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: Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast, or if this is your very first time listening to an episode, welcome, I'm glad to have you. I am your host, James Pollard, and this week I want to dig into a topic that's crucial for financial advisors who want to grow, and if you're listening to the Financial Advisor Marketing Podcast, I assume that's you. We're going to talk about inbound leads. [00:53.6]
Inbound leads are potential clients who come to you rather than you going out to find them. They are people who have shown interest in your business by taking some kind of action. Maybe they've downloaded a resource from your website. Maybe they've registered for a webinar. Maybe they've connected with you on LinkedIn or maybe they've reached out to you after reading a couple of your posts.
Now, why should you, as a financial advisor, care so much about inbound leads? Let me break it down for you. Inbound leads are typically warmer than outbound leads. This makes sense, because if people have sought out your content or your website, they are already interested in what you have to offer, at least a little bit. They're not random people you're cold calling who might hang up on you or flat out reject you, or just have no clue who you are. They've already raised their metaphorical hands and said, “Hey, I am interested in this. I would like to get involved in your world. I would like to be a part of whatever it is that you're doing.”
Even if they don't set an appointment right away, they at least have acknowledged your existence and they want you to follow up with them, meaning, if they sign up for your email list, obviously, they want to have you follow up. They want to receive emails from you. [01:57.5]
Secondly, inbound leads are more cost effective. According to HubSpot, inbound leads cost 61% less than outbound leads. To be fair, I just want to keep it real with you, that study is not specific to financial advisors, but I have seen lower costs for advisors who embrace inbound marketing.
In reality, it works like this. You pay a little bit more upfront in terms of time, energy and money, because you're paying to roll that snowball uphill. But, eventually, you reach the top of the hill and then you don't have to push as much. You can just let it roll and grow. Outbound marketing is pretty linear, alright? So, it's not that snowball that just compounds again and again and again. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. With outbound marketing, you do one unit of effort and you get one unit of a result, but inbound marketing has the power to grow without you. [02:48.0]
Inbound marketing is just like buying quality goods and services. I say you should buy a quality microphone, because it's going to last a long time and give you a better result. If you buy a crappy microphone, it might stop working a year from now. Then you have to buy another one and that stops working a year after that, and you have to buy another one. It is actually more economical in the long term to just buy higher-quality goods and services, like mattresses and sheets, and cars and the oil that you put in your car. I could talk on and on and on about this. Inbound marketing is the same way.
Another reason why inbound leads are more cost effective is because they are usually higher quality. That's why I brought that up. They are people who already know a little bit about you. They've consumed your content. They understand your approach and they're more likely to be a good fit for your services as a result, especially if you follow what I teach about exclusionary marketing.
Even if you are outlaying more cash up front for an inbound lead, those inbound leads that you receive are still cheaper because they give you more output for an equivalent input, in the same way that higher quality goods and services are cheaper over the long term. So, inbound leads are faster to work with you. They are higher quality. Your conversion rates are higher, and just a host of other benefits that come from inbound marketing. [04:04.8]
I'll just give you one final point and then I'll move on. Inbound marketing is always working for you. Your inbound marketing assets, your website, your content, your social media profiles, they are working 24/7, even when you're sleeping or on vacation. They are constantly attracting and nurturing leads.
All right, let's get started here. If you want more inbound leads, then you should stop doing the following five things.
Number one, stop treating all leads the same way. What I'm about to tell you takes a little bit of work and I know a lot of you won't be willing to do it, it's just so sad. But for the rare few who listen and implement what I say, it can make a world of difference.
I see so many financial advisors treating every lead that comes in exactly the same way. They put them through the exact same messaging sequence. They put them through the exact same follow-up sequence, no matter where they came from or how they've interacted with the business so far. But not all leads are created equal. [05:02.0]
Some leads are what sales trainers would call hot, and not hot in the sense that they're attractive, although I guess it could be very possible. Whenever I'm a lead for somebody, I'm always a hot lead. Goodness, you get it, don't you? Ha, please laugh. Please laugh at my jokes. But hot in the sales training world means they're ready to hire you right away.
