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: Last week's podcast episode was all about marketing mistakes new financial advisors make, so I figured I would flip this and talk about the marketing mistakes experienced financial advisors make.
I actually have a unique vantage point that I don't think anyone else in the world has, because not only do I keep my finger on the pulse of the financial advisor marketing world with my emails and this podcast, but I also have products specifically for new financial advisors and experienced financial advisors, and my Inner Circle Newsletter, even though it tends to attract advisors who are a little bit more experienced, has advisors with all kinds of experience levels. I have new advisors, advisors with a little bit of experience, and advisors with a lot of experience. Really, advisors from all walks of life are subscribed to that newsletter. [01:15.6]
So, I see new and experienced financial advisors and their marketing firsthand. I know what they're doing well, what they're not doing well. I know what kind of things trip them up with their marketing, so I have a vantage point that I don't think anyone else in the entire world has.
Before I begin, it's been a while since I've plugged my email list on this podcast, so I'm going to plug it now. If you'd like to subscribe to my email list, you can do so over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/57mt. That's the number 5, the number 7, the letter M, the letter T, “57mt”. When you subscribe, I will end you a PDF with 57 of my favorite financial advisor marketing ideas that you can download right away. If you have not subscribed. I highly recommend doing it, because this podcast has a lot of content that is inspired by my emails and vice versa. [02:04.4]
But onto the show. The very first marketing mistake I see experienced financial advisors making is getting complacent. Perhaps the biggest mistake I see experienced financial advisors make is they get comfortable with their business and their marketing. They lose that spark, that hunger that drove them to be successful in the first place.
Have you ever heard the old saying, dance with the one that brought you? That’s a success secret, and a lot of people stopped doing the things that got them to where they are. I'm not necessarily talking about the tactics either, because tactics change, and, yes, you have to adapt over time. I'm talking about the core fundamentals that built their businesses.
One specific example is having a prospecting routine. Sometimes experienced financial advisors will ditch the prospecting routines because they feel like they have enough clients and everything is okay, and they may be fine for a few months or even a few years. But, naturally, clients will begin to drop off and their business will either slow or begin to shrink. [03:03.5]
I know all about this because I run a subscription-based business. I am knee-deep into numbers, like new signups, retention, average customer value and churn. What's scary is that experienced financial advisors and already successful businesses will get hurt more by this decay than new financial advisors.
Let me explain. Let's say that over the long term, you onboard two new clients per month on average, okay? I'm just keeping it nice and easy for you. Two new clients per month on average. You take things very slowly, we'll keep it nice and easy here, and your churn rate is 5% per year, which means you lose 5% of your clients each year on average. If you have 20 clients, then only one will leave you in an entire year. That's not a big deal, because with your marketing efforts, you should be able to replace that person in about two weeks. Remember, you're onboarding two new clients per month on average, so if you lose one, then you will probably replace that person in two weeks. [04:05.4]
However, this is where things get a little crazy. Let's say you have a successful business, and you already have 100 clients and you have the same exact churn rate. Now you will lose five new clients per year, and assuming you don't stop your prospecting or your marketing routine, that represents two and a half months of your marketing efforts just to get back to where you were.
Again, I want to stress, that's keeping the prospecting exactly the same. When you become complacent and you stop doing that, things become much worse. Momentum is so important, so even if you keep your marketing the same, I want to make sure you get this, if you never stop prospecting and you keep doing the same things that you were doing, it still takes you a lot more time to replace the clients because of the churn.
Now, in the real world, will your marketing improve over time? Will you optimize your systems? Yeah, I hope so. Right? I hope that your marketing will get better. But even then, let's say that your marketing gets proportionally better to the amount of clients that you now have. It’s still about the same amount of time to replace the churn, if it's proportionate, right? So, you have to account for these things. [05:11.0]
Another reason why complacency is so dangerous is because the actual tactics change in marketing all the time. I mentioned this, tactics change. What worked extremely well a few years ago might not even move the needle today. The pandemic was a perfect example of this with in-person events. The pandemic was a gift for me because I was already showing financial advisors how to do online marketing and get clients online, and when the pandemic happened, it was like tens of thousands of financial advisors were added to the market and they were practically throwing money at me. I loved it, right? And to be fair, I was able to help a lot of them. I even did an entire newsletter issue about how to seize opportunity in a downturn and how to prepare for a recession. [05:50.6]
But simply throwing money at a problem when it occurs is pretty much gambling. You shouldn't do that. It is much better to proactively fix the problem, or, even better, prevent it from occurring in the first place. What these financial advisors should have been doing was taking my advice all along and diversifying their marketing efforts. They should have had multiple marketing strategies, but they didn't. They got comfortable. They relied too heavily on in-person events and seminars, and it came back to bite them in the butt when the rug was pulled out from under them. The point is, complacency is a silent killer. Don't let it get you.
