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: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Financial Advisor Marketing Podcast. As always, I am your host, James Pollard, founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com, and today we're diving into a future-looking topic. The future of financial advice will be ruled by these three things.
Most of the time, this podcast talks about things that are working right now. I talk about marketing strategies that financial advisors can use right away to get more clients and make more money. But, today, I'd like to pivot to the horizon. I want to talk about the future of the financial-advice industry. [01:03.4]
I could discuss fifty different things that I think will change in the future. However, I'd like to drill down into three big themes. This might be a shorter episode, but I do think he's going to be helpful, because these three things cover a lot of ground and I want to talk about them because I want you to keep them in mind as you conduct your business and as you set your goals for the next few years and beyond.
The first theme is the rise of personalized and human-centered advice. At first glance, this might seem strange, because the financial advice business is already a relationship business, but I think it will no longer be table stakes in the future. I don't think people will take that for granted, meaning, it will be helpful for advisors to point out to their clients that they can work directly with another human being. Wow, why is this so important? Because robo-advisors are growing. [01:52.6]
It seems like financial advisors were really worried about robos back in 2019 and 2020. I was getting a lot of emails from advisors about it. But the hype has died down since then and I really haven't been getting as many questions about robos. But don't be fooled, because they're still getting clients. They're still managing more money. Vanguard has its robo-advisor. Schwab has Intelligent Portfolios. Then you have Betterment you've got Wealthfront. You have a whole bunch of other options, and to be fair, some places allow you to have direct access to human financial advisors, but that's really not the same thing as having a dedicated advisor who is your advisor who works specifically with you every step of the way to develop a plan and help you implement it.
What's extra sad is that consumers already had trouble telling the difference between financial advisors and now they're somehow expected to be able to tell the difference between full-service advisors, financial advisors who work with robos in some way and robos that offer no financial advisors to work whatsoever, and then all of the other options out there. It's just a lot.
This increasing difficulty in discerning between different types of financial advice combined with the growing number of robo-advisors shows how important it is for financial advisors to emphasize the human element in their services and in their marketing materials. [03:05.7]
I've been helping financial advisors get more clients in 2015 when I started the Advisor Coach. I've worked directly and indirectly with thousands of financial advisors. I've seen firsthand just how much better personalized, heartfelt and real genuine marketing materials work. I'll give you some examples.
Instead of a super-professional, uptight “About Us” page on your website, include some photos of you. Talk about your hobbies. Who are you? What do you like to do? What can people expect when they meet you? What you want to hear is “Wow, you're exactly what I thought you were going to be like. You are exactly like you are on your website, your LinkedIn profile, your content and your emails.” That is a great compliment that you can receive.
Instead of posting boring articles or whatever on social media, share something about you. Tell a story. What cool stuff have you done? What has happened to you lately? Have you read any good books? Tell us something interesting. People are craving novelty and interesting things. That's why they go on social media, so give the people what they want. [04:03.7]
Instead of sending awful stock-market-commentary emails, try telling a story in your emails. I've sent and tested millions of emails for financial advisors. I've also personally written more than 2,500 emails for myself at the Advisor Coach and I can tell you unequivocally that entertaining, story-based emails performed better than dry, canned content, and even if your content is not canned, it probably feels like it is.
Plus, if you think about this scenario, from a business perspective with the robos, you realize that it's becoming more and more important to want to become indispensable. You want your services to be sticky, in the sense that you want your clients to stick with you. They should want to continue doing business with you. [04:48.5]
Let's think about some ways that robos fall short in this category. Robo-advisors are popular with some people because they offer a form of convenience and lower costs. Yet I don't. I don't want to keep beating a dead horse here, but they lack personalized service. They lack the personalized touch that can make or break a client relationship with an advisor. This impersonal nature doesn't build any emotional connection. It doesn't build any trust, except I guess trust in the company, and those things are both crucial in planning and advice, the emotional connection and the trust.
The customization and personal intention that a human advisor provides cannot be replicated by an algorithm, especially when you're dealing with complex financial situations, life changes, or nuanced investment strategies, or machines taking people's jobs—that's one of the questions I got in 2020 a lot with robo-advisors and then I got it again in early 2023. Is artificial intelligence going to take people's jobs? Yes, yes, machines are taking people's jobs.
