This is a transcript from the Marketing for Advisors Podcast. To listen, please visit mfapodcast.com and every episode is easily available and free for listening.
Don Anders: Hello, welcome to Marketing for Advisors. My name is Don Anders. I'm here with Donovan Stull, and we are talking about dinner seminars or meal seminars. And this is a pretty big hot topic. We see some advisors who absolutely are opposed to it. They say, "I don't want to feed people." Or, "I feel like I'm buying someone's business." And then you have other people who they swear by it. I personally am a financial advisor and I really like the dinner and the food seminars. I feel like it's a way to give back to clients and prospects, but we're going to kind of go over that. So, I've been an advisor for a while. Donovan works with us at Advisors Platform, which we help out financial advisors throughout the country, digital market and we do marketing, consulting.
And so there's kind of pros and cons of both. So, but let's get into exactly why financial advisors do dinner seminars. Or more importantly, the biggest objections to it we can start off with. So Donovan, what pros and cons of dinner seminars have you heard from advisors? I know you work with a lot of people who like to do the educational ones, but you also work with a lot of people who like to do the dinner and lunch seminars.
Donovan Stull: Let’s go in with the cons first. The people who have opted away from doing the dinner seminars or meal seminars in general, they feel like they are constantly getting people who are just showing up for the meal, and not really the information. So obviously there's a different kind of ...
Don Anders: Those professional diners. Yeah.
Donovan Stull: Professional. I'll save that one for another time.
Don Anders: Yeah, professional diners. That's a nice way to say it.
Donovan Stull: I think there's a lot of people though who they see the differences of someone who will attend a dinner seminar versus someone who's going to go to an educational event. And even someone who would go to a webinar. They're all three different kinds of prospects who are coming into the room. But those who enjoy the educational seminars, they say, "I'm tired of spending all this money on food." And I think a lot of people as well, they always feel like they have to do these really high-end steak houses to buy someone's business. They have to do the $50, $60, $70 a plate steak dinner just in order to prove a point that, hey, we're a good enough adviser to buy you a nice dinner. But you're trying to buy someone's business by schmoozing them over with a filet mignon.
To me, I think that's probably one of the biggest ones that we hear. People have been burned in the past from flipping these minimum $1500 rooms for hopefully 20, 30 people. And you're trying to do that twice a week for two times out of the month, it gets pretty costly. And you don't see your ROI right away. And I think that's a biggest drawback where the educational side of it, they come in, they hear the information and if they're content on what they hear, then you spent $100 to rent out a library room or whatever the case may be, and you're done. So I think for the people who gear towards the educational side, that's their biggest kicker on that. But then in addition ...
Don Anders: Well, I see both sides of it though. I see ... So for me, I get the wanting just to rent out a hundred dollar library or community center. And then if they show up there, they're really there for the information, which I understand. But from a marketing perspective, that doesn't really make sense to me because ... And we just talked with an advisor a couple days ago, and he stopped doing dinner seminars because he was ... The very last one he did, he walked around and somebody said, "Hey buddy, I'm just here for the free food. Let me enjoy my meal." And so he stopped doing them all together.
But that happens with every type of marketing, right? If you're doing a mailer, most people are going to take your mailer and throw it in the trash. If you're doing a Facebook ad, most people are going to scroll right past. If you're doing a TV commercial or a TV show, most people are going to switch it off or start looking at their phone. The difference is, it just hurts a lot worse when you're paying for the bill and they do it right in front of your face. I think if a lot of advisors had to watch everyone, the amount of people that just threw their mailer directly into the trash, they probably wouldn't do it.
Donovan Stull: No, that makes a ton of sense. And in this day and age, even this generation of people who are on that cusp of retiring or kind of getting towards the end of their retirement ages, they are some of the few that will still look at their mail and that's it. But because they are inundated with ads all the time, whether it's credit card mailers or we always get the ones, what, for cars. Every holiday that comes around, here's another mailer to come buy a new car. And you send a photo of a steak on a mailer and hope to capture somebody's attention. They see them all the time.
Don Anders: But you'll capture some attention. I'm talking about more the philosophy of being there and having a meal, right? The actual philosophy of buying a meal. Because people will say, "I don't want to feed everyone in the world." Or, "I don't want to do this." Or, "I don't want to do that." But when we actually take a look at the data from what we've seen on a digital marketing side, it's about four to five times more expensive to get somebody to an event without a meal, as it is to get somebody to an event with the meal. So I don't really get the idea of, okay, well I'll spend $100 more per lead to get them there because I don't want to spend $50 on a steak, or $30 on a steak or something like that.
The reason I think a lot of financial advisors have gone away from it is because it just hurts to watch them do it. But once again, if you had to watch every single person that turns your commercial off, you probably wouldn't do it. If you had to watch every single person out of the 8000 mailers that you send out, you have to watch 7920 of them go directly into the trashcan. You probably wouldn't do it because it would hurt. So I think that's why a lot of people have kind of gone away. But I still see a value there. For that reason, my whole approach is I just want to get in front of as many people as possible. Our firm's approach is to help as many people as we can. But the other reason is because it's a really high cost of entry to do work with a financial advisor.
