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: Ladies and gentlemen, boys, and girls of all ages gather around because I have a special announcement. Financial planners, financial advisors, Certified financial planners, and everyone in between ……. let's get her ready to market!! God, that was awful, wasn't it? That was my ring announcer practice there, trying to get into the ring announcing games. So, this week is actually going to be, oh God, it's going to be 20 Things I Wish Financial Advisors Knew About Marketing. And I wrote an email with the subject line 20 Things I Wish Financial Advisors Knew About Marketing and it did really well. So, I was like hot diggity dog, I should probably turn this into a podcast episode. So here I am. [01:15.1]
The very first thing I wish financial advisers knew about marketing is that having a niche makes marketing more effective. I've said this so many different times on the show. It is still true, things haven't changed. Almost any marketing campaign can be made more effective, it can be improved by making it specific to a group of people. This is one of the easiest wins I can give financial advisors and I am amazed at how many people still refuse to niche down. One specific example, I could go on and on. I've done several podcast episodes about niche marketing, but I'm going to give you one specific example here. It involves getting clients with LinkedIn. So, I posted a poll on LinkedIn, and I asked people, how many clients have you gotten from LinkedIn? I said zero, one to five, six to 10 and more than 10. And a lot of people voted. I was shocked at how many people voted. I looked at the profiles of the people who voted zero. And I saw that almost none of them focused on a niche. Like maybe there was one, maybe there was two, but like virtually every single one did not have a niche in the headline. [02:09.3]
And one person was like, I didn't, I haven't gotten any clients. And his headline was like Principal at XYZ, wealth management or whatever the company name was. And I'm sitting here thinking, well that's because people think you work at a school dude. Like people think you're a little old principal at a school. The general public doesn't know what principal at your company means. They don't get it. You and I know you and I understand it, but they don't get it. But if you said something like financial advisor or financial planning, helping a certain niche, and people saw that in the headline, then they would be more apt to take action. And I also messaged several advisors who voted more than 10 because I, you know, I want to know what they're doing. Maybe they're doing something I don't know about. I'm not so arrogant as to think I know everything. I'm definitely not. I got to humble myself every now and then. So, I messaged them and I said, Hey, like, what are you doing? It's totally cool, if you want to keep it a secret, if you don't want to tell me, that's fine. But if you do, then let's hear it. And overwhelming response was that they were focused on a niche. And this makes sense, because if you're a financial advisor again, and your headline says something like financial advisor, helping teachers retire with peace of mind, teachers are far more likely to send you an inbound message. This is not hard stuff. So just really think about that in niche marketing makes everything way more effective. [03:20.2]
Speaking of LinkedIn videos, this is number two, the second thing I wish financial advisors knew about marketing. Videos don't work as well on LinkedIn, as they used to. There was a period of time between 2019 ish to 2020, where a video is performed exceptionally well on LinkedIn and many people believe they got such a high reach because they were favored by LinkedIn's algorithm. That makes sense to LinkedIn gods smiled on video, video got more, reach, more engagement, so on and so forth. And today videos don't have nearly as much reach as they once did. However, I still recommend them, maybe not as maybe not to do only video, but to include video in your marketing mix because there's still fantastic ways for people to see you in action. They appear to make people feel more comfortable messaging you because they see you as a real person looking into camera talking like, did she, what she looked like, they see what your office looks like. They just, they're just more comfortable with that. But videos work exceptionally well still on websites. [04:19.3]
So back when I analyzed the websites of Barron's top 100 independent financial advisors, I was surprised to see how frequently they used videos. They had photos of themselves. They have videos of themselves, but compared to just regular “normal”, independent financial advisors, those who are just like average, the most successful independent financial advisors, they were far more likely to use video. I anticipated that a little bit, but I was still impressed to just how frequently it came up. And if you are going to use videos, make sure that your videos have captions. That's the third thing I wish financial advisors knew about marketing. Depending on which study you read anywhere from 65 to 95% of people watch videos on mobile with the sound off. And that's all I've got to say about that. [05:05.6]
