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, hope you're doing well. I want to kick off this week's podcast episode by reading an email that really got people thinking. And that's good. I want people to think because most people don't do it. I don't really write emails to get replies, but this particular one got a lot of replies from people saying, wow, I never thought of it like that. This is awesome content. So on and so forth. So, I'm going to read it to you verbatim, to the best of my ability, my reading Scheels may not be world-class or anything, but here we go. Subject line is why people don't do business with you, and here it is. [01:06.3]
If you've been through any old school sales training program, you're likely familiar with some of the reasons why people don't buy, they include number one, no need. There's no point in selling corrective lenses to someone with perfect vision. Two, no money. As the saying goes, you can't get blood from a turnip. Number three, no, hurry. This is the classic, let me think about it objection. While this is typically a stalling tactic, it can sometimes have some merit. For example, if a wife is shopping for her husband's birthday gift and his birthday is six months from now, there's genuinely no hurry. Four, no desire. A foundational rule in selling is that people buy what they want, not what they need. If people bought what they need, then financial advisors wouldn't have any trouble getting new clients. Five, no trust. This is a big issue in selling financial services, because trust is necessary for people to say yes to working with you. If you have no trust, you have no clients. Period. [02:09.0]
I've been meditating on these reasons, and I think they're incomplete. I think there's a larger, more encompassing reason people don't buy. I call it no frame of reference. A frame of reference is a complex set of assumptions and attitudes we use to create meaning. If there's no frame, there's no meaning. In other words, paying for financial advice is completely foreign to people without a frame of reference, they have no idea what it should look like and how to know if they're doing it correctly. The worst part is without the frame, there's no trust, no desire, no hurry and no need and no connection that money should be used to pay for it, which means you're starting from zero. Imagine someone came to you and told you that starting tomorrow, you were in charge of purchasing a space shuttle responsible for carrying four passengers to the moon. You probably wouldn't know where to begin. That's how some of your prospective clients feel. [03:03.8]
Another example. I see this effect all the time within my inner circle newsletter, because most of the time the newsletter is not the first investment subscribers have made in themselves. They've typically been through different courses, training and coaching programs. Most of them regularly invest in themselves and have no problem seeing a quick return on investment. Contrast that to people who don't invest in themselves, the idea of a $99 per month, newsletter sounds appalling. They can't wrap their heads around it because they have no frame of reference. Again, it's foreign to them, any attempt to convince them that it's worth, it would be like trying to teach calculus to an infant. So, what's the lesson here. The lesson is this. Be cognizant of your perspective, clients, frame of reference or lack thereof, and let it inform your marketing decisions. [03:55.4]
Then the title for this week's episode, by the way, I hope you liked that email because it's going to set the backdrop for this episode because it's titled my number one secret for creating winning marketing campaigns. And a really good secret is to fix your targeting. You want to go after people who do have that frame of reference. One of my most popular podcast episodes, since we just talked about one of my most popular emails, let's talk about one of my most popular podcast episodes. It was actually the most lucrative overlooked niche for financial advisors. And that niche was people who already had financial advisors. So, if you want to go back and listen to that episode, the title again is the most lucrative overlooked niche for financial advisors and these people who have financial advisors, they tend to make awesome prospective clients when they leave. It sounds super counterintuitive because you might think, oh, well, what's the reason why they left. Why aren't they working with a financial advisor anymore? Are they a pain to work with? Well, maybe, but they know the value of financial advice. [04:52.7]
Does it have to be that they've worked with a financial advisor before? Not necessarily, but the people who have an inclination to smart financial decision making tend to be the people who work best with financial advisors. That should seem obvious, but it's not right. And it's also not the secret I want to talk about in this episode. There's something more powerful than that. That is something that I personally use to create winning email campaigns, direct mail campaigns, webinar campaigns, and more, the secret is hidden in plain sight throughout this podcast and the website over at TheAdvisorCoach.com and the blog post over TheAdvisorCoach.com/blog. If you're in my world, you have heard this and you've seen it many times before, but here it is just to make it super-duper clear. [05:41.2]
It's thinking strategically instead of tactically. Now I've never quite explained how I personally approach marketing campaigns in a strategic way. So, I'm going to do that in this episode. And I promise that if you get this information and apply it, it will revolutionize the way you do business. That is a bold promise, but I promise you that. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of people will get what I'm going to say in this episode. And an even smaller percentage of people will apply it. However, I know that those few people will never be the same again. Here we go. [06:17.3]
