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: Welcome to Financial Advisor Marketing the podcast for, obviously, financial advisors who want to get better in marketing, get more clients, make more money, build their business, you name it. Welcome to the show. I'm going to go above and beyond with this particular podcast episode because today, we're going to talk about the most lucrative overlooked niche for financial advisors and if you listen to this episode and take it to heart, it could be extremely profitable for you. And when I was thinking of the episode titles for this particular episode, I originally wanted to call it The Most Lucrative Untapped Niche for Financial Advisors, but then I realized that by definition, it can't be untapped and you'll see what I'm talking about when I reveal it to you. [0:01:15.7]
First, I got this email from a financial advisor. Shocker. It happens all the time and I wanted to answer this email on the show because it has a really good question. And he says, "James, I purchased your How To Get Clients With LinkedIn product last year and have gotten good results from it. Now, I am on the fence about getting Appointments On Autopilot," which is, it's my email marketing program, for those of you who don’t know, "mainly because if LinkedIn has done so well for me, is it even possible that email could do better? I don’t want to drop LinkedIn to pursue something that won't work as well. Let me know, either way." It's a really good question. I like this. And he put it in such a way where there's a lot of advisors out there who may be thinking the same thing, and it may not be with LinkedIn. Maybe they're getting a lot of results with direct mail. Maybe they're getting a lot of results with seminar marketing, but they're confused or they don’t know where to start when it comes to email or maybe it's LinkedIn or maybe it's another marketing strategy. [0:02:13.8]
First of all, I want to congratulate this particular financial advisor for investing in himself - that's a step beyond what a lot of people do and you know that, producer Jonathan. Most people don't…
Jonathan: Yes, sir.
James: …make that first step to invest in themselves. That's awesome. Congratulations. I do really appreciate that and I love being around people who will invest in themselves. Secondly, you should never, ever, ever view your marketing strategies as either or. That's the big mistake that this advisor is making and based on the email. He's thinking in either or terms. You always want to seek to add. What can you add? What can you integrate together? And you don’t want to add things just for the sake of adding them. You want to make them stronger. You have to a purpose. I'm going to give you an example, like just a literal step-by-step example. Let's say that this advisor decides to do email marketing and he ends up going for it. [0:03:02.5]
And then he puts an opt-in form on his website and just for kicks and giggles, let's say he puts the opt-in form at the bottom of his blog post on his website. Like hmm… I don't know, like someone .. oh, that's right - me - I do that. And let's say he shares that content, his blog post, on LinkedIn. Maybe he posted as a status update, maybe he messages his prospects directly, who knows. Either way, what's going to happen is people who are interested in the headline or the topic that they see, they're going to click on it and that's when the magic happens because there may be a percentage of people or there will be a percentage of people, I should say, who are interested in learning more and who will want to stay in touch, who will want more information, who wants to hear from that advisor. Those are the people who opt-in to the email list, obviously. From there, you can follow up with them. You can eventually set an appointment with some of them; that's just very simple. You have the content. You can share it. You use your LinkedIn to strengthen email. You use your email to strengthen LinkedIn. [0:04:02.5]
Maybe you send an email out and you say, "Oh by the way, if you're not connected with me, connect with me here." I do this with the podcast. I'm being completely transparent. This is how the machine works. I take my email. I say things like, "Hey, if you haven’t listened to this particular episode, make sure you listen to it." There are people on my email list, right now, who have literally…they don’t even know that I do a podcast. Right? They're oh, wow - you do a podcast? How come I've never heard of it before? It's well, you've heard of it now because I've used… is this making sense, Jonathan? I use email to strengthen my podcast and vice versa. I talk about people emailing me and being on my email list on the podcast. There may be people who are listening to the show right now who have no idea that I do email marketing. I'm going to say, "Go to the TheAdvisorCoach.com/57 and get on that email list," and that's just one way that you can integrate your marketing, get away from that either or thinking. It's one way you can build your email list too. There's a whole bunch more, but I want you to understand that you should never, ever, ever view your marketing techniques in a vacuum. [0:05:04.6]
Every single technique that you use should be used to complement and strengthen everything else. And if you're interested in learning more about the email marketing thing, just go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar because I have a webinar about email marketing and it will help you get started down that rabbit hole and you will thank me for it later. Back to this whole overlooked niche thing and allow me to illustrate the power of a niche with a little story. I recently purchased a belt - I'm going to talk about belts now, Jonathan.
Jonathan: Alright.
