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: This week on the podcast I want to talk about five different types of website, traffic, and how you can profit from each of them. If you haven't already been through the client, getting website, make sure you get that over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/website. It's different from anything else out there, because it focuses specifically on your homepage, your about page, your contact page, and it shows you what to do to maximize conversions on your website. Getting conversions is it's all about getting a response from people. You want people to do something. And sometimes that requires tapping into human psychology and the power of habit. So let me tell you a little story. [01:11.8]
I don't expect financial advisors to know this man, but any marketer worth his or her salt will know the name Claude Hopkins. Claude Hopkins wrote a book called Scientific Advertising, which laid the foundation for split testing as we know it, thus, the title Scientific Advertising, he took a scientific approach. He approached marketing based on the numbers, the math, the science, he kept track of important metrics in order to run successful promotions. He was an incredibly smart guy and I owe a debt of gratitude to him. My story here is going to be about how he got Americans to brush their teeth. Yes, brush their teeth. Before Claude Hopkins intervened most people in America didn't do it, they didn't brush their teeth. It was so bad that the us military considered poor dental hygiene, a national security risk when they were recruiting people for World War I. [02:05.6]
Anyway, someone approached Hopkins with Pepsodent toothpaste. It's still selling today, it's still in grocery stores. I don't use it. I'm a Colgate man myself. Maybe you're a crest person, more power to you, but I don't use that nasty crest stuff I use Colgate. At this time, Hopkins was already pretty successful, and he had made a name for himself in marketing. So, he knew what the market wanted and did not want. That's what marketing is. It's providing to a market. You're marketing. He knew Americans didn't brush their teeth so, he tried to turning these people away at first. When they approached him, say, Hey, we've got Pepsodent in here, can you help us sell it? He's like, no, that's okay. I don't really want to. They persisted and he agreed to take them on as a client, as long as he got an option on Pepsodent stock. Well Hopkins knew that habit's drive a lot of market behavior and habits get strengthened with two things, cues and rewards. This means that you need to identify a cue, like something like ding and the rat, goes straight to cheese, okay. And the reward rat feels good, cause rat has cheese. [03:18.1]
And it also meant that Hopkins needed to identify something, to remind people, to brush their teeth and a reward that they would enjoy from using the product from brushing their teeth. And you might be thinking, what the heck does this have to do with marketing? Everything, my friend, everything. Because I promise you that your audience will respond to cues and rewards pay attention. Hopkins' nailed down the feeling of having plaque on your teeth as the cue. And he found it deep in a dental book because he did his research. That's another important lesson for you. Mr. Hopkins would have never found his cue had he not been knee deep in research. So, you need to know your market is one of the many reasons why I say to have a niche, because you can know that niche inside and out, you can know things that other financial advisors simply cannot know that they're just not aware of. Hopkins found this in a dental book. He did the work that other marketers were not willing to do. He did the research that they were not willing to do. There were other people and still today, but back then, and today, this human psychology doesn't really change. There are people who think they know everything. There are people who think they can wing it. They can fly by the seat of their pants and be successful. [04:27.6]
Hopkins got down and dirty. He did the work, and he also had an obvious reward here. So, the cue was the plaque. The reward was a wider, more attractive smile. So, he wrote the following headline. I'm going to read you the headline word for word. ‘Film, a dangerous coding that robs teeth of their whiteness. A way to remove it that quickly restores brilliances. Film, it is agreed also foster serious tooth and gum disorders. Please accept free 10-day supply.’ So, there was an advertisement that went out. People got a 10-day supply of this. They go brush your teeth. If they liked it, they could buy it again or buy it in the first place. If they didn't like it, then they could go back to their poor hygiene ways, I suppose. And within 10 years, more than half, the American population was brushing their teeth every day. And Hopkins made more than a million dollars from Pepsodent, which adjusted for inflation is more than $14 million today. Think of that. He made more than $14 million because he knew his market and he set up cues for them to do things. He knew his market. He set up cues. That's going to be important as we go through the different types of traffic. So, I want you to keep that in mind. So, let's get through these five types of traffic and how to profit from each. [05:52.9]