When it comes to marketing, it's easy to get sucked into stuff like writing better content or creating better social media posts or having better headlines or whatever. And I don't want to discount those things because they are important. However, I want you to think about it this way. Have you ever heard the saying ‘lose the battle but win the war.’ I want you to keep that in mind as I explained this, because it will make a lot of sense. There have been times where I have had worse advertisements than someone else, and I've made more money. I've had worse direct mail letters, and I've also made more money and you might be thinking, well, how is that possible? It's possible because I did not get bogged down in the tactics. And I don't, let's take copywriting as an example. There are people out there who obsess over copywriting. They read books about it. Take courses about it and hire mentors and copy chiefs to look at what they're doing. But what if I told you that I can go head-to-head with world-class copywriters and beat them? I can, I have, and I'll do it again. I plan on doing it many, many, many, many, many times in the future. So, I'm going to tell you how I do it. [07:29.0]
I do it by thinking holistically. First, I know which battles I can and cannot win. Many people have told me that I am a great copywriter and I appreciate that. I will say that my emails are some of the best in the world. I'll agree with that. However, my sales page copy my direct mail copy and stuff like that, it really pales in comparison to some of the legends out there. If I were to construct a mailing and go head-to-head with some of these people, I would probably lose the battle. But the copy itself is only a small part of the equation. It's only a small part of the war. It is one battle. I will win the war. I guarantee it, but I may not win the battle because guess what I could do with the direct mail campaign as an example. I could include a gift. I could insert a chair sheet. I could use a few of the strategies that I've revealed in my inner circle newsletter, which I'm not going to reveal for free here. I mean, if you really want the great stuff, you're going to have to pay for it, I could change the envelope. There are five or six things I could do write on the envelope without touching a single word of copy that would dramatically alter the results in one direction or another. [08:37.8]
I could beat the campaign while not necessarily beating the letter itself. There are so many different things that I could do. There were so many different levers I could pull. So, I would think holistically, if you put my text against someone else's text in the letter itself, even if I lost and I probably would lose going head-to-head against some of the greatest who've ever done it. I mean, of course, right? It wouldn't matter necessarily because my campaign would still make more money because I could change things, I go tweak things, I could improve things that have nothing to do with the copy itself. The copywriter is the one who fixes the copy. I, on the other hand and the one who fixes the campaign, there is a difference. And it all comes down to thinking holistically. If you're a good financial planner, you do this all the time. You're not just thinking about one moment in time or one tool or one approach to get your clients on the path to financial independence or retirement or whatever you're optimizing for. You're looking at all the moving pieces. Mark Twain said that, ‘to the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ And most marketers are out there just swinging their hammers at anything they can bind. You cannot do that. You must assemble a toolbox. [09:49.2]
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. [10:11.8]
If you've been in my world, you already know how important having multiple marketing strategies can be. Multiple marketing strategies is, it's just another way to have big picture thinking, to look at things from a 30,000-foot view, because if I'm competing with someone who has to “sell” the appointment and a direct mail piece, like it has to work and I have the Liberty to just get my foot in the door, I'm going to win. Even with the cost of the mailing, I'm going to win. Because instead of spending a dollar or two to send out a full fledge package, I can send a simple postcard and a link to a webinar. And that webinar will do the heavy lifting. And guess what? If someone doesn't send an appointment during the webinar, I still have A, the mailing address and B the email address where I can follow up there. And I've already had, let's see the direct mail piece, the emails and the webinars. So those are three follow up sequences that I could have if I wanted to. [11:07.1]
I mean, really, there's no chance that the copywriter wins. Even if the copywriter won the battle, the copywriter would still lose the war, but you don't have to take my word for it. I want to share a little factoid from Agora, which is the largest financial newsletter company in the entire world, the billion-dollar company. They have a book called, Changing the Channel and in that book, they have this quote, I'm going to read it to you here at Agaura Inc. several of the more successful divisions have been implementing a multichannel marketing strategy. One division has documented that customers acquire through multi-channel marketing are five times more valuable to them over time than customers acquired through one channel. And here's another stat this time from the Direct Marketing Association, which found the customers who buy from two channels rather than one are between 20 and 60% more valuable to a company over time. This isn't me. This is the Direct Marketing Association. It turns out that, hmm, maybe, maybe I kinda sorta know what I'm doing. And maybe there's a reason why I tell financial advisors to focus on their LinkedIn profiles, the websites to follow up and more. It's because it's proven to not only get more people paying attention to you, which increases conversions in the long-term, but it's proven to increase conversions in the short term as well. And I encourage you not to dismiss these statistics because you might think, well, I don't have any control over how valuable a client is to me because I have set financial planning fees. I charge based on AUM, whatever they have is what I make so on and so forth. But you're missing the point because multi-channel marketing increases conversions as well. [12:48.1]
