trust Seminar website.

Free Publicity Case Study: Volcano Helps Apple’s iPad

Yesterday I wrote about connecting current news events to your products or services using press releases. You read that Congress changes the federal estate tax laws so you write a press release quoting this story and promoting your upcoming estate planning seminar. With a little effort you can get some free coverage in your local paper.

Sometimes you don’t have to do any work at all.

Unless you were cut-off from the world yesterday doing your tax returns, you know a massive volcano erupted in Iceland. You may have read that the massive ash clouds floated east to Europe and caused many air flights to be canceled. Some travelers were stuck in New York City because they couldn’t fly home to Europe.

One of them was the Prime Minister of Norway. Now read this article from the NY Daily News:

Volcanic ash from Iceland strands Norway’s prime minister in NYC airport, so he governs via iPad

All he needs is an iPad and an electrical outlet to run the country.

Norway’s prime minister, Jens Stotlenberg is again grounded in New York as volcanic ash from Iceland’s temperamental volcano continues to close European airspace, but that didn’t stop him from doing the daily business of Norwegian government from his iPad in an airport lounge.

Stoltenberg, who traveled from Oslo to participate in President Obama’s nuclear summit, was stranded along with many thousands of others and will probably be waiting for at least another day before flights can resume, authorities said Friday.

The FAA is working to move some of the many affected flights from the US to international destinations by rerouting them around the huge cloud of ash.

Stoltenberg’s press secretary told CNN that the prime minister has been running his government from Apple’s tablet.

Read the rest of the story

I found this story on www.DrudgeReport.com which had 27,027,155 visits in the past 24 hours. So it was seen by many, many people who never would have looked at the New York Daily News. So this is fabulous publicity for a product many say is an expensive toy.

Who knows maybe the Tea Party activitists will use the iPad as a symbol of limited government…who needs fancy offices when a Prime Minister can run the government from an airport waiting area?

The Drudge Report also linked to this story: School-issued laptops took thousands of secret images… Buried down deep in the story the reporter mentioned that the laptop in question is an Apple MacBook. Thankfully for Apple’s sake, it wasn’t mentioned in the headline.

So look for ways to publicize your products and services by linking them with current news. And you just might land on the Drudge Report!

Getting Free Publicity with Press Releases

Financial advisors, like any other business, have two ways to get noticed in newspapers, radio and television. Paid and unpaid.

The advantages of paid advertisements include you can guarantee you’ll be in the paper on the day you want and your control your message. The big disadvantage of paid advertisements is that they cost money! Another disadvantage of paid advertisements is that the readers, listeners, and viewers all know it’s a commercial or an ad.

How do you get unpaid publicity? By submitting press releases which talk about your company and it’s products and services. Now if you ONLY write about yourself, your company and it’s products and services, the “news” will be boring and no news editor will write about it.

Your press releases can result in news articles in two different cases.

First, your company comes out with something that is truly new. For a financial advisor, perhaps it’s a community seminar on a topic all seniors are interested in. This could be on estate planning or dealing with long-term care expenses. You might get mentioned especially if it’s a slow news day.

I wrote a press release for an advisor who held a grand opening for his new building. I knew the write reporter to get it to and followed up with an invitation to the grand opening. The reporter appeared and brought a camera. I gave him a tour and he met the building owner for an interview. Thankfully no one drowned in river and the stock market didn’t crash. So we got front page coverage including a picture of me and the new building! A couple local TV stations sent a camera crew and reporter so we made it on two TV stations 11 o’clock news. This is coverage that money just can’t buy. Done with press releases and some personal follow-up.

The other way to get publicity is to tie you and your company to a local or national story of interest. When Michael Jackson died, the news coverage mentioned he had a living trust. You could promote your expertise in this area to local reporters. You might get called for a quote. Or you could announce your next living trust seminar and tie it back to the news story.

Of course, press releases have two main disadvantages. The paper may not print anything at all. This happens all the time so your time is largely wasted. You can put a “Press Release” page on your website and post all your press releases. Your press releases will help your rankings on Google and give your readers more information about your company.

Or they include the information and change the story to fit the editor’s desired angle. Or they might make a typographical error.Once, I sent a press release for a marketing seminar I was holding at 7 in the morning. The paper printed my press release word-for-word with one little exception. It showed the time as 7 pm. Guess what? I held the seminar at 7 pm because the paper was the main form of publicity.

When should you submit your press release? For newspapers, try to fax or email it in a week before your event. Television works on a shorter news cycle so 3 days in advance is plenty.

Like so much of marketing, you need to make a consistent, sustained, and purposeful effort with press releases. Set a goal of sending out one press release per month. You’ll find it becomes easier as you do it more often. You’ll get known to news editors and this can result in them calling you. This might result in a new client or two and will help you establish yourself as an expert in your field.