If you're someone with a simple W-2 and a brokerage account, and you’ve got some dividends, you probably don't need an expensive accountant. You can just upload some forms to your favorite software and you can call it a day. The cost–benefit analysis just would not work out in your favor to hire an expensive accountant. [06:02.3]
However, it is a little different for financial planners. Why? Because people have a lot of variables in their lives, marriages, divorces, children, new jobs, hopes, dreams, goals, death, disability, and so much more. Things change, and a human financial advisor can anticipate those changes before a machine can. That is the magic. That is what is going to separate financial advisors from robo-advisors and software that is powered by artificial intelligence in the future.
I also want to point out that a lot of these robo-advisors and tools are trying to differentiate by adding more stuff. They're cramming their interfaces with tons of features and bells and whistles. Advisors can and should run in the opposite direction of that and offer simplicity. With the sheer amount of information and choices available, the role of a trusted advisor has never been more critical. [06:56.5]
I'll give you an example. One of my friends bought this plot of land, and he wants to drill a well on that land. This is something I've been looking at, too. I've never drilled well before, but I want to buy some land. I want to make sure I do it right.
When you're buying land, you want to look at a water source and what the trees look like, and you want healthy vegetation and you want it to have a certain gradient, and you want to have the soil tested. There's so much. There's so much stuff that goes into it, I can't possibly explain it all. I don't even know 99.9% of this stuff. I'm an absolute beginner, but it is something that I'm interested in.
So, I could spend hours researching companies and interviewing them, and figuring out what to look for versus what not to look for. I could watch YouTube channels. I could listen to podcasts. I could read books. Or I could go to somebody like a farmer who has a well for his livestock and maybe another well for his house and his family, and I could ask, “Hey, who did your well? What do you recommend? What do you wish you knew before beginning this process?” and I could get the information right away. It would take me about an hour. That is what a financial advisor can do. A financial advisor who can cut through all of the noise and tell you exactly what to do and why. But enough about the robo-advisors I want to move on. [08:07.1]
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.
The second thing that I feel will dictate the future of financial advice is the way financial advisors market themselves. Obviously, this is the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast, so I'm a little biased. Yet let me explain. There are still in the year of our Lord 2024 financial advisors who can't even have their own websites and can't do email autoresponder sequences, and can't even make certain posts on social media. That is crazy to me. [08:58.0]
Imagine getting in a fight with someone and that other person is allowed to use weapons and you're not. It would be an unfair fight, right? These marketing strategies are the exact weapons they're using to kick your butt. The example I give frequently is Coca-Cola versus Pepsi.
I want you to imagine a world where Coca-Cola could advertise everywhere, on TV and magazines, on billboards, on social media and everywhere else. Coca-Cola can advertise anywhere and everywhere. Then imagine that Pepsi was limited only to billboards. Pepsi wouldn't stand a chance.
If Pepsi couldn't advertise anywhere except for a few billboards, how long do you think Pepsi would remain in business? Yet that is what is happening to financial advisors. They’re being handcuffed by these companies, and I feel so, so bad for them because they don't have the tools to scale their businesses the way that everyone else can. It is not a fair fight. [09:50.8]
You might be one of those advisors listening to the show right now thinking that you're doing just fine, and you might be doing just fine based on your standards. It is up to you to define what fine is. I also want you to realize, just think that I might be right here, okay? Think that it's possible that I know what I'm talking about. You might not be just fine for very long, because if you don't think this will get worse in the future, unless your company's changed, of course, then you've got another thing coming.
Good marketing has always made a huge difference for people and companies and industries. I'm a student of history. I've seen this throughout time in the early 1800s, and 1900s. Even today with financial advisors, I'm seeing it with my Inner Circle members. I've been writing the monthly paper-and-ink newsletter for years now. I've had thousands of back-and-forth conversations with financial advisors, and one of the most prevalent themes is that financial advisors who capitalize on good marketing strategies tend to get more clients and make more money. Whoa, that's obvious, isn't it? The effect has been getting stronger. Technology has advanced. Strategies have become more refined. [10:57.1]
I first started seeing this effect speed up when I launched appointments on autopilot back in 2019. That was and still is my email marketing program that teaches financial advisors how to write emails that set appointments. One of the reasons I focus so heavily on the email writing itself and not so much on the actual technology, I guess there are lots of reasons, but the first reason is that I write better emails for the financial-advice industry than pretty much anyone else on the planet. But the second reason is because I knew the tech was going to change, and change it did.
