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: Hey, financial advisors welcome to another episode of Financial Advisor Marketing. I want to start this week's episode with a story. I think you'll enjoy this. A state trooper pulled over an 87-year-old woman for speeding. And as he looked at her driver's license, he was surprised to notice that attached to it was a concealed weapons permit. So, some places it's called the CCW. Some places it's called the CPL concealed pistol license, but this lady had one. And taken aback, he couldn't help but ask; do you have a gun in your possession? Some states you have a, what's called a duty to inform where you have to let the officer know. And this lady obviously did that. So, she replied in her crackly voice. Indeed, I do why I have a 45 in the glove box and the trooper then asked if she had any other weapons in the vehicle. She said, I keep a nine-millimeter in the center console. Then the trooper asked is that all you're transporting. Then the little old lady held up, her person replied, well, I do keep a 38 special in my purse. And finally, the astonished officer asked, what are you afraid of? And the little old lady looked him dead in the eyes and replied not a gosh darn thing. So, I hope you enjoyed that little joke. Get into the marketing now. Thank you very much. I'll see myself out. [01:53.4]
Not too long ago, I posted online and asked advisors to share their biggest business and or marketing challenges. And a theme that kept coming up was this idea of marketing overwhelm. People described it in many ways. There's analysis paralysis, feeling stuck, trying to get everything together, trying to get everything to flow, not knowing where to begin and so on. These are all ways to describe feeling overwhelmed. I know because I've been there, I've had that same sense of overwhelm and I've had a lot of financial advisors in my inner circle and on my email list and listeners to this podcast who have emailed me with the same type of issues. So, I've helped a lot of people who have had this sense of overwhelm. And in this week's episode, I'm going to share some ideas that might help and might reduce that sense. [02:40.1]
When you look up the word overwhelm on dictionary.com, there are actually three definitions. The first one is bury or drown beneath a huge mass, then that can apply, if people feel buried by all the things they have to do, and then they feel like they have to handle marketing on top of all that stuff that. Somebody had said, they that I can't remember who it was. But actually a couple of people said that they felt like marketing took a back seat where they had to serve as clients and they had to run their business and do the administrative stuff. And then they just couldn't get a round to marketing. They couldn't do the things that they wanted to do. And then the second definition is defeat completely. And this also applies because sometimes I see financial advisors do nothing and that leaves them defeated. You can't get to where you want to go, unless you take the first step. And then the third definition is give too much of a thing to someone inundate. And this definitely applies. I kept seeing financial advisors say that there were so many choices. There were so many different things they could be doing, and they did not know where to begin. And in psychology, this is called the paradox of choice or over choice. [03:47.3]
If you Google over choice, you will see the paradox of choice. If you Google paradox of choice, you'll see over choice. I'm not going to get into the weeds of any studies or anything, but essentially this concept describes the fact that when people have too many choices, they tend to not make a choice at all. This is what happens with marketing overwhelm. And since we know there is a legitimate, psychological process, inhibiting financial advisors from choosing a marketing strategy we have a way forward. Because it means we can improve the chance of making progress by reducing choices. Now, of course, this is easier said than done. I get it because the first thing you might think of is, well, if I knew which choices to eliminate, then I would have eliminated them already. I get that. I understand. So, I'm going to help you. There are a few ways to do this. [04:36.2]
The first way, and this is what I would do before analyzing anything else is to, here we go, I've said this so many times on the show. There's so many people who just don't do it, but it works. Choose a specific group of people you would like to target as a niche. And it's kind of ironic that the first step to defeating marketing overwhelm and the paradox of choice is to choose something. However, I hope you don't have as many niche choices as you do from marketing choices. And if you want my help choosing a niche, I encourage you to check out TheAdvisorCoach.com/niche. I don't have time to detail stuff about niche marketing in this episode, because this is about defeating overwhelm, not necessarily niche marketing. But once you choose a niche, I want you to figure out where that niche spends its time. [05:26.2]
And I once saw a financial advisor, ask a group of other financial advisors to help him find his niche. He wanted them to literally help him find where these people spent their time. And I'm thinking, dude, if you can't find them yourself, or if you don't know where they are, then they should not be your niche, they should not be your target market. If you don't know where to go, if you need someone to hold your hand to find these people, then it is obviously not a good fit for you. Think about how dumb this is. I know virtually nothing about astronauts, so I would not choose astronauts as my niche. It seems so obvious. And I know there are people who say, oh, James just brings up obvious stuff. Well, yeah, because there are so many financial advisors out there who try to choose niches and they have no idea where the niche hangs out. They don't know anything about the niche and it's more common than you think. [06:14.1]
Another advisor told me he wanted to target real estate investors, but didn't know where to find them. Now let me be clear. I am not saying you have to have all the answers on day one. Nobody expects you to be a wizard in the beginning, but, if you have to have some sense of where these people are, you should have something to start with. Remember, this is about reducing the paradox of choice. If you don't have something obvious with which to start, you're never going to get started. Imagine having a bunch of milk in front of you, you've got goat, milk, almond milk, regular milk, like 2%. Then you've got skim, whole and chocolate milk. And you know, you like chocolate milk because it's excellent after a workout. And in case you didn't know. So, you use chocolate milk as your post-workout drink. And you know, you love chocolate milk. Well, you should probably just drink the chocolate milk. The reason choosing a niche is the first step is because once you choose your niche, you should see a few marketing strategies that are more effective than others. [07:14.9]