James: Called Hank's Belt and I am mentioning the name, even though they're not sponsoring this show. Maybe they'll send me a little belt - who knows. They make really nice thick leather belts. They're actually, they have gun belts. That's what they're most known for, is for people who are packing the heat. Right? And they're really nice. [0:06:01.5]
They're belts that are made for concealed carry, but you can wear them even if you're not packing a gun, but I bought a belt from them and they almost immediately started showing me ads all over the internet for their belts and then I started seeing ads all over the internet for other belt companies, and I started counting them. Because I was wow, I literally just bought a belt and now I'm seeing a belt on Amazon here. I am seeing this belt company, this belt company, this belt company, and I lost count at four. I just stopped paying attention. I want you to think of this - more than four separate belt companies were all advertising, to me, and I had never seen any of their ads until I purchased from Hank's Belts, which means that their criteria to advertise to me had something to do with me purchasing a belt. This is a huge breakthrough that a lot of financial advisors should be having right now. Now the question becomes why in the world are they advertising to me as someone who already owns a belt? [0:07:06.9]
I obviously.. I just purchased it. It's shipping to me as they're showing me the ads. The answer, it's because someone who has already demonstrated that he or she will do something, is more likely to do it again and a long time ago in this podcast - I don’t even know which episode it was - I gave the example of a watch company or you having a watch company. If you were selling watches, would you rather advertise who don’t own any watches or would you rather advertise to people who already have 5 or 6? Some people might think that, oh, if people don’t have any watches, there's a need they can fill, that there's some type of need that the person has just because they don’t have a watch. That's a mistake because all you're looking for is the propensity to take your desired action. That's it. Whether it's buying a belt, buying a watch, or even hiring a financial advisor. So far, so good, producer Jonathan?
Jonathan: I am with you 100%. [0:08:03.6]
James: And I know I mentioned this on the show before, but I always thought maybe you would do very, very, very well targeting people who already had podcasts. I know we talked about that in the past because I have The Advisor Coach podcast and relaunched with The Financial Advisor Marketing, but it's always been in the back of my mind that maybe that could be an avenue you take.
Jonathan: Thank you. I was just thinking as you were saying those words, "Man, I should really be advertising to people that have a podcast."
James: I wonder if there's anything that you can use or find that would demonstrate that people have a propensity to start a podcast or if there's any predictor that they'd be interested in it. I wonder if there's something… is there something like that? I'm not sure. Just thinking here.
Jonathan: You know where we're seeing it is in our book funnel. People buying books from us, I mean, probably 30% of them already have a podcast. Maybe just offering information to people who are already producing. [0:08:59.1]
James: Yeah, and that's just kind of like what we talked about at the beginning of the show with you're putting a piece of content out. You're strengthening. You're pretty good, there's something on LinkedIn, people are more interested or more likely to opt-in to your email list and it just funnels down. I see this with my own stuff, too. My best customers, and I love being transparent on the show. I literally break down my entire business. I give people everything. It's funny to watch some people try to copy it and it doesn’t work because they don’t have the stuff in the back, but anyway, my best customers are actually Inner Circle members and I don't know what it is, but it seems like as soon as someone becomes an Inner Circle member, they start buying all of the other stuff.
Jonathan: Lovely.
James: Yeah. And sometimes, it happens right away. Sometimes it's in the first 24 hours and sometimes it's within a week. It's obvious that they're getting something - they're consuming it - they're applying it. Then they're coming back for seconds essentially.
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: It's like they realized how valuable the stuff is and they finally recognize that, holy cow, I should have done this a long time ago. They don’t waste anymore time. [0:10:01.6]
They just start consuming everything, which is good because it means that by getting someone to become an Inner Circle member, I'm helping them in the best way I can because I know it will likely get them exposure to some of the other stuff and get them even more results and this is how marketing works for financial advisors as well. If you share a piece of content online - I'm going back to that same example - you are getting them, if they consume that piece of content, some of them will be more likely to pursuing the rest. You get them over to your website. You get them to a blog post. A certain percentage of those people will consume all of the other blog posts. They're going to get on your email list. All of a sudden, you've got them in your marketing machine and when it comes to financial advisors, going back to the overlooked niche thing, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, because I haven’t given it to you on a silver platter - if you haven’t figured it out, it's people who already have financial advisors. Just like it would be a mistake to ignore people who already have watches when you're selling watches, I've seen financial advisors make the mistake of excluding prospects simply because they already have a financial advisor. [0:11:05.4]
Hey, financial advisors, if you're looking for a way to set more appointments with qualified prospects, I invite you to sign up for James' brand new webinar about how financial advisors can get more clients with email marketing. Go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar to register today. On this webinar, you'll discover why email marketing is able to generate upwards of 4400% ROI for smart financial advisors, three fatal mistakes nearly all financial advisors make with their emails, and the proven three-step process for converting prospects into booked appointments using email. All you have to do is head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar and register today.
