You're listening to “Financial Advisor Marketing”—the best show on the planet for financial advisors who want to get more clients, without all the stress. You're about to get the real scoop on everything from lead generation to closing the deal.
James is the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com, where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisors grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard.
James: In this week's podcast episode, I'm going to talk about some marketing strategies that can potentially add $100,000 or more of revenue to a financial advisor’s business. Now, am I saying that you specifically will get this result? For sure, absolutely, 100% guaranteed? No. This show is made primarily for entertainment purposes only and the examples I give you in this show are just that, examples. [00:58.1]
Have you ever watched the TV show Shark Tank? They have this disclaimer right in the beginning that no offer is being made to the viewing audience, and it's really sad that such a disclaimer even has to be made. I mean, who is really that stupid to think that an offer is being made to them when they're sitting at home on their couches. But here I am putting a disclaimer here just in case someone foolishly believes that I am talking specifically to him or her and somehow guaranteeing results, so there is my disclaimer.
Before we get into the meat and potatoes of the show, I'd like to share something cool with you. I'm recording this podcast episode in early February, and a few days ago, I mailed the February Inner Circle Newsletter issue. It was the longest, most comprehensive and most in-depth newsletter issue I have ever written—and I have great news. It was the most successful newsletter issue I’ve ever written in terms of new subscribers.
I actually began reviewing my numbers and discovered a few really cool things I'd like to share with you, if you'll indulge me for a minute. First, not only does the newsletter ship all across America, but it also ships to 14 countries around the world. That is amazing, truly. I'm so thankful. [02:07.2]
I did some more digging and discovered that as of February 1, 2024, 20.4% of my inner circle members are international. That's wild to me, because I have relatively few international website visitors, email subscribers, podcast listeners, and so on. If you're in another country besides the United States, hello, thank you so much for listening. But the majority of my audience is in the United States. I don't even show my email opt-in to countries in the European Union because they have all of these weird email marketing laws that I just don't want to deal with, so you can't even see my email opt-in if you're in the EU, unless you use a VPN. I just don't deal with it.
In any case, it seems like people in other countries, especially Canada, Australia, and Singapore, are far more likely to invest in themselves than people in the United States. I really don't know why. I wonder why. Maybe it's something within their cultures. I truly don't know. My best guess is that Americans have a fierce sense of independence and are conditioned to do everything themselves. Asking for help is seen as a sign of weakness and people would rather struggle, or Americans, I should say, they would rather struggle than get the much needed help from someone like me. [03:16.8]
I also wanted to calculate the percentage of Inner Circle members who are male versus female, so I did something bad. I did something that you're not supposed to do anymore. I assumed people's gender. I know, I know, bad James. So insensitive. So politically incorrect. I'm sorry, but I'm a business person and I want to know my audience. That means if I saw a name like Joseph, I assumed it was for a man. I know, I know, again, bad James, and if I saw a name like Josephine, I assumed it was for a woman.
After going through everyone and making these politically-incorrect gender assumptions, I discovered that approximately 34% of my Inner Circle members are women and I plan on getting a more detailed analysis done, where I search every single name and company and just try to look for in “About Us” on a website or LinkedIn profile, and then I can make a more correct gender assumption. [04:08.8]
But that is really cool. I am blown away, especially when you consider that many sources suggest that women only make up 15 to 20% of financial advisors period, and according to the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, only 23.6% of CFP professionals are women. I am so honored. I want to say thank you to all of the women who listened to this show, and men, too. I'm grateful that you do.
This also kind of supports the stereotype that not just Americans, but American men are not willing to ask for help. I mean, think about the stereotype about how men won't ask for directions if they're lost. That's kind of supported here with the data.
But enough about that. I want to talk about the marketing strategies you can add $100,000 of revenue to a financial advisor’s business and get the game plan to get there. These strategies might seem super simple, and they are simple, but they're not easy. What I want to do is I want to give you the numbers and the situation that you need to create in order to make these possible for you. [05:06.3]
Okay, let's begin. The first one is a pure outbound marketing play. I talk about this a lot. In fact, it's one of the core principles that you need to adhere to, if you're going to be a true full-fledged citizen of Planet Pollard. You should embrace both inbound and outbound marketing—and we're going to talk about that in a little bit—if for no other reason, things can go wrong, because as much as I love inbound marketing, stuff breaks, things stop working, platforms change.
That's also why I suggest having multiple marketing strategies, which we're also going to discuss it a little bit. Aside from that, having both inbound and outbound marketing strategies means you can get clients today, while also setting up the systems that will get you clients tomorrow. But let's focus on outbound for right now.
I also talked a lot about LinkedIn marketing. I even have an entire video training called “How to Get Clients with LinkedIn” that has helped thousands of financial advisors so far. I can't believe we have such a powerful tool like LinkedIn and financial advisors don't want to use it, or at least some of them don't. I think old school marketers and entrepreneurs would slap you silly if they saw you not using LinkedIn, because it is just an amazing tool. [06:11.7]
Think about this. You can log into LinkedIn right now, find people in your target market and engage with them, right away for free. As long as you have an internet connection and a way to access LinkedIn, you can probably make this work for you.