If you choose the wrong mattress, you have a bad night's sleep. You're out a few hundred dollars. But then you buy a new mattress. If you choose the wrong car, you're out a lot more money, but then you just buy a new car. It's not detrimental. But if you choose the wrong financial advisor, then it's over. So that's why a lot of financial advisors do the TV show. They do the radio shows because there needs to be a higher level of entry. If you're selling a car, you don't need a whole hour to figure out whether or not you want a car. You need a few minutes of research or two hours. So to have an audience like that and have an hour's worth of somebody's attention for the price of a meal to me is amazing. But then again, it also just depends on your area, and how many people are doing it.
I would say those professional diners, if I was going to give one tip to other financial advisors out there it would be, don't let them really get to you. Just think of him as somebody who's throwing your mailer into the trash. And don't really worry about it. Focus on the positive there. I know that's hard, but that's the way I would personally recommend doing it. So well, let's get to ... You mentioned, which is a big thing for me going from the high-end steak houses to the lower-end restaurants or maybe mid-tier restaurants. And that's something we did recently. As you know, we'll do a Ruth's Chris once or twice a year. But I think the reason a lot of people will do the high end steak house is they feel that high-end clients, that's where they want to go. But what we've found is, that's not true.
Donovan Stull: Some people feel standoffish of going to a Ruth's Chris because they either can't afford doing it on their own, or they just don't feel like that's a place that they fit in well enough. So it's a little standoffish for them.
Don Anders: Or for them it's a luxury. And if you're able to buy it every single day, then you're making too much money off of them. Or they think that there's going to be a hard sell to try to recap that money, right? So what we've found is those mid to lower tier restaurants, your Carrabba's, your Olive Gardens, your ...
Donovan Stull: Don't forget Red Lobster. People love Red Lobster.
Don Anders: Oh people love Red Lobster. Those types of restaurants where people will go on a daily basis is less intimidating. It's less pretentious. And what we've found is the results are actually the same or a little bit higher for the RSVPs. And the results are just the same. And the meal, Ruth's Chris costs anywhere between $50 to $80 per person, while Red Lobster, it's $18 per person.
Donovan Stull: Well, let's talk about your firm not too long ago doing a hibachi grill.
Don Anders: Oh yeah, that's been the biggest thing... We have a place called Kobe Steakhouse in Orlando and people love it. They think it's fun. There's some people who've always heard of it, they've never gone. Or there's other people who go all the time and they love it, but it's a $20 to $25 meal and it goes over great. We give the presentation, they come in, they start making fire and chopping onions and doing butterfly and everything else that they do. So yeah, and the other reason I think a lot of financial advisors are so stuck on the higher end steakhouses is they really want their brand to be synonymous with luxury and high-end things.
But most independent financial advisors like ideal clients who have between $250,000 to five million. They're not really getting those execs, most of them that have 50, 100 million dollars, because they'll usually have whole teams that will handle them and take care of them. With most of the smaller financial advisors, 2.5 million, 5 million, 10 million is kind of the higher end of what you'll see. And so you just have to know your audience. And you have to know what they want. And don't be afraid to test. So I think a lot of times people do things because that's the way they've always been done. They go, "Well yeah I do mailers and I go to Ruth's Chris because that's how we've always done it and I make a good living."
That's great, but if you plan on being in business in the next five to 10 to 15 years, you might want to think about switching that around or changing something up or trying it.
Donovan Stull: I think you made a good point about just wanting to stick to what's always been done.
Don Anders: That's the most dangerous thing that you can say.
Donovan Stull: Yeah. Hey, we've always done it this way, so we're going to continue to do it this way. But if you change it up from time-to-time and like you said, “Hey let's try and do a lower to mid-tier restaurant. Let's try and do it at a wing place and see if people like it.”
Don Anders: Yeah, that's been actually one of our best results was a beer and wing place. Because that's where people, you would usually go on a Wednesday night. So why not go and have your meal paid for? And it's not that intimidating. And it's laid back. And guess what? Every financial advisor is going to have a bust of a seminar where you do it and you don't really get any appointments. It hurts a lot less when your dinner bill is $400 over $2000.
In summary, I'm personally 100% for dinner events. I think they're more valuable than anything. Everyone's attention right now is already allocated. Every single person, 100% of their attention is allocated. And the whole point of marketing is to get a piece of that attention. You're competing for eyeballs, you're competing with Netflix, you're competing with spouses and kids and grandkids, and you're competing with Facebook and you're competing with YouTube and you're competing with their job and their sleep and everything else. But they have to eat, right?
So, you're combining it with something that they need to do, something they like to do. You know? And also never underestimate the power of positive re-association. So if somebody has a really good meal and now they associate that really good meal with you, then that's nice as well. We’ll wrap it up here and then the next time we'll get into educational events as well.
Donovan Stull: All right. Appreciate it guys. Thanks.
Don Anders: Thank you so much for listening to Marketing For Financial Advisors. If you want more information, you can visit our website at mfapodcast.com. There you can download the show notes. You can download, watch one of our webinars, contact us and also subscribe to our email list. And we look forward to talking with you next time.