Others are lukewarm. They're interested, but not enough to work with you just yet. A lot of people who bounce around your website are lukewarm. A lot of people who subscribe to your email list are lukewarm. Heck, a lot of people who listen to this podcast, for me, are lukewarm. And others, so you have hot, lukewarm, and then you have cold and coldish. These are people who are just starting to dip their toes in the water.
If you’re treating all of those people the same way, you’re missing opportunities and you're probably wasting a lot of time. You're just operating inefficiently. Instead, what you should do is implement a lead scoring system. This is the part that takes some work where I say only a few of you are probably going to do it. [06:00.2]
A lead scoring system allows you to prioritize your leads based on level of engagement and readiness to become a client. For example, someone who has interacted with your website a bunch of times, and I mean, you know this because you're using a tracking software, right? I mean, you're using tracking software. I want to double-check. You see that person who has visited your website a bunch of times, has signed up for your email list, has opened the last five out of six emails you've sent. That person is likely to be a much warmer lead than someone who just subscribed to your email list, and that is it.
By scoring your leads, you can tailor your follow-up approach. Not only can this improve your conversion rates, but it can also make you more productive, because it means you won't spend much time on the leads who aren't even warm yet, and productivity is money. The more productive financial advisors are the ones who make more money. Hot leads might get a personal phone call, while warm leads continue to receive nurturing emails asking for an appointment. [06:56.0]
How does this work in practice? In a lead scoring system, you assign points to various actions or characteristics. For example, downloading something you offer might be five points. Attending a webinar might be 10 points. Opening your emails might be 15 points, and being in the exact target demographic, like age, income level, the exact person you work with, might be 20 points. I mean, that's huge. If you work specifically with retirees in Tampa, Florida, with a million dollars in investable assets, and someone joins your email list and they say, “Hey, I'm a retiree in Florida with a million dollars in investable assets,” that's 20 points right there simply because they're such a match.
The more points a lead accumulates, the quote-unquote, “hotter” that lead is considered to be. Some of you might be thinking, James, that sounds complicated, I'm not a check wizard, but you don't need to be. Many CRM systems have lead-scoring capabilities built in. If yours doesn't, then get a new CRM. But in the meantime, you can start with a simple spreadsheet. The key is to start somewhere. [07:57.7]
Begin identifying the actions that are most valuable to your business. What do your best clients typically do before they sign up with you? If you don't know that, then today is the day to start knowing that, to start gathering that information. Those actions are the actions you want to assign the highest point values to, because if your best clients do A, B and C, then you can look at someone who is doing A, B and C, and think to yourself, Hmm, that person is likely going to be one of my best clients.
Remember, lead scoring isn't set in stone. It is a dynamic process. As you gather more data about your leads and your clients, you can refine your scoring system to be more effective. Maybe over the next couple months, you find out that one of your emails works better than all of the others combined and it's because you hit on a specific emotion, and your best clients all have this emotion and they just want to know they're okay about this thing, or whatever, right?
If you know that, then you can repeat it, and if you repeat it, you can alter your lead-scoring system, and when people respond to talking about that specific emotion in your marketing, then you can assign points based on that. I know that sounds kind of weird and abstract, but just trust me, you can change it as time goes on. [09:06.0]
If you're not using lead scoring in your business, bottom line, it's time to start. It's one of the most effective ways to get more out of your inbound marketing efforts. You can simply become more productive, and a more productive financial advisor is a higher-earning, better-serving financial advisor. That financial advisor can help more people in a bigger way.
Number two, stop neglecting your Thank You pages. Let's talk about Thank You pages for a bit. This is something I see frequently. Advisors put a ton of time and effort into creating great lead magnets and optimizing their landing pages, and they get all of that right. I mean, I even help a lot of my Inner Circle members with this. I say, “Here, this is what a good landing page looks like. Here, this is what a good lead magnet looks like.” I've talked about lead magnets so many times in newsletter issues, so financial advisors, at least those in my Inner Circle Newsletter, have a good idea of what this looks like. But then even my beloved Inner Circle members completely dropped the ball on the Thank You page. [10:02.1]
Your Thank You page is prime real estate. When people get to your Thank You page, they have just taken an action. They have given you their email address in exchange for something valuable. They are engaged. They are engaged right now, so you shouldn't waste this opportunity with a generic “Thanks for downloading” message. Instead, your Thank You page should do three things. I really shouldn't give this much value away for free on a podcast, because this is truly valuable. This is something that can make a huge difference if you implement it. But I am feeling generous today.