For the purposes of this podcast episode, I'm going to assume that you earn an average of $3,500 per client per year. You might make a wide variety of amounts based on your clients, but that is going to be my assumption here, because a lot of advisors can either make that by managing investments or they can charge that much, at least that much for a full-fledged financial plan—and if you're not charging that much, I highly recommend going back and listening to the two-part series I did called “Financial Advisors, Raise Your Prices.” [06:55.6]
Let's think about how many clients you would need in order to make $100,000 more of revenue. If you make $3,500 per client, that means you need 29 clients. With 29, you actually get slightly over $100,000. You get $101,500 over the course of a year, so 29 divided by 12 to figure out how many you need per month, it shows that you need 2.41 clients per month on average. That means you could get two clients one month and then three the next month, and so on. Let's set our sights on three just to be conservative. We'll back into this.
What is your appointment-to-client conversion rate? In other words, how many prospective clients who set appointments turn it into clients for you? Many advisors told me things like, “I'm good once I'm in front of people” or “I can demonstrate my value when someone is with me. I just need help getting these people in front of me.” They say things like that, so I'll say it's a third. [07:51.3]
Okay, that means, if it's a third, then you need nine prospective clients per month to set appointments with you, because out of those nine appointments, you're going to get those three clients. That might be super low to some of you and that might be an intimidating goal to others. It doesn't really matter either way. I'm just putting the numbers out there. The numbers are the numbers, period.
Now the question becomes, how many people need to see your marketing materials in order for one person to set an appointment with you? Remember, you're trying to go for nine here. Let's say that the number is one out of 100, and I'm being conservative. I'm actually trying to go out of my way to be conservative because I want to make this as clear and, again, as simple as possible, because, truthfully, if you have a defined target market and something your market actually wants, then it should be a heck of a lot higher.
The truth is that a lot of you don't have anything super valuable to offer the marketplace and that's why your businesses aren't growing. Get mad if you want, but that is the truth. A lot of people get mad at me for telling them the truth. [08:51.0]
Hey, financial advisors. If you'd like even more help building your business, I invite you to subscribe to James' monthly paper-and-ink newsletter, “The James Pollard Inner Circle”. When you join today, you'll get more than $1,000 worth of bonuses, including exclusive interviews that aren't available anywhere else. Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more.
Imagine I did cold messages to pregnant women and I said the following. Here we go. I’ve got a script for you. I want you to listen to the script.
I have this pill that you can take that ensures you and your unborn child get all the proper nutrition requirements. It's only one cent per pill. It has been endorsed by every major health organization in the world, and some of the world's most famous celebrities and successful entrepreneurs take it to ensure they have healthy children. It also completely eliminates all morning sickness and all those weird pregnancy cravings. Are you interested?
How many out of 100 pregnant women do you think would tell me, “Yes, I am interested. Please tell me more”? Now, of course I'm exaggerating here, but I'm doing it to illustrate the point that people will respond if you have a valuable offer. [10:01.3]
A lot of financial advisors are trying to put out financial advice or investment management or a financial plan, and it's quite simply not a compelling enough offer. Again, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know, bad James, bad James for telling people the truth, but I care about you too much to just sit here and say, “Oh, no, it's fine. You just need to do XYZ, or you need to put your message out there. Or you need to get your name out there.” No, no, no, you need to have a valuable offer first.
But let's say that you get one out of 100 and you need nine appointments. That means 900 people per month need to see your marketing materials, so now you need to ask yourself, how can you do this? Let's say that you engage with 20 people per day on LinkedIn every single business day. Assuming there are 20 business days per month, that's 400 people right there, so you only have 500 left to go.
How can you do that? Maybe people see your posts. Maybe you push your message out into the world by sending people letters or direct mail. Maybe you make phone calls. Maybe you network. Whatever you do, the critical thing here is that you know how many people need to be exposed to your marketing materials based on your conversion rates, and the nice thing about outbound marketing is that you control the process. [11:11.7]
If you are behind on your numbers, let's say that 900 is your goal and it is almost the end of the month, and you are at 800 people, now your goal is for the next few days to get your marketing materials in front of 100 people, and assuming those numbers stay constant, you will reach your goal.
The second strategy could be inbound. It truly is not that difficult to get your marketing message in front of people if you know what you're doing. Continuing with the LinkedIn example, you could connect with 100 people per week, not engage, but connect with 100 per week, if half of those people accept your connection request. That means roughly 200 people per month will be added to your network.
The beautiful thing about LinkedIn is that the number will continue to grow over time, so your existing network will see your content today, but your network will grow and even more people will see you and your content a month from now. Even more people will see it six months from now. Even more people will see it a year from now. [12:11.6]
I want you to start thinking bigger. Think about all of the different things you could do. Let me tell you something. The March 2024 Inner Circle newsletter, which is going to be shipped on March 1—by the time you listen to this, it'll already be out—it is going to have a bonus called “10 Lessons from My First 1 Million Website Visitors.” When I'm going to promote that bonus, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a screenshot in one of my emails I'm going to show, prove to people how my website got 119,000 visitors in three months.