The very first type is direct traffic. These people they're not clicking through search results. They're not scrolling through social media. Their intention is to visit your site and as a result, they tend to be the most profitable traffic source. They are literally typing in your site, specifically into their browser. So, if you go to google.com, you are direct traffic for Google. If you type in linkedin.com, you are direct traffic for LinkedIn, and here's something most people miss when it comes to direct traffic. If people are typing your website, address directly into their browsers, where did they first hear about your website? Hmm. If you can answer that question, you will know which marketing strategy you should ramp up because let's say your website is getting conversions and you are setting appointments, everything's hunky dory, but most of your website traffic is direct traffic. Does that mean that your website itself is doing the heavy lifting and getting people in the door? Probably not. [06:52.2]
You could send out a postcard to a thousand people and have 50 of them visit your website by typing in your URL. If I sent postcards out to financial advisors and I say, happy holidays or something, this is TheAdvisorCoach.com. And they type in TheAdvisorCoach.com. That's direct traffic, but the postcard calls that traffic really understand this. Most people, they just don't get it, but like, oh yeah, I'm getting lots of traffic. This is awesome. I'm so grateful for my website. And I'm not saying that your website isn't important, it's one of the most important things that you can have in your marketing arsenal. But you need to understand where the traffic comes from. You need to have a grip on where people are hearing about your website. In the online advertising world, two types of tracking attribution are first click and last click. Last click gives credit to whatever the person clicked on last, which means someone could bind you through a Google search, go to your LinkedIn profile. See one of your ads online after leaving, click that ad and then book an appointment. [07:53.8]
The ad would get the credit in the last click attribution model. First click is, well, the first thing that people clicked on, which would be SEO at this point, you, your SEO would get credit. The search engine result would get credit because the person wouldn't not have found you in the first place, had it not been for the search engine. Direct traffic almost always goes to your homepage unless you give people a reason to go somewhere else. For example, if you type in TheAdvisorCoach.com/website, that would be direct traffic for me, and you would go there because I mentioned the URL. I'm giving you a reason to go there, you can get the client getting website. It can walk you through exactly how to set up your homepage, your about us page and your contact page to maximize conversions. However, if someone is just thinking about your business and wants to check you out, that person would land on your homepage. If they think about XYZ wealth management, and they're like, oh yeah, I'd like to check out the websites or they type in XYZ, wealthmanagement.com. I don't even know if that's a real website so, if it is then props to you. That they type it in, and they go to the homepage, which means your homepage needs to be in great working order. You can't do, well I guess you could, but you really don't want to do all this work, sending out postcards for example, let's just continue with that. [09:10.5]
Where I worked so hard, and I sent out these happy holiday’s cards. And I say, by the way, visit TheAdvisorCoach.com. And it's not clear, there's no call to action. There's nothing for people to do. I'm just sending them to a bland, generic home beach. That is a huge mistake. So, if and you can tell in your Google analytics, if you have Google analytics, you can go right in, you can see how much direct traffic you're getting. If you don't have Google analytics set up or any sort of analytics, and please do that. But you can go through all this yourself and you can make the decisions yourself and figure it out and make it better. [09:44.0]
The second type of traffic is referral traffic. And this traffic is similar to direct traffic in the sense that it is warm. Referral Traffic comes to your site because of links on other sites. So, these people have been given a reason to click and they have done so, and now they are on your website. Let's say that you get mentioned in an article online, someone will click on the link, maybe in the article itself or in your bio and gets taken to your website. What do you want to happen? These people might be hearing about you for the first time. They read an article about you, where you get mentioned, it positions you in a wonderful light. It's a bit of a halo effect for you and they decide to check you out. What happens now? Lots of people drop the ball here. They worked so hard to get mentioned in the press. They spend thousands of dollars on PR campaigns only to screw it up here. I don't want you to miss this opportunity. Referral traffic sends potentially qualified visitors to your website from trusted websites. This is critical, critical. People already trust the site, they're leaving. If you get featured on the Huffington post and people love the Huffington post again, it's, it's the halo effect. [10:55.8]
