Lesson 3: Event Marketing!

Welcome to lesson three of Grassroots Marketing. So, in this lesson, we’re gonna talk about event marketing. Most agents, when they think about event marketing, they immediately think about educational events and sales events. And while that’s included, I want you to understand that event marketing is an opportunity to invite individuals from your target market to participate in events, sales events, educational events, but also social events, holiday events, online events. Any event you can dream up that gets your target market to come and meet with you, either virtually or face-to-face, is an opportunity for you to continue to build your reputation within that market as a valuable resource for that demographic. So, the most successful agents that focus on feet on the street marketing, grassroots marketing, they expect to consistently host or participate in 12 to 15 events per month. I know that sounds like a lot, three to four a week sounds like really high activity levels. But let me remind you from the previous lesson, activity leads to productivity. So, if you want to be extremely successful with your grassroots strategies, like we want you to be, to be able to drive low cost, organic, high-intent, high-quality leads, you have to have significant action on a consistent basis. That’s gonna continue to generate interest and lead flow. So, let’s talk about some of the in-person event ideas and some of the things that we have agents that are using. So, there’s always events and opportunities that are already going on in your market that we want you to participate in. So, you don’t have to host them, you don’t have to sponsor them, you don’t have to, to coordinate and market and schedule. You can go and participate in events that are already taking place. So, when there’s a health fair, which happens all over the place, senior expos happen all over the place. They’re going on all the time. You want to make sure that you’re a vendor at those events. So you are a trusted and visible person at those events, and your community, your target market, is continuing to see you on a consistent basis. It creates in front of mind awareness to them to say, Hey, I know this agent is always serving people in this population. So that’s something you want to participate in. Some other ideas, flea markets are really, really big. I know some agents that have boosts at a flea market on a consistent basis, especially on the weekends because they expect the, the traffic of senior citizens to increase during those opportunities. And that is definitely an opportunity you should take a look at. There’s appreciation events, whether that’s, you know, other businesses that are doing appreciation events that maybe they’re durable medical equipment or hosting an appreciation event, client appreciation, you should get involved, especially if the person putting that event on is someone that you’ve built a referral partnership with or professional relationship. And you work together to serve your target demographic parties and celebrations. You should be there. You should always be one of the first person to raise your hand and sign up and say, I want to participate. What’s going on? What are we doing? How do I get involved? It doesn’t always have to be insurance related. It just has to be or has to have participants from your target demographic. That is the key workshops that are, that are taking place. It could, it could be anything. It could, it could be an exercise workshop. It could be an educational workshop. Anything that your target demographic is gonna participate in, you should also participate in. So, any of these in-person events, that are taking place in your community, be a part. If they’re not taking place in your community, plan them, schedule ’em, invite other businesses in to participate and they’ll do it! So, it doesn’t have to end with in-person face-to-face events, although that’s a lot of fun, builds a lot of great relationships. You can also do online events. You can do, Medicare 101 seminars. You can do educational seminars. You can do livestream events where you’re inviting people that serve your target, target demographic in to do some education or make them aware of services that are available to them. And as a participant and or a host, you again, are seen as the valuable resource that is delivering this value and opportunity to your target demographic. So don’t wait on your community to do it. Don’t wait on your other businesses in the community to host events. Create your own opportunity.

