You're listening to “Financial Advisor Marketing”—the best show on the planet for financial advisors 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 advisors grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard.
James: In this episode, I'm going to chat with you about some marketing myths that financial advisors believe. These are myths that hold advisors back from getting the clients and marketing results they should be getting.
I recently watched The Usual Suspects, which is a good movie from the ’90s, I highly recommend it, and there was this quote which said, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist.” I could say something similar about these marketing myths, except I would say the greatest trick these marketing myths ever pulled was convincing advisors that they're effective. [01:03.6]
Let me use email as an example. If you look at the average ROI of email marketing, you will see that simply reported as 36-1. Other places say 38-1 and others say 44-1. Basically, it's a lot, right? Let's pick 36-1. What happens with email is that financial advisors will use an absolutely horrible email marketing strategy and still get a 5-1 ROI, for example. They will be thrilled that they're getting such a great return on investment, but what they don't realize is that they're getting that return despite the things that they're doing.
I used to work in the marketing department of a casino. I don't talk about it as much as I used to. I actually talked about it a lot in the early days of the podcast. That was a long time ago. But I learned more about human psychology there in a few weeks than I learned in four years of college, and I literally have a psychology degree, not even being sarcastic, not joking. In real life, for real, I have a psychology degree. [01:57.5]
A lot of people don't realize that one of the worst things that can happen to a new gambler is for that person to win, because that person is more likely to be hooked. They get that rush, like, Yeah, I just won. I hit it on the roulette table. I hit it on the blackjack table, just got the jackpot. That sort of thing. They might have this illusion that they're somehow good at gambling, even though the house always wins and even though it's based on just random chance. Depending on the game, right? Poker is a little bit of a different story. Please spare me your emails.
It is actually better for a new gambler to lose in the beginning. That way he or she gets turned off gambling and doesn't want to do it anymore, and saves money over the long run. You just get your loss out of the way. You get your butt kicked on night one. You say, “Wow, gambling sucks. I never want to do that again,” and you live your life, right? That is the thing that should happen to you and you are saved. That is awesome, right?
In the same way, it would actually be better for a financial advisor to have a negative ROI with these marketing myths, because then the advisor would stop the behavior and move on to something better, because a financial advisor might get trapped into believing that a 5-1 ROI is amazing, get comfortable and never do anything to seek out the real 36-1 ROI. [03:12.3]
What I plan on doing with this podcast episode is going rapid fire and giving you 10 marketing myths so you can pick out which ones you need to work on.
No. 1: “Successful financial advisors are extroverts.” This is simply not true. I have worked with thousands of financial advisors over the years and I've seen successful extroverts and I've seen successful introverts. If you believe that your marketing is somehow limited or that you're at a disadvantage because you're an introvert, hear me loud and clear—it is not true.
I even did a two part podcast series about personality not that long ago, titled, “Personality types of the most successful financial advisors.” If you have not listened to that, please go back and listen. I explained that whatever your personality is, you should lean into it. That means if you're an extrovert, you should go ahead and pursue stuff like networking and seminars. If you're an introvert, you're better served by leaning into your introverted personality and working with your strengths. Besides, introversion and extraversion both exist on a spectrum. You're neither either/or. You're a combination of both. [04:11.4]
Here's another myth. Some people believe that introversion and extraversion has something to do with where you get your energy, like introverts get energy from being alone and extroverts get energy from being with other people. I think this idea came from a book called Quiet by Susan Cain. Unfortunately, this idea is so popular that it's kind of hard to fight now, kind of like how semantics change over time.
If I were to say, “Yo, that's hot,” 300 years ago, people would look at me like I was crazy, but the meaning of “Yo, that's hot” means something I admire or something I get enjoyment from. If I look at your shoes, I say, “Yo, that's hot,” but if it's the 1700s and I look at your clogs, and they say, “Yo that's hot,” you would look at me and you would burn me at the stake. [04:50.3]
But what's crazy is the introversion and extraversion were both coined by Carl Jung. He is the guy who introduced these ideas, and it wasn't about where people energy. I don't know why people take these ideas that are just blatantly wrong and run with them. Introversion and extraversion is about where you direct your energy, meaning, where do you put your focus? This is directly from Jung. He is the person who came up with these concepts, and if he says that's what it is, that's what I'm going with. That's what I believe. If you're an introvert, you have an inward orientation of psychic energy. You focus more on your internal thoughts, your feelings and your moods. If you're an extrovert, you direct your psychic energy outward.
