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: This episode is scheduled to air on Monday, November 11. That means, if you're listening on that day, then tomorrow, November 12, is the second Tuesday of the month, and you know what that means—office hours, exclusively for Inner Circle members. [00:47.6]
I am so thankful that I started doing this because it's a chance for financial advisors to get direct, personalized marketing help right then and there on the spot. Also, it's a chance for advisors to meet each other and network. I mean, I really encourage that. I want them to know each other and help each other. I don't have all the answers. It would be goofy of me to try and posture like I know everything, because I absolutely do not know everything. I know a very, very small fraction of everything there is to know. I mean, I know a lot about marketing and getting financial advisors more clients and building their businesses, but I still want to encourage financial advisors to learn from each other.
I know that when we get a bunch of super smart, successful people in the same Zoom Room together, we can do a lot, and that's what the office hours is all about. That's what has been happening on the second Tuesday of every month, from 11:00 a.m. to 01:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. That's when I host office hours exclusively for Inner Circle members.
If you're interested in that and you're not subscribed yet, check it out over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. That's the Inner Circle signup page. You can become an Inner Circle member, and then you can join the office hours and we can have a lot of fun. I can help you right then and there on the spot. [01:59.4]
Now, like many of these podcast episodes, this episode is inspired by my Inner Circle members, because Inner Circle members also get direct email access to me for their questions. I have spent years at this point having back-and-forth conversations with financial advisors about all things marketing-related. I have seen what works, what doesn't work, what they wish would have worked and what worked despite them thinking it wouldn't work. I don't want to say I've seen it all, but I have certainly seen more than 99.9% of anyone in the financial advice industry, simply because of the sheer amount of data that I have.
It took me a while to realize that my unique vantage point is one of my biggest, quote-unquote, “competitive advantages” that I have. I don't really believe in competition. I believe in creation. But if someone were to ask me about what makes me different from everyone else, one of the things I would say is it's because I am, quite literally, the only person on Planet Earth with the data that I have, because the email access is special and it created something special. [03:01.1]
Since it's private, financial advisors are usually more willing to share private details that they wouldn't share anywhere else, like at a mastermind group or a conference, or even the office hours. I know this might burst your bubble, but if you're getting your information from public places only, then chances are you're only getting part of the entire story.
Do you know how people only share the highlight reels of their lives on social media? Imagine how much of the highlight reels they will share when they're in front of other people, when they're in front of their peers, no less. That's one of the reasons why it took me so long to even do the office hours, because I recognize that it's just less likely for advisors to share the real stuff with me. Just be raw, brutally honest. If you're struggling with something, give me the nitty-gritty details so I can actually help you.
In office hours, I mean, they're in front of other people and it's just harder. I recognize that. However, I'm still doing the office hours because it's a chance for me to help advisors more effectively and efficiently. But when advisors share the real stuff with me, their real analytics numbers, they're real financial situations, their real goals, desires and frustrations, I can serve them at the highest level. [04:10.0]
That's one of the reasons the price is increasing to $199 per month on January 1, 2025, because I want to keep direct email access. I know how valuable it is. I don't want to let go of that. I don't want to give it up, but I need to put the brakes on new subscribers, because I get a ton of emails every single day, a lot of emails.
I love you, Inner Circle members. I am so grateful that you think of me and that you email me and ask your questions. Please don't stop, because we have a symbiotic relationship. You help me. I help you. You give me content ideas. You give me stuff that I can put in the newsletter. I really appreciate it. That's why I want to hold on to this. But I think that by raising the price, I'll get fewer subscribers, and they'll be more committed and more serious, which is a good thing. [04:52.6]
I've always been the type of person who would rather have five diamonds instead of 100 lumps of coal, but now I'm realizing that, on the inflow side, I need to get two or three diamonds instead of five of them—and I held out for as long as I could, because the price has been $99 per month ever since I published the first issue in 2018, But the time has come and now I am more than doubling the price. It’s like double, 99 times two is 198, plus $1, so now it's $199 per month. However, everyone who is subscribed before January 1, 2025, will pay $99 per month. They will continue to pay that. I figure it's the least I can do to say thank you and it's just the right thing to do, in my opinion.