People associate you with that because you got featured there and who you associate with is very important with your business and who people see you with that sort of thing. They trust the Huffington post. They see that you're featured there. They click the link. They go to wherever the link takes them. What happens next? Let's say that your niche is dentist, and you get featured on a dental podcast. And that podcast is kind enough to link to your website in the show notes. You need to answer the following questions. First, where does the link go? It doesn't have to be your homepage either. A lot of people just link to the home page and that's okay. Yes, it helps with SEO, and it makes your traffic have a higher rankings and whatnot, but maybe your homepage, isn't the best place for people to go. It's possible that sending them to an opt-in form is better because you have something to offer like a lead magnet. Maybe you have a video you want them to watch. Don't limit yourself to the homepage, especially with referral traffic. [11:53.0]
If you're running XYZ, wealth management and you work with dentists and you're on the podcast and you say, oh, by the way, yeah, my website is XYZwealthmanagement.com. And that's it like, there's no reason like people don't want to go there just to, I guess, dilly dally. But if you say, yeah, my website is XYZwealth management.com/book. And if you go to XYZwealth management.com/book, you will be presented with an offer to opt into my email list, and you'll get this free guide. And there's a reason for people to take action at that point. If you're a published author and you do a guest post somewhere, your bio could explain that you are a published author, you have a book on Amazon and the link could go to your book on Amazon. Remember my postcard example, people could find you through the guest post. They could go to your book, which is not even your website, it doesn't have to be your website. They could go to Amazon, check out your book and the book itself can send them to your website. It's your coming back here. [12:52.4]
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. [13:14.8]
The other question. So, the very first question you needed to answer was where does the link go? The second question is what are people seeing when they click the link? Are they seeing credibility mechanisms? Do they see your experience? Is your link trustworthy? Does it inspire confidence? You have to think about these things. And I did an entire podcast episode called what clients value ranked in order of importance, where I talked about exactly what people want. Go back to, listen to that episode and implement some of the things into your links. Like, think about this. When you go to Amazon, what does Amazon have is, is a trustworthy, do they have different credibility mechanisms? They sure do. They have a sample of your book. People can click and they can go through. These are all things that people want and Amazon is just giving people what they want. [14:02.6]
The third type of traffic is search traffic. This traffic comes from well search engines, and it's an interesting source of traffic, but the intent can vary. For example, someone searching financial advisor in Lincoln, Nebraska will probably be more willing to hire a financial advisor than someone searching traditional versus Roth IRA comparison. And one of the examples that I remember from some marketing book that came out years and years and years ago about search engine optimization, it was something like this. Let's say this, someone is searching TV for sale. That person has a different intent than someone who types in like the model, Sony XR, 2000 42-inch TV for sale. That person is probably going to buy that TV today. The intent is totally different, and the intent is what is important. The most important part though, is to have a clear next step after someone reads the article or consumes your resource, wherever they go, there needs to be a clear next step. [15:09.7]
If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've heard me hate on the give value crowd. This whole, this whole give value idea, it's just, it's so misinformed because a lot of these people they're saying give value with no clear next step. It's goofy. Imagine going to get your eyes checked, okay. You go, you sit down in the eye exam room. You're reading the letters on the chart, the big E. And you're saying, A, X, P O no, no that's not a P that's an R, a Q no Q is, that's an, that's an O, O, Q…Hmm. And you're going through, oh, you do the entire exam, then they do the little thing where they cycled through the prescriptions and they say one or two, and you're like, oh, two. Three or four. Can I see them again? Like you go through that whole song and dance. Then the doctor gives you value. The doctor says, Sir, or Madam, your prescription is, and the doctor tells you your prescription. And then doesn't offer you a chance to order any contact lenses. Doesn't give you a chance to buy any glasses. Just says, here's your prescription. See ya. There's no clear next step. [16:17.6]
