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: Here at the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast, I strive to keep things fresh and new and exciting, and I think I can do that this week because I'm discussing something I've never discussed in any of my 280-plus episodes I've done so far. I'm trying to do that. Last week I talked about psychological ventriloquism. That's something I've never talked about in any podcast episode, ever, and this week, I'm doing something else that is new and fresh and exciting, and that is my least favorite marketing strategies for financial advisors. [01:01.8]
Now, I may have alluded to some of these in past episodes, but I've never explicitly sat down and said, “Look, I don't like this. I don't like this. I don't like this, and here's why.” But before I begin, I want to make it clear that if you're doing any of these things and these things are working for you, then more power to you. Seriously, just keep doing whatever it is that you're doing, I really don't care. What you do doesn't impact my life one bit.
But the analogy I like to use all the time is that I think doing these things, the marketing strategies that I don't like, is like cutting your lawn with scissors. Can you technically get it done? Yes, you can technically cut your lawn with scissors, but I would much rather use a lawnmower.
Another example that I've given in the past, another analogy is that if a potential client came to you and bragged about how he had all of his money invested in CDs and nothing else, or imagine if a 30-year-old investor with a 35-year investment horizon came to you and talked to you about how happy he was that he has been invested in bonds and just bonds, 100% bonds. [02:09.4]
Technically, both of those people are making money. The 30-year-old investor who is 100% in bonds is earning an income from those bonds. Technically, that is true. But you would immediately think about how there are likely better options for him and how you could help him, and you could just give him a much better outcome. You can't really change where you start, but you can change where you end up. You know that. I know that. That's exactly how I feel when I see financial advisors using these marketing strategies. I know in my heart that there are way better options and that they could be doing a lot better if they just made a couple of adjustments.
At the end of the day, it is your life. You can do whatever you want. That's freedom. You can do whatever you want. You're free to make bad decisions. You choosing to cut your metaphorical lawn with scissors instead of a lawn mower doesn't impact me one bit. My life doesn't change at all. All I can do is put information like this out there for you and try to help you—so, let’s get started. [03:10.0]
Number one, I don't like this one bit and it's buying leads. I did an entire podcast episode about why buying leads is dumb. If you scroll back, you should be able to find it. The title is “Why buying leads is one of the worst things financial advisors can do.” How's that for a title? It came out on September 4, 2023, so I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for you to find it. I actually don't think it did that well because September 4 was Labor Day, and podcast episodes that come out on holidays usually don't get as many downloads, but I think it's one of the most valuable episodes I've ever recorded, because I outline exactly why I think buying leads is such a horrible move.
First, you have no control. You're letting another company control the lifeblood of your business. How can you say that you're an independent man or woman, that you're free and you have your own volition, if you are subjecting your entire livelihood to someone else? You are subject to the whims and the changes in their business model. You are adding. It doesn't make any sense to me. I can't relate. [04:11.8]
Besides, if you understand basic probability, you know that a surefire way to decrease the odds of any sequence of events working out in your favor is to add more variables. If you're trying to get from Point A to Point B, every obstacle you add between A and B will decrease the odds of you getting to B. Does that make sense? That's probability. That's not my theory. That's not my opinion. That is math.
That is why I like simple marketing campaigns. People get a letter. They either read the letter or they don't. People get an email. They either click the link in the email or they don't. They either open the email or they don't. It's very simple. I'm not going to voluntarily put a middleman between me, Point A, and my potential client, Point B. That is just goofy and it doesn't make mathematical sense. Hear me, loud and clear: No real business buys leads. [05:03.8]
Can you imagine the CEO of Microsoft waking up in the morning and telling his team, “Okay, guys, let's buy some more leads today”? Or how about Nike or Walmart, or Apple or Tesla? Do you seriously think that any of these businesses prioritize buying leads? I'm reading a book all about J. D. Rockefeller. I've read books about Andrew Carnegie. These are titans of industries, people who literally built America. They provided the oil. They provided the steel that built the country that you see today. Do you think Andrew Carnegie woke up in the morning and thought to himself, Huh, I wonder where I can buy a list of leads to sell my steel? No, it did not happen. Do you think John Rockefeller woke up in the morning and thought to himself, Hmm, I need to get another list of leads. I wonder where I can buy this list. Where can I buy, buy, buy some leads? It's dumb.