Here's a good question I’d like to ask people to get a feel for if they're introverted or extroverted. I’ll ask us. If you have to learn about a new topic or skill, what would you rather do? Would you rather go out and talk with people who can do it, just have banter back and forth, like, “Oh, what about this? What about this?” and just talk with people? Or would you rather read a book or study the materials written by or created by people who can do it? This will tell me where you prefer to focus your psychic energy, because reading and studying focuses your attention inward. That's also why so many people associate reading with introversion. [06:03.0]
But enough about that, here's another myth. Myth No. 2 is that more traffic equals more clients, and I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because I posted online and shared in an email a screenshot of my website traffic stats showing I received more than 119,000 visitors in a three-month period to TheAdvisorCoach.com.
So many questions poured in from this, a lot of email replies, not that many people ask on social media, but email, for sure. Perhaps the biggest one was from the “actually” people who wanted to know about my conversion rate. They were thinking something like, you might get a ton of traffic, but actually conversion rate is more important, or your conversion rate probably isn't that good—and that's a good line of thinking. I want to commend that. I appreciate that, because more traffic does not always equal more clients, so I am thankful that these people were able to see through that myth and actually understand that conversion rate is extremely important. [06:56.8]
Still, I'd like to answer the question of “What is your conversion rate?” Conversion rate depends on which page you're talking about. For example, a random blog post will likely have a lower conversion rate than a Contact Us page because someone who gets to a Contact Us page is probably more interested and ready to proceed.
Also, it depends on the traffic source. For instance, people who visit a landing page by clicking on one of your social media posts are generally more likely to subscribe to email us than people who visit by clicking a cold ad. This makes sense because people who are on your social media profiles kind of know you, like you and trust you. You can do more work there than you can do with a cold ad.
But I'll try my best to answer the question even though it's really hard. If someone just asked, “Hey, what is this website's conversion rate?” it depends. I know, some people don't like “it depends,” so I'm going to give an answer and I'm going to back up my claim some more.
I have been featured by a company called OptinMonster, which is the company I use to create all of my email opt-ins. OptinMonster is a third party, not a sponsor, that has actual backend access to my metrics and they were the ones who reported my conversion rates. They did this in an article. One opt-in, in the article, which is completely shown, you can go see it for yourself, it converted 58.33% of readers. [08:11.0]
I say converted instead of converts or converting, because I don't even use that opt-in anymore. I have a much better opt-in that's converting more than 58.33%. However, I only want to share stuff with you that has been verified by a third party. My OptinMonster article is public. The exact title is “How the Advisor Coach increased conversions 3x from Facebook ads.” You can read it for yourself. There are so many people making all of these claims and anybody can say anything. It's very easy to say something. It's a little bit more difficult to back it up, and it's even more difficult to back it up with a third party that has actual access to your stats and they're the ones who are making the claim, right?
Plus, if you google the average opt-in page conversion rate, you will see that LeadPages says, and I quote, “a common conversion rate for an email opt-in landing page is between 5% and 15%. The companies with the most success tend to convert at around 20-25%. And the very cream of the crop achieves conversion rates of 30% or higher.” I guess it makes me at least cream of the crop, figuring that opt-in that I just referenced and I don't even use anymore converted at nearly double the cream of the crop rate. [09:15.3]
It also means I've been able to attract high-quality visitors, which is important, because while getting a bunch of traffic is beneficial, it's the quality of the visitors that truly counts. Quality traffic refers to visitors who are genuinely interested in the services offered and are more likely to engage with the content, inquire further or eventually become clients. These are typically people who are actively seeking a financial advisor, or financial advice or solutions or financial-planning topics, and they get into the advisor’s world.
In my case, I talk about what? Financial-advisor marketing and how financial advisors can get clients, and financial-advisor prospecting strategies, and that is how financial advisors find me and they get into my world. If I talk about something like mountain climbing for financial advisors, they wouldn't really get into my world. Then I might get financial advisors, but they wouldn't opt in to my email list and do all the cool stuff or listen to literally the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast, because they're interested in mountain climbing, not marketing. [10:12.6]
At the end of the day, you have to look at your numbers and figure out what works for you. Dogma is dangerous, because which would you rather have? A thousand visitors per month at a 10% conversion rate, that's 100 conversions, or 2,000 visitors per month at a 5% conversion rate. That's also 100 conversion, so the conversions are the same, but one has more visitors and one has a better conversion rate. There is no right or wrong answer. It's up to you and your situation. In my opinion, you want both traffic and conversions. But just understand your approach and understand what works for you. That is the most important thing. I can kind of give you a guide and say, hey, this is what I think, but I can't really tell you what to do. [10:51.6]
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 $1,000 worth of bonuses, including exclusive interviews that aren't available anywhere else. Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more.
No.3: “Social media isn't for serious investors”—and I don't know why this is still a thing. I thought we were past this. Some financial advisors believe high-net-worth individuals don't use social media. I've got news for you. They do, and I have tons of inner circle members who are doing extremely well on social media and they are getting clients like you wouldn't believe. Obviously, I like LinkedIn. I have an entire video program about it called “How to get clients with LinkedIn,” which you can find by going to TheAdvisorCoach.com and clicking on the Get Clients with LinkedIn tab.
