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: Welcome to another episode of Financial Advisor Marketing. I am so grateful that you're listening. I appreciate you. I want to help you grow. This week, we're going to discuss a few inbound marketing mistakes financial advisors make and how to fix them. And I want to share, I want to share a little, little something. Something had happened to me this morning. So, a financial advisor who got on my email list, who opted in through my opt-in form, who has read every email that I've sent and clicked almost every link that I've sent him so far responded to one of the emails that I sent from my auto responder sequence. And he asked me, James does email marketing work. You tell me! You're on my list. You got there through my opt-in. You are responding to an email that you got from me that was sent out automatically and you'd click it almost every link. What do you think? I just responded back. Yes, LOL. It works. And I, I was just like, I couldn't even, I didn't even want to be mean or rude or anything. Sometimes I'm a little snippy with people when they ask stuff like that. But I was nice, Jonathan, this time. [01:57.0]
Jonathan: You feeling, okay?
James: I came from the past. What would you do? What would you do if someone was on your email list and they responded to your email, they listed, they opted into, and they responded to, they asked you does email marketing work?
Jonathan: I would respond now. And then I would write an email, making fun of them. And then I would.
James: Let me write that down in my notes. It's just, it's, it's just so weird that people don't, it's called like a meta lesson. That's what it is. And I, I, want to write, about meta lessons in the future inner circle newsletter issue, because there's a lot of meta value that I've gotten from observing people. And they think the value is in the lessons they provide, like do this, not that here's number one, number two, number three, they think that is the value. But there exists something called meta value, just like metacognition, where you're thinking about yourself, thinking and that sort of thing. There's the value behind the value where I observed the processes that they use to get message to me. I observe the systems that they have that exists independently of them. And that is the value that I'm getting from these people when I watched their moves, the big players, the big investors, the, the billionaires of the world there's systems that they have, that sort of thing is really, really incredible. [03:17.6]
How the, and I, I mean this in the nicest way possible, how the average person cannot extract this meta value from things when they see them. It could be right in front of their faces where yes, email marketing obviously does work. What do you want me to do? Spell out. Yes, here's what you should do and what you should not do. That's the straight up value. And there's a time and a place for that, but the money for people who extract it and happily extract it and make money and understand how the world works and how the marketplace works. They know the monies in the meta value and it always has been, always will be. Let's chat about some inbound marketing stuff. I don't know if you saw this producer, Jonathan, but I changed my profile picture on LinkedIn. [04:02.1]
Jonathan: Yeah, you know, I was going to ask you who the hell, that stuff shirt was on. And then, and then I noticed it was you. What happened there?
James: So that was the speaking engagement that I had. And we did some headshots for that engagement. And I figured that after five, six years, something like that, it was time to change my profile photo.
Jonathan: Good God, man!
James: So, I took that picture and I uploaded it. Well, first I asked people if they liked number one or number two, like the photos better, and everybody liked the number one photo. So, I was like, alrighty, here we go. So, I changed it. And people like, where's your hoodie, where's your hoodie?
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: Where's your hoodie? And I get it. It's cool to have like a personal brand and stuff like. People, I wear other clothes!
Jonathan: Come on, now. You went and bought that suit for that photo. Shit! Get out of here. You don't own suits.
James: I bought that suit. So, my last “real” speaking engagement in front of human beings where I could shake hands, kiss babies, and maybe pimp slaps some disrespectful people. Can't do that over a computer. I can't pimp slap people. Unfortunately, I wish I could. Oh my God, that would be nice. Just reach through that zoom and just, Whap… But, but no, I bought that suit. And the last, either the last week of February, the first week of March of 2020, and I had it custom tailored. And it was then that I learned that I have an awkward neck.
Jonathan: Hmm. [05:26.8]
James: Because when you get a custom tailor, they take the load tape out and all that. So, I, I, I have gotten suits before. This is not my first time getting a suit. I've gotten suits in 2014, 2015, 2016. Like every year I'll get like a nice suit. And in 2019, my neck was perfectly fine.
Jonathan: Hmm.