But, James, I'm not a Fortune 500 company, you might be thinking, and that's probably true. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a financial advisor. You're probably not a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. But you are still buying into a faulty premise that someone else is somehow going to be your ticket to success. [06:08.8]
Nobody is coming to save you. That's not how business works. Even other businesses that help businesses succeed still can't do everything for you. I know this better than most people because I have ad networks that serve ads for me. I have email tools that deliver emails for me. I have the post office. The post office delivers a boatload of mail for me every single month. I have assistants and contractors that help me with various tasks. I could go on. All of these things are tools that help my business grow, but I am not dependent on any of them, and that is pretty much my attitude toward buying leads. I think if you want to do it, then it should be icing on the cake. It should not be the cake itself.
But what's interesting is that by the time you have your marketing rocking and rolling, and you're really making progress with your business, you will likely realize that you don't even need to buy any leads. You might realize that you can get clients at a far lower cost doing it yourself than giving up control to someone else to just pay extra. Someone has to make money from this exchange, okay? Do you understand that? [07:10.5]
Do you know this? Lead gen companies are doing the exact same stuff that you can do yourself. I'm sorry, but you don't need a third party to run Facebook ads for you and charge an 1100% markup. It is just stupid. I've had some people tell me, “But, James, sometimes financial advisors need to buy leads when they're just starting out, because they don't have all the marketing assets. They don't have all the systems that you talk about.” Give me a break. That's faulty thinking, too, because how much do these leads cost? $100 each, $200 each. More?
Let's say you light $2,000 on fire and get 10 leads. Congratulations, you might get a client or two, who knows? But what could you have done with that $2,000? In economics, this is called opportunity cost, and you would be surprised at how many grown men and women who give financial advice for a living don't understand this basic economic principle called opportunity cost. [08:01.7]
You could have built an entire marketing sequence. You could have reached 2,000 targeted individuals with a smart direct mail campaign. You could have reached thousands more with an online advertising campaign. You could have paid for social media tools to help you go on LinkedIn. There's just so much more that you could have done, but you saw that big grassy lawn, and you picked up the scissors. If I could help one financial advisor, just one out of the thousands who will listen to this podcast episode, just one to think twice about buying leads, then I've done my good deed for the day. It is just so goofy.
Moving on, number two, mass mailings. This one comes with a bit of a caveat. Back in the olden times, when I was coaching financial advisors one on one, I did a couple of mass mailings for advisors and they did well. The USPS, the United States Postal Service, has this service called Every Door Direct Mail, where you can select an area and they will mail to everyone in that area. For example, if you're a financial advisor in my home state of Delaware, the greatest state in America, and you decide that you want to mail where the rich folk live, then you can choose that zip code and mail everyone who lives in it. [09:09.5]
That actually worked pretty well for financial advisors who knew they wanted to target a specific zip code, and even better, for financial advisors who were already somewhat known in the area. That is part of the secret sauce. If people in that area already know you and have already seen you somewhere else, then that Every Door Direct Mail works way better, because if you're already well-known, that mass mailing becomes kind of sort of like a branding campaign.
Even though I'm not really an advocate of branding, I don't really believe that—I don't want to get into it, but I think that branding should be a byproduct of the stuff that you're doing, not a goal in and of itself—I can tell you, the effects of all of your marketing start to gel together over time, and it's hard to compete with someone who has been seen 20 times in an area if you've only been seen once. Hmm, maybe that's the secret behind email marketing. Hmm, maybe that's the secret behind social-media marketing. Maybe that's the secret behind a lot of the other things I taught financial advisors to do. [10:05.1]
But I will tell you that mass mailings aren't really the scissors for cutting the lawn. They are like push mowers, and push mowers are better than scissors, but it's nothing like a riding lawn mower with cup holders and noise-canceling headphones so you can rock out to some ’90s country. I mean, is there anything better than listening to Joe Diffie when you're putting some stripes in the old backyard? I doubt it, my friend. I doubt it.
Whenever I came across a financial advisor who had a niche market, we would put together a niche-specific mailing and send it directly to people in his or her target market. That works well because the mailing can be so much more specific and call out the exact type of person you want. I'll give you an example. If I got something in the mail that said, “Attention, are you a devilishly-handsome man who is also incredibly funny and smart?” I would be like, Wow, you nailed it, this is for me. I must read. [11:00.5]
In the same way, putting information about dentists in a mailing sent to dentists is a surefire way to boost conversions and it works so much better than the mass mailing. Even though the mass mailings, if you're already well-known, you kind of sort of can finagle it to make it work, just having a targeted mailing works so much better.
