As 2024 winds to a close, now is a good time to start planning your firm’s annuity and life insurance marketing strategies for 2025. Here is a roadmap to better marketing in the new year and beyond:

Plan a regular rhythm of marketing seminars and workshops.

In-person workshops are the lifeblood of a successful practice’s growth. During the more than 30-year history of the indexed annuity/indexed life insurance industry, there has never been a time when in-person seminars and workshops were not the most consistent way to gain new clients and grow a book of business.

The most popular and effective format is the dinner seminar, which consistently provides a positive ROI for advisors. It offers the highest potential close rate and shortest potential timeframe from lead to client — typically, a two or three meeting process from seminar to close. There’s no duplicating the credibility and trust you can build with prospects at these in-person events.

We recommend monthly dinner seminars, or quarterly at a minimum. It’s not unusual for planners to experience 50-50-50 with dinner seminars. For example, if 50 prospects register for a seminar, 50% (or 25) could attend the event, 50% (or 12-13) could schedule appointments and 50% (or 6) of the appointments could close.

Tarkenton’s turnkey Retire Ready workshop system takes the legwork and the guesswork out of marketing a successful retirement workshop. Our team will build your custom digital ad campaign, target your ideal clients in your market, handle the registrations and deliver attendees directly to you in real time. All you have to focus on is giving a great presentation and setting appointments.

Implement an ongoing lead generation campaign.

While dinner seminars are the lifeblood of an effective annuity marketing strategy, they should be supplemented by a lead generation campaign throughout the year to keep the prospect pipeline full. For example, if you host quarterly dinner seminars, you could supplement these with lead gen efforts during the months when you don’t have a seminar.

While lead gen has a lower close rate than dinner seminars, these campaigns can run in the background without any direct effort or involvement on your part like a seminar. For example, you could possibly schedule five meetings from 50 leads and close one or two new clients from your lead gen efforts.

Tarkenton’s Retire Ready lead generation campaigns are plug-and-play. We set up your lead generation campaign to run in the background and deliver high-intent leads to you in real time.

One of the most effective lead generation tools is an email “drip” marketing campaign to stay in touch with your full database. The idea is to email value-added (not promotional) resources to your database on a regular basis. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel — Tarkenton Financial offers a library of resources at your disposal, including year-end planning guides and whiteboard videos that can be customized to your brand.

Host client appreciation referral events.

This could be a holiday party or summer bar-b-que, for example. Or you could do smaller one-on-one lunches with individual clients each month. The key is to ask clients to bring a friend with them who could be a potential new client for your firm.

For example, keynote speaker Steve Beecham often talks about the power of helping other people. Steve encourages business owners to be the “mayor of their own village” by introducing people they know to other people who can potentially help their business grow. When you do this, Steve says, your business will naturally grow as well.

Call us and ask for our complimentary guide to hosting awesome client appreciation events.

Implement a local media plan to build your brand.

Local media can be a powerful tool in your annuity marketing toolbox. Tarkenton Financial makes this easy with our “Agents in the News” program that books you in local media segments, positioning you as a go-to financial professional in your market area.

We provide all the necessary tools to make your media appearances successful, guiding you through the process by providing talking points that help boost your credibility. Through regular placements, these three-to-five-minute interviews can get you in front of new audiences, boosting your local visibility. Best of all, once you lock in a spot with us, you can become one of the featured financial professionals on your local news station.

Utilize tools and coaching to grow your business.

Tarkenton Financial also offers a wide range of add-on marketing resources to help advisors grow their firms, including:

• Traq.ai — This AI-powered sales software offers meeting recording, transcription and archiving; automatic notetaking; conversation intelligence; and meeting analysis to help you identify new opportunities and key items for follow-up. Click here to learn more, including special pricing for Tarkenton Financial advisors.
• Accelerate — This is our turnkey video training program with insights from top advisors to help you better understand indexed annuity/life products and how to position them more effectively with clients and prospects. If you’re a Tarkenton Financial advisor, click here to access your Accelerate portal!
• Dedicated in-house advanced market consultant — As a Tarkenton Financial advisor, you can call our dedicated consultant anytime you have a complex client scenario or need answers regarding a specific case (e.g., Social Security, Roths, taxes, trusts). Click here to schedule a call with Heather!
• PEAK Conference — Our flagship event of the year will take place on January 30-February 1, 2025, in Atlanta. At the conference, we will dive deep into everything that will help you reach your PEAK in 2025, including new marketing and lead gen programs and annuity/life products. Top Tarkenton financial advisors and industry-leading experts will share practical insights and sales positioning strategies you can put to work in your business right away. Click here to learn more and register.

Give me a call at 404-364-2598 or shoot me an email if you have questions or need help with your annuity marketing and life insurance marketing roadmap for 2025 and beyond.