For example, if you choose a specific occupation, then LinkedIn is a no brainer for you. LinkedIn is ridiculously effective for financial advisors with occupation-based niches. However, if you choose something like left-handed Mercedes mechanics, then LinkedIn might not help you as much. Because even though it should be easy to find Mercedes mechanics, it's kind of hard to see if someone's left-handed over at least over social media. You're going to have a hard time. So, it would be much better for you to find a website or organization devoted specifically for south paws and try there. I know that's a goofy example, but I'm trying to get the gears spinning in your head. You probably wouldn't want to look for left-handed people or try to market exclusively left-handed people over LinkedIn. You would probably want to find an organization dedicated for left-handers. If you're a Simpsons fan, you remember that there was an episode where Ned Flanders opened a store specifically for left-handed people. You would want to get Ned Flanders on your side. You would want to have him as a strategic partner. You would want to look at the people who were coming in the store. Maybe if he has a list, you can rent that list. You would want to hook up with Ned Flanders and get it together, right? [08:26.0]
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. [08:48.5]
The next step to reducing marketing overwhelm is to analyze your personality. Here's advice that no other guru expert coach consultant or marketing company will give you. And if someone is giving you this advice, that person got it from me and should give me credit. I want credit where credit is due. I literally pioneered this idea in the financial advisor space. Again, this is going to seem obvious, but lots of people ignore the obvious stuff. They think they have complex problems. So, they look for complex solutions to their detriment. Sometimes marketing is a complex problem, I get it. But when it comes to reducing choices and reducing marketing overwhelm, it is a fairly simple solution, but it's just that people think it is so complex. They think that a simple solution cannot possibly work for them. So, they don't look for the simple stuff. [09:38.0]
One basic example of that is that if you are an introvert, you probably aren't going to succeed with networking events. If you're an extrovert, you probably aren't going to succeed with direct mail that requires you to lock yourself in a room and address envelopes or work with a mailing house. I would rather have someone pick a mediocre marketing strategy that is aligned with his or her personality than have someone pick an incredible marketing strategy and not do it. For example, email marketing is by far the most effective appointment setting strategy we are seeing right now, nothing else comes close bar. None. If you haven't gone through appointments on autopilot, you are missing out. I have no idea what you're doing with your life. I like it is just so effective. However, financial advisors will set exactly zero appointments with email, if they do not get started. So, if you don't, if even if you know all the facts about email, you understand how effective it is and you know how to use it, the way that I approach email is I don't want to toot my own horn, but here we go toot-toot, it's probably the most effective email marketing strategy for financial advisors ever devised. And if you just don't do anything with it, then you're not going to get any results. [10:44.2]
So yeah, I also want you to take a bunch of personality tests and I'm not even joking. The personality test, they give you a place from which to start to know yourself. I want you to really look at the results that you get, dig deep into your personality type to figure out how you tick. I don't care what Joe and Iowa is doing. I don't care what Billy Jim Bob in Indiana is doing. And I literally do not care, because the strategies that align with your personality will work best for you. Let me give you another example. I'm trying to load you up with examples in this podcast, because this is a big problem, apparently, and I want to help people with a lot of different examples. [11:24.2]
So, there's been some research done that has found that the E N T J personality type from the Myers-Briggs test earns the most money on average. There's something about that specific personality type again, E N T J that is likely to experience a more likely to experience financial success. On the other hand, there's research that suggests the I N F P personality type. Again, that's the I N F P personality type makes the least amount of money. Now, personality is not permanent. You can change your personality. I talked about that in an inner circle newsletter. So, I'm not going to talk about it here, but it does take some effort to change your personality. And most people don't do it. So, for the sake of this example, I will say that it's fixed whatever your personality is. In this example, I'm gonna say, you cannot change it. You're stuck with it for your entire life. So, if I had to lend money to someone to start a business and make it financially successful, my odds are going to be better with the E N T J. It's just that simple. That's why it's so dangerous to paint with a broad brush. I am all for inclusion and holding hands and singing songs together, but we are not the same. We have different tastes, different preferences, different desires. Fortunately, you can succeed in different ways. There's not just one way to succeed. Anybody who tells you there's just one way it’s just, they're selling you a load of crap and run the heck away. If someone told me there is one way to succeed in marketing as a financial advisor, I want you to kind of yet firmly request that they check themselves into rehab, because it's obvious that they're smoking the funny stuff. [13:04.6]