James: Financial advisors will hear the prospect say something like, "Oh, I already have an advisor" or my personal favorite, which is "I'm all set." That's a common objection in everything, when you're trying to…marketers that sell everything, "Oh, I'm all set." Set with what? I don’t understand. [0:12:03.1]
That's one that gets under my skin, but the reason that people who already have financial advisors make incredible prospects is because they've already demonstrated that they think having a financial advisor is important, which means you don’t have to waste your precious time and resources convincing them of that because that's step one - they have to have at least some level of interest. They have to demonstrate that propensity to do business with you. I would rather find someone who already knows my value than try to go after someone who is clueless about what I can do. The same is true across all businesses. I'm saying the same thing again and again in different ways just so you can get it. Just to be clear, I am not, absolutely not talking about poaching clients from another financial advisor because unless you have access to another advisor's client list, there's no way to directly target them anyway and getting access to that list, it typically requires some unethical or illegal behavior.
Jonathan: Yikes. [0:13:02.6]
James: Don't do that. Big disclaimer, Jonathan. I'm not advocating any illegal activity. Got to get that out of way. But what I am talking about is if you reach out to someone through your own efforts and your marketing machine that you already have running - if you reach out to someone and that person tells you that he or she already has an advisor, I'm telling you, it's probably in your best interest to keep following up and to at least keep that prospect in the loop and I am not recommending that you try to convince or persuade that prospect to leave his or her current advisor. Do not do that because you wouldn’t want someone doing it to you. Respect that boundary, but what I am saying - just to be clear, got to be crystal clear here for some of these people - what I'm saying is that statically speaking, some of those prospects are going to leave their advisors. It is a statistical certainty. You might as well be there when it happens. [0:14:02.4]
This is what any smart business person would do. For example, I used to go to a specific car dealership because it was only 10 minutes away, but they kept screwing up a lot, a lot, a lot, and I ended up driving an extra 30 minutes just to go to a different dealership, and they have never screwed up and I talked about them on the show before, where they have all the extras and the vending machine and the nice chairs and all that. I'm extremely happy. It's not like this one dealership reached out to me and was hey, you know, we know you go to x, y, z dealership, but we can offer you a better deal. That didn't happen. They didn't poach me from the other dealership. They merely existed. Right? They were there and they existed until I was unhappy with one dealership and I went to another, and I chose them because they were there and that's all it is. Just to be clear, that's what I'm talking about. Be respectful of your other financial advisors. But I do want to break this down a little bit. I'm about to break it down, producer Jonathan.
Jonathan: Alright. [0:15:02.4]
James: I want to break it down because this approach, it's very powerful. It's not sexy. It's not some tactic or whatever, but it can help financial advisors grow if they understand it. Here's the math behind all this. According to a study done by PriceMetrix, the average financial advisor loses between 5 and 10% of his or her business per year. Let's say you're a financial advisor and you've got 100 prospects in your pipeline who already have financial advisors. Throughout the course of your career, throughout a year, whatever, right, you've got 100. Statistically speaking, 5 to 10 of those prospects will leave their financial advisor in the next 365 days and if you have positioned yourself as a strong number two, don’t you think they'll at least consider you? I mean, use some common sense here, and according to that same study, it's called Stay Or Stray - you can look it up if you want - I mean, I'm not just making up numbers. You can look it up. [0:16:05.7]
It's called Stay Or Stray by PriceMetrix. Households with $100,000 in assets, they have a 13% chance of leaving their advisors during any given year. Let's run those numbers again. If you target 100 prospects who all have about $100,000 in assets, statistically speaking, 13 of them will leave their financial advisor in the next 365 days. That's a potential $1.3 million in assets you can add to your business in the next year from this one strategy alone, assuming you get all of them and you probably won't get all of them, but you can get a few. Is this going to be life changing? Probably not, but I'm not the guy here who's going to promise you the moon and the stars and have you be disappointed. I give you the real deal - sure, you can make some more money with this. It's probably not going to rock the boat too much or change your life or make you feel like a lottery winner. [0:16:59.9]
