You're listening to Financial Advisor Marketing, the best show on the planet for financial advisers 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 advisers grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard. [00:31.7]
James: It's another week and you know what, that means. Another episode of Financial Advisor Marketing. If you haven't subscribed to the inner circle newsletter yet, make sure you go over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching and subscribe especially if you've been listening to these episodes for a long time. I don't want to burst your bubble or anything, but if you've been listening to this show for a long time and you haven't joined, you're missing a lot, like a lot, and that's a huge opportunity cost. And you would think someone involved in the financial world and financial markets and investments would understand opportunity costs. So, don't delay another day, head over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching and subscribe. Got that business out of the way. Producer Joe Nathan, happy to have you back. [01:16.7]
Jonathan: I thought you were going to tell them to stop freeloading and you didn't.
James: I always wonder. So, I see people spend money on watches, cars, shoes, cable, the fancy food restaurants. I love Morton's as much as the next person. I love Ruth’s Chris, as much as the next person, but I'll be darned if that takes the place of my personal growth and personal development. If it came down to it, restaurants got to go. Watch, got to go. Cables got to go. Shoes got to go. Nothing has taken a place. I guess some people just don't have that same drive. Maybe that's what it is. I don't know.
Jonathan: Indeed, my man. Well, good to be back. So, what do you have for us today James? [01:57.3]
James: Well, the title of the show is ‘4 Effective Ways to Generate Leads with Content Marketing.’ And I want to start off this show by talking about an email I sent right after the 2020 election. And it was all about how financial advisors can profit from uncertainty. And one of the things I talked about in that email was advice from the great Dan Kennedy on what to do when the future looks uncertain. Cause back in November, the 2020 election, everybody's freaking out, Oh, Donald Trump's sucks. Joe Biden's sucks, Joe Biden's great. Donald Trump is great. Everybody was just going crazy. The media was like in a frenzy because they knew that they weren't going to be able to do that for another four years. They got to wait and make all their money now. Right? That's kind of how the media works, but people were just, I don't know, they were in a different headspace. And I don't know if it's because of the Corona virus or whatever, but I went back to one of the great ones, Dan Kennedy and his advice was as follows. Number one, get your money together. Number two, establish a lifestyle supported only dividends from safely invested assets. If you can't do that because you don't have enough money invested. Well, guess what this message is for you. You better get off your butt and get to work and put the money together, stack the paper up so you can live off dividends. [03:10.7]
Number three, be prepared to opt out at a moment’s notice. If you're earning, if you're earning incoming, like literal earned income, and Joe Biden raises your taxes. This is not a political podcast; this is not me doing any political commentary and basically saying Joe Biden's president right now. If he decides to raise your taxes on an earned income, can you opt out? Can you get income from another source? Do you have passive income? Do you have dividend income? Do you have portfolio income? Gotta get your stuff together. Number four, home you live in paid off. I know that ruffles a lot of feathers. I know producer, Jonathan, you do a lot of stuff with real estate investors and that might go against the grain with them. But Hey, that's from Dan Kennedy. If there was one piece of information that I kind of sort of disagree with is that one. There, there are some instances where I'd be like, no, I don't really want to pay off the house. I want to have the ability to pay off the house at a moment's notice. [04:04.7]
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: I want to have the ability to write a check and get it out of the way, but I'm, I might not want to have the whole thing paid off. So, shout out to Dan, but hmm that's a toss-up. Number five, have enough cash to live the rest of your life, if all you do is eat principle. So, there's no income to be taxed at all. So that might seem extreme some people, but I think it's good advice because I always thought it was better to get rich now, rather than later. Work now, rather than tomorrow, this is the only logical choice because the future business environment is uncertain. I have no idea what the future holds. I don't have a crystal ball and neither do you. A lot of financial advisors when they're asked by clients and prospective clients, Hey, what is apple stock gonna do? They'll say I don't have a crystal ball, but yet they act like they have all the time in the world. They act like everything's going to be the same 10 years from now. They act like everything's gonna be same even two years from now. [05:00.9]
I've got news for you listeners. It's not going to be the same. It’s much smarter to play a game where you know the rules, you know what the taxes are today. You know what the business environment is like today. You know what people want today. I'm giving you the data. I'm giving you the stats. I'm giving you the information you need to succeed. So, you know the rules today. You won't know the rules five years from now. One of the ways to win, one of the ways to play harder, one of the ways to make more money is to improve your content marketing. That's what we're going to talk about today. So, we're going to talk about four effective ways to generate leads with content marketing. And number one is to stop creating skimpy content. I want to talk about this because it ties directly into helping financial advisors generate more leads. So sometimes when financial advisors start with content marketing, they will hire someone to crank out these little itty bitty 1000-word posts. And they'll use a service, maybe it already has canned content for them. This is not the way to go. You do not want to use the canned content, especially not if it's skimpy. It's okay to get your inspiration from the canned content. It's okay to see what other people are doing and see if it's performing well.