So, if you have a group of 100 people and you're marketing to them with just one marketing strategy, okay, and then you have another group of 100 people and you’re marketing with two channels. For example, if those people are going to convert at 20 - 60% more often, that's more money in your pocket. That is a direct, I don't even want to say correlation because it really is causation. I know if in the academic community, a lot of people will say, oh, well, correlation doesn't mean causation. And that's totally true. But when you change a variable about your marketing and your marketing has a direct impact, and it changes the result, it is quite literally causation. So having multi-channel marketing and thinking holistically and focusing on the campaign, instead of the little tactics, it is really causing better results. [13:34.5]
I recently saw a financial adviser on LinkedIn who posted something like this. Like it's time to celebrate. I've been blogging for six weeks, and I haven't missed a week yet. Here's my newest blog, and his link to a post. So, I messaged him, and I was like, just curious, why are you blogging? Like, what is the reason for your blog post? And he said that he wanted to educate his prospective clients. I see this all the time. I get it. I know that people can have the heart of a teacher and that they want to educate people. What they don't realize is that they're competing with big financial brands and educate, if you want to be an educator, get into education, right? But they're competing with these big financial brands with deeper pockets, with better content than they can ever create. These financial advisers are fighting the battles that they cannot win. [14:18.2]
They're focused on the battles instead of winning the war. And I'm, I really want you to get this. And here's what I want you to take away. Do you see the problem with this? His blogs didn't hook up to anything. He wasn't thinking holistically, even as even something as small as including a link in his post to his, about us, page something as tiny as that, something that seems so small, it would have a huge difference, but all he had were the posts and that's it. And I could have a terrible blog post compared to this guy and I could probably kick his butt. And in marketing, I would create a better campaign. My stuff would be hooked together. I'd be rocking and rolling. My blog posts could just be not so good. They could be crappy, but I would do the things that would lead to results. I would leave a link to an about us page. I would reference other things. I would have different social proof. I would have urgency, scarcity, all the marketing principles that come along with building a successful campaign. [15:18.9]
And of course, the best outcome in the entire world here is to be able to see the forest and the trees. Obviously a much better scenario is to create incredible blog posts and to create better overall campaigns. I get that. But what I've found is that most financial advisors aren't natural marketers. They don't have the time or the inclination to get really good at it. Then the mind-blowing part that may have never occurred to you before today is that's okay. That is 100% completely. Okay. It is acceptable. I promise you; it is fine to not be a natural marketer and is completely fine for you to not want to get really good at it. [15:57.6]
I want to leave you with this last point, because I want this to stick with you. Maybe you're a newsletter subscriber, maybe you're not, but have you ever thought about why my inner circle members are so successful? I am not necessarily teaching them marketing. I am not a marketing teacher. It's not like I get the Blackboard. I have different, I have the chalk and I'm just writing out lesson after lesson. And I'm giving you a little homework assignments. I mean, every so often I will jokingly say, here's your homework for the month, but it's not like I'm literally giving them homework. I am not a teacher. I am not an educator. I appreciate it, if you think that I am, I appreciate if you learn things from me, but my approach is not from like an education standpoint. It's not like I'm showing people how to do A and then B and then C and that's partly by design because I want the content of these newsletters to apply for many years to come. [16:44.3]
A lot of the people who are doing the teaching would like nitty gritty stuff like Facebook ads or different sequences, where they say like, hook this up this way and then do this and do this and do this four years from now. It's not going to make sense. It's not going to apply the stuff that I am covering for the most part, it's going to apply 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, I don't want to teach tactics. I mean, every so often tactical stuff slips in there. And yes, there is a little dopamine rush that comes from getting tactics, I've talked about that before. But what I'm really doing with the newsletter and the reason why financial advisors tend to be successful, obviously your mileage may vary and put that disclaimer there. But the reason why they tend to be successful in my experience and in my opinion is because I'm showing them alternative ways of thinking. [17:29.9]
This whole podcast episode about focusing on campaigns holistically, that's all it is, it's an alternative way of thinking. It allows someone who isn't a good marketer to beat the pants off, of someone who is. And it also means that it's possible to get far better results in less time, which is what I help advisors do every single month. Think about the example that I gave you. I could have, I could make more money from a direct mail piece that is worse than someone else's direct mail piece. That is how this is possible. I could also get far better results by not changing a word of copy. I could do this with anything, literally anything I could get you better results on LinkedIn, by not changing a single word on your LinkedIn profile. I could get you better results from your email marketing campaign, by not changing a single, a single letter in your email marketing campaign, I could get you better results from your blog post, by not changing a single word on your blog. And it's done because you got to focus on the campaign. You're looking at how these things work together. [18:33.3]
But enough about that, I don't want to keep talking forever. I hope this helps you if so, leave a positive review. And if you're interested in subscribing to the newsletter, go to the best link in the entire world, TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, and I'll catch you next week. [18:48.8]
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