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 a few elements of winning online marketing campaigns for financial advisors. This episode is inspired by my Inner Circle members in two specific ways.
First, you know I record these episodes in advance, don't you? I'm currently working on the May Inner Circle Newsletter issue which will get shipped out on May 1. By the time you listen to this, it will be well over a month too late. But this issue is going to be exceptional because I'm including the exact online advertisements, the exact landing pages and the exact funnel used by one of the world's largest RIAs. [01:07.3]
I'm also including a marketing breakdown so my subscribers can know exactly why the funnel works so well, because, truthfully, you can see it for yourself if you know where to look. You can just see it online. You can find it. It's easy to find, but seeing is not enough.
It's kind of like learning a second language. If you don't know Chinese, then you can look at the Chinese language all you want, but the words, the symbols, the things that you see won't mean anything to you. It's only when you understand the language, when you understand what the symbols mean that you start to see. You start to take it in. It starts to be meaningful to you.
The same is true in marketing. You can look at an online ad or a landing page or a website all you want, but it is meaningless unless you know the reasons why it works so well. This is one of the biggest reasons why I think people who mindlessly try to copy or build some swipe file are some of the dumbest people out there, because it would be like me copying a book in Chinese and thinking that I'm doing something productive. I would just be copying things and not knowing what the heck they are or they would be meaningless to me. [02:11.4]
The May Inner Circle newsletter issue is also going to be extra special because I'm including a series of seven emails personally written by me designed to help financial advisors set more appointments with their prospective clients. I'm doing this because one of the secrets to good marketing is making people an offer so good that they can't say no, or as the Godfather would say, that they can't refuse.
I'm doing that with these emails, because I currently charge $5,500 for my email marketing consulting session that I call the Email Marketing Intensive. I have an email marketing course that sells for $1,995, and I love email marketing so much that I've written more than 2,500 emails from my personal list, so I put my money where my mouth is. I am actually doing it and I have actually been doing it for years. [02:58.0]
You've heard me say many times that email marketing is the most effective appointment-setting strategy I have ever discovered for financial advisors and I mean that. I really do stand on that. Yet, so many financial advisors are doing it wrong, so I figured I'd help them do it the right way by literally doing it for them. These emails are also going to be copyright-free, which means Inner Circle members can use the exact language from the emails, even copying and pasting in some cases where specificity isn't needed to begin using those emails the very same day they receive the newsletter issue.
So, considering the newsletter “cost,” and I'm putting air quotes on “cost,” $99 per month, this is one of the greatest offers I've ever made to financial advisors, because I can't imagine making it much easier than quite literally doing the work for them.
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, so the second reason why this episode is inspired by Inner Circle members is because I've seen behind the scenes with so many different financial advisor marketing campaigns, and when you have seen as much as I have, you can't help but notice some of the same things come up again and again. I'm going to share the elements of winning online marketing campaigns in this episode. Are you ready? Here we go. [04:08.1]
Number one, the financial visors with winning online marketing campaigns, they try enough stuff to figure out what works. This is true with all of marketing, but especially with online marketing, like social media, online ads, all the stuff. If it’s on the internet, this is extra true.
You cannot try one Facebook ad or one LinkedIn post, or one Google ad, and then give up when it doesn't work. Newsflash, most stuff doesn't work. I think financial advisors would do so much better if they understood from day one that most stuff is not going to work. That way, they would be prepared to try so much more and they wouldn't give up as easily.
I actually wrote an email about this concept and I'm going to read the email to you because it fits right in with this topic, so here we go. The subject line is “When financial advisors give up.” Here we go. I'm going to read this email to you. [04:58.8]
“One of my favorite Stories comes from Napoleon Hill's legendary book, Think and Grow Rich. The tale revolves around a man named R. U. Darby, who, during the Gold Rush era, caught the gold fever and went west to dig and grow rich. He staked a claim and started digging. After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore.
“He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, told his relatives and a few neighbors of the strike. They pulled money to buy the needed machinery and had it shipped. The first car of ore was mined and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines. A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killing and profits.