James: Nothing wrong. I got a beautiful neck in 2019, but something happened between 2019 and 2020 that when the guy measured my neck in the store, he went, I'm going to try and recreate this for you. So, we were standing and he measured one leg and then the next leg. And I was like, so just curious, why do you measure the leg like that? He's like, well, some people have their legs are different lengths. I was like, really? They're like, yeah. Sometimes just like half an inch or an inch. They have different, the right legs longer than left leg. And maybe they have hip problems. I was like, okay, cool. And he was like, you got equal length legs. I was like, good to know. They did the arms equal lengths, arms. Great. You know, so far so good. And he measured the, went around my neck and his expression changed. His demeanor changed. And he was like, Hmm. As like, what, what, what's wrong? What? Cause I, I don't, I don't have two necks. It's not like one neck is going to be longer than the other neck. I was like, what, what is it? He was like, oh, you just have an awkward neck. [06:49.1]
Jonathan: Wow. Thank you.
James: Okay. How's that even possible? I just thought I have an awkward neck, but apparently, I do. And I'm proud of it, but enough about the neck. So, I got comments, I got messages, I got emails. People are like, why are you wearing a shoe? Why are you wearing a suit and tie? Like people, I wear suits and ties. Here's the real, real truth. I'm going to give it to you straight. So, there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, in the Advisor Coach. There's a lot of stuff that you don't see. I've talked about this with you, Jonathan, on zoom calls, like in last year and the year before that, you know that there's a, there's a healthy stream of revenue at the Advisor Coach that most it's not front facing essentially.
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: And there's a lot of, we get a lot of media inquiries. A lot of people reach out to us. They want to use my quotes. Maybe they want to use a quote from someone else within the Advisor Coach. And when they do that, they asked for headshots. And up until that point, I've been sending them the gray, old profile photo that I've had. And some people say, yes, some people say no. And I just got upset with people saying, no. I wanted to make sure that we had a system in place where the inquiries would be accepted. So, if someone reaches out and they say, Hey, James, I really liked your productivity article. Can I copy and paste this quote? And can you send a headshot over? I want to know that they're going to say yes to that headshot. That's like the real reason why I changed the profile. And now we have a system in place where they would just take that photo. So that's it, that's like the real reason. Does that make sense? [08:19.9]
Jonathan: You want to make your life easier. You don't like being rejected. So, you put on that monkey suit. I got it.
James: Totally. And the second reason is because, so I mean, it's just nice to wear a suit. It's more professional. Suit and tie is more professional. We can all agree that.
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: The reason that people see me wearing hoodies and t-shirts and stuff is because most, I would say 99% of the time when I record a video, I'm at home. So, I'm not going to wear a suit and tie in my house. Like, it's that simple. And I think anybody who wears a suit and tie in their house outside of like a job interview or something. Cause I mean, obviously you want to dress to impress. You want to dress and be respectful and that sort of thing. But if you're just working with people and you're networking and you're just trying to give people some advice, don't wear a suit, it's just disingenuous. And when I see people wearing suits in their houses and you got like a couch behind you and a painting or something like, what are you doing? You're obviously trying to fool people or to pretend you're something that you're not. So that's why I wear hoodies and stuff in video, because I'm not going to try to pretend to be someone I'm not, but I do wear other clothes. [09:31.1]
Jonathan: All right. I was wondering about that, I'm so glad you brought it up. Cause I, I thought there was something wrong with the world.
James: Yeah. Well apparently, it's working well because more people are engaging with me on LinkedIn. More people are reaching out, but, and that's kind of sad too, that you kind of have to project this image like, oh, a suit and tie.