Your Thank You page should do the following three things. First, it should congratulate them on the thing that they did. This is behavioral reinforcement 101. If you want someone to repeat a behavior, then you should reward it. When people get involved in your world, you should make it a big deal, at least say thank you. Actually saying thank you on your Thank You page, wow, what a concept, right?
Congratulate them saying, “Hey, congratulations on subscribing to my email list or downloading this free resource. You made a great decision,” because you want them to continue to get involved in your role. You want them to continue to do those things. That is just behavioral reinforcement, basic psychology. [11:08.8]
The second thing you Thank You page should do is set expectations. Tell them when and how they'll receive the thing that they signed up for, the thing that they did, or what they wanted. Whatever it is, set expectations. If you are an Inner Circle member, you know I take my own advice here, because this is exactly what I do on the Inner Circle Newsletter Thank You page.
I say, “Congratulations. Thank you for joining the most prestigious newsletter community in the entire world for financial advisors. In my biased opinion, it's going to be awesome. You're going to get something in the mail that looks like this. It's a cool little envelope.” It’s actually not a cool little envelope. It's very boring, but I should probably spice that out, but “It's going to look like this. Then you can email me with this subject line. I'll respond to you within 24 to 48 hours.” I tell them exactly what to expect, so I congratulate them and tell them exactly what to expect. [12:00.5]
Then, third, the third thing your Thank You page should do is you should guide them to the next step. For financial advisors, this means asking for an appointment. Yes, ask for the appointment on the Thank You page. You would be surprised at how many people go, “Oh, what the heck. I'll set aside some time to chat.” They just need to be asked. They need to have that calendar right there staring them in the face with a strong reason why they should do it.
Now, the reason this works so well is because of a psychological principle called commitment and consistency. People want to remain consistent. They want to stay committed to the thing that they committed to in the past, okay? So, if they are committing to getting involved in your world through your email list, then they want to stay consistent with that attitude, with that belief, meaning, they are more likely to get further involved in your world. That is one reason why order bumps work well, why upsells work well in retail and E-commerce. [12:55.4]
If you buy microfiber towels on Amazon, Amazon is going to say, “Hey, people who bought these microfiber towels usually buy a bucket as well. Would you like to buy this bucket?” A lot of people say, “Actually, you know what?” and unconsciously they think to themselves, I would like to remain consistent and committed to this process of detailing my car or cleaning my car, or whatever, so I am going to add the bucket to my order. They don't think about this consciously. I want to make that clear. They think about it unconsciously, simply because they want to remain consistent with what they're doing, and the same principles apply to your Thank You page.
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, another thing you need to stop doing if you want to attract more inbound leads is to stop creating content without a strategy. I had an advisor reach out to me a couple days ago. Let's call him John. John was frustrated because he had been blogging and posting on LinkedIn and doing all of this stuff for a few months, and hadn't seen any real results. I asked John to send me a few examples, and when I looked at what he was doing, the problem became crystal clear. He was creating content without a strategy. He was making this mistake. [15:03.4]
What does a good content strategy look like for a financial advisor? Let's talk about it. For starters, you need—all right, here we go, I say this all the time—you need a niche market. You need a target market. Always begin with your market. You should be 100% market focused. What do they want? How can you give them what they want? How can you serve them? Your service should serve people. I wonder where that word comes from. Your market is the foundation of your entire marketing strategy. There's another cool word. I wonder where marketing comes from.