Number two, failing to nurture existing client relationships. There's an ancient Greek proverb that says, “Moderation in all things.” I like that because there are some financial advisors who aren't complacent at all. They go all the way to the other side of the spectrum and go so gung-ho on marketing that they forget about their existing clients. That is also bad. Remember moderation in all things. I've also seen cases where financial advisors will attempt to build a lifestyle business, and in their minds, lifestyle business means they don't contact their clients as much. That's also bad, so don't go too far on either end of the spectrum. [07:00.7]
And I get it. Look, when you're deep in the trenches of building a business and you're learning marketing, it's easy to get caught in the never-ending pursuit of new business. You want new clients, new business, new clients, new business. Bringing in new clients is exciting. It really is. It feels like tangible growth and progress. You can measure it. You get the rush. But in that rush to get new clients, don't let your existing clients fall by the wayside.
I already talked a little bit about churn. There are lots of studies which talk about how it's a lot cheaper to keep an existing client than it is to acquire a new one, and I found that to be true as well. One article in the Harvard Business Review says that acquiring a new client can cost five times more than keeping an existing one. Now, that article wasn't specifically about financial advisors, so it may be more, it may be less, but it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that keeping a client is usually better than getting a new one.
Plus, satisfied clients are more likely to refer others to your business, which is essentially free marketing. Now, I don't really like the term free marketing, but it is. It's as close to free as you're going to get and, technically, if you're measuring it in dollars and cents, then sure it's free. Okay? [08:07.8]
I think it's kind of crazy how there are so many marketers out there who talk so much about getting new clients, “Build your business, get new clients,” and I'm guilty of that. But a lot of these people, you can tell they're not really business owners, because they don't focus on churn. Churn is “the” metric. They don't realize that reducing churn has an enormous impact on the bottom line. Most of the time, it's even more than getting new clients because there's a fulfillment cost that comes with getting new clients.
You might spend 10 hours or more onboarding a new client when two extra hours, just two, not 10, spent with your existing clients would keep them. That's kind of wild when you think about it like that. So, your cost to keep a client is significantly less. You're not factoring in fulfillment. I know it's exciting to get new clients and to build your business, but you have to think about all the things that come along with that. [08:57.1]
You should think like this: your existing clients are the lifeblood of your business. They are the ones who have already bought into your value proposition. They already trust you with their financial futures. They already have the potential to become raving fans and advocates for you. Neglecting those relationships is like ignoring a goldmine in your own backyard.
You might be thinking, though, Okay, James, I get it, but how can I nurture my existing client relationships? And in fact, I got this LinkedIn message from a financial advisor about a week ago. Let me read it to you. Here it is:
“Do you have resources on how and what type of marketing to send existing and maintaining clients? One of the books on your to-read list mentions a certain number of touch points throughout the year. The challenge I have is that the subscriptions that I have found don't look professional or are a little cumbersome. Just wanted to see what your thoughts and views are on how to tackle this.”
I told him he was overthinking it. You don't need these goofy magazine subscriptions or fake newsletter-looking things to keep in touch with your existing clients. You really don't. I know financial advisors get advertised this all the time. “Send this quarterly newsletter so you look like an expert to your clients.” Just be a real person. Pick up the phone and call them. See how they're doing. They are your clients. They want to hear from you. They've already bought into you and your value proposition, so why not keep in touch with them? [10:12.5]
Seriously, it's not that difficult. You don't need to think about this 42-step program that is sent out quarterly, and you put your face on and it's not even written by you, you're just on the cover. It's goofy. It is goofy. Asking how to keep in touch with your clients is kind of like asking if there's some step-by-step guide or podcast episode about getting 10,000 steps per day. There isn't, because it is so simple. Do you know that thing where you put one foot in front of the other and then you move in a forward position? Yes, do that 9,999 more times and you will get 10,000 steps per day. Am I clear? [10:46.4]
Listen up, financial advisors. This is something special I'm doing exclusively for people who listen to this podcast. If you subscribe to the Inner Circle Newsletter over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, I will send you a collection of seven copyright-free emails, personally written by me, that you can use right away to begin getting more clients.