The reason I'm talking to you about this is because it's directly related to this podcast episode, because I'm going to share with you five of the most common things I find myself telling Inner Circle members when they email me. Because I get so many questions, these are the things that I tell them. These are the patterns to come up again and again. These are the wakeup calls for financial advisors. I figure, if Inner Circle members are struggling with certain things, other financial advisors probably are, too. They are going to be listed out in this podcast in no particular order, by the way, I'm just sharing them. [06:04.3]
The very first, most common piece of advice is “Talk to your market,” because chances are, if you have a marketing problem, it can be solved by talking to your market. Who are the people you serve? What do those people want? How do they feel? What is going on with them? Forget about what other financial advisors are doing. Even forget what I tell you. Listen to your market, first and foremost. I bring this up because I'll get questions from financial advisors like, “What should my lead magnet be?” or “What should I post on social media?” The answers to those questions are found in the market. They are not found with other financial advisors. They are not necessarily found with me.
If you serve police officers, then your content will look different than if you serve corporate executives. That is just the truth. It's also why canned content can never be as effective as the content that I tell financial advisors to create, because my approach is market-focused. It is not about the guru or the coach, or the lead-gen company or the content. That is not where the magic is. The magic happens when you are focused on your market. [07:05.8]
I like to study a man named Jim Camp, and he's gone now. It's interesting that a lot of people I like to study are no longer with us. It's probably because their greatness stands the test of time, and he was known as the world's most feared negotiator, and he had this saying, which I absolutely love. He said, “You're always safe in the other person's world,” and that is very true. The more you can talk about your clients and potential clients and about what's important to them, the better off you will be. It's okay to talk about yourself and your experience and your credentials, as long as you bring it back to why people should care.
You have 10 years of experience which allows you to serve your clients better. You're bringing it back to them. You've been featured in an industry publication, which means you're demonstrating your expertise to a wider audience, and therefore you are more likely to be viewed as trustworthy. You are trustworthy. You are credible. That's how you have to approach marketing. You have to tie it back to your market. That's where marketing comes from. [08:05.2]
A lot of old school copywriters would write their marketing pieces by talking to people in the market. I am not reinventing the wheel here. This is nothing new. If you talk to the people you serve and many of them tell you that they're worried about inflation, then you’d better talk about inflation in your marketing. You'd be better off talking about that than anything else people tell you to talk about. Again, you are always safe in the other person's world.
The second most common piece of advice I find myself giving to Inner Circle members that should be a wakeup call for a lot of financial advisors is “You are not doing enough.” A lot of financial advisors I talk with just simply are not putting in enough effort when it comes to their marketing. Their activity levels are just too low to generate the results they want. This could mean they're not posting enough on social media or as frequently. They're not following up with prospects or they're not running enough ads. Whatever it is, they're just not pushing hard enough. [09:04.0]
I think part of the problem here comes from unfounded optimism. I love being optimistic, but I also think it's important to be accurate about what is going on in your business. It's like financial advisors sit down and think to themselves, Okay, my goal is to set 10 appointments this month. Therefore, I'm going to reach out to 20 people, and half of them should set appointments with me. No, no, no, that's almost certainly not going to work. You need far more than 20. That is just accurate thinking.
I talked about this few episodes back where financial advisors would spend $5 on an online ad and then wonder why nothing was happening. It's because it's only $5 that's really it. You cannot expect your business to go into the stratosphere because you spent $. I shared one of my personal marketing campaigns in an email not that long ago. I included a screenshot and it was a screenshot of one campaign and that one campaign had more than 14,000 clicks in a few weeks. That is one source of new business for me, and one campaign within that source, more than 14,000 clicks in that one thing, from that one source. You have to do more. [10:13.8]
I see this a lot with social media, too, especially when financial advisors don't stick with things like LinkedIn marketing, for example, because they failed to appreciate the trickle of clients that comes from LinkedIn over years. The results from LinkedIn do not come from the 10 or 20 messages that you send this week. They come from the hundreds of messages and hundreds of pieces of content that you share throughout the years. The results come from the trust, the credibility and the rapport that you build on that platform. [10:45.7]
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.