If you have a content library, you can ask the people who run the library and say, Hey, which of the posts have you noticed get more engagement than all the other posts? Maybe there's one that gets more engagement than all the others combined. You want to ask that question to get your inspiration from that post. [06:27.4]
One of the reasons why you don't want to use these, the canned content and the little itty-bitty skimpy content is because there is a direct correlation between how much time someone spends with you and how much that person implicitly likes you. This is backed by science. This is called the mere exposure effect. It states that people like things more if they're exposed to them more, it's that simple. If you get nothing else from this episode, understand that creating longer content means people were probably like you and your business more. And you don't even have to go deep into the science to understand how this can work for you. Use your common sense. Which person do you trust more, at least implicitly? I know that there are different factors. I know that you've got credibility and rapport and all these things, but just implicitly if you had to make a split decision, who do you trust more? The person who has a short five-minute clip talking about a topic or the person that has a 90-minute webinar, that goes really deep. It's obviously the second one. [07:24.3]
There's a reason why my email marketing webinar is 90 minutes. Those are the reason why a lot of my blog posts are 3000, four thousand five thousand six thousand seven thousand words long, because first I want you to spend more time with me. Second of all, I want to give you the actual information that you can use to succeed. And third of all, I know that it makes financial advisors trust me more. I'm just laying my cards out on the table. I'm showing you exactly what I do because it works. Marketing expert, I use that term mockingly sometimes. I say marketing expert, but this guy truly is an expert. His name is Neil Patel, and he did an experiment with longer content. He found out that when he increased the length of his content, people stayed on the page 40% longer than average. And not just that, they looked at 25% more pages than the average visitor. So, 40% longer time on page, they look at 25% more pages. It's not as if they're just spending more time on that page and then leaving. You're getting 25% more total website activity, which means you've got 25% more at bats to get someone to set an appointment. You got 25% more chances for someone to click to your about us page to another page on your blog, to your homepage, to your podcast, whatever you have, you're getting more activity. People can learn about you. They can set an appointment. All of those are good things. Is that a shocking statistic to you Jonathan? Did you know that? [08:52.5]
Jonathan: I, I didn't know that, but isn't that one of the reasons you do podcasting? Little long form content.
James: Yes, it is. And I don't know if you know this or not. I don't know if you're on these messages, but I've been asking cupcake to send me the audio player for this podcast. And I take the audio player and I put it on the blog post as well. And that increases time on page. I'm doing that for a reason. I don't know if you've seen that or not.
Jonathan: I have seen you doing that. And I also know that you're one of those nerdy SEO guys, and I figured it was keeping people around and giving you more chances to convert. [09:26.8]
James: Yes. Also, for the financial advisors who are SEO nerds, check this out. When I take my podcast or a video or whatever, both of them are well, it's just content that people can watch. So, let's say the podcast episode is 22 minutes long and I put it on my website and one or two people per week listened to the entire podcast episode on the page. Just one or two, nothing crazy. Well, that's going to jack up my average time on page, which Google is going to look at and they're going to say, wow, this website has a really high time on page. It must be incredible content. So, when Google thinks I have incredible content, what do they do? They tend to rank it higher. They tend to push it more. So, there's a reason. There's a method behind the madness here. So, take what I am telling you create longer, better content. [10:25.0]
Number two, tailor your content to your audience. I don't know who needs to hear this today, but here it is. Do not be afraid of excluding people. If you want to be exclusive, you must focus on exclusion. So many people are like, yeah, I only work with certain people. I'm exclusive. I've got account minimums. Good for you, but are you excluding people? Oh no. I would never exclude people. Okay. Then you obviously don't understand the word. You don't know what exclusivity means. That's just what it is. Your content isn't going to be for everyone. And that's okay. There are some people who they freaking hate this podcast. It's cool with me. I really don't care. This is that my business has never been more successful. The financial advisors, I help have never been more successful. And that's what really matters is their results. Anyway, I could care less about my results or couldn't care less. I got other sources of income. I can, I'll be just fine without The Advisor Coach. But the people who I help, they're getting more results. I care about them. I love them. I nurture them. I make sure that they are going to succeed. That is what really matters. And I exclude everyone else. [11:28.0]
If you don't want to be a part of my world, that's totally cool. But the people who are a part of my world are going to succeed. I'm going to help winners win more. You should apply the same type of thinking to your business. You need to choose a niche. You need to go deep with that niche. It's one of the best ways to generate more leads with your content. And here's why. According to a company called look, book HQ [11:48.0]
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 one thousand dollars’ worth of bonuses, including exclusive interviews that aren’t available anywhere else.
Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more. [12:10.3]
James: Cool name. 44% of marketers say that content production is their biggest challenge because they're worried about what type of content to create. Think about that. Nearly half of marketers with a straight face, they filled out this survey or answered this question and said, my biggest challenge is content production. I don't know what type of content to create. I don't know what to write about. I don't want know what to talk about on my show. I don't know what to talk about in a video. I don't know what to write about in a status update. They just don't know. Hmm. Well, when you choose a niche, this problem gets solved immediately because you begin seeing where your niche hangs out. You can see what they're talking about. You can see the opportunities; you can see their challenges and you can create content based on that. So financial advisors, do you understand what I just told you? [13:01.1]
Choosing a niche can help you solve the biggest problem. 44% of marketers space. You will be ahead of these 44, 44% of people in a snap of your fingers. It will be solved. And I promise you, if you chose plastic surgeons as your niche, and you started reading 20 different plastic surgery blogs, you'll see some of these same themes come up again and again and again. And here's another piece of absolute gold for you. Okay, if you're driving, you might want to pull over. If you're at the gym, get off the treadmill and listen to me, take some notes. Get your note taking app out on your phone, get a piece of paper and a pen or something. Here's what you want to do. [13:43.6]
You want to set up a Google alert for your niche plus money. In this case where the plastic surgery niche, you will set up a Google alert for plastic surgeon plus money. So, your keyword will be plastic surgeon money.
That way, whenever any articles are published, that talk about plastic surgeons and money, you will get an alert. You will see what they're talking about. This can give you tons of content ideas by itself. You could do plastic surgeon investment, plastic surgeon financial planning, financial advisor plastic surgeon, whatever it is like, just set up the Google alert for it. And you will get content ideas quite literally delivered to your email inbox. Tailoring your content to a specific audience, a niche is the smart thing to do because it enhances your authority and enhances your credibility. People want to see content about them. They want to find a financial advisor who serves them. If you can be that person, you'll be miles ahead of everyone else. And hopefully Jonathan is going to set up a Google alert for The Podcast Factory. Perhaps you've already done it. I, I be willing to bet you've already done something like that. [14:54.4]
Jonathan: We have a Google alert, but I thought you were going to say, listen, listen to your clients, they're giving you content ideas every time you talk to them.
James: Oh totally. Without a doubt. If you have the same questions, come up again and again, that that's a piece of advice. That's pretty common. I know that I hate on a lot of, of the vague theories and like good ideas or whatever that genuinely is a good idea that I've seen offer where just listen to your clients. If they're asking a certain thing, if they, if they're confused about something, I know one of the podcasts factory members, Brandon Neely, he has a lot of objections that come up with cash value life insurance. And they're just the same objections that come up again and again and again. So, what does he do? He creates podcast answering those questions that are handling those objections, whatever you want to call it. So, if somebody asks him something where it indicates that they don't understand a critical part of the process, rather than trying to explain everything and getting, writing out a long email or responding in some way with a video or whatever, like a loom video, I should say, he says, Oh, I actually recorded a podcast episode about that two years ago. And that's way more impressive than just trying to scramble to handle the objection or whatever the sales trainers are calling it these days. [16:08.7]
So, number three is, do not forget about your content once it's created. I don't care what people say, content marketing, it's not set it or forget it or set it and forget it, I should say. In the case of something like a blog post hitting published is only the first part of the game. It's only the first step. You still have to promote it. You still have to get it in front of people. There are so many different ways to promote content. These days, here's a few. Linked to your best piece of content in your social media header like Facebook. You can have an arrow pointing to a button in your Facebook header, or you can write the URL in the header itself. I do that.