Number four, email marketing is the best appointment setting, marketing strategy I have ever seen, and I want you to pay attention. I said, appointment setting, you should still have other marketing strategies working to collect leads for you to build trust, to get referrals and so on. You should not do just email marketing, but when it comes to getting someone to finally set that appointment with you, nothing else comes close. And if you don't believe me, that's totally cool. Here's some proof. According to McKinsey and company email is 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined. According to Y-charts clients prefer email over all other forms of communication. And it's not even close, its literally clients are saying, Hey, please email me. According to campaign monitor, email average is a 4400% return on investment. And that's average that's if you do it the average way, and if you do it my way, that's not average. Okay. Now obviously your return may vary. Your mileage may vary, but I'm just saying that's average. [06:01.4]
According to Forrester, people are twice as likely to sign up for your email list as they are to interact with you on Facebook. This blows a lot of people's minds, but it is true. So, if you're one of those people, like why don't people engage with my content? Well, people just don't engage. I'm going to keep posting content, even though people don't engage. Well, there, it's proven that they're more likely to sign up for your email list. So maybe if you put an email list out there, they would sign up for that. According to AARP, 45% of middle-aged Americans would rather go to the dentist, UUHH, then meet with a financial advisor double UUHH. Guess what overcomes that skepticism and gets them to meet with you, EMAIL! It’s so good, it’s so good at overcoming skepticism. According to OptinMonster 58% of people check their email first thing in the morning before anything else. So, guess which message is getting consumed first, email marketing again. And by the way, if you Google OptinMonster, the adviser coach you'll see a case study they did on yours truly for basically kicking butt with conversion. So, if you want to Google that OptinMonster James Pollard or OptinMonster, the adviser coach, it should come up and you'll see a case study that they did on Moi. [07:09.4]
According to research done by Litmos 28% of people check email on iPhone. So, it's the most popular channel, essentially, especially on mobile. Guess what allows you to track links and to call people once they have consumed your message, email again. So, I'll leave you with that. I'll move on to number five. The fifth thing I wish financial advisors knew about marketing is the key to making email marketing work is to use an autoresponder. And I don't have time to explain all the nuts and bolts in this podcast episode. Essentially, you want a series of emails that go out in a predetermined order at predetermined times. This is an asset you own. Again, I'm all about building marketing assets. I am not just a marketer putting out marketing stuff for marketing sake. I am building assets because if you're a financial advisor with a real business and you want to make real money with your real business, then you want to create assets. So, once you have an asset built and locked in, that's generating like a hundred thousand dollars for you per year. Well guess what? You can build another asset that makes another $100,000 for you every single year. And then you can build another asset that brings in another $100,000. And it's not that simple and it's not, you're not going to have those exact numbers, probably not, but that's the idea you want to build this asset. And having an auto responder sequence, where when someone joins your email list, they get the email number one, every single time, they get email number two every single time, email number three every single time. That we're work for you, whether you're working, sleeping or on vacation, it doesn't matter. [08:37.8]
Number six, the best emails don't talk about money. Lots of financial advisors worry about compliance, harassing them for trying to create email marketing campaigns. It's a, it's a boogeyman, right. They, they are worried about this thing that this fear that just doesn't come true. And most of compliance fears, they come from advisors talking about money or investments in our emails. So, so scared that they're gonna make a specific recommendation or something like that. Well, I've got news for you. If you're talking about money or investments in your emails, you are doing it wrong. Stick to stories, mixed with information. I have sent and tested more than 5 million emails at this point. And I guarantee you, I guarantee it. I will sign my, my name on a stack of twenty-five Bibles. Okay. This is true. If you're talking about money and investments is especially in your early emails, especially, especially, especially in your early emails. Oh, my goodness. You are doing it wrong. [09:39.9]