I'll give you another example that I actually recently experienced, too. In September, I had a financial advisor subscribe to my Inner Circle Newsletter, who first bought something from me on May 15, 2017. [11:57.7]
Think about that. He may have been following me before then, I'm not sure, but I have a record that he purchased something in May 2017. He did not become an Inner Circle member until September 2024. That's more than seven years. My heart aches thinking about all the money he could have made if he was a newsletter subscriber since day one, but, oh, well, what's done is done. He can move forward now. He made the right decision now.
I'm telling you this because I want you to understand that this took more than seven years. Is this an extreme example? Yes, it's very extreme. However, I realized that a lot of marketing is like this. Let's say that 1,000 prospects drop into your lap today, a few might convert, maybe five. Then throughout the next few weeks, you might get another 10 or 20. Then you'll get a trickle for the next few years. You might average one every month or two. That's how marketing works, especially for professional services businesses like financial advising, because it's built around trust and relationships. You cannot get around. I really want financial advisors to understand this concept. I really do, because it would just transform their businesses. [13:04.8]
The third common piece of advice I give, which is really a wakeup call for a lot of financial advisors, is “You're probably overthinking things.” I interact with a lot of financial advisors who worry about the tiniest little details, and I see it all the time, advisors getting stuck in the weeds, overanalyzing every little decision and trying to make everything perfect before they do anything. Whether it's crafting the perfect email, coming up with the best, most ideal social media post, or designing the absolute best, flawless website, they obsess over every detail and it stops them from taking action.
Here's the reality. Your marketing doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be good enough to get in front of your audience and start generating results. The perfect marketing campaign that never gets launched is infinitely worse, and that's true. Mathematically and statistically, it is infinitely worse than the imperfect one that actually goes live and gets in front of people. [14:00.0]
When you overthink things, you waste time. You could be running ads, sending emails. You could be engaging with potential clients. You could be networking. You could be getting referrals. But instead, you're tweaking. You're rewording your tagline for the fiftieth time. You're writing a hundred subject lines when you could have just shipped it and moved on with your life.
Most of the time, not always, I just want to be clear, there are exceptions to almost everything in marketing, but most of the time, these tiny details don't even matter to your audience—and, again, that is what matters, relevance to your audience. Your audience probably cares about the message and the value that you provide as a financial advisor, not the little things you're obsessing over.
The problem with overthinking is that it creates the old paralysis by analysis, or analysis by paralysis, however you want to say it. You're so caught up in trying to make everything flawless that you end up doing nothing at all, and the truth is, marketing is about testing. It's about learning. It's about adjusting as you go. You put something out there, see how it performs, and then make improvements based on real feedback. That's how you get better, not by sitting on the sidelines, waiting for perfection. [15:09.0]
Overthinking also goes hand in hand with low volume, because when you don't do anything, your volume doesn't increase. It cannot. Your activity level stays low and that hurts your business. Remember, action beats perfection every time. Gary Halbert used to say, “Motion beats meditation,” so instead of trying to perfect one ad or one email, just put it out there. See how it works. If it's not performing, you can always turn it off or adjust it later, but if you never launch, you'll never know.
The more you can let go of the need for perfection, the more effective your marketing will be. Take Action, test, iterate and move forward. That is how you win in the long run. Take it from me. I'm someone who has done a lot of this stuff and I've seen a lot of it, and it is just the way. Okay? Follow the way. [15:58.5]
The fourth common piece of marketing advice I find myself giving to Inner Circle members is “That doesn't matter or that won't matter in a few years.” This is related to overthinking things, but it's a little different because it's about focusing on things that seem critical in the moment, but are ultimately insignificant to your overall success.
Here's an example. Advisors often stress about small details like the perfect logo design. We just talked about perfectionism. They focus on the exact wording of a website bio or if their LinkedIn photo looks professional enough, and all of those things have their place, but they aren't what drive business growth as much as the alternatives, which we will talk about in a little bit. The fifth piece of advice I'm going to give you is going to be about alternatives.