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: To get people to take it more seriously. That's, that's sad and that's a commentary on society, but let's get into this episode. I want to start by making one thing clear. There has been a push recently for advisors to do nothing but inbound marketing. Inbound marketing, it's a hot buzzword I say now, but it's been hot buzzword for about a year or two. And while I think inbound marketing is amazing, you still need to think like a business owner because a lot of businesses can't afford to sit down and wait and wait and wait for inbound marketing to produce results. So, it's not an either-or thing you should not do either inbound marketing or outbound marketing. [10:29.2]
You want to do both. Again, this is multiple marketing strategies coming back up again. You want to do things to get you clients today while building assets that gets you clients tomorrow. Because if you're a brand-new financial advisor, you probably don't have months to wait for your blog to generate inbound leads. You have to do something to get clients right away and not necessarily in a needy desperate way, but you need to get the needle moving. Also, I want you to understand inbound marketing isn't something you do once. It's not necessarily an item you check off your to-do list. It's like, well, it's like an ecosystem. It's constantly evolving and changing depending on what you introduced to it. Like an ecosystem changes when you introduce a new animal to it. If there's a predator from Japan and we take that Japanese predator and we put it in France where it could just eat up all the prey in France, the ecosystem has been changed and there are going to be consequences to that. [11:27.3]
This is the same thing with life, with business, with your marketing, if you are creating blog content and you revamp your LinkedIn profile like I did with a new profile photo. By the way, if you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn, make sure you go over to LinkedIn and type in James Pollard, the adviser coach, and I should pop up. If I don't, I'm not marketing well enough, so. But if you revamp it and your profile is now generating more inbound leads, you will probably mention your profile more often, just like I did. It will change the ecosystem. From there, you can make business decisions based on your results. That's how this works. So, let's talk about mistakes. [12:06.8]
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. [12:29.3]
James: The first mistake is using content only as a direct sales tool. Notice how I'm saying only as a sales tool, because if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know, I love selling. I'm constantly selling what I have to help financial advisors because I provide incredible results in their lives. I love what I do. I want to spread that message as much as I can. For example, if you're not an inner circle member yet, make sure you subscribe over TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. It's the best thing you could possibly do for your business. If you are only going to get one thing from me, it should be that. So selling is awesome. However, it would be a mistake for me to use my content for nothing but a direct sale. That's why I give people other opportunities to get into my world. They can read my blog. They can subscribe to my email list or they can watch some of my videos and webinars. All of those things are free, but they serve a purpose because they give people an opportunity to stick around. [13:31.0]
So, this is not a direct sales tool, at least not all the time. And it doesn't have to be, but it's, it sells something. It sells another opportunity. It sells another movement. It's not necessarily selling the appointment. I should clarify and say, a direct sales tool for the appointment or a direct sales tool, where money is going to be exchanged. We're always selling. We're constantly selling, but money doesn't necessarily have to change hands right away. So, if you are putting yourself in a box where your content is always and only leading to an appointment, you might want to change that because in the same sentence, financial advisors, they hurt themselves when they don't give prospective clients the opportunity to do other stuff where the marketing materials. For instance, I think financial advisors should have opportunities for people to set appointments, not just with the content, but all throughout the websites. It should go both ways. If the reading, the blog content, and they want to set an appointment, they can, if they don't want to set an appointment, they can still stay in the advisor’s world. Because I mean, that's what you want. You want appointments, but only offering an appointment there is a mistake, because only a handful of people at any given time already to set an appointment with you. [14:41.2]
Now, what about all the other people? What about the traffic, you pay to get with your time, your energy, your money? If you let those people get away, you're flushing money down the so that may seem vague, but let's run through a checklist. If people are checking you out on LinkedIn, do you give them away to stick around outside of your LinkedIn profile? This is critical. If people are reading your website content, do you have a way to stay in touch after they leave your website? Again, this is critical. The best way to do this is with email marketing. I'm not going to talk about email marketing too much on this, in this section or in this podcast, but email marketing is the best way to do this. If people get your emails and unsubscribed, for whatever reason, do you have a way to still stay in front of them? I've had a few financial advisors tell me that they create a separate folder for my emails, so they don't read them as they come in. They will look at the folder every week or so and they read all seven emails or maybe they'll read it every two weeks. So, when I'm checking my email stats in real time, it can look like they're not engaging, but that doesn't matter because I still have ways like this podcast to stay in front of them. [15:53.4]