Neglecting social media is a huge missed opportunity for financial advisors because social media is not only a way to get found by prospective clients—I mean, they are searching on there, trust me. There's research out there that proves this. It's not just me saying this—but it's also a way to follow up with people over time. Don't neglect that. When you show up on LinkedIn and you're posting and people see your posts, that is a follow-up mechanism. It is a way for you to stay in front of people until they're ready to hire you. [12:09.3]
No. 4: “Referrals don't need nurturing.” This was actually inspired by an Inner Circle member. My newsletter subscribers, in case you don't know, they get direct email access to me for their questions. What's really wild is I actually just had a guy cancel and this guy was trying to build a $99-per-month subscription business in the financial advisor space. Yeah, that's nuts, isn't it?
This guy canceled after one month, too. I don't even think he got his first newsletter issue. Maybe he got cold feet or something. Maybe he got scared. Maybe he thought $99 was a lot of money, I don't know. But I bring that up because I have quite literally built one of the biggest subscription businesses in the financial-advisor industry, and at any point, seriously, at any point, it could be 3:00 in the morning, it could be six o'clock at night and I will check my email on a rolling basis, like every day, every other day, and get back to all of my Inner Circle members to the best of my ability. [13:01.0]
So, at any point, this guy could have emailed me and asked, “James, what advice do you have for growing my business?” That could have been his question. I would have told him. I would have said, “I would do this, this, this and this, because I've been there and I've done that and I'm here to help my newsletter subscribers,” but he didn't. He legitimately never asked the single question despite having direct access to someone who has built what is pretty much the exact type of business he's trying to build.
It really is amazing to see just how hard people will work to avoid becoming successful. It's mind boggling. I bet that's what it is. There's some psychological block that this guy has that says, “No, I'm too close and I'm getting help directly from someone who has built the type of business I want to build. I believe I'm an underdog, I believe I have to work hard. I believe I have to climb the ladder. So, I'm going to cancel.” It really is crazy to see people working so hard to avoid becoming successful. [13:52.4]
Anyway, another one of my Inner Circle members, not that guy, was asking about referral marketing, and he was putting together his referral marketing strategy and he realized that his follow up was really bad, meaning, a client would give him a referral or something and he would reach out once or twice, and that's it, usually a phone call or an email. There was no social-media connection request. There was nothing sent in the mail. There were no resources offered, just a phone call or an email, or probably both sometimes, I don't know, and the email would say, “Hey, so-and-so referred you,” and that's it. “If you'd like to set an appointment, here's where to go. If you'd like to chat with me, here's where to go.”
Referrals need follow up. People have lives. They get busy. People don't wake up in the morning thinking about how they can become your client. You are not the most important thing to them. They have to be moved closer and closer to you until they finally convert. That is how marketing works.
No. 5: “Online ads are a waste of money for financial advisors.” I had trouble saying this. Don't even make me laugh on this one. I've been doing this a long time and I'll give it to you straight. Some online ads are a waste of money because they're not going to work—I shouldn't say a waste of money. I'll just say an investment. It's like it's the cost of doing business—because a lot of stuff doesn't work. That's the name of the game. [15:06.5]
When you're advertising online, I want you to think of yourself as an angel investor. When angel investors put their money to work, they understand that something like 90% of their investments are going to go belly up, but the 10% is usually enough to recoup all of their losses and more. That's what it's like with online advertising. You're trying stuff and trying stuff and trying stuff, and a lot of that will fail, but some of the stuff will work, and it will work so well that it will recoup all of your little losses, and more.
No. 6: “Email marketing is outdated.” This is weird. Every so often this, I've heard this so long, that people just pop up out of the woodwork and they'll talk about how email marketing is dying or how it's outdated, and it's just not true. I've said this many times on the podcast and I will say it again, email marketing is, by far, the most effective appointment-setting strategy I have ever seen for financial advisors. [15:58.6]
To be clear, I am talking about email where people opt in to your email list to receive emails from you, not cold email. They are two different things. When people choose to raise their hands and say, “Yes, I'd like to be part of your world,” then your marketing works so much better. And email marketing, it's just so gosh darn effective, it's just ridiculous that people don't do it. But in any case, email marketing is definitely not outdated.
Speaking of email marketing being outdated, here's another myth I see all the time, No. 7: “Your lead magnet should be short and easy to consume,” and when I say lead magnet, I mean the thing that people get in exchange for subscribing to your email list. This could be a video, a PDF, a webinar, or something else entirely. Whatever it is, it is the thing people are getting.