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Another reason why I like targeted mailings is because they're a lot more forgiving if you're not an excellent marketer. You could have an average headline, an okay opening, a relatively weak call to action, and it would likely still make more money than an excellent mass mailing, simply because the targeting is so dialed in.
If I'm talking to financial advisors, for example, when I send something out to my Inner Circle Newsletter subscribers and I tell them to do something, I'm going to tell them to do something specific when it comes to mailing. The reason is I'm not right there. I'm not working with them. I'm not over their shoulder. I'm not telling them, “Write this. Do this. Put this here. Do this.” If they even are horrible at it, but it's still targeted, then it will likely work okay or decently well, or fantastically well, depending on what the offer is. [13:05.2]
Number three, cold marketing. This could be cold email or cold calling, or cold messaging on LinkedIn. Basically, when you're reaching out to people who have never heard you before, have never seen you before. They just don't know you. Now, there is a time and a place for everything. If you absolutely must cut your grass and you have nothing else available to you except some scissors, then pick up the scissors and start cutting, okay? That's how I feel about cold marketing. If you have absolutely nothing else on your calendar and you have no alternatives, then cold marketing is better than nothing, because you got to get the job done.
But I think that cold marketing is a horrible choice when compared to all of the other choices available to you. That's why I started off this episode talking about someone invested in CDs or someone invested in bonds, when this person is 30 years old and has a 35-year investment horizon. It's better than nothing, okay, but it's horrible compared to the alternatives. I'll discuss the big three in order here, the big three colds: cold email, cold calling and cold messaging. [14:09.5]
When I talk about email marketing, I do not mean cold email—99.9% of the time when I say email marketing, I mean email marketing where someone opts into an email list and gives you permission to contact him or her. I am a big proponent of using automated sequences to follow up so you don't even have to think about it. Besides, Google really started cracking down on cold email in 2024 and cold email just hasn't been as effective anyway. Can it still work if you're a small-volume sender, where you're only sending a couple every single day, a couple hundred, a couple dozen, whatever? Yeah, I guess so. I guess it can still work, and it can work even better if it's highly personalized or if you go above and beyond and you send a video or something. But that's not the point. [14:52.1]
The point is to ask yourself, what are your alternatives? If you picture yourself as that 30-year-old investor invested 100% in bonds, and with a high risk tolerance and a good income and good cash flow, what are the alternatives? Are there alternatives out there? In marketing, if your alternatives are things like creating marketing assets that operate independently or using scalable marketing strategies that can reach a ton of people at once, then it does not make sense to choose cold email.
Next is cold calling. Cold calling is fine. I don't really hate cold calling that much, but again, I think it's kind of silly, considering all of the alternatives you have. The only time I like cold calling is if you do it and immediately go to something else to make it more of a warm contact, so it’s not even really a cold call at that point.
I'll give you a specific example. I tell financial advisors all the time that they should leave voicemails when they make phone calls. This has always seemed so obvious to me and it makes even more sense now that phones give you transcripts of voicemails. I mean, I can open my phone and I can see a transcript of every single voicemail. I don't even have to listen to it. I don't have to press play. I can just read it. [16:01.1]
Still, some advisors will push back and say that leaving voicemails is a waste of time and that advisors shouldn't do it. Voicemails are not a waste of time for me, because I like to add in a few magic words and those magic words are “I'm going to follow you on LinkedIn, too, so you can put a face to the name.” Ooh, magic words. “I'm going to follow you on LinkedIn, too, so you can put a face to the name,” and that is some powerful stuff, because it lets people see who called them. They can see that you're a real person with a real business and that other people interact with you, which is social proof. That's what marketers call it, social proof. It's just other people interacting with you, other people saying, “Wow, you helped me,” or “You're legitimate.” That is so much better than cold calling, and that's it.
