Are you being asked to do more with less for your CE program budget? Can you stretch your budget without sacrificing the quality of your sales and marketing efforts? Is there a way to strategically optimize your program to get more bang for your buck? If questions like these are keeping you up at night, take solace in knowing that yes, it can be done! To help you get started, we’re sharing our five critical elements needed to optimize your CE program spending in 2023. 

  1. Clean-up Areas of Underperforming Spend  
    • Comb through your roster and retire old instructors that are no longer with the firm. Additionally, make sure you’re only refiling content that is getting used. Every time you file a course or instructor there are typically state/designation fees tied with that. When you consider a national renewal, with all 50 states, that’s a lot of fees. Save yourself from those unnecessary costs by only renewing the content and instructors you plan to use in the new year.  
  2. Establish KPIs/Benchmarks for the Year 
    • As we head into the new year, remember that you’re only as good as the goals you set. Make sure you have something to measure your success by, whether that be event registration numbers, total attendees, number of credits rostered, etc. These benchmarks are a great way to not only see what’s working vs. not working but also serve as a good reminder to your leadership team that this spending is helping move the marketing needle forward.  
  3. Embrace Data Feeds for Targeted Communication 
    • Send attendee data back to your CRM to do more with the data you collect at your event. Talk more about why it’s helpful to have this data in your CRM so sales and marketing can continue to follow up on new leads, returning customers, etc.   
  4. Create an Events Calendar for the Year  
    • Create a calendar so you have ample time to get content and instructors approved and most importantly, time to market the event. Ensure you have several weeks planned out to drip emails, share on social, etc. Focus on quality over quantity. Unfortunately, there are also fees tied to canceled events and expedites – so plan accordingly! This is an easy way to save on costs.
  5. Truly Understand your Audience 
    • It’s so important in today’s day and age to truly understand your market demographic. And not just in a general sense, but truly knowing what collection of data you have to understand their pain points and preferred channels of communication. Quest CE recently released its annual Financial Advisor Survey, which gets sent to thousands of CE event participants from across the nation to gain a better understanding of who they are and what they care about most when it comes to the CE events your firm puts on each year. It is so important to be able to strategically align and tailor your marketing efforts and dollars around these key audiences. To view those results, click here.