Does Your Lead Gen Take a Spring Break?

It’s that time of year when everyone seems to be on vacation. Spring break is here, and families are headed to the beach, while college students are off visiting friends. 

But just because you’re taking a break doesn’t mean your lead gen has to.

Enter Automated Webinars. 

Automated webinars are actually a year-round tool you can use to keep the top of your marketing funnel full. Here’s how they work and why you should consider adding them to your marketing toolkit this year.

Why Automated Webinars?

If you’ve ever wrapped up a workshop thinking, “That was great, but I wish I could bottle it and use it again without all the time and travel,” - you’re not alone.

I talk to advisors every day who love the results they get from seminars, workshops, and educational events. But even the most successful advisors know there’s a limit to how many workshops they can host a month. 

And that’s where automated webinars come in. Automated webinars are a way to take the content you know is converting at seminars and put it on autopilot to attract leads and generate appointments for your practice. 

It’s like having your best workshop running in the background - working for you while you’re focused on client meetings, follow-ups… or even that Spring Break trip.

How Do Automated Webinars Work? 

With an automated webinar, you record a presentation (or leverage a pre-recorded expert presentation, like we offer at Stonewood Financial).

You can then leverage that recorded presentation in one of two ways: 

• As a “live” webinar event at a given time. For this approach, you’ll market the webinar as if it’s live, offering several times when prospects can register to join the webinar. 
• As an “evergreen” webinar that can be viewed on demand. For this approach, you’ll market the webinar as a recording that can be watched anytime the prospect chooses. 

Regardless of which approach you choose, you’ll then market to the webinar like you would to a seminar or workshop. This can include email marketing, social media marketing, and - of course - print mail. 

Once the webinar has run, you’ll see appointments booked directly from the webinar and have attendee data to follow up with anyone who didn’t book time directly. 

Your time is limited, but your results are not. 

If you’re recording your own webinar, you’ll invest the time for that recording. If you’re leveraging an expert recording like we offer at Stonewood Financial, you’ll just record an intro and outro, and Stonewood Financial experts will record the proven content in between.

Either way, your automated webinar will only be as good as the number of attendees who view it. So be sure to work with a marketing firm that has experience (and results!) marketing to webinars. (Here’s a few of our favorites at Stonewood Financial.)

Why Automated Webinars Now?

Are you on the fence about adding automated webinars to your marketing plan? Here are some of the key values I believe a quality automated webinar program can bring to your practice:

1. They’re always on.
   Automated webinars can run on demand, so your prospects can watch at the exact moment they’re most interested—whether that’s on a weekday morning or late Sunday night. Even when you host “simulated live” webinars, you can offer multiple viewing options over a several-day period - without having to block out your calendar for those times.
2. They deliver qualified appointments - not just views.
   This isn’t about posting some content to YouTube and hoping for the best. Automated webinars are a proven way to generate quality leads and appointments. In fact, a successful webinar program will have many of the same hallmarks as a successful seminar program: from registration to post-event follow-up, you’ll have real connection opportunities with potential clients. The best part? Because the content is the same every webinar, you know it will convert.
3. They’re built around the retirement planning challenges you solve every day.
   If it’s a successful topic for your live seminars, chances are it will be a successful topic for your automated webinar. I’ve found two of the top-converting webinar topics in 2025 are Taxes in Retirement and Income Planning. These topics not only educate prospects but uncover challenges you solve for clients every day.  
4. No tech headaches.
   If you work with a quality marketing firm to promote and host your webinar, you can take “understanding new technology” off your to-do list. There are many platforms you can use to host an Automated Webinar if you want to do it yourself (from Zoom and Big Marker to Go To Webinar and EverWebinar). But many marketing firms that specialize in automated webinars also provide the hosting platform and setup. 
5. They scale with you.
   Once your automated webinar is up and running, it becomes a repeatable, evergreen part of your marketing engine. You can expand your reach, test new markets or topics, or pair it with live events. The more automated webinars you host, the more ways you’ll find to leverage pre-recorded content. It’s a way to multiply your impact without multiplying your efforts. 

Ready to Give Automated Webinars a Try? Or Looking for New Content to Increase Your Webinar Conversion? 

Most advisors we work with here at Stonewood Financial aren’t trying to become webinar experts - they just want predictable lead flow without reinventing the wheel every month. If that sounds like you, there are a couple of ways Stonewood Financial can help: 

• Stonewood Financial Members have access to multiple webinar presentation decks they can download and deliver. From estate planning and income risk to taxes and updates from Washington, our presentations focus on topics that are guaranteed to convert. 
• As I mentioned above, my partner Neil and I have also recorded automated webinar content you can use if you don’t want to record your own. If you’re interested in learning more, let’s connect for a quick call.

Whether you’re heading out for Spring Break or just returning from it, you deserve some automation in your marketing efforts. 

If you’re already using automated webinars in your marketing practice, please share what has been converting best for you so far in 2025 and what approaches you plan to leverage for the rest of the year.