I call these my “objection-busting” emails, because they are designed to overcome the biggest objections financial advisors face. All you have to do is send me an email letting me know you’ve subscribed and I will reply with a link where you can download them for free.
I originally offered these in the May 2024 Inner Circle Newsletter issue, and it was one of the most popular bonuses I've ever given away. Today, these seven objection-busting, copyright-free emails are only available to listeners of this podcast, because I'm not mentioning them anywhere else. Go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to subscribe today. Now, back to the show.
Number three, having inconsistencies in their marketing. This is the big mistake. I was going to call this having inconsistencies in their branding, but I'm not really a branding guy. I think that branding is a byproduct of good marketing. [11:59.8]
But here's the basic idea, as you build your business, you acquire more and more marketing assets, or at least you should. A financial advisor who has been in business for 10 years will likely have many more marketing assets than a financial advisor who is just starting out. That should be obvious, right? Over time, there can be inconsistencies in the experienced advisor’s marketing, simply because the business changes over time, or perhaps the financial advisor's values have changed. Who knows? And that happens all the time, too.
One specific example that I saw about a month ago was from an Inner Circle member who asked me about a few of his website pages, and when I clicked on them, I noticed that they seemed like they were written by two different people. The problem was he wrote one page years ago and wrote the other page recently. A lot had changed, including his writing style and some of his core business values. As his business grew, he got more sophisticated. [12:53.7]
This gap in consistency can impact how clients perceive an advisor. When materials differ really markedly in tone, style or message, it creates confusion. This is because potential clients might not receive a clear and consistent message about what the advisor stands for or offers, or thinks about or wants to do with them, and I can't talk much about this because I have this issue in my own marketing. It's kind of inevitable, because if you create a lot of content, stuff is going to change.
I'm guilty of not going back and reviewing every little thing that I have. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I haven't increased the price for the Inner Circle Newsletter yet, because I have so many online ads, PDFs, blog articles, podcast episodes and emails, just a lot of stuff. All of this stuff references the $99-per-month price. I talk about $99 per month, $99 per month. If and when I end up increasing the price, I will have to go back and I will have to update everything, and it's just a pain in the butt.
Number four, the fourth mistake, it is failing to collaborate with other professionals. As a financial advisor, you are an expert in your field. You have a deep understanding of investment strategies, retirement planning, risk management, and a host of other financial topics. You're technically competent, okay? But the truth is, your clients’ needs often extend beyond the scope of your expertise. They need more than you can offer. [14:11.2]
This is where collaboration with other people can be a game changer. I talk all the time about building relationships with attorneys, CPAs, insurance agents, and just other trusted advisors. When you do that, you can create a powerful network of people who can provide complementary services to your clients and just make you look better and help you have a better business.
Think about it this way, when you're able to connect your clients with a top-notch estate-planning attorney or a savvy tax strategist, you're not just helping them solve a specific problem. You're demonstrating your value as a trusted advisor who has their best interest at heart. You're showing that you're willing to go above and beyond to help them achieve their goals, even if it means bringing in outside experts. You have the business that can help them with that.
But the benefits of professional collaboration, they go way beyond just serving existing clients. When you build strong relationships with other people, you also open the door for referrals. An attorney who trusts you may be more likely to send his or her clients your way when they need financial guidance. Duh. Those referral partnerships can be incredibly valuable for growing your business. [15:12.6]
Instead of relying solely on your own marketing efforts, because you can only do so much, truthfully, you can tap into other people's networks and OP—in finance, called OPM, other people's money. I like OPN, other people's networks—and referrals that come from those trusted sources tend to be higher quality, more likely to convert than cold leads. They also tend to be higher in net worth, because higher net-worth individuals rely on referrals from trusted sources, like estate-planning attorneys and accountants, more than lower net-worth people.
So, really think about that. I want you to build your business this way. Experienced financial advisors, it's crazy for me to come to you and you say you've been in business for 10 years or even five years, and you don't even have a single relationship with someone like that. [15:54.5]
One way to start building those relationships is to identify the key professionals in your area or in your niche, whatever you do, and simply, seriously, just start talking to them. I hate to be the guy who's just like, Oh, just talk to people, it's that simple, but it truly is. Just look for opportunities to help them. Have conversations with them. Get to learn about them. Who are they? What do they want? How are they building their business? Just by learning about these people, you can have that relationship.