If you're maybe serving a market, you need it, because you need to know who you're talking to. For instance, you might work with small business owners aged 50 to 60 who have incomes in the low- to mid-six figures. These business owners want to balance investing in their business with investing for retirement. They are concerned about having enough seed. They're unsure how to transition out of their businesses when the time comes. Those are challenges they are facing, and they're facing them and other people aren't. Those challenges should inform your inbound-marketing strategy if you want to attract them. I hope that makes sense. [16:09.6]
I'm also doing that right now. Many of the best financial advisors I serve have told me directly they are interested in inbound marketing, so I am literally creating content right now for those advisors. Chances are, if you are listening to this podcast episode, then you are a good fit for me, because I am, again, literally creating content specifically for the people I serve best. I am taking my own medicine here. When you begin with your market, you can create your content with purpose and it makes it so much better, because one of the worst things you can do is just create content for content’s sake. That is simply a waste of time.
Number four, stop hiding your personality. This is a big one and it's something I see advisors struggling with, man, so much. I get it. I really do. You want to be seen as a professional, but being professional doesn't mean being boring. Your personality can be your secret weapon in attracting the right clients if you just let it. If you just let it be your secret weapon, then it can be for you. [17:12.1]
Let me tell you about another advisor I work with and let me call him Steve. Steve was brilliant with numbers. He had amazing credentials. He was a wizard at finance and personal finance, and budgeting and spreadsheets and all that, but his marketing was dry as toast. When I looked at his marketing assets, it was stuffed with filler and just stuff people no one cares about. There's nothing about Steve himself.
We decided to shake things up. I'll give you a few pointers on how I helped Steve inject his personality into his marketing and how you can do the same thing. We began by using more photos, and in fact, I think this was the most important thing that we did. I know there are a lot of coaches and consultants, gurus and agencies who swear by video marketing, and I like video marketing, but the truth is that photos are so much easier and they get you a lot of the way there. It's kind of like 80% of the results for 5% of the effort. I'll take that all day, every day. [18:06.3]
Steve started showing more photos of himself. He started sharing on social media and emails even though photos and emails can be tricky. He put them on his website. He had photos of himself at his desk. He was out on walks. If he was out walking his dog, he would just take a picture. He would say, like, Out walking my dog. I have a golden retriever. This dog does XYZ. And guess what? People who had golden retrievers started talking to him and he built real relationships. Even the most basic photos that took two seconds to take made him more approachable and made him more relatable.
Next, the second thing that Steve did, we did a lot of things, but this is just the second thing that I'm thinking of right now is he shifted his writing style. I've talked about this a little bit in previous podcast episodes, where sometimes financial advisors drift away from their original writing style as they get better. As they get more casual and more conversational, when prospective clients get to their old marketing assets, they read it and it's just so jarring because it's different, right? [19:07.1]
Steve didn't really have that problem. He didn't have that many marketing assets, but his writing style, he just shifted it. He began writing like he spoke, and that helped a lot, too. He began sharing stuff that was interesting to him that his market also found interesting. That's important. Just because it's interesting to you doesn't mean your market finds it interesting.
This seems super obvious and I say it all the time, but it works well. If you show people that you're reading the same books as they're reading, watching the same movies they're watching, and just things like that, you become more approachable. It is awesome.
Perhaps the biggest reason why I love personality-driven marketing is because it is a natural qualification mechanism, because not everyone will like your personality, and that's okay. In fact, it's great. That's fantastic news, because the people who do resonate with you will be much better fits as clients for you, and you can truly be yourself when working with them. That’s a win-win, because you're repelling the people that you probably would not like to work with and they'd be like nails on a chalkboard to you, but you're also attracting new people who would just be lovely to work with. [20:08.8]
I am one of the few people who just constantly harps on personality-driven marketing. I am one of the pioneers in this approach for financial advisor marketing. I think I am the pioneer, but I'm careful, because I say I'm one of the pioneers, just in case there's somebody out there that I don't know about. I just want to be careful in that way, but I haven't seen anyone talking about it earlier than I have been talking about it, so I'll take credit, I guess. Whatever.