Number seven, referral marketing is dying. Research from spectrum found that only 4% of millennials said a recommendation from a trusted associate was their most important factor when choosing a financial advisor. I love referral marketing, but I am not naive. I know that referral marketing is the icing on the cake. Your marketing cakes should be already there, referral is just icing on top. And 19% of gen X said that a referral from a trusted associate was the most important factor. And 20% of baby boomers said that a recommendation or a referral from a trusted associate was the most important factor. So, you got 19% and 20% in gen X and baby boomers, but only again, only 4% of millennials said that the referral, the recommendation was the most important factor. So, referral marketing is going, I don't want to say it's going away, but it's, it's going away in a significant way, I guess. It's just dying, you know. [10:36.9]
Number eight, websites are becoming more important than, than ever before. That same research from spectrum found that 11% of millennials ranked websites as the most important factor when choosing a financial advisor. So, websites, as far as millennials are concerned, it's almost 300% more important than referrals and recommendations from a trusted associate. And I imagine that that's only going to get larger in the future. It's going to be more and more and more important because they're going to realize that they can evaluate financial advisors and they can find good ones online, because there are financial advisors who are questioning it with their websites. There are financial advisors who are doing the right things with online marketing. And when these millennials realize millennials and zoomers at this point, realize that they can get a financial advisor online, maybe have that financial advisor work virtually have the appointment virtually so on and so forth. It's going to be a game changer. It really is, and it's already happening. [11:31.4]
Number nine, clients are one on LinkedIn through messages. I got another study for you according to Putnam's 2020 social advisor survey, so I'm giving you the, the sources here. So, you can look up what I'm saying, you can verify it. You know that what I'm telling you is true. According to Putnam's 2020 social advisor survey, 94% of advisors seeing success on social media, AKA getting new clients are using direct messaging capabilities. Let me say that again. 94% of advisors seeing success on social media are using direct messaging capabilities. If someone is telling you that all you have to do is just post content and like nothing else and you don't have to do anything with messages. The odds are not going to be in your favor. Nearly 100% of financial advisors getting new clients are doing direct outreach on places like LinkedIn. This is actual data. This is real research. That is not even me saying this, this is Putnam. [12:27.4]
This means if you have been sold this idea that you don't need to message people that you don't need any outreach, and all you need to do is just constantly push content. You have been sold a lie. Now to does that mean it's used to stop posting content? Absolutely not. Because content leads to messages, content supports messages. You can use your content in a message. When you're reaching out to people, you can take your existing content and share it with them in a message, and you can personalize it and have them get back to you and start a conversation that way. Maybe I'll do a more in-depth episode on that concept in the future. [13:01.3]
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.
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Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more. [13:23.9]
Number 10, podcasting can work well if, and this is a big, if you're willing to invest the time and the effort. Several of my inner circle members are crushing it with podcasts right now. And it's pretty cool because I obviously have a podcast and they asked me questions about podcasting, and I help them with their podcast. So that's really, really cool. It's like, it's something that I'm, I'm humbled by because this is not like the biggest podcast in the world, but it is pretty neat to do this. And I obviously have the setup and I have the microphone and the condenser and all the equipment, but I do not run a podcast service. I am an ambassador of The Podcast Factory. So, if you are interested in starting your own podcast, let me know. I will introduce you to The Podcast Factory family. And I know there are other services out there that will help you start your own podcast. And I love any service, any company that helps financial advisors improve their marketing in a meaningful way. I have nothing but respect for these people. However, what makes The Podcast Factory different is that you have financial advisors in there. You have insurance agents in there, and you also have people from many different walks of life, but they're all crushing it in business. They're all getting results. [14:33.1]