“Down went the drills. Up with the hopes of Darby and uncle. Then something happened. The vein of gold ore disappeared. They had come to the end of the rainbow and the pot of gold was no longer there. They drilled on desperately trying to pick up the vein again, all to no avail. Finally, they decided to quit.” [06:03.6]
“They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few $100 and took the train back home. The junk man called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed because the owners were not familiar with fault lines. His calculations showed that the vein would be found just three feet from where the Darbys had stopped drilling and that is exactly where it was found.
“I think about the story all the time, because I frequently see financial advisors stop three feet from gold. For example, they might try to make an online advertising campaign work, only to quit right before they have a big winner. Or they might get frustrated with their direct mail test and give up right before they have the ability to scale. Or they might admit defeat with email marketing a few days before getting a major feature in a niche-specific publication that just skyrockets their success. All of these are real examples I have seen from financial advisors, they all make me really sad when I think about them.” [07:00.4]
“Malcolm Gladwell talked about this concept, something like the three feet from gold, don't give up, keep going, in his book, The Tipping Point. Up to a certain point, a new force, whether it's a new product or disease, a social media network, it’s just a thing, right? It finds it difficult to make headway. It can't go as much. A great deal of effort, if you just push and push and push and push, it generates little by the way of results. You just try and try and try, and then it seems like nothing is happening, and at that point, many people give up. However, in The Tipping Point, he explains, ‘If the new force persists and can cross a certain invisible line, a small amount of additional effort can reap huge returns. That invisible mine is the tipping point.’”
I'm sharing this with you because I want you to know that if you want to be successful with your online marketing campaigns, and actually marketing in general, you must make it past the tipping point. Things get so much better, so much easier. You make so much more money. Of course, your mileage may vary. In my experience, people make a lot more money once they cross the tipping point. It is just wonderful. [08:00.8]
Number two, they have a specific market. I don't know who is telling people this or who is selling a course with this nonsense, but I've heard from several financial advisors who have told me that they were told to make their targeting as broad as possible. The idea is that these online advertising platforms know your audience so well that you don't have to do anything. You just throw your ad up there and Facebook or Google, or LinkedIn or X, they know their audiences so well that they're going to put your ad magically in front of the right people.
Listen to me, yes, it's true, advertising platforms do a good job at targeting people. They know a lot about their users, but they are not perfect. I want you to imagine that you're selling solar panels. Don't you think it might be a good idea to at least target homeowners? Or what if you're selling men's clothing? Wouldn't it be a good idea to at least target men to exclude women, right? I mean, in a financial advisor’s case, if you only work with people in Florida and you know that going in, why not narrow your targeting to people in Florida? [09:03.2]
Truly going broad is like throwing money away, and it might work somewhat well, because, again, they do know their audiences, the algorithms work well, but you want to maximize every single dollar that leaves your business to help it bring back as many friends as possible.
I totally understand the appeal of casting a wide net. I've been helping financial advisors since 2015. This has been one of the things that I've had to battle again and again and again, because the big problem with the wide-net approach is that you end up paying for a lot of impressions from people who will never become clients, and that is a surefire way to burn through your cash like a kid in an arcade with a pocketful of quarters. But you can still go to arcades. Is that still a thing? If it's not, let me rephrase. They'll burn through your cash faster than a 13-year-old buying V-Bucks on Fortnite. How did I do? Is that better? [09:53.2]
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.
Number three, they track, track, and track some more. They pay attention to their metrics. Successful advertisers know that the key to a profitable marketing campaign is to constantly monitor and analyze their performance data. They don't just set it and forget it. They're always keeping a close eye on their click-through rates, conversion rates, cost per click, and return on investment. They know their numbers.
But tracking your metrics isn't just about patting yourself on the back when things are going well. It's also about identifying areas for improvement and making data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns, aka make them better to improve over time. [10:51.5]
Peter Drucker, management legend, has this quote that I love, which says, “A ‘database,’ no matter how copious, is not information. It is information's ore. For raw material to become information, it must be organized for a task, directed toward specific performance, applied to a decision.” Just like ore needs to be processed and refined to extract the valuable elements inside, data needs to be processed. It needs to be analyzed to give you some insights that you can actually use.