When To Feed Your Seminar Attendees

This short video looks at when you should feed your seminar attendees. Should you hold lunch seminars or dinner seminars? Should you feed them before your presentation? Or “hold them hostage” and feed them after your presentation?

The offer of a free meal attracts folks to your seminars. The delivery of a good meal keeps them happy at the presentation and impacts your goal: getting them to sign up for an first appointment.

For more seminar marketing ideas go to http://www.MyLivingTrustSeminar.com.

Should Financial Advisors Use Facebook and Twitter?

Wow. I just read that Facebook.com just surpassed Google.com for traffic. Amazingly, 7.07% of all US web traffic goes to Facebook.com which is a bit more than the 7.03% which goes to Google’s home page.

Facebook becomes bigger hit than Google

By Chris Nuttall and David Gelles in San Francisco

Published: March 16 2010 13:15 | Last updated: March 17 2010 00:10

Social networking website Facebook has capped a year of phenomenal growth by overtaking Google’s popularity among US internet users, with industry data showing it has scored more visits on its home page than the search engine.

In a sign that the web is becoming more sociable than searchable, research firm Hitwise said that the two sites accounted for 14 per cent of all US internet visits last week. Facebook’s home page recorded 7.07 per cent of traffic and Google’s 7.03 per cent.

It is the first time that Facebook.com has enjoyed a weekly lead over Google.com. The lead may be slim, but it has become inevitable as Facebook’s popularity has grown rapidly from just over 2 per cent of visits a year ago. Heather Dougherty of Hitwise said that Facebook had “reached an important milestone” with the weekly figures.

Facebook’s membership has more than doubled in the past year, passing the 200m mark last April and 400m in February.

“The true value of Facebook and social networks is just becoming clear to marketers,” said Augie Ray, analyst at Forrester Research.

Read the rest of the article

The ABC’s of Social Networking

You may be like me a couple years ago when I asked my 15-year old daughter to help me set up a Facebook account. What did it mean to “write on someone’s wall”? I had no idea.

I set up a Facebook page mainly to keep up on my daughters’ social activities. And soon old high school classmates would find me and we’d exchange some mail. The idea was to keep up with your “Friends” by reading what they’re up to and leaving status updates on what you’re up to. I could update my Facebook page now with something like “I am explaining what Facebook is all about to a bunch of financial advisors” but that would be a bit lame. I recommend you ask your own son or daughter so I won’t try to do it here.

Ditto for Twitter. Twitter is “micro-blogging” because you’re limited to 140 characters per entry. Not words and not letters so you need to be really concise. This paragraph is 203 characters by the way.

LinkedIn.com is like Facebook for business owners and professionals. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn charges a monthly fee to get full functionality.

Should Advisors Care?

Yes and no. You need to stay in touch with your clients and “social networking” sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn will be used by more and more of your clients. Over time, your prospective clients will find you on these sites and check  you out. And your clients will want to keep in touch with you and what’s going on.

Yet don’t think you need to spend a lot of time here. You’re probably busy enough as it is. Plus your compliance department might give you a big thumbs down. So should you do anything?

Yes. I strongly recommend that you grab your profile names NOW so you’ll have them later.

Think back to that modern marketing miracle: the 800 number. Customers could call companies without making a long distance phone call or calling collect. Whole advertising campaigns promoted vanity 800 numbers like 1-800-FLOWERS. Imagine snagging 1-800-PLANNER back in 1964 when AT&T created the idea…it would have cost you a fortune if you could have gotten it. Not to mention you were 6 years old at the time.

Thankfully you can reserve your profile names now and use them more later. Here are my profile pages:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/richardemmons
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/richardemmons
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardemmons
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/richardemmons

I use Facebook the most out of these 4. Yet I just checked and discovered 28 people wished me “Happy Birthday!” a couple weeks ago. And I never commented back. I guess I had too much face time with family and friends to make time for Facebook. Oh well.

You’ll notice that I automatically “tweet” my posts on this site to Twitter. Occasionally I’ll toss in a quote or a status update.

I do a little bit with LinkedIn and am open to suggestions on how to use it. I joined several LinkedIn Groups related to estate planning and senior advisor marketing so I get some good articles. And a lot of fluff updates in my in-box.

I threw in MySpace as an example of reserving it and not using it. MySpace was passed up a long time ago by Facebook and will probably never recover. You never know and it cost me nothing to set up and nothing to maintain.

My recommendation is to click through and sign up for these services now. Get the best profile name you can get. If your name is taken, you can add “cfp” to your profile, put in an under_score or a period between your first and last names.

Future articles will explain how to use these profiles to help grow your business. For now just stake your claim and get your name!

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