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: I spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about good marketing strategies and things that you should do, but I figured I'd switch it up this week and talk about some telltale signs that you're a horrible marketer, so these are things that you should not do. But first, I want to tell you a little story about a social media post that got quite a few messages from financial advisors. [00:50.7]
I posted a picture of my tool bag on LinkedIn. I have this rule where I will do something myself if it takes longer to hire someone or to get someone else to do it. For example, I change my own oil. I know, because there is no mobile service around here in these parts, around these parts here, and it would take me about 30 minutes to get to the oil change place or the dealership, and then 30 minutes back, and that doesn't even account for the money I would spend there or the time I would spend waiting. Therefore I just do it myself.
In that LinkedIn post with the tool bag, I talked about how I also changed the guts of my toilets myself, so the flush valve, the fill valve and stuff like that. Actually, the toilet is only . . . that's it, the flush valve, fill valve and flapper. It's not that hard. It takes maybe 10 minutes max per toilet, and it would have taken me longer than that to call a plumbing service, schedule an appointment, let the person in, show him or her where everything is, and all that stuff, all the stuff that comes with just hiring someone and letting someone in your house. Again, that doesn't even include the money I would pay. I mean, the money itself is inconsequential. I'm more concerned about the time. That's why I just do it myself. [02:01.6]
But I got several messages from financial advisors because they were impressed with the quality of the tools that I showed in my bag. Even the bag itself is high quality. I have a VetoProPac and I think Veto makes the best tool bags in the entire world. I love their bags. The one that I posted, I'm so glad I have it. It is a joy to carry and use around the house, and when I'm helping friends and family members. In that bag, I have tools like Knipex, Klein, PB Swiss, and more. These are all high-quality tools.
I actually get tools based on the job I want them to do, and I think this is a good lesson in business and marketing as well. I want you to really think about this. I get, literally, actual tools based on the job I want them to do. I am not brand loyal. For example, my wire strippers are from Knipex. They make what is considered to be the best wire strippers you can get. I also have a ratcheting stubby from PB Swiss that's considered the best or one of the best stubbies, depending on who you ask. I am not brand loyal. [03:02.8]
Back when Craftsman, if you know Craftsman, back in the olden times where they were sold at Sears, and when they were made in the USA, I had some family members who would buy all Craftsman tools. They wouldn't even compare other tools. They wouldn't shop around. They wouldn't even look. They would be die-hard Craftsman people. They would be loyal to the Craftsman brand.
I also know some guys who have a bunch of money to burn. These guys have more money than they know what to do with and they just buy Snap-on, and if you know anything about tools, you know that Snap-on makes some really expensive stuff. Even though it's really, really good, most of the time, it's usually not the best. I mean, outside of their socket wrenches, I mean, let's be honest, Snap-on is not that good. It's usually pretty good, again, but it's rarely “the” best. I want “the” best. [03:50.8]
That doesn't mean my tools are cheap, though. Just because Snap-on is super expensive and I don't have Snap-on, it doesn't mean that the tools are cheap. For example, I have a set of Allen keys or hex keys that cost me 50 bucks. That might seem absurdly expensive, especially considering that a lot of people have that big old pile of hex keys laying around somewhere, because they all come with different pieces of furniture to help you assemble them, and you can get a set online for 10 or 20 bucks if you want.
However, the set that I have is so nice. I love it. They are extremely high-quality. They don't round out—if you use hex keys, you know that happens a lot. They just round out over time—and they're color-coded so I can grab the one I need every single time.
When it comes to tools, a popular piece of advice, and trust me, I'm going to round this back to marketing—this is a marketing lesson, trust me. This is not just a podcast episode about tools—so a popular piece of advice that people tend to give is that you should buy a bunch of cheap tools and then replace the ones that you break or wear out. I think that's goofy. I think you should buy tools as you need them. That way you don't buy stuff you don't need and buy the best quality you can afford. [04:58.1]
Imagine if business owners had the same philosophy for marketing. If they, quote-unquote, “bought” all of these marketing strategies and got the absolute cheapest ones in the very beginning, they would drive themselves bankrupt. I am a big believer in the “buy once, cry once” philosophy when it comes to things that really matter, like tools and marketing. I can't tell you how satisfying it is for me to get a job done quickly, easily and correctly, because I had all the great tools at my disposal, tools that would help me get the job done.