And if you listened to this podcast and maybe you are an inner circle member, you understand that the best ideas come from outside your industry. Well, The Podcast Factory has a bunch of different industries, and they all get together. They truly are a family. There's a Facebook group, we do the whole deal. We used to do weekly zoom calls, it's we're a tight-knit group. You know what I mean? And it is just so cool, but enough about that. If you want to start your own podcast, reach out to me and I will introduce you to The Podcast Factory family. I will take you by the hand and I will help you at least get started to see if it's something that you want to do, and we'll go from there. [15:10.9]
11, words matter. A study called advisor value propositions found that those younger than 40 prefer the word advocate to fiduciary. So, everybody out there who is like, oh, I'm a fiduciary, I'm a fiduciary. Are you a fiduciary? Like you should be, if you're not, then you're just like a scammer or something. Well, people under 40 don't even prefer that word, they prefer advocate. And they also found that 91% of people aged 65 and older prefer the word dedicated to passionate. So, if you're out there saying how passionate you are, and you're targeting people 65 and older, maybe you should change that to dedicated. And they also found that while those under 40 prefer live the life you want over achieve objectives, people older than 40 prefer the opposite. They prefer achieve objectives over live the life you want. So, it seems that if younger people, when you go up to them, like, why is money important to you? They will say, oh, it's because it helps me live the life I want. And then people who are older than 40, you ask them, why is money important to you? And they say, oh, because it helps me achieve objectives. So, words matter if you use the words, it sounds so crazy to the uninitiated, to people who don't understand marketing. But if you run an online advertisement and it says, we are passionate about helping you live the life you want, and you run that to people who are 40 and younger, that's going to work a heck of a lot better. And if you take an ad, like we are a dedicated to helping you achieve your objectives and you run that to older people, that's going to work a lot better. Like words matter a lot. [16:42.9]
Number 12, emotion must be present in your marketing. Neuroscience proves that people make the bulk of their decisions, including hiring a financial advisor, unconsciously. Their subconscious processes, they are constantly running and sifting through information, and they lead to what's called scientifically. This is a scientific term gut feeling. So, people have a gut feeling about whether or not they should work with you, whether or not they should say yes, Harvard business school, Professor Gerald Zaltman goes as far as to say 95% of our purchase decisions, including hiring a financial advisor, because that is a purchase take place unconsciously. Isn't that interesting? And the reason I bring that up is because a lot of financial advisors have marketing that is completely devoid of emotion. They think logic were when the day, and I don't blame them because they think logically, they are numbers people. They like spreadsheets. I do too. I am a logical person. I think logically I love numbers. I love spreadsheets. That is me. You and I are the same way. Like if, if that's you, of course. If you're a spreadsheet person, if you're a numbers person like you and I are like this, you can't see it because it's a podcast, but I'm crossing my fingers right now to show you how tight we are. And I have to put my emotion in my marketing in order to make it more effective. And I'm speaking from experience, anecdotally. Emotion makes it way more effective. And that's all I got to say about that. [18:12.8]
Number 13 prospecting should be about filtering. Most people believe that prospecting is about gathering the biggest list of people that you can possibly gather and that is not so. Prospecting is about ruthlessly qualifying everyone in your list until you're left with only the people who want to work with you. And one of the best ways to do this is with email marketing. And this is the example that I have here, because think about it. If someone reads an email from you and you have a calendar link at the bottom, do you think that someone who isn't interested in setting an appointment will set an appointment? No. Do you think that if someone isn't interested at all, then maybe that person would just unsubscribe and wouldn't stay on your email list? Yeah. Which means that by definition, the only people who set appointments with you are the ones interested in some way. And, and that's why email is so powerful when it comes to prospecting is because it is a filtering mechanism that works for you all the time. Only interested people are going to set appointments. They're not going to get pressured by you. It's not as if you're on the phone with them and you're, they're just, they didn't want to be nice to you. And they say, oh, sure, what the heck I'll meet with you on Wednesday. Even though they have no intention of working with you, they're just going to ghost you anyway. You know, that happens. We both know that happens because it's happened to me back when I used to do consulting, because I would try to use these sales techniques and they would work, but they would work to my detriment because people would say, oh, what the heck? I'll set an appointment with you, James. Show me how you can help me get more clients? And they would ghost me. So that doesn't happen with email because I mean, unless something catastrophic happens or maybe they get cold feet or whatever, but they're setting the appointment by themselves with no one else around there by themselves reading the email, 28% of them were going to read it on their iPhone and they're just going to set it up their own volition. [20:04.8]