That is exactly what the whole give value crowd does. And it is just so, so like I said, it's just so misinformed and they, their intentions are good. Their heart is in the right place, but when it comes to results and marketing results, it just doesn't measure up. So, make sure you have a clear step. And by the way, I'm the person to talk about the person to talk about this because my website gets tens of thousands of visitors from search engines every single month. I get more traffic than these so-called SEO agencies that claim to help financial visors rank in Google. So, I know what I'm talking about. If you only knew what these agencies or so-called agencies do for financial advisors, and like some of the BS that they spew, your head would spin. I kid you not. I got an outreach email from a third party who is helping one of these so-called SEO agencies that claims to help financial advisors. Think about this, think about this, think about how nutty this is here. You have an SEO agency that is going out into the world and telling financial advisors. We can help you rank on Google. We can help you rank. We can help you rank blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that very agency is literally, I swear to you literally hiring someone else to do their own SEO. Whiskey, tango Foxtrot WTF is going on here. The straight up fraudulent. These people are saying, yeah, we'll help you with your SEO, but then they just go around, they don't even do it themselves. [17:51.2]
When I talk about email marketing, guess what I do. I email every single day. Am I as active on LinkedIn as I want to be? Not necessarily, but I am active, and I do get clients myself from LinkedIn. I mean, financial advisors reach out, I'm fairly active. I'm talking about web stuff and like traffic and my site literally gets tens of thousands of visitors every single month. And here you go, I'm telling you what it is. You can choose to listen, or you can choose to not. But if you, if you get these outreach emails from people, if you get these messages really, really, really pay attention to what is going on here. Like the old example is there used to be somebody who used to talk about how text messaging was so awesome. And, and they would send people to an email list. What, what you're talking about, how awesome text messaging is, why don't you ask for people's phone numbers so you can text them instead you're sending people to an email list. So, keep your eyes open, keep your ears open. If, if it walks like a dock, if it talks like a duck, probably is a darn duck. So, I'll move on. [18:50.5]
The fourth type of traffic is social traffic. And according to a study published by BNY Mellon and purging, which it's called advisor value propositions. The two most popular ways investors search for financial advisors are through Google, no surprise there and LinkedIn. Sometimes people are surprised by that, which means if your LinkedIn profile doesn't mention your website, you are leaving money on the table. Specifically, 27% of investors said that they use LinkedIn to search for a financial advisor and 12% of investors said that LinkedIn was the most important detail for them. It was the most important way for them to search for a financial advisor, so use LinkedIn. Moral of the story, get on LinkedIn, become more active on LinkedIn, you are missing out if you're not. And the beautiful part about social traffic is you have many opportunities to get people, to click your link. You can post your homepage one day, your opt-in form the next day, your Amazon link the next day and interviewed the next day. It never ends, you can keep using it. Which means my advice to you here is to use your social traffic, give people opportunities to engage with you. [20:01.7]
A lot of you listening to my voice right now would get better results, if you simply upped your share frequency. Yes, it can be that simple. Chances are, you're not doing enough, you're fooling yourself into complacency and guess what can be a great way to get more social traffic? The LinkedIn inbox. Yes, it's true. Several of my inner circle members are using this strategy right now. And I talked about it originally, I talked about it in one of my blog posts, but it's kind of grown into a life of its own. So, I will read this directly from the blog post, which is four things I've learned from sending 3.2 million financial advisor emails. At this point, it's well over 4 million, probably close to 5 million at this point. So, I'm going to read this to you. Do not send someone a pitch or asked to jump on the phone as soon as someone has connected with you. That's one of the biggest LinkedIn mistakes, we all laugh at people who do that. Instead start with an icebreaker, say something about the person's background. Hey, I noticed you're involved in alligator wrestling. Do you still have all your fingers? Ha ha yes. Yes. That's a good start. Then offer the person a free piece of content related to him or her. Curious, are you looking to improve your alligator wrestling skills? If you are, I've got a great guide to rear naked chokes I can share with you. So, if you're a financial advisor who specializes in working with a certain niche, all you need here is a good piece of content related to that niche. [21:27.8]