The truth is that in five years, almost no one is going to care what shade of blue you used on your logo. They will care about the quality of the relationship you built with them, and how well you delivered on your promises. When I say this won't matter in a few years, I'm encouraging financial advisors to focus on the things that actually move the needle, things like building trust with clients, honing your communication skills and consistently showing up in your marketing. These are the aspects of your business that will stand the test of time. [17:16.4]
I give this piece of advice to advisors who are tempted to hop on short-term trends. Advisors often fixate on trends or what their competitors [are doing.] Again, don't believe in competition, but that's what they say, like, Oh, so-and-so is doing this. I need to do this. They feel like they need to jump on every fad in order to stay relevant, but most trends come and go. That's what trends are. What's important is mastering timeless marketing principles.
It's not a popular thing that I'm here saying people don't flock to me and say, “Wow, yeah, James is just saying to master timeless principles, like communication and trust-building. Whoa, brand new stuff”. They like the hot, new trends. They like the bright, shiny objects, and that's a disadvantage on my part, but I am focusing on serving financial advisors because I know this stuff will outlast any trend. [18:04.4]
If you're a longtime listener of this podcast, you probably think I sound like a broken record, but I'm telling you, this is the real stuff. This is the stuff you need to master. I also give this advice when financial advisors are worried about making decisions. Advisors often hesitate to take bold action because they're worried about minor risks or potential setbacks, just little things.
But in reality, most decisions don't have life-altering consequences. Your life will not change if you launch an ad and it doesn't work. The marketing experiment that you run today will likely be a blip on the radar in five years. That is just the truth. However, the cumulative effect of taking consistent strategic action over time will make your life better than you could ever envision. [18:47.0]
Finally, the fifth common piece of advice I have for financial advisors that I find myself given very often is “Just because that's working for you doesn't mean there aren't better alternatives.” This is the “cutting your metaphorical lawn with scissors” story I tell frequently, and I give this more to non-Inner Circle members, because once financial advisors are subscribed to the Inner Circle Newsletter, they start to wake up and realize that there are better ways to do things. But financial advisors on the outside are usually oblivious and they don't realize that they're doing the marketing equivalent of cutting their lawn with scissors.
I coined that phrase to describe this problem, and I've discovered that that is what resonates with advisors, the whole lawn with scissors thing, so let me unpack it. Imagine you're manually snipping away at your lawn, carefully trimming each blade of grass. It's tedious, it takes forever and it doesn't allow you to cover much ground, but you're proud of it because you're getting results. You're technically cutting the lawn and you're making progress. But someone else is driving a high-powered lawn mower and finishing the entire lawn in a fraction of the time with the same, if not better, results than you. That is what it’s all about. [20:01.5]
Sometimes this comes from complacency. It's the “We've always done it this way” mentality, and I get it, when something is working, even if it's only working moderately well, there's a tendency to stick with it and resist exploring potentially better options because it's comfortable, it's predictable, and it provides a sense of control. But as I like to tell financial advisors, just because something is working doesn't mean it's the best or most efficient way to do things.
In fact, sticking with what's working might be the very thing holding your business back from explosive growth. If you're seeing results from what you're doing, that is fantastic. But ask yourself, is there a better way? Is it possible that there's a better way to achieve the same results or even better results with less effort, less time, or on a bigger scale? Could you? Just daydream with me here. Could you double your client acquisition? Could you free up hours in your day? Could you automate parts of your business so you can focus more on growth, so you could do whatever you want, so you could go live your life? Chances are you probably could. [21:03.0]
To recap, those five common pieces of advice I find myself giving that are wake up calls for a lot of financial advisors are, number one, talk to your market, figure out what it wants. Number two, you're not doing enough. Your activity level is too low. Number three, you're overthinking it. Number four, that doesn't matter or that won't matter in a few years, and number five, just because it's working for you doesn't mean there aren't better alternatives.
Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you, and I will catch you next week. [21:35.5]
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