This also applies to marketing. I say this all the time, the most expensive marketing strategy is the one that doesn't work. I'm telling you this little story here because I want you to know that I practice what I preach when I tell you about this way to live your life. I can tell you from personal experience that it's actually far more cost-efficient to spend more in the beginning, aka make an investment in yourself, than it is to go cheap and have to replace, or in the case of marketing, pivot entirely, where you just throw in the towel and you're like, Wow, this really sucks. I wasted all this money. I don't know what to do. [05:59.2]
Psychologically, going cheap is actually even far more damaging than people realize, because of the sunk-cost fallacy. When people go cheap and they spend all of this money, just throw it into the pit, they begin to think to themselves, I spent all of this money. I must have a reason for doing so. I'm a smart person. They want to fight that cognitive dissonance. They can't stand to think, Oh, I'm a smart person, therefore I always do smart things. No, it's not like that. You can be a smart person, and sometimes do dumb things, but that triggers cognitive dissonance and that makes people uncomfortable. So, just invest in yourself, seriously. I just want to share that because I do live this philosophy.
But enough about that. Let's get on to the podcast episode. What are some signs you are a horrible marketer? I'm going to give you 10.
No. 1, you go cheap. We just talked about this, but I want to make sure you get it, so I'm making it a point all by itself. I'll give you a specific example. Let's say you created a lead magnet, a downloadable PDF that people can get when they subscribe to your email list. You do not want to go cheap on the cover. Make the cover at least halfway decent, because people consume first with their eyes. I know it shouldn't be this way. You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but people do. [07:08.3]
If your PDF guide, your lead magnet, looks unappealing, then it won't appeal to people. That's what appealing is. If it's unappealing, it's not going to appeal. Spend the 100 bucks or the couple 100 bucks or whatever to get a professional designer to make you something that will catch people's eyes when you promote it. Just go to some place like 99designs.com, spend the 100 bucks, get a cover that actually looks decent instead of something ugly that you tried to put together yourself on Canva.
No. 2, you go all in on one marketing strategy. This is a surefire sign that someone is an inexperienced amateur. Having multiple marketing strategies is “the” most important thing I can possibly teach financial advisors, because it helps them avoid so many problems that will inevitably come up in business. [07:53.0]
I think of all the financial advisors who were dependent on seminars before the pandemic in 2020, and to a lesser extent, 2021. And goodness gracious, I mean, it went on for a long time, didn't it? I specifically remember many of these people, they were living high on the hog, living their life thinking everything was so wonderful and sunshine and rainbows because they had their precious little seminars. I like seminars, don't get me wrong. I think seminars are awesome. But I would not depend on them. Because what happened? Everything shut down. Womp, womp, no more seminars.
There were even entire companies that had to pivot. There were literally companies that spent years, literally years, talking about how awesome seminars were and how every financial advisor should do seminars, and seminars are just amazing, amazing, amazing—and as soon as the pandemic happened, they started talking about how awesome other things were, like webinars. I mean, wait a minute, which one is it? If webinars were so awesome, why weren't you talking about them years ago? Hmm, maybe you're just in business to make a quick buck from financial advisors. Hmm. [08:54.4]
No. 3, you care about email open rates. This is another sign that someone is a horrible marketer, because it means that person is focused on the wrong thing. I care very little about email open rates or click-through rates, or engagement rates and all of that stuff, and not just with email either. I'm talking about vanity metrics across the board, on ads and social media and websites, and yes, emails. Do you know what I care most about? Profit.
I actually spent this morning going over my numbers here at The Advisor Coach. I compared my June 2024 numbers to my June 2023 numbers. In almost every single vanity metric, hear me loud and clear, in almost every single vanity metric, I did worse in June 2024 than I did in June 2023, but June 2024 was the most profitable June I have ever had. That is not a coincidence, because I focused on profit and you tend to get what you focus on. [09:53.6]
All else being equal, are higher open rates better than lower open rates? Yes, of course. But in the real world, where stuff actually breaks and there are variables, and things happen and people act irrationally, things are not equal, because you can game, quote-unquote, “game” open rates. I can get high open rates by using clickbait subject lines.
If I send something like, “Hey,” and that's it just “Hey.” it would get a ton of opens. Or if I said, “. . . What are you doing?” that would get a ton of opens, but the wrong people would open it. The right people would probably ignore it. So, getting high open rates is very easy, but turning those opens into people who said appointments requires a little bit more finesse.