I'm doing that because I know some people will think that, oh, my website recently crossed a million visitors or something. Heck no. Check the title again. The title is “10 Lessons from My First 1 Million Website Visitors.” Do some quick math. If I did 119,000 in three months and my website has been around since 2015, don't you think I’ve gotten multiple, multiple millions? Hmm, it's not that hard to see. [13:08.8]
What's even crazier is that I'm going to put the exact source in everything where people can see the traffic for themselves. They can verify it for themselves. It's very easy to fake screenshots. It's very easy for people to say anything they want. Men lie, women lie, but numbers don't lie. Even these so-called marketing companies that specialize in websites and website marketing whatever, they can't even put 119,000 on the board in three months. But guess what? I can. James. I can, lil ol’ me. You bet your butt I can.
So, let me ask you something right now. Is your website generating 119,000 visitors in three months? If not, then maybe, just maybe you can learn something if you sit back and listen. I talk a lot about multiple marketing strategies. I think it is the most important thing I can possibly teach to financial advisors, and it's something I talk about frequently, really frequently. [14:05.5]
Multiple marketing strategies means you do multiple things in your marketing. But you can apply that to each level of your marketing and each channel of your marketing as well. For example, my website has multiple traffic sources, and yours should, too. You should have organic traffic, direct traffic, social media traffic, clicks from your emails, visitors from print and physical media, clicks from your online ads, and more. You could have all sorts of things going for you. That way you can't be stopped, even if one channel stops working for you.
Multiple marketing strategies actually brings me to the third thing I want to talk about that could get financial advisors $100,000 of additional revenue, which is, as I alluded to in the beginning of this episode, combining both inbound and outbound. Oh boy, this is some powerful stuff. Let me tell you exactly what I mean. [14:58.3]
Your marketing is likely to work much better if you combine both inbound and outbound. I'll give you several examples here. These are real examples to help you understand. A financial advisor makes some cold calls. Now, I really don't like cold calls all that much. I think there are better ways, but I understand that some people still do them. That advisor might make cold calls and leave voicemails with his name and his company. Guess what? Some of those recipients are going to Google him. What will they find? A LinkedIn profile, a website. These are inbound marketing strategies that are working because of an outbound marketing strategy.
Here's another one. It’s direct mail. The same thing is absolutely true with direct mail. Let's say you push out into the marketplace with a direct mailer, and on that direct mailer, you tell people to call you. But not everyone is going to do that. They're not going to just pick up the phone and call a financial advisor, like, Oh, this is exactly what I wanted today. I woke up this morning, hoping that a financial advisor would send me something in the mail. That just does not happen. They might go to your website first, though. What's your website? Gasp, inbound, but it never would have occurred without the outbound marketing effort. That is what I want you to get here. It would not have happened. [16:07.3]
Now let's switch it around. Let's say someone sees one of your social media posts for the first time and decides to check you out and opt in to your email list. That's inbound, right? What if time goes by and that person doesn't set an appointment? Then what you can do is leverage an outbound marketing strategy and send that person an email or direct message or social-media outreach, whatever, right? And when I say email, I mean, you're sending an email specifically to that person. That outbound strategy was made possible by the inbound strategy.
A lot of you out there think in terms of either/or, and that is a mistake. You have to be an “and” person. When you think in terms of either/or, you close yourself off to so much potential that can come from combining the two things. I’ll continue to pile on these examples, because I genuinely want to help you. I want you to understand this concept.
What if you develop some content that's built around your niche market? That's awesome and that can take you a long way. But what if you personalized your outreach with insights from people who will engage with your content? Wouldn't that make your content better over time? It sure would. [17:11.3]
What if you were conducting a live seminar or something? How would you promote it? I know you can hire these seminar companies to cost tens of thousands of dollars, and what they do is they run Facebook ads for you like that's super hard or something. But what if you did online ads and you did direct mail, and you did phone calls and you did social media posts, and you did direct messages? What if you really put some effort into it and combined inbound and outbound? Do you think you could triple your results or quadruple them?
I want you to get your mind to this place where you are thinking in terms of how can you combine? How can you get more out of the stuff that you're already doing? I know this stuff might seem simple. I talked about this in the beginning of the episode. I said this is going to seem simple, and that's actually one of my biggest criticisms that my marketing approaches are too simple. But guess what? I like simple. I like being able to easily track what's working and what isn't. I like making money with less effort. Don't you? If so, then you're in the right place. [18:06.2]
If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. It's one of the best ways for the podcast to grow. Tag me on social media, post something. If you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn, send me a connection request. Wait a minute, am I using multiple marketing strategies right now? Hmm. You can find me by searching James Pollard on LinkedIn and my headline should say that I am the host of the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. I can't wait to hear from you, and I will catch you next week.
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