Because if the person says yes to your offer, you can reply with a link where he or she can exchange his or her email in order to access it, that's called an opt-in form. When you send the link, you're on social media, they click the link and social traffic, BINGO, like you're getting social traffic, which will lead to conversions, if you have your website set up the correct way. And that's the tip that I'm going to give you here. I could do an entire, like, not even a podcast episode, but a podcast episode series about social traffic and how to improve it and how to make the most of social traffic. But I want to move on to the fifth type of traffic because I'm giving you enough that you can implement right away. I'm giving you some stuff that you can actually use. [22:06.1]
The fifth type is paid traffic. And I don't want to spend too much time about on paid traffic here because I'm going to wrap this podcast up. We're already over 20 minutes into the episode. What I want you to take away from this is that paid traffic must be specific. Clarity is the most important thing. You need to be clear about what you're offering and who it's for. If you're offering a guide to help people save money on their taxes. That's awesome. But who specifically is it for? Be clear. One of the articles that I wrote was five elements of high converting landing pages for financial advisors. And I gave a couple examples in there. One of the examples was a, an offer for a guide called tax secrets for attorneys. It was basically tax strategies; attorneys must know to reduce taxes. And I want you to notice the title. That title was very specific. It's for attorneys. If the person looking at that ad is not an attorney that person's probably not going to click. A lot of people struggle with advertising, and they think advertising is too expensive because they're getting clicks from people who aren't in the target market. [23:06.4]
If you're advertising and you want retirees, and you're showing your ad to people who are in their 20’s and people in their 20’s, they're clicking on that ad and it's a dollar per click. You're just burning dollar bills that people are never going to convert. They're never going to do business with you because you're not, you don't want them, right? So, stop doing that. The title is, ‘Tax Strategies, Attorneys must know to reduce taxes in order to attract attorneys.’ And if you're an attorney, that title should catch your eye. It's one of the reasons why having a niche is one of the best things you can do to get more clients. And at the time of this recording this ad for the attorney’s taxes book, it has been running for 11 months, 11 that's insane. That is like downright jaw dropping mind-blowing insane. It is crushing it because it is a solid offer being delivered to a niche audience. Not because of some Facebook targeting secret, not because of some algorithm hack touted by someone to sell you a Facebook system. Just like it's so clear. Clarity is what makes it work. [24:12.2]
And guess what? When someone clicks on that ad, they get to a landing page and the landing page literally says the here's the headline. I'm going to give you the headline word for word. Here it is. The headline is, ‘New book reveals the tax secrets. Every attorney must know to reduce taxes.’ Ding, ding, ding, like super clear, it's exactly what it is, it's for attorneys. If you want to reduce taxes and you're an attorney, you should probably get this. And there's a little subhead that says, ‘Even if you have an experienced CPA.’ So, this headline works because it defines the offer. It is a book, which is the thing that's being offered. It is for attorneys, that's the niche. And the book for attorneys will show the attorneys how to reduce taxes, which is the benefit or the reason why they accept the offer. If you include those things in your headline, then your paid ads will be more effective. But this landing page with that little subhead takes it a step further by adding the, even if you have an experienced CPA. This is a critical part of why the headline is such a winner because it addresses an objection that many attorneys have. [25:17.2]
They may view this paid ad for tax planning services and the bulk and whatnot. And they might think to themselves, oh, I don't need this. I already have a CPA. So, with this one sentence, the objection is obliterated, and attorneys are more likely to convert. So, what are some objections that you can address in your headlines? Let's just, I'm going to leave you with this and just think about this. You can say things like, even if you already have a financial advisor, even if you're a do-it-yourself investor, even if you think you're too busy, or even if you don't think you have enough money to hire a financial advisor. So those are the five types of traffic. Let's go back here. You have paid traffic, you have social traffic search traffic, referral traffic, and direct traffic. [26:02.7]
Again, if you have a website and you want to make it better, I highly recommend checking out the client, getting website over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/website. One more time TheAdvisorCoach.com/website. I hope this helps you and I'll catch you next week. [26:19.3]
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