There are so many fancy features now, you can tag people in ways that you couldn't tag before. You can score leads in ways that you couldn't score before. You can segment. You can build your audiences. You can link your email list, your online ads accounts. There's just so much cool stuff that's happening. Even LinkedIn has changed a lot. Of course, the human psychology part of it, the fundamental marketing stuff, that has not changed whatsoever and I don't see that changing anytime soon. However, there are lots of little buttons and tweaks that they've made over the years. Those little changes add up. [11:58.8]
A financial advisor who has taken advantage of all of those little things over the past few years will look a lot different than someone who hasn't done a darn thing—and that brings me to the third and final thing that I think will rule the future of financial advice, and that's adaptability.
Let's continue with the LinkedIn example. Over the years, LinkedIn has favored different types of content and pushed certain types harder than others. A few years ago, polls were all the rage. You could post a poll and get thousands of impressions with really not that much effort. Your network didn't even have to be that big. They would push it outside of your network. Today, polls aren't as effective. They're not as strong. The adaptable financial advisor would simply change his or her posting style.
This type of thing happens all the time. Search engines update their algorithms. People's taste in marketing can change. In short, things are not static. But I want to point out that the rate of change seems to be speeding up. The acceleration in the rate of change emphasizes the need for financial advisors to stay informed to stay adaptable. [12:59.7]
The most successful financial advisors are those who not only stay up to date with the latest technology trends and marketing trends, but they're also able to anticipate changes and adapt their strategies accordingly. This doesn't mean chasing every new fad, but it means maintaining a solid understanding of the core principles, the fundamentals of marketing that I keep hammering again and again and again.
I think this is Episode 278, I couldn't be wrong, so you’ve got 277 other episodes of the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast where I talk about the marketing fundamentals. Those are critical, right? But I want to make sure that you understand this doesn't mean hopping on to every single new trend.
Do you remember when Clubhouse came out in 2020? I specifically remember a few so-called marketing experts telling financial advisors that they needed to hop on Clubhouse. “Oh, you need to be there. This is the new thing. You’ve got to be on Clubhouse.” I was one of the only people saying it wouldn't last. And what happened? Clubhouse fizzled out. It did not last. The financial advisors who listened to me would have been just fine and the advisors who listen to other people would have wasted their precious time and energy. [14:09.8]
But wait, that's not the only time it happened, because in 2023, the social network threads dropped and a whole bunch of people got caught up in the hype. They were screaming about how you had to be on Threads and how Threads was the new social media platform. Did I tell advisors to do that, to be on Threads? Nope, I sure didn't. And guess what? Threads kind of fizzled out as well. So, adaptability does not mean hopping from one thing to the next, like a squirrel and a nut buffet during a firework show. It means focusing on the things that can help you and your business.
I'm going to give you two quotes that I really like and then I'm going to wrap up the show. Dolly Parton has a quote that says, “We cannot direct the wind, but we can't adjust the sails,” and that's true. You have to be willing to go with the flow. When things don't go as planned, you don't just throw up your hands and give up. You find a way to navigate to new circumstances. [15:02.6]
The second quote is from Jack Welch and he said, “Change before you have to,” and, ooh, I love that quote. I love it so much. You really don't want to be forced to change. That puts you at a disadvantage because it makes you desperate. If you have to change, you're more likely to make unwise decisions, but if you change proactively, then you're in control. You're making decisions based on foresight and strategy rather than being backed into a corner.
This approach allows you to explore new opportunities and experiment with innovations on your own terms—that's important—which can lead to more thoughtful and successful outcomes. Embracing change as an ongoing part of your strategy can also alleviate fear and resistance that come with all change. I mean, people, we're human. I get it, we're scared of change. We resist it, so instead of viewing change as a threat, when you do it proactively, it becomes an opportunity for growth and improvement. [15:52.7]
That mindset not only benefits you as a financial advisor, but guess what? It sets a positive example for your clients. It encourages them to embrace change in their own financial planning. If you're asking them to invest differently, to budget differently, to plan differently, if they see that you are someone, you are “the” type of person who embraces change, that you are adaptable, they are likely going to model you.
Alright, to recap, the three things that I think will rule the future of financial advice are: No. 1, the rise of personalized and human centered advice. No. 2, the financial advisors who are willing to embrace good marketing, and, No. 3, the financial advisors who are willing to adapt and change before they have to.
Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't gotten involved in my world, go to TheAdvisorCoach.com. You can see a few ways you can dig deeper and get even more from me. You can subscribe to the email list. You can read some of my blog articles without subscribing to anything. You can just click around and read them. There's so much more you can do. The homepage of TheAdvisorCoach.com is like a “choose your own adventure” story, so check it out. And I will catch you next week. [17:00.4]
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