Number 14 marketing companies, I know this probably news to you. They tend to over-complicate things. Here's a little dirty secret. There are entire segments of the marketing expert population that makes its money on making marketing as complicated as possible. Because if you can understand it, you're more likely to fork over wheel barrels of cash to have them do it for you. It's like if you can't sell them, confuse them. If I, if they just say enough marketing BS and make it super-duper complicated, you got to have this funnel doing this and this ad doing this, and you've got to have it set this way. And it's got to be this way instead of that way and they just make it so fricking complicated that you'll just say, oh, I don't want to deal with all that. Like you just do it please. In my experience, the best marketing is drop dead, simple. So simple that many of these experts, coaches, consultants, marketing companies. And let me just pause here for a second and let you know many of these coaches, consultants and companies are actually inner circle members. I just want to put that out there. I'm not going to say anybody's names unless you come from me first or unless they bring something up. I just want to let you know that your favorite marketing coach, your favorite marketing expert, your favorite marketing company, the executives at those companies, most likely they are subscribed to my newsletter. So, I just want you to think about that where these people are getting their information from, and they understand it. They understand that what I'm doing. They know that my marketing is super simple. They know the financial advisors gravitate toward my message and they want to know what I'm doing. They want to know what I'm telling financial advisors so they can get, I guess they can get, they think they can get an edge. But they, they really can't get an edge because I keep everything super simple. And a lot of these people said that that doesn't work. That doesn't work, that shouldn't work. And I'm sitting here telling you like, yeah, it works. And like, okay, you can keep believing that it doesn't work, and I'll do it. So, the joke's on them because I mean, the simple stuff works better than anything they could possibly dream of. [22:09.3]
15, longer lead magnets work better than short ones. Some of my best lead magnets include an 80 plus page PDF, which you can get at TheAdvisorCoach.com/57, the number five, the number seven. So, TheAdvisorCoach.com/57 and a 90 minute webinar, which you can watch over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar. Most people, including the inner circle members who are executives of these marketing companies, they recommend cheat, cheat sheets, checklist, little itty-bitty guides, they recommend short webinars. One of them said, oh, well, nobody wants to watch a long webinar. I'm like, okay, cool. You keep doing, you I'll do me. And I'll do the webinar that actually works because I used to do a 45-minute webinar and the conversion rate was nowhere near the 90-minute webinar. So, more power to you, if, if you really want to do your thing, then that's cool. But maybe just maybe I know something that they don't know. So, you can take that for what you will longer lead magnets work better than short ones. [23:09.8]
Number 16, you are likely being influenced by the anchoring bias. Let's play a little guessing game. Do you think the tallest tree in the world is taller or shorter than a thousand feet? Go ahead and answer the question in your head. What do you think it is? The tallest tree in the world is drum roll please…379 feet. Now your answer was probably influenced by the 1000 anchor I put in your head. This is known as the anchoring bias, and it costs people money when they anchor the goals based on their previous achievements. I talked about this in the previous podcast episode about the psychological biases and stuff I gave that same exact example. This is very common with income goals, okay. If you are sending a goal to make an additional $100,000 this year, make sure you're not anchored to a previous income or anything of the sort, because your growth does not have to be linear. Marketing isn't linear. If you turn on an ad and it's working really well, where you can turn on another add and have it work really well. And if you have a skill that is proven to work and is proven to get clients, you can take that skill and replicate it and replicate it and replicate it and as you get better and better and better, it becomes exponential. [24:25.3]