If instead, I sent an email, like, “Important message for financial advisors with three years of experience or fewer,” that might not get as many opens as the curiosity-driven click bait subject line, but the right type of person will open the email and it will give me more results. If you see someone bragging about high open rates, then you know that person is almost certainly a horrible marketer. [11:02.8]
No. 4, and I'm laughing at this, but this is a real thing that happens quite frequently, you start trying to make decisions after spending $5 on online ads, or really anything, but this happens a lot with online ads, because every so often I'll hear from a financial advisor who will ask a question like this. “I just spent $5 on this Facebook ad and I haven't set any appointments yet. What should I do?” Man, chill. You literally spent $5.
Now, I get it. I don't want to sound judgmental. I don't want to make it seem like I'm being harsh because I'm not. Trust me, I am absolutely not. In fact, I love this mindset. I love the fact that financial advisors are so focused on results when they ask this question. That makes me happy. That brings me joy. But it doesn't change the fact that something like $5 is unlikely to get any sort of result for financial advisors outside of a few views and a few clicks. You can't even get a footlong at Subway for $5 anymore. Goodness gracious. [12:02.5]
Let me give you an example that is probably pretty close to real life. This company called WordStream did some research into the average cost per click for a Facebook ad across multiple industries. They found that the average cost per click across multiple industries was $1.68. However, and this is the part that a lot of people miss, finance was the most expensive at $3.89, so keep that in mind. Finance is literally the most expensive industry for online advertisements.
However—again, there's this word, it's important—however, you can kinda sorta get around that by targeting a specific niche, because it's not like you are targeting finance professionals like I am. I actually have to be really good at online ads. I have to be much better than even really good marketers, because I'm targeting financial advisors, and that means I'm paying a lot more per click. [12:58.8]
That's one reason why I selfishly think you should listen to me instead of some generic marketer, because the stuff I have to do is way harder, because, again, my audience is “the” most expensive audience to target. If I'm successful with it, then chances are this advice that I'm telling you to do with online ads is probably going to work even better with other niches. So, if you're a financial advisor targeting retirees or dentists, or executives or some other niche, it should not be so bad.
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Anyway, back to the average cost per click. What was it? It was $1.68 per click. The average conversion rate for landing pages also varies. The whole idea behind running online ads, at least if you do it the Pollard way, is to send traffic to a landing page, and people, once they get to that landing page, they will take some action, register for a video or webinar, or join your email list to get a downloadable PDF, just to do something, right? You're sending them to a landing page to do something. [14:55.0]
Campaign Monitor says that the average landing page conversion rate is 2.35%, but Mailchimp says it's 9.7%. I was able to find this one report from Ruler Analytics, which found that the average conversion rate in finance—ooh, that's so nice. You see the average conversion rate for your industry financial advisors—that is 3.1%.
Now, of course, average is pretty meaningless, because conversion rates depend on your traffic source, the type of page you have, the call to action you have, and so much more. So, the idea of average, I mean, yes, it's kind of helpful to have a benchmark, but it's really not going to be applicable in many cases. I mean, there really is no average. But let's just stick with those numbers, because I want to give you an example.
If you're paying $1.68 per click and you're sending traffic to a landing page to get email subscribers, and you have a 3.1% conversion rate, that means it will cost you $54.19 to get an email subscriber. That is the expectation that you should have in your mind. So, when you are spending $5 and nothing has happened, just keep that in mind. [16:05.0]
That might seem like a lot, and it kind of is, but you can improve those numbers by having better messaging, better targeting and a better landing page. That's all stuff I help financial advisors with. I can't guarantee results, obviously, because I don't know your specific situation, but I'm just telling you, it is not that hard to get a landing page to a 20% conversion rate with an average cost per click of 50 cents, or at least in that ballpark.
If you get those numbers, it will cost you $2.50, whoa, to get an email subscriber. Then you can really pour on the gas, because let's say you're spending $250 per day with that campaign. You'll get 100 new subscribers every single day. If five of those people set appointments and one of those appointments becomes a client for you, you can effectively onboard one new client for every single day you have that campaign running. You are basically saying, “Here's $250. Give me a client. Here's $250. Give me a client.” [16:58.2]
The catch, of course, is that the campaign can't run forever. Sometimes financial advisors will say, “Oh, if it was that easy, then everyone would do it.” Yes, if that were true, then, yes, everyone would do it. There are campaigns that happen like this all the time, but they don't last forever. Eventually, those campaigns, every single campaign, ever, will stop being as effective as it once was. But that is why striking while the iron is hot is so important, and it's also why continuously working on your marketing and not stopping and just being consistent is so critical.