When you go to my actual LinkedIn profile, you will see TheAdvisorCoach.com. I've got my URL in my header. If you look at my Facebook header, you'll see that I actually do this with the podcast. My Facebook header says, search financial advisor marketing, wherever you listen to podcasts. It's an easy win. Whenever someone looks at your Facebook page, it looks at your LinkedIn page, they'll see your website there. Of course, you want to have it in your headline too. Maybe you can take advantage of something else in your headline. I don't know. But if you have a link to your content pieces in your header, in that photo, it's going to draw attention. [17:21.6]
You can share your content with online groups like LinkedIn groups, like Facebook groups, there are tons of different groups online. You can create a call to action and put it on your website's homepage. People are attracted to new stuff. If you have something on your website homepage, and it says new content or recently published something like that, people are more likely to check it out because they’re attracted to new. They want something new. Whenever I post something on LinkedIn and I say, just published this blog four minutes ago or something like that. I get more clicks than if I just share the blog and try to entice people. I'd tried to write curiosity, style status updates, or whatever. I have, I very rarely beat just publish this four minutes ago because when people see, Oh crap, he just published this. I better be one of the first people to check it out. That's how people think. And that's how they approach the content. You can also create a content library. This is different from a blog because it's not going to be only written content. [18:15.7]
It should have all sorts of content you created broken down by topics for people. That's one way to do it. If you have a video and a blog post about 529 plans, you can put them together in the content library. So, you'll say here's information I've created about 529 plans. I've got a video, if you like video, I've got a blog post if you like the written word. You can share the link with other content creators in your niche. This is some amazing advice I've told inner circle members how to do this. I'm not going to share it on the podcast. You can pay for online advertising, if you're allowed to do that. You can link to in your content to other pieces of content, I do that if you go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/blog, and you check out the blogs there, you'll see that I have links in my content to other pieces of content. If I have a paragraph talking about a certain marketing strategy like Facebook ads, I'll probably have a link to my blog article that talks about nothing but Facebook ads. That is very, very effective. Share your content on social media. You can email your list with new pieces of content. All of these are ways for people to consume your content and move closer to setting an appointment with you and becoming clients. So once again, do not forget about your content once it's created. Promotion is 80% of the game. I know you had the 80-20 rule, 80% of your results are going to come from, from promoting. Make sure you promote your content. [19:38.1]
Number four, create a content marketing calendar. I know that content marketing can be overwhelming. Even I get overwhelmed sometimes. So, I can only imagine how you feel if you're not well-versed in this stuff.
So, one of the things I recommend that you do, especially if you're new to this, if you've never really done content marketing seriously before create a content marketing calendar. You can Google it, there, there are so many templates online. I do not have a template because they're so easy to find. And there's just a bunch of them. I'm not going to create another one in saturate the market. So just Google it, creating a content marketing calendar, look at a template. But my advice for you when you're starting, this is don't, over-complicate it. All you're doing in your calendar. You're laying out what content you'll create, due dates for that content and when and how, you’ll your share it. [20:30.4]
For example, you may want to create a blog post about how dentists can the value of their practices. That's a good topic, especially if you're niche is the dentist niche. And let's say you want to get it done by July 15th.
So, you start with that due date on your calendar. You say this blog about boosting the value of the practice. Due July 15th. You put it in there and you work backward. You figure out when you need to get started creating that content. And then after that schedule in some time to promote it and then write how you're going to promote it, create a game plan. Say, I'm going to start writing on July 1st. It's due July 15th. I'm going to hit publish for sure on July 15th. Then on July 16th, 17th, and 18th, I'm going to post on LinkedIn one day. I'm going to post on Facebook the next day. I'm going to share it with groups. I'm going to put some money behind it in a paid ad, whatever you want to do, but make sure you have your plan in place on your content marketing calendar. Because having that calendar keeps you on track. It eliminates uncertainty from your business and it keeps you from waiting around. It keeps you from being the type of person who's like, Oh, I need to be inspired. I need to have inspiration. Like other people can have inspiration and sit around and wait all day but not you. It lets you plan ahead, batch your work and avoid multitasking. And most importantly get stuff done. So that is like absolute gold for content marketing. I think I'm going to give you one more tip. [21:55.5]
You should plan for holidays and important days related to your niche. Put those in your calendar right away. If you're starting today, look at the next 365 days and map it all out. If you specialize in working with dentists, we'll continue with that example. You better know that National Dentist Day is March 6th and you better know the dental hygienist week is the second week in April. Merely knowing this and putting it in your calendar saying, okay, March 6th is National Dentist Day. I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to have a bunch of content showing dentists that I appreciate them. I'm going to show them that I am involved in their world. I know about this. Like that's going to set you apart from everyone else. And it allows you to capitalize on it when the time comes. And honestly, having a calendar like this as a financial advisor can help you with a lot of compliance headaches, because you can get stuff approved by compliance far in advance. If you know that you're going to do something on March 6th of next year, you can get your content approved before that and be ready to strike. So that removes a lot of headaches. It removes a lot of the stress, a lot of the anxiety that comes with this process. [23:05.8]
So, to recap, we're going to wrap up the show. The four effective ways for generating leads with content marketing as a financial advisor, they are number one, creating long form content instead of short skimpy content. Number two, tailoring the content to your niche. Number three, promoting your content once it's created and realizing that hit hitting, publish or post or whatever, that's only the beginning of the content marketing strategy. And number four is creating a content marketing calendar to streamline the process and to make things easier for you. That's it for this week. [23:43.4]
Jonathan: Boom, boom pow. What do you have coming up for us next time, James?
James: We're going to talk about How Financial Advisors Can Deal with Burnout
Jonathan: All right, looking forward to that and another Financial Advisor Marketing has come to an end. But worry not, we will be back in your earbuds next time. Thank you for tuning in. [24:03.1]
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