Number five, this is the final tip I have for you. If you want to attract more inbound leads, you need to stop expecting fast results. In today's world of instant gratification, this is a tough pill to swallow, but inbound marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It is not a magic button you can press to make clients appear out of thin air. It is a long-term strategy that requires patience, consistency and persistence, things that are, I think, lost on a lot of people. [21:02.1]
I'll tell you about yet another advisor I worked with. We'll call him—so we did John, we did Steve—let's call him Mike. Very basic men names. Mike came to me frustrated. He had been doing inbound marketing for three whole months and hadn't seen any results. Three months? I almost laughed, but I could see that he was serious.
Inbound Marketing is like planting a tree. You don't plant the seed today and sit in the shade tomorrow. It takes time to grow. When you start your inbound marketing efforts, you're essentially starting from zero. You're building awareness, establishing credibility, and nurturing relationships. All of this takes time. But here's the good news—once it starts working, it really works. It compounds over time.
That blog post you wrote six months ago could suddenly start ranking in Google and bringing in leads for you. That email sequence you wrote last year could nurture a subscriber on autopilot, mind you, who finally decides he's ready to work with an advisor. [21:58.1]
So, how long does it take to see results from inbound marketing? How long should someone's legs be? Long enough to hit the ground, right? At least, that's what Abraham Lincoln said, and he really did say that. That's a real quote. Truthfully, it depends. It could be as little as a week. It could be more than a year. But in my experience, this is very general, don't take this to heart. I'm just giving you a rough expectation.
Most advisors start seeing real traction around the 6–12-month mark and it only gets better from there, and I mean real traction, not just the one-off appointment or fast results or anything. I'm talking about real traction that starts to actually grow their business and revolutionize the way that they do things, because I'm not saying you won't see any results before the 6–12-month mark. You might get a few leads. You might even get a client or two, but the real momentum, the kind that can transform your business, yeah, that doesn't get built overnight.
Here's what you need to do instead of expecting fast results. You should set realistic expectations. You should understand this is a long-term play. You're building assets that will serve your business for years to come. You should focus on the leading indicators. Yes, things like new clients and profit are more important. However, you can keep yourself motivated by looking at metrics like website traffic, email subscribers, engagement, and more. [23:12.2]
You just want to know that you're having an effect somewhere, because there is a delay between all of those metrics and new clients, right? If you try to track new clients right out of the gate, you run the risk of being disappointed or losing hope, or losing motivation. You just don't want that to happen, right? Then you should also be patient and I know I say this a lot, but you're playing the long game. Every piece of content you create, every email you send, every social media post you make, it's all building towards your future success.
Let me give you a real world example. I brought up Mike not that long ago. After our chat together, he committed to sticking with his inbound marketing efforts for at least a year. He focused on high-quality content. We were creating that content consistently. He focused on building his email list and sending emails regularly. [23:58.5]
He has an automated sequence that sends out 12 emails in a row every single day. Then when people have done that 12-email sequence, then they are emailed every single week. He manually writes an email that he sends every single Saturday morning. You don't have to do that. That's just something that he chose to do and he is seeing great results with that, and he committed to engaging on LinkedIn.
For the first six months, he felt like he was shouting into the void, but he kept at it and then around Month 7, things started to shift. His website traffic began to climb. His email open rates improved. He started getting comments on his LinkedIn post, or at least, a lot more comments, a lot more engagement, and by the end of the year, he had a steady stream of inbound leads coming in. In fact, he ended up bringing on more new clients that year than he had in the previous two years combined.
The kicker was that a lot of these new clients mentioned content he created months ago. That's the power of inbound marketing. It keeps working for you long after you've done the work, and prospective clients are consuming it, and seeing it and getting involved with it, even if you don't think they are. [25:03.5]
So, if you're just starting out with inbound marketing or if you're a few months in and you're feeling discouraged, I want you to remember this. Good things take time. Don't give up. Your future self will thank you for the foundation you're laying today.
If any of this has been helpful or inspiring to you, please share it with a friend. That's the number one way this podcast grows. Even things like online ads and me mentioning it in my emails and social media posts don't come close to one financial advisor sharing it with another financial advisor and saying, “Hey, listen to this.” So, introduce me to one of your friends and I'll be forever grateful. Thank you so much, and I will catch you next week. [25:38.6]
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