So, using your inbound marketing materials, only as direct sales tools means you're leaving money on the table. This is one of the ways where if you're a financial advisor, I can quite literally guarantee I can get you more clients if I see that I can help you in this area. This is one of the things I would look for. If I was doing coaching. I would go to the financial advisor’s website. Like I'm giving you this right here at for free. I would go to the advisor website. I would go to the social media profiles and I would make sure they check these boxes. And if they don't check these boxes and I'll be like, yeah, I can help you. I guarantee I could get you more clients. I guarantee I can make you more money than what I charge. So, it's really that simple. [16:31.6]
The second mistake, inbound marketing mistake is failing to track key performance indicators. Let me ask you a few questions financial advisors. How many inbound marketing messages have you gotten so far this month? Do you know? Is it better than the same month last year? If a thousand people visit your website, how many people will set an appointment with you? Do you know? Keeping a close eye on your KPIs is the bare minimum that you should do because by tracking your activity, you can get a good idea of what works in what doesn't. If blog posts A converts, 5% of your visitors and blog posts B only converts 2% of your visitors. Well, you can boost your business by doing more posts like A instead of B. Here's a real example from my website. I'm not going to name the post because a lot of so-called experts listen to the show. And I know they will copy me as soon as I say what it is. So, I'm not going to reveal it. [17:28.4]
I have a blog post on my website right now, today that converts 18% of visitors, readers, whatever you want to call them into email subscribers. That's not a landing page that is not an opt in form where I send them directly to the page, and I say, Hey, opt-in and get this free gift. That is not what this is. This is a blog post. So, when you consider that the average opt-in inside of a blog post gets something like one to 2%. This means I'm doing literally 9 to 18 times better than average on this post. I also have a blog post that converts 2% of visitors into subscribers. So that's average, right? So, if I have an advertising campaign coming up and I need to create a link, I need a link to a blog post and I want to figure out which article I should include in that ad. Don't you think that's a handy piece of information to know, because if I pay $1 per click, one article is going to get me email subscribers for $5 and 55 cents. And the other one would get me email subscribers for $50. So, if I ran the wrong one, that would be a very expensive mistake. And you know, the most important KPI for inbound marketing, I don't want to say this is the most important for all of marketing, but within inbound marketing is to know how many inbound inquiries you're getting. This is like inbound leads. This is how, how many people are reaching out to you to learn more about what you do to set an appointment with you, that sort of thing. This is the most important thing you want to track within inbound marketing. And you want to make sure that it's growing. [18:59.7]
And in my experience, the best way to keep track of this stuff is to use a CRM. If you're not using a CRM, you will transform your business when you begin using one. If you've never used one before, the one I recommend is Capsule. If you want to go to Google and you type in the Advisor Coach CRM recommendation, I have an entire article about that. One more time TheAdvisorCoach.com/. Well, actually I don't know the URL, but just go to Google type in the Advisor Coach CRM, best CRM for financial advisor, that kind of thing. And it will pop up because we're pretty good at the whole SEO thing and we show up in Google so. We practice what we preach. You could use HubSpot, if you've used a CRM before, and you're a little bit more comfortable with advanced features. They have a lot of features that are good for large teams, for people who are selling something but not, and well I mean, for the financial advisors who are just starting out it’s not so good. Because financial advisors who had never used a CRM before want a simple process, they got to get comfortable with it first. So that's why I recommend Capsule. Someone who they go from a lead to a prospect, to a qualified prospect to a client is what you want to track. And you want to have that lead out in your CRM. [20:12.2]
I don't want to; I don't want to detail this too much because we talked about this in other podcast episodes and it's in 37 sales steps for financial advisors, if you want to buy that. You want to be able to log into your CRM at any time and see how many people you have in each category. At the drop of a hat, he wants to, how many leads do I have? I can get it. I can get that information. How many prospects do I have? I can get that information. How many qualified prospects do I have? I can get that information. So, make sure you use a C R M. And another reason you want to use a CRM is because it helps you avoid the third mistake, which is mistake number three, failing to follow up. [20:52.4]