For data to become truly useful information, it must go through a transformation process. The process involves organizing the data, analyzing the data, and interpreting it, right? Say, “Okay, I know these numbers. Now, what do these numbers mean?” And then the third step, the most important one, is applying the insights that you gain from the data. You are making an informed decision, and the reason it is an informed decision is because you are using information from your data. Do you understand?
For example, if you notice that your ads are getting a lot of clicks, but not many conversions, that might be a sign that your landing page needs some work. You’re using that data to get information, so it's information’s ore. You're now taking that out, you're saying, “Hmm, what can I do to improve this situation?” and the application is to improve your landing page. [12:11.8]
Or if you see that certain ad variations are outperforming others, you can allocate more of your money to those high-performing ads. You're using the information. The bottom line is, you cannot make good informed decisions unless you have the data to point you in the right direction, and successful online marketers track, track, and track some more.
Number four, they let their winners run. It bugs the heck out of me when financial advisors stop their winners because they get tired of them. How long should you let a winning campaign run? Until it stopped being a winner. You will get sick of your message before your market does, and that's okay, but if your advertising is still working and still profitable for you, do not turn it off. [12:56.4]
In fact, repetition is actually a key component of effective advertising. Studies have shown that it can take anywhere from seven to 20 exposures to an ad before someone takes action, and that usually means across multiple ads, which goes back to my first point about trying multiple things. But it won't necessarily mean that someone saw your ad 20 times in a row or saw that same ad 20 times. It could be that someone saw all 10 of your ads an average of two times each. But in any case, if you're cutting your campaign short before they've had a chance to fully penetrate your market, you are leaving money on the table.
I'm not saying you should never refresh your ads or try new creative or try new messaging, but you should do it from the winner, meaning, if you have a winning ad right now, try to use that same image with a different headline or try that same headline with a different image. If it's yellow, make it red. If it's blue, make it green. See if you can slice and dice your one winner into 10 winners. You want to expand and grow in scale. That way you can continue to reap the benefits of your winning ad, while still keeping your proven winners in the mix. [13:59.8]
Now I have seen those with so many other online marketing campaigns, too. For example, financial advisors will figure out that personalized messages and connection requests work really well on LinkedIn. Imagine that, personalizing your messages works really well instead of just copying and pasting and trying to message 100,000 people with the same exact thing. “Huh, wow, Interesting.” They'll do that and they'll get great results. Then they'll get distracted by the latest bright shiny object, like LinkedIn automation or some tool that promises to do all the hard work for them. Then they'll switch everything up and they'll get disappointed when they don't get the same results. Well, duh, it’s because they cut what was working. That should be obvious.
I've also seen it when financial advisors redesign their websites. Typically, this is done because they get sold this idea that they need to update the websites every so often, like they need to refresh every six months or the website is outdated, as if that's the thing, as if there's a thing like being outdated in marketing that works. Your dividend payments from Coca Cola, are those things outdated? Or your rental payments from a rental property that you've had for 30 years, is that now outdated simply because it's just been going too long? No, it's an asset. Collect the income from the asset. That's how you should treat marketing. [15:15.7]
But anyway, these financial advisors pay a bunch of money to get this brand new website. They get it redesigned because they've been sold this idea. Then they wonder why their conversions have gone down the toilet. It's because if they had a site that was working before, they changed it. It's not that hard to figure out. But financial advisors do it all the time. Things work. They have a winner. Stuff is doing well. Then they say, “Hmm, let me just change it,” or “I'm getting tired of this,” or “Can I make the logo bigger?” It's just moronic.
Hear me loud and clear. If you have something that is working well for you, feel free to try to improve it, but do not get rid of it until you have something that is clearly working better. So, if you have something working better, then you can get rid of it. I hope you take me up on this. I hope you really implement this information. This can truly change your life. [16:06.3]
Then number five, they are nimble. Things break. Algorithms change. Successful financial advisors have to pivot quickly. Change is the only constant. What works today might not work tomorrow, and what was once a best practice could become a liability overnight. That's why the most successful advertisers are the ones who are able to adapt and adjust on the fly.