Cold messaging on LinkedIn or Facebook, or wherever, is probably the best cold marketing strategy, but it's annoying to me because so many advisors do it incorrectly. They either send these long, long, long messages to people, or they try to use these weird automation tools. [16:59.4]
First, LinkedIn messaging should be about having real, genuine conversations with other people. I've said that so many times. I repeat myself so many times. If you met the other person in real life for the first time, would you go into some monolog? No. And as for the automation tools, they are legitimately against LinkedIn’s terms of service. I'm not just saying that. If you just Google “automation LinkedIn terms of service,” you can read it for yourself. If you play with fire, then you shouldn't be surprised when you get burned.
The fourth marketing strategy that I really dislike is Search Ads, and I might as well say Google Ads because they're the most popular. I love online advertising. I talk about ads all the time. However, I talk about Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, X ads, formally Twitter, and things like that. I very rarely, if ever, talk about Google Ads or Search Ads.
Why not? One reason is because a lot of the search terms simply aren't that good. A lot of amateur marketers will try to bid on terms like financial advisor in New York or financial advisor in Nebraska, or financial advisor Delaware, or perhaps the worst one of all, “financial advisor near me.” They’ll bid on this term and then wait for people to visit their websites or call them directly. [18:10.0]
While I think you could do a lot worse than those two things—you could definitely do a lot worse—again, you must look at the alternatives, because another reason why I'm not a big fan of Search Ads is that most of the time, not always, your mileage may vary, but most of the time, they are far more expensive than just placing an ad in front of your target market.
I've seen average cost per click for terms like “financial advisor near me” range from as little as $5 per click, maybe if you're out in Wichita, Kansas, or somewhere, to as much as $50 per click if you're in Los Angeles or New York, or Philadelphia or Washington, D.C. It just gets really expensive. It's hard for me to give an average, because the demand is so different based on geography and time of year and all of these other factors. [18:56.1]
In the accounting world, the crisis for accounting-related terms goes through the roof in the first two weeks of April, because everybody's scrambling at the last [minute]. Not everybody, not me. I'm a prepared person, right? And you probably are, too. But the unprepared people, people who are not like you and not like me, then they are scrambling, so the ads get far more expensive.
It has been my experience that it is much cheaper, it is much easier, and it is much faster to just run your ads on social media and it works. I mean, you can test a lot faster. It is so much easier to put a bunch of different headlines and images and whatnot out there to see what works best. You could just make moves and make them fast.
What's cool is that you can then take the winning headline, you can then take the winning image or whatever you have found to be a winner, and use it elsewhere. That is an easy win that I wish more financial advisors would take advantage of. [19:47.0]
Another reason why I like running ads on social media networks is because you can put them directly in front of your target market. You don't have to wait for them to search a specific term. You can start showing it to them right away. For example, I'm running an advertisement on LinkedIn right now that is being shown to financial advisors in the United States. So far today, I have spent $27.60. The ad that I'm showing has been shown 1,697 times and has received 93 clicks.
If I were running Search Ads, I would have to wait for people to search marketing for financial advisors or something. With social media ads, I can push my message out in front of them. I can do it right away. I can also control how much I want my ad to be shown. If I'm willing to spend more money, then my ad can be shown a lot more. It is just a much better alternative. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, think of the alternatives.
Number five, the fifth marketing strategy that I dislike, I don't like it at all, is cookie-cutter social media content. This is where you just pull your content from a content library somewhere, complete with a stock photo and everything. It's just the laziest thing you can possibly do. It's just so lazy. It communicates a special message to the rest of the world and that message is “Hey, look at me. I have absolutely no creativity,” or worse, something like this, “Hey, look at me. This is what my corporate overlords tell me that I can share with you. Please make me comply harder, Daddy.” [21:12.5]
Imagine trying to help other people achieve financial freedom when you don't even have the freedom to put a picture on social media. You don't have that freedom. That has to be a special kind of mental hell. The best-performing social media content comes directly from the advisor. It is about him or her, his or her hobbies, interests, family life, just whatever the advisor has that is about him or her to demonstrate that he or she is like the clients he or she is trying to serve. It gives a peek into what the advisor is like, because that's what people want to see. They don't care about the generic holiday post, like, Yeah, we get it, it's Mother's Day, thanks. But what are you like? What do I get if I'm working with you? What's in it for me? That is the secret of good social media content.
All right, I'm done. I'm going to end it here. In the words of Jerry Springer, take care of yourself and each other. I'll catch you next week. [22:04.8]
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