Having a CRM, it also lets you see how many times you've followed up with prospective clients. You can get as fancy and as technical as you want with this, you can hook up your CRM to your email marketing software. You can keep track of which emails get opened. You can hook your CRM up to your calendar software. You can see when they’re book, when they’re rescheduled, you can enter everything manually, if that's your cup of tea, it doesn't matter to me. But make sure they're linked somehow, make sure you're keeping track of the data and make sure that you know where people are coming from. All I care about is you having the data so, you have an accurate, that's an important word, accurate view of what's happening in your business. If you log into your CRM and you see the John Smith subscribed to your email list and has opened every email and clicked on your appointment link five times, but hasn't set an appointment, this is what us marketers call an opportunity. Ding, ding, ding. This is a chance for you to get an appointment. So, here's what you can do. You can send John a manual manual email. This means you're typing it now. It's not in your auto responder. You are going into your email account and you are writing this email to John. You explain to John that your software keeps track of clicks, be upfront with him. Otherwise, it's creepy because he won't know how you know, Hey clicked on link. [22:11.8]
Jonathan:
James: like don't say, Hey, I saw you clicked on the link five times. Why haven't you set an appointment? So don't say that. Say, Hey, I've got this fancy pants tracking software. My emails are automated, you probably already know that. And the software I used automated by emails; it shows me that you've clicked on the link five times. I'm just curious. No pressure. Why haven't you sent an appointment yet? Just ask, be bold victory favors the bold. Fortune favors the bold. Give him a few times that he's open to say, Hey, a lot of people that I work with, they're interested in topics, A, B and C. I see those are the ones that you clicked on. Ask if you can schedule something manually for him. All he has to do is respond, let you know what works and you can set it up. [22:53.4]
BOOM! That one tip alone, going in there manually seeing that John's clicked. You say He say, Hey John, he's obviously interested. I'm going to say, Hey, what times work for you? Can I help you with anything? Can I answer any questions? Whatever you want to say. That one tip alone is more valuable than 99% of the so-called content out there. When you have an accurate view of how many times people have been contacted, you can go in there and you can make sure everybody gets at least five touches. Or I mean, whatever you want to do, you want to six, seven. I recommend at least five because all the data shows that the majority of conversions have happened after five touches, you can make a judgment call. It just ensures that nobody falls through the cracks. [23:35.3]
And another tip, when it comes to follow up, I want to give you this and then I'm going to wrap up the show. Make sure you follow up correctly in that involves two things. First follow up quickly. When you get an inbound inquiry, the faster you respond, the better. This doesn't mean that you take your time away from your high value activities. If you have an assistant, put that person in charge of monitoring the inbound leads, make sure they get flagged or alerted somehow don't miss them. Make sure that you get back to people as quickly as you can. I almost never recommend stopping a known variable in favor of an unknown variable, which is why I say to have someone else do it. But if you don't have anybody else, I mean, and you would want to follow up quickly so you can do it. Just it's like a backbone. All hands-on deck. Got a follow up with the question. Second, follow up in the manner. It, this is it's crazy to me. How many financial advisors don't do this? And they don't understand it. Like it just like face palm every time. [24:32.6]
Follow up in the manner in which they reached out to you. If someone emailed you asking a question and that person's phone number is in the signature for the love of all, that is good and holy don't call them. I know some sales trainers tell you to do this. I know they do. It is a mistake, especially with younger people. Of course, I can't speak for all younger people, but for me personally, it is a mistake. It is a huge pet peeve. The financial advisors who have embraced the combo prospecting strategy that I recommend, they have found this to be the case as well, because they're, they're combining like email and phone and direct mail and all this other stuff. If somebody responds with a phone call and you email, it's frustrating for the prospective client. If they email you and then you call it, it's frustrating for them. So don't do that. [25:24.0]
And to wrap up the show, here are the three inbound marketing mistakes, if you're taking notes. Number one, using content only as a direct sales tool, you want to make sure that you're giving people opportunities to do other stuff than just an appointment. You want to make sure that they have an opportunity to stay in your world even if they leave your website, even if they leave your inbound marketing material. Mistake number two, failing to track your KPIs and mistake number three is failing to follow up and follow up correctly. And that is it for this week. [25:55.4]
Jonathan: BOOM! A master class on content marketing. James, what do you have coming up for us next time?
James: We're going to get deep into what I like to call the most neglected yet profitable marketing strategy for financial advisors.
Jonathan: Hmm…There he goes with that little curiosity button being pushed. That means you're going to have to come back next week. Thank you, James. Thank you, fam, for tuning in and we'll be back in your earbuds next time. [26:21.5]
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