Take the example of algorithm updates. Every so often, platforms like Google and Facebook will introduce significant changes to the way their advertising algorithms work. These updates can have a major impact on the performance of your campaigns, and sometimes render your tried and true strategies obsolete. Things could be working for five years, and then in Year No. 6, boom, they're gone.
So, in situations like these, advertisers who come out on top are the ones who are able to quickly diagnose the problem, test new approaches, and implement changes to get their campaigns back on track. They don't panic. They don't throw in the towel. They roll up their sleeves and get to work. [17:05.1]
But being nimble isn't just about reacting to external changes. It's also about being proactive and having contingency plans in place. That's where having a backup or two comes in handy. Hmm, if only there was someone out there with a certain Financial Advisor Marketing podcast, who was preaching the idea of multiple marketing strategies. Huh, do you know anyone like that?
For example, let's say you're relying heavily on Facebook ads to drive traffic to your website. What happens if Facebook suddenly shuts down your ad account or introduces a new policy that restricts your ability to advertise? It's happened before. If you don't have other channels in place to pick up the slack, you could be in for a world of hurt.
That's why successful advertisers diversify their efforts across multiple platforms and multiple channels. They might run ads on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, while also investing in content marketing, email marketing, direct mail, referral marketing, and just all other sorts of marketing strategies. That way, if one strategy underperforms or becomes unavailable, they have others to fall back on. [18:05.3]
I have been talking about this stuff for years. I am “the” guy who pioneered multiple marketing strategies in the financial advice industry. I have never had a single financial advisor ever tell me that he or she regrets having multiple marketing strategies. It has never happened. In many ways, this is just thinking like a financial advisor.
So, I have this program called “How Successful Financial Advisors Think” and it is one of my most underrated programs ever. One of the things I've discovered is that successful financial advisors continue to think like financial advisors, even when they're not in front of clients. That is so important that it is actually Belief No. 2 in “How Successful Financial Advisors Think.” So, it is the second thing you learn when you go through that program. You learn that you should keep thinking like a financial advisor. You should keep your financial advisor’s thinking cap on. [18:54.1]
So, you should think in terms of diversification. If you're going to diversify your financial assets, why wouldn't you diversify your marketing strategies? Being willing to diversify is also about being willing to experiment and try new things. The most successful advertisers are the ones who are constantly testing new ad formats, new targeting strategies and new offers, and again, that's going back right to number one. They try a bunch of stuff that is really like thinking like a financial advisor.
That is diversification. They're not afraid to fail because they know that failure is just a stepping stone to success, and just like with a portfolio, if you're not unhappy with one part of your portfolio, then you're probably doing it wrong. You're not diversified enough.
That is all I have for this week. To recap, successful advisors try enough stuff to figure out what works. They don't give up easily when things don't pan out immediately. Number two, they focus on a specific target market rather than casting too wide of a net. I've said this many times before. Number three, they obsessively track their metrics and they use that data to continuously optimize their campaigns. Raw data becomes actionable information, the ore as Peter Drucker said, to drive better decisions. [20:03.2]
Number four, when they find a winning ad or campaign, they let it run as long as it keeps delivering results. As long as it's profitable, they let that sucker run. They look for ways to build on that success rather than abandoning it prematurely. Number five, they stay nimble and diversify their marketing mix. By being willing to experiment and having fallback options, they can roll with the punches when the metaphorical poop hits the fan. Mastering these elements takes persistence and willingness to learn, but it is well worth the effort.
As always, I hope you found this episode valuable. If you did, please share it with a friend or a colleague, or someone, a family member or somebody out there. Just give it to someone who could benefit. And if you want to dive deeper in these topics, be sure to check out my Inner Circle Newsletter, where I share real-world case studies and give subscribers tools they can use to enhance their own marketing. You can check it out at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. And I will catch you next week. [21:00.0]
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