Number 17, marketing is psychology mixed with math. And I talk a lot about the psychology behind marketing. I even have a degree in psychology, but I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge math’s critical role. Most marketing comes down to knowing how much it costs you to acquire a client and how much you make from said client. If you make $5,000 per client, you shouldn't freak out, you shouldn't lose sleep about spending $500 to get that client. It makes absolutely no sense. Financial advisors will look at a marketing campaign and if it works out to be $500 to get a $5,000 client, oh, that's so expensive. I can't afford to spend $500. It's like, what are you? What are you smoking? What world, in what world are you living where this doesn't make sense? You give $500 to your almighty marketing machine. You stick the $500 in the box and $5,000 comes out. In what world does that not make sense? I've seen so many financial advisors moan and complain about how marketing is too expensive when they easily, easily, easily make their money back and then some. That could be a whole podcast episode by itself and maybe it will be in the future. [25:33.2]
Number 18, 58% of Barron's top 100 independent financial advisors use email marketing, I found that out in my analysis of the top 100. This statistic is mind blowing because in my experience, fewer than 20% of independent financial advisors are leveraging the incredible power of email. So, the fact that advisors on Barron's top 100 list are three times as likely to use email. It should tell you something. [26:00.4]
Number 19, most financial advisors screw up their contact pages. So, from 2017 to 2020, I offered a website review service for $497. I would record a 10-minute video critiquing a financial advisor's website, and I would give specific, actionable advice on how to make the website better. However, I kept seeing the same things over and over, especially on the contact page. If you think your website's contact page is merely a place for people to reach out to you or to request more information, I guarantee you are leaving money on the table. And I talk about this over in The Client-Getting Website over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/website. I show you how to make your client getting website your content page better. [26:47.1]
Number 20, the final thing I wish financial advisors knew about marketing and it is related to your website. These three pages matter more than everywhere else on your website. It's your ‘home page’, your ‘about us page’ and your ‘contact page.’ And if you don't believe me, check your analytics, look at your most visited pages. I'll wait. You're almost certainly see those three pages in your top five. Now the biggest mistake financial advisors make with these pages is not having them work together. Now, remember, I just mentioned how I did those website reviews, you know, $497 for 10-minute critique. Well, I would say like 99% of the time I saw financial advisors treat these pages as if they were isolated from each other. And this is the wrong move because when someone visits your website, that visitor is likely to go to all three of those pages, almost certainly in order. And again, if you don't believe me, take a look at your own analytics. If you don't have Google analytics goals set up, I encourage you to set up goals. I have seen financial advisors with goals in case you don't know what goals are, they track where people start and where they end with respect to a specific outcome. [27:55.5]
So, you can see, you can set a goal for someone to set an appointment with you and to get to your thank you page. Well, Google can tell you the pages people visited before they got to that Thank you page before they actually set an appointment with you. And in almost every case, it is homepage about us page and then contact page. Even when people take a little detour, like let's say they go to the homepage and then they go to the blog. They will read, read, read, and then they'll wonder, well, who is this person who is the person writing this article? Then they'll go to the about us page and then they'll go to the contact page, or they'll go to the home page to go to the about us page and then maybe they'll go back to the homepage. And then they go to the contact page. But these three pages that if they're, if you treat them as if they're isolated, you are making a big, big, big mistake, and you can immediately make your website more effective by having these three pages work together, it's something almost nobody is doing. And it's a way for smart financial advisors to gain a serious edge over their competitors. And I reveal more over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/website. You can get the client getting website and you can see exactly what I'm talking about, about how to have your homepage, your about us page and your contact page work together. But if you don't have them working together, if you have them isolated and you don't have them linked in some way, and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about in the video, then you are leaving money on the table. [29:16.1]
So that is a wrap for this week's episode. I hope you enjoyed these 20 Things I Wish Financial Advisors Knew About Marketing. I will catch you next week. [29:23.9]
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