I'm giving you the real deal because you can get some money this way. You can get clients this way. It's a good tool to have in your toolbox and on the flip side of that, you need to make sure you work hard to keep your clients. What's your service looking like? Are you delivering for them? Because it doesn’t matter if you get a bunch of new clients if the old ones are leaving at the same rate. You don’t want to be the person who's losing the clients. You want to be the financial advisor who is getting the clients. The big idea with all this financial advisor marketing stuff is to get a net increase. You want more clients and more money, but only if it's above and beyond what you had before. Right? Nothing, not, or no breaking news there. Besides, acquiring a new client, it tends to be much more expensive and a lot of the marketing experts and gurus won't tell you this, but I will - getting that new client, the cost can, they rack up in both time and money. It's very expensive compared to just retaining an existing client. [0:18:01.5]
A lot of times, if somebody reaches out to me and they've already got a solid book of business, one of the first things I do is I'm, "Hey, how can we make your existing book of business stronger? How can we make this work a little bit harder for you? Because if you lose your clients, you're paying a much higher price than just the revenue that they take away from you. You have to factor in all of the resources that it took to get them. You have to factor in all of the resources it's going to take to replace them. If your cost to acquire a customer or a client is $1000 and you have someone who nets you $10,000 a year, if that person leaves, you're actually losing $11,000 or more because you're factoring in your time, but just dollars and cents, you're losing at least $11,000 because you've got to spend another 1000 to replace that person. Really, really think about this. This is a very important episode. I really can't believe I'm going to give this away on a podcast episode, but this is some good stuff. This strategy, it does take patience. [0:19:01.4]
You don’t want to push. You just want to continue educating your prospect, staying in touch, building the relationship. All that you're doing is just positioning yourself as a strong second choice. That's it. And you're not doing this instead of your other marketing strategies. You're doing it in addition to. That's why I wanted to start off the show with that question from that advisor because you're going to strengthen everything else. You're doing this in addition. You're looking for what can I add, and honestly, all of your other marketing strategies, they really should strengthen this. For example, if the prospect isn't on your email list, get that prospect on your email list. If the prospect isn't connected with you on social media, you want to get connected. You want to make sure that you're there for the 5-13% of clients who will leave their financial advisors. I don’t want to talk about own stuff too much but I've seen this with my coaching. I have seen it. One advisor reached out to me and I told him how much I charged and he was, "Oh. No thanks. I'll go somewhere else." I was like…
Jonathan: Dodged a bullet. [0:19:59.6]
James: Yeah. And it happens. I just wrote back, I was like, LOL in all caps because really, he said a lot more - I'm not at liberty to say these things on the show, Jonathan. Got to keep it clean for the children. I was like, "Ohhhkay," but then he came back a year later and he was talking about he hired someone else and it was a disaster and how he wasted a year of his life and how he just wished he had went with me from day one. So really take this strategy to heart and believe in it because if you believe in yourself and your business, know deep down that the prospect is better served with you anyway. If you really, truly, 100% believe in you and what you offer, you know that you can do a better job than that other advisor. You know that you can serve that prospect as a client better than the other advisor ever could in a million years, and if you don’t have that rock solid belief, it's just not going to work for you. I mean, for example, one of the reasons that I guarantee Appointments On Autopilot, I literally say, "If this doesn’t work for you, you get your money back within a year." [0:21:02.9]
The reason I do that is because I have a rock solid belief that the stuff works and it's just not belief. I see it every single day. So you have to have that same type of belief when it comes to your business, that you can do better and you can serve that prospect better than anyone else because otherwise, you won't have the cajones, the guts, to do what I'm talking about. That's the overlooked niche - prospects who already have financial advisors, and financial services is a relationship business. It really is. The idea is to build and grow a relationship so you're there when the prospect wants to make a change. Don’t neglect people simply because they already have a financial advisor. If they say, "Oh, I'm all set," don’t just leave because they could eventually make the switch. It would be a mistake on your part to brush them off. That's it for this week.
Jonathan: I don’t know what to say. I almost feel like you gave too much away there. What's coming up next time, James?
James: Next time, we are going to talk about some mistakes that cost you clients. Some of the mistakes that you could avoid as financial advisors. [0:22:08.0]
Jonathan: Yeah baby. Let's keep it - what do they say - it's cheaper to keep her?
James: Oh, yeah.
Jonathan: On the next one. Thank you, fam, for tuning in. That is a wrap for another Financial Advisor Marketing. We will be back in your ear buds next time.
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