No. 5. This podcast episode is probably going to be much longer than normal, but I just want to give you great information. I want to help you. I truly do. No. 5 is you don't try enough. I wish more financial advisors understood that most marketing fails. Even the world's best marketers don't consistently crank out winners. Someone who has a 50:50 win rate is considered legendary in the marketing world, and most people would be thrilled with half of that. [18:03.0]
Think of this a 25% win rate, meaning, one out of four, that's it, that's all you get to succeed. Three out of every four completely fail. Professional marketers, people who do this for a living, would be absolutely thrilled over the moon with that. How much would you try if you knew that 1/4th of everything you did turned out to be a success? That's the optimistic view. What if it was only 1/10th? Would you just not do anything, or when you get to the ninth failure, would you say, “Oh, boy, here it comes. I'm getting closer. I can't wait. I can smell that success. I can practically taste it”?
The key to this and making this work is to approach marketing with a scientist mindset, and I'm not big into the mindset stuff, but I just want to tell you, this has been helpful to me. It can be helpful to you. Each failure is not a setback, but a valuable data point that informs your next attempt. By trying more strategies—there's that multiple marketing strategies thing again—more frequently and with a willingness to learn and adjust, you dramatically increase your chances of marketing success. [19:10.6]
No. 6. Here's another sign you're a horrible marketer. It is when you copy other people. Charlie Munger says that one of the iron rules of life is that only 20% can be in the top fifth. That means, if you are copying what other financial advisors are doing, then you have an 80% chance of copying someone who is in the bottom four fifths.
This used to be one of my biggest pet peeves when I was coaching financial advisors one on one. They would get on a call with me and begin saying all this dumb stuff, like, Johnny in Wichita, Kansas, is focusing on XYZ. I should probably do XYZ, too. Or, Oh, Lisa up in New York is doing video marketing. You think I should do video marketing, too? Or, This person is focusing on SEO. I think I should do SEO. It was so annoying. Unless someone else's business is exactly like yours and you want the exact same results that someone else is getting, you should not copy. [20:06.6]
No. 7, you are inconsistent. I'm recording this episode at the end of July and I'm getting ready to ship out the August 2024 Inner Circle Newsletter issue. Let me share something mind-blowing with you. It now costs me more money merely to ship the newsletter than I used to make in a year when I had a marketing job. That is wild to me, but that didn't happen overnight. I have been publishing that newsletter for more than six years now. It has been responsible for more success stories than anything else I've ever offered or likely will offer. That comes from consistency. There's consistency again.
Issue No. 10. This is the magic of a newsletter. This is why it's “the” most effective thing I offer. It is just absolutely wonderful. I buy newsletters all the time. I'm a big believer in the newsletter model, because issue number 10 mixes with issue 17, 25, 36, 49. These just gel together over time and they give you a huge overarching view of the entire marketing landscape. [21:03.5]
How committed is your favorite marketer? If it's not me, of course, I'm just saying this, because I have literally written a newsletter with 20 or so pages every single month for years. I have never missed a month. I have never missed a deadline. Imagine me missing a deadline. Come on, imagine being a grown man committed to success and just a great life, and missing something as simple as a deadline. It's ridiculous to me.
Oh, and that's on top of this podcast with nearly 300 episodes now, and that's also on top of the daily emails that I've been sending for years. Heck, even now on the Bible App, I'm on Day 696 of my streak. That means I've been in the Bible App every single day for 696 days in a row. Imagine me missing a day, and there are some people out there who can't even be bothered to go pick up the metaphorical bag of money that's sitting on the table right in front of them, because life is so hard and just things come up and, oh, it's so terrible. [21:58.2]
No. 8, you have weak offers. I'll be 100% transparent with you, because I have this on the brain right now. The biggest reason the newsletter has done so well over the years is because it is an amazing offer. Really, that's it. Not only do advisors get some amazing bonuses immediately after subscribing, but they also get the monthly newsletter itself—duh, that's the thing they're paying for—and they get access to me for any questions they have, all for $99 per month.
That offer works so well and it's so appealing to people that I can even place restrictions on it that other marketers couldn't even dream of using. For example, I make it crystal clear on the newsletter signup page that it is a commitment and that you shouldn't even think of subscribing unless you're willing to stay subscribed for years.