The myth that the lead magnet should be short is prevalent among financial advisors who are trying to build email lists. They put out this short piece of content, like a checklist or a whitepaper, and they expect people to just desperately crave it and enter their email addresses in exchange for it, and they think that people want it so badly that their hands are shaking over the keyboard as they enter into characters, and that's just not true, either. [17:10.4]
I mean, think about this. Would you rather have a prospect who spent two minutes looking over your little checklist or would you rather have someone who spent 30 minutes reading about your well-crafted, in-depth piece of content? The answer should be obvious, but I'll let you conclude.
No. 8: “The best services sell themselves.” Oh, no. No, no, no, this is not true at all. Some financial advisors believe that if they offer excellent services, they don't need to invest much in marketing. However, no matter how outstanding their services are, they won't sell themselves. Advisors must actively promote their services to make potential clients aware of them. I mean, how much good can you do for people if they don't know you exist?
No. 9: “Your LinkedIn profile should be like a resume.” This might have been fine in 2015, 2016, 2017, but it's outdated and it's corn now. If you want to attract clients on LinkedIn, your profile needs to appeal to a specific type of person, and to prove I'm not just flapping my gums, I'll use my own profile as an example. [18:13.0]
Here's my headline right now at the time of this recording. “Host of Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. TheAdvisorCoach.com.” That is a darn good headline, if I do say so myself. It accomplishes three critical missions. No. 1, it establishes credibility. I lead with my podcast because it makes me more credible. The logic here is that if I have an entire podcast about financial visor marketing, with 250-plus episodes, I guess I should go back and put that on there that I must know what I'm talking about. We're still determining if that's true or not. I may not know what I'm talking about or I may. It's up to you to judge.
No. 2, it gives my website, TheAdvisorCoach.com, that allows people to check out my business outside of LinkedIn, that is extremely important and it leads to people subscribing to my email list, reading my blog posts, giving me a little bit of money, subscribing to the Inner Circle Newsletter. They can get in my world however they desire, and it tells people exactly what I do. I help financial advisors with their marketing. [19:07.0]
Let's keep going. Let's look at my actual profile. The very first line of my summary is “I am the founder of the Advisor Coach LLC, a company that helps financial advisors grow their businesses and get more clients.” Again, I’m being extremely clear about what I do and who I help. That is so important. What do you do? And who do you help? If you can just put that in there, you are going to do so much better than all of the other financial advisors who do not do that.
I'll give you a 10th and final myth, and then I'll close out this episode. No. 10: “Marketing should be all about attracting people to you.” This myth is dangerous because it sounds right, but I think your marketing should also include repulsion, meaning, you should actively repel the people who you do not want as clients. What's interesting is that as you do this, you will probably find that the right people become even more attracted to you. [19:59.8]
I'll give you an example of using myself again and my newsletter to illustrate this concept. Once upon a time, I received this email from this guy complaining that my newsletter page was too long and that I should move my call-to-action button higher on the page. He offered this unsolicited advice without asking about my unique situation, my goals, or any question, really. He just gave me his advice like I should be thankful for it, right?
After reading his email, I started jumping for joy. I literally did. I was jumping. I got out of my chair and was jumping up, yippee-yay. I really did this. Why did I do it? Because that's exactly what I want my newsletter page to do. It was doing the thing that I wanted it to do. I want it to repel people who don't read. It is a monthly newsletter, for goodness’ sake. This means people who can't be bothered to read a simple signup page are not good fits for it. It requires reading, so I'm glad to see it's doing its job. [20:53.8]
I've never understood the mentality behind trying to offer unsolicited business advice through cold email, because you knew nothing about me, you know nothing about my business, you know nothing about my goals. Amateur marketers love to talk about how landing pages should reduce friction or whatever, and these people get acid reflux when they view my newsletter page for a few reasons.
First, as this emailer kindly noted, my call-to-action buttons are buried deep, deep, deep down the page. You can't see them until you scroll, scroll and scroll some more.
Second, I tried to repel the wrong sorts of people from subscribing. I make it abundantly clear that the newsletter is not for everyone.
Third, I have a strict no-refunds policy. My shopping cart, ThriveCart, won't even accept people's money. The order will not go through unless they manually check a box where they acknowledged that there is no money back guarantee. They say, “I understand that the newsletter ships on the first of the month. I understand that I'm going to get billed every single month because it's a monthly newsletter, and that's how monthly newsletters work, and there are no refunds under any circumstances, no matter what.” [21:55.8]
So, what is the lesson for you? The lesson is that you should design your business based on your situation and your desires, not what someone else thinks. Judge all advice, even mine, against what you want. What are your goals? Because the truth is that there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all marketing advice.
In any case, that is it for this week's episode. What did you think? Let me know. Leave a review. Share with a friend. I appreciate you listening, and I will catch you next week.
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