So, I want to, uh, talk about that and spend some time on creating your own opportunities as you, uh, uh, begin to develop the ability and the desire to host in-person events. It is extremely key when we talk to about 12 to 15 events a month. Guys, that’s a lot. When you’re doing four events a week, essentially every other day you’re hosting an event or participating in event, some of the ideas we’re gonna give you, we want you to use, they’re being used successfully all over the country. But this is certainly not an exhaustive list of the opportunities that are available. So, think about hosting in-person events at section eight or low-income housing. These are fantastic opportunities because the property managers are required, the facility managers are required to host a certain number of events every month. So, if you as an agent come in and say, listen, I’ll host a birthday party. I’ll host a senior prom. I’ll do an educational event once a quarter, I’ll come in and, and do bingo, or whatever idea you come up with, you are literally helping that facility manager check a box on the requirements they have for their job, and you’re providing value to your target demographic, which is gonna lead ultimately to more sales. So, you want to host those events. You wanna utilize community centers, senior centers, libraries, faith-based organizations to lower the cost of hosting some of these events. Obviously, if you do them at section eight housing, there’s no cost other than maybe the food items that you bring in. But you can utilize the resources in your community and do these, host these events without spending a lot of money. So there’s really some significant opportunity for you to be out in the community, building these consistent, meetings that you’re gonna host and participate with other people. Also think about events around food insecurity, especially around the holidays, but don’t stop there. 7% of the senior population says they experience food insecurity on a monthly basis. It is a significant challenge in our society today, not only for the senior population, but also for some of the younger populations. So be aware of those opportunities. Do a Turkey giveaway at Thanksgiving. Do a Christmas basket at Christmas, but don’t stop there. Think about, additional opportunities through the course of the year that you can provide a value,  and a valuable resource to your community. I know groups that literally stand on the side of the highway and give away bread and milk every single weekend just as a service to their community. It is providing n needed resources to people, but it’s also making their name well known. It’s building their sphere of influence. It’s showing their heart for their community, and that’s what you want to take the opportunity to do. So, with food insecurity, there also comes nutritional deficiencies, which just opens up more ideas for you to be able to host events, providing value to your target market. You can bring in a nutritionist that’s gonna teach and educate and talk about the diets that we eat and the foods to stay away from and the processed foods that we eat and how that impacts our health. There’s so much information that is available as well as getting the proper vitamins on a daily basis. This information is, is valuable. It’s necessary, and it’s a value that you can provide to your community. And while you do that, you can also build referral partnerships with new the nutritionist. So, there’s plenty of opportunities to do it. Just be creative, continue to be a known and recognized face in your community. And I would also say co-sponsor events with other professionals that serve the population, the target demographic that you’re looking for. There are other professionals that are out marketing looking for opportunities to build relationships. If you co-sponsor with them, you reduce the cost of the event, you share the marketing effort, the marketing expense, and you’re both benefiting from the same population. So, there’s no reason to re-invent the wheel. Look for the opportunities to co-sponsor with them. Again, plenty of opportunities to do that. I love doing co-sponsored events with estate planning attorneys. maybe you’ve got financial professionals that are doing events. They’ll co-sponsor events with you on the insurance side. Take advantage of those opportunities. And again, look for reasons to get your target demographic together. If that’s the senior population, which is where I focus most of my time, there are all kinds of opportunities that you can go to a fitness center, you can go to a faith-based organization, you can go to a senior center, you can go literally on the parking lot of your office and you can host things like pickleball tournaments has exploded in popularity. Everybody wants to, to learn and participate, cornhole tournaments. You know, we’re, we’re having fun. We’re building relationship, and you’re generating the ability to continue to build profitable relationships and serve your community. Think about hosting events that are gonna support cognitive health and dexterity focused activities. Again, caring about the senior population, caring about, uh, their health and wellbeing. You should also think about client appreciation events. There’s so many industries that do client appreciation events, but you rarely hear about them in the insurance industry. The goal being, that your your ability to increase customer retention efforts always leads to increased revenue, right? If you do a bring a friend event, your best marketing is done by your most satisfied customer. So, if you invite them out to an appreciation event, you’re able to have them bring a friend, invite a friend, they come for free. They get to know the services that you provide. They get to see this and hear from the satisfied customer. It’s a great way, again, to deliver that high quality, high intent referral. And everybody should rather work a referral than they would a lead. Another motto that you should inject into your marketing practices is to, to generate a referral from every client and every client from a referral. So, if I’m getting a referral stream from my existing client base because of the value I provide, the fun that we have, the relationship that we build. I can ultimately get to the place in my business where all of my new business is coming from, client referrals rather than lead purchase, investing in strategies that there’s no guarantee of return it. When you have a strong referral strategy, you can pretty much bank on what your cost per acquisition is going to be. And that’s something that we want you to understand. Some of the most, high-quality, high-intent leads, if you want to call them that, are going to come from referrals. So, do appreciation events, bring a friend events, and get referrals from every client. If you’ve provided a service that’s of value to them that they appreciate, they’ll be willing to refer you, their family, their friends, their sphere of influence, which coincides with yours and just begins to increase your influence within your target demographic in your community, and that is certainly the goal. So, that is event marketing. We’re now gonna take some time to take a quiz and test your knowledge.