I also blacklist people who cancel, ensuring they can never resubscribe again in the future, because, truthfully, if someone isn't committed to themselves, I don't even want to waste my time trying to commit to them. That's just the long and short of it. Plus, there are no refunds. There are no money-back guarantees. Anyone who needs the emotional security blanket of a guarantee is not psychologically equipped to do what I say. [23:05.8]
People who want a safety net, I just can't relate to that, because in life, there is no safety net. Did you have a safety net when you got married? Did you have a safety net when you had children? Did you have a safety net when you hung out, you're single in your own business? Life doesn't have a safety net. If you're coming to me expecting me to say, “Oh, it's okay, little Billy. I'm going to give you a money-back guarantee, because that way, if you decide to screw things up or you decide to not implement the material, or you decide that things are just not right for you, for whatever reason, you can have everything back, because that's how life works. When things don't work go your way or you screw things up, everything will be okay. Someone will swoop in and fix it.” No, I'm not going to do that.
If I had a weak offer, I wouldn't be able to place those restrictions on it. The same is true when it comes to offers you're making as a financial advisor, and you're likely making far more offers than you think you are. This is critical. If you're going to take notes with a podcast, then please write this down. You are likely making far more offers than you think you are. [24:06.4]
For example, the first sentence of your social media post is an offer to get people to read more. Your LinkedIn profile headline is an offer to get people to do something. Sure, that's not an offer in the traditional marketing sense, where you want people to buy something, but it's still an invitation to do things you want people to do.
No. 9, you do not understand the concept of lifetime value. How can you call yourself a financial advisor, someone who gives financial advice for a living? First, if you can't see the ROI in certain decisions, which is crazy, because you talk about investments all the time, it's just ridiculous. But how can you call yourself a business owner, a serious entrepreneur who literally gives advice for a living, if you don't understand the concept of lifetime value? [24:51.8]
Let's say you get a client who pays you $4,000 for a one-time financial plan and then $6,000 per year. All right, we're going to go back to middle school now. This is the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. I'm not giving you advanced calculus or anything. We're just going to go right back to middle school. Do you remember y = mx + b? This is from fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade. We're about to use that now because it means if you keep your client for 10 years, then your lifetime value, y, is 6,000 times 10, because that's what you charge every year, plus, the one-time $4,000 financial plan.
What that is 60,000 + 4,000, meaning, your total lifetime value, at least revenue-wise, is $64,000. Still, there are financial advisors out there who will mumble, stumble and agonize over a few thousand bucks in marketing spend. They lose their minds when they spend $5 on a Facebook ad when they have client lifetime values like these. You're generating $64,000 in revenue over 10 years, okay? And you still have years to go, if your client stays with you. But the people who think like that, is it any surprise that they struggle so much? [26:00.7]
Finally, No. 10, the 10th sign you are a horrible marketer is you fail to track your metrics. Just as you would never create a budget or a savings plan or an investment plan without knowing certain numbers, you should never approach any marketing strategy without at least some sense of how the numbers are going to work in your favor. No, you're not going to have everything on day one. No, things are not going to be dialed in, not going to be crystal clear the very first millisecond you start a marketing strategy, but you should at least have a sense, okay?
Let's use LinkedIn as an example. Here are some important numbers to know. You should know your connection-acceptance rate. If this is just a strategy, I'm just giving you a basic strategy and numbers you should know. If you send 100 connection requests to people in your niche, how many of those accept your request? What percentage?
Then you should know your appointment-setting rate, so if you engage 100 people in your niche through something like a direct message or outreach, or you engage with them somehow, how many of them set appointments with you? Then you’ve got to know your client-conversion rate, so if you set appointments with 100 people, how many of those people end up becoming clients? [27:07.9]
Once you know the answers to those questions, LinkedIn becomes a game where you can practically get clients on command. This is how you think in terms of funnels. You start at the top, then you get through the middle, then you get to the end, and, boom, voila, you have a client, right? It's not that easy. It's a lot easier said than done. That is the type of thinking you should apply and the only limit is how consistent you're willing to be.
If you'd like to tilt the odds in your favor, I'd like to invite you to get How To Get Clients With LinkedIn, which you can find using the “Get Clients with LinkedIn” tab over at TheAdvisorCoach.com. So, visit TheAdvisorCoach.com and click the what? The “Get Clients with LinkedIn” tab.
That is it for this week. Those are 10 signs you are a horrible marketer. I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as I've enjoyed recording it for you. Thank you for listening, and I will catch you next week. [27:58.8]
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