So, figure out how your personality type succeeds. And I just Googled I N F P personality type strengths and weaknesses before the podcast, in order to help you understand this a little better. So, here's what I found. One of the strengths of the I N F P. So, this is the personality type that where research suggests that they don't make, or they make the least amount of money on average. So, but one of their strengths is that they're empathetic, which means they can relate to people. So, in this case, case studies would be good. Stories would be good. Talking about others would be good. Maybe a podcast where you're talking with others that would work because you can interview people and they would tend to be good interviewers and people could pick up on that, that they actually care about people. Another strength is that these people with the personality type I N F P are creative. That's awesome. That's good for making content. So, if you're someone who wants to make videos or audio files, again, podcast sounds like a pretty good fit for I N F P’s, that would work. A weakness is that they tend to be unfocused. [14:07.5]
So, you, you would, if you're an I N F P, you probably want a software that will keep you in line that will send you alerts, push notifications to help keep you on track or hire somebody to keep you accountable. And you will shore up your weaknesses that way. If you want to do a podcast and The Podcast Factory will make sure you get it done. Another weakness is that people with this personality type tend to be self-critical. So, they pick apart everything they put out, and that could work against them, obviously. So, if you know this, if you know that you're self-critical, you can get someone to help you. So, you don't even see what's happening. Get a third party to just do the stuff for you. Or you can get a third party to critique your, to tell you what is great versus what sucks. You can remove your own judgment, but you, in order to even know what to do, you have to know your personality test in, know your personality in the first place. [15:03.7]
And finally, another way to reduce marketing overwhelm is to get the real data on how people actually choose financial advisors. I was reading some research from the spectrum group, which surveyed people about how they chose financial advisors. And they were asked to rank the importance of various factors. And they broke down the responses among baby boomers, generation X and millennials. The silent generation was also in there, but I'm just going to focus on these three because otherwise I would get really bogged down in the data. And what they found might shock you because there was a four-way tie for the most important factor to millennials. And it turns out millennials want an advisor who uses social media tools like LinkedIn…WHAT? Millennials want financial advisor, who uses LinkedIn. And so do other people and James Pollard is recommending LinkedIn, say WHAAT. And there, there are a lot of coaches and consultants and different people who say, oh, well, people don't care about track records anymore. They want socially responsible investing and they understand the performances and everything. And financial advisors just help them with their goals as well. It turns out actual millennials who are responding to a survey where they're presenting real data, and they're telling you exactly what they want. Now, of course, what people say and what they actually do are two different things. I get that. But when you have a survey like this and millennials actually give you their answers and you can kind of sorta weight it a little heavier than a lot of other things. So, it turns out they want the solid investment track record. Number three, they want low fees. And number four, they want someone who is perceived as being honest and trustworthy. That's obviously pretty important. [16:42.6]
Another interesting finding was that while only 3% of generation X respondents care, if a financial advisor is from a well-known brand or company, a whopping 11% of millennials ranked that as their most important factor. And it goes to show that a lot of the experts who harp about millennials, not caring about brands, have you read these things where, oh, millennials don't care about brands. They'd rather have a boutique advisor or they're not brand loyal. Umm…Hmm. You have no idea what you're talking about. Millennials also care deeply about their financial advisors’ websites. 11% of millennials said that an advisor's website was the most important factor, which means if you target millennials, the video training I have over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/website can help you. It can be the best thing you watch all year. It also helps you reduce marketing overwhelm. Because if you're someone who targets millennials, you now know 11% of them rank the financial advisor’s website as the most important thing. You have a track on which to run. You say, you can sit down and you can tell yourself, huh? It turns out that my target market really cares about my website. I should probably get my website in order. It's not rocket science. [17:48.8]
However, millennials do not care about referrals. Only 4% of millennials said a recommendation from a trusted associate was their most important factor when choosing a financial advisor. Only 4%, that's super low. And to give you some perspective, 19% of gen X said it was the most important factor, a recommendation from a trusted associate and 20% of baby boomers said it was the most important factor. So, the message is clear. If you're targeting millennials, you need to focus on things like your website, your social media accounts, specifically LinkedIn, your fees and your track record. If you're targeting baby boomers or those in generation X referrals can still be highly effective. My point with all this is to let you know that if you're suffering from marketing overwhelm and you're targeting baby boomers, you now have a clue about how baby boomers choose their advisors. If you serve millennials, you now know that you can avoid putting too much emphasis on referral marketing because the data doesn't support that. And as you remove choices, you remove the parent. You aren't subject to the paradox of choice anymore, and you reduce marketing overwhelm. [18:58.1]
You see, I don't just follow the crowd or do what's trendy. I do what works. I want to be the person who has helped you more than any other resource you've ever had in your entire life. With that said, I want to thank you for listening because that's a wrap for this week's episode. If you loved it, please leave a review and I will catch you next week. [19:16.4]
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