Stop viewing everything as a transaction. Relationships should not be transactional. It should not be “I do this thing for you, so you do this thing for me.” No, just be a good person and build relationships over the long term, and that's all I have to say about that, in the words of Forrest Gump.
Finally, number five, the fifth and final mistake I'll share in this podcast episode is probably one of the most important things that experienced financial advisors can do. Here it is, going back and improving your systems, so the mistake is not doing this. The mistake is not going back and improving your marketing and your business systems.
Many experienced advisors get so caught up in the day-to-day grind of running their businesses that they neglect to take a step back and focus on improving what they have. The truth is, this kind of strategic optimization can be one of the best ways to take your practice to the next level. [17:07.8]
As your business grows and evolves, the systems and processes that worked when you were just starting out may not be as effective or as efficient anymore. You probably thought of new ways to do things. You probably picked up on bad habits that you should get rid of or you let certain things slide because you were just trying to keep your head above head above water. But now that you've reached a certain level of success as an experienced financial advisor, it is time to go back and tighten up every aspect of your operation.
That means taking a hard look at your marketing strategies. Look at your onboarding processes. Look at your investment management workflows. Look at your team-communication protocols. Everything that makes your business run. It's about identifying areas where you can streamline, automate and/or improve, then taking action to make those changes. [17:50.2]
For example, let's say that you've been using the same client-intake questionnaire for years. It gets the job done, but it's a bit clunky and it doesn't really capture all of the information you need to provide the best possible service. By taking the time to redesign that questionnaire, you could make the onboarding process smoother for you and smoother for your clients, while also gathering more valuable data to inform your financial-planning recommendations. Just make things better all around.
Or maybe you've been relying on the hodgepodge of different software tools and all of these things for client communications, financial planning, investment management. You just love software, software, software. You like to subscribe to a whole bunch of different tools. But you could go back and you could look, and you could say, “Okay, out of these tools, what are the 20% of these tools to deliver 80% of the value for me and my business? Is it possible that I could eliminate some other tools? Is it possible that there are features in some of these tools that have been added that can help me eliminate other tools?” You can go back and you can look, and you can see what can have the biggest impact on your business. [18:49.7]
The key is to approach this optimization process systematically and strategically. I know buzzwords, buzzwords, “systematically, strategically,” but it really is true. Block out a chunk of time, whether it's a few days or a few weeks, to really focus on analyzing and improving your business operation just systematically. What do I mean? Go through each thing that you have, this marketing asset, this marketing asset, this onboarding sequence, this questionnaire that I have, this tool that I'm using, this other tool that I'm using. You go through systematically—and strategically.
What do I mean by that? I mean that you're going to look at how each of those things, whatever it is, marketing, operations, the software. How does that fit into your goals? Is it helping you? Is it hurting you? Is it hindering you? Can you do something better? Don't be afraid to ask other people for help. Don't be afraid to seek guidance, if needed, if you're looking at a specific tool. You can contact customer service and you could say, “My goal is this. Can you help me with that? Do you have anything I don't know about?”
I have had massive improvements in my business simply by contacting customer service of tools that I use. I say, “Look, this is what I'm trying to accomplish. Do you know anyone who has done something similar with your tool? Do you know anyone that can help me with this? Do you have a case study? Do you have a wiki? Is there something that I can use? Do you have a YouTube video?” Right? That has helped me tremendously. [20:04.2]
I know it may feel daunting to go through everything, especially if you have a lot of clients and you're busy, and you don't really want to put your business under the microscope, but the payoff can be enormous. By doing this, streamlining your processes, eliminating inefficiencies, and implementing the best practices across the board, you can free up more of your time. You can free up more of your energy to focus on what really matters, which is serving your clients and growing your business.
In fact, I would argue that this type of optimization is one of the highest-leverage activities you can take or do as an experienced financial advisor. If you could improve your marketing funnel to attract more qualified leads or optimize your financial planning process to deliver more value to clients in less time, or maybe you could implement a team-training program to boost productivity and morale, the impact of that, the cumulative impact, could be massive.
All right, we've covered a lot of ground in this episode. We've talked about the dangers of complacency, the importance of nurturing existing client relationships, the perils of inconsistent marketing, the power of professional collaboration, and the transformative potential of systems optimization. How is that for a conclusion? [21:11.6]
I hope you take this information to heart if you're an experienced financial advisor, because I know it can make a difference for you. I've seen it with my newsletter subscribers. I've seen it with financial advisors who have been through my products. Thank you so much for listening, and I will catch you next week.
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