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, I did a list episode with 25 things I would do if I were a new financial advisor, and I had a lot of fun with that, so I'm going to do it again, except this time, I'm going to talk about 23 harsh truths about marketing financial advisors should know. Let's jump right into it. No introduction, no story about myself this time.
No.1: all else being equal, the best marketer wins. So many financial advisors attempt to dance around this truth. They don't want to face the reality that good marketing is really the key to growth. It is not hope. It's not reading a thousand books. It's not endlessly scrolling on LinkedIn, checking out what other financial advisors are doing. It is literally just good marketing. [01:10.5]
You could spend years growing a business step by step with tons of time and energy and effort, and just blood, sweat and tears, and I could blow right past you in a few months if my marketing is better. You just cannot beat having powerful systems in place to get more clients and grow your business. I'm sorry, you just cannot. Good marketing is the key. I know I may be biased because I'm the financial advisor marketing guy, but I'm just telling you the truth. You can believe me or not believe me, I really don't care. I can only give you the message.
No. 2: people don't want a, quote-unquote, “financial plan.” They want a better life. You can apply this to every product or service under the sun. People don't want drills. They want holes. People don't want a vacation. They want Instagram photos, and people don't want the literal binder or papers or downloads that you give them as a financial plan. That is not what they're buying. They are buying the outcome. [02:05.1]
No. 3: “Build it and they will come” is a lie. Distribution is 90% of content marketing's effectiveness, and, actually, marketing in general, but I'm going to talk about content marketing here. It kills me when I see financial advisors get caught in this trap of creating content, or worse, hiring people to create content for them for content’s sake. They will post a blog article every month because some guru told them they were supposed to do that or that's what good marketers do. Or they release a weekly podcast episode, but their heart isn't really in it and they don't really want to do it. That is dumb.
I would much rather have you only create 10 amazing pieces of content instead of 100 mediocre pieces of content. If you really enjoy content marketing and you want to do it because it's fun for you and that's the way you want to spend your life, then more power to you. I love this podcast. I love chatting with you every single week. I like creating content, so I'm living my best life. I am doing stuff that I want to do. But I guarantee you this, if I didn't like this podcast, if I didn't want to do it, I would not do it, okay? That is what I want to tell you. You just want to focus on having good content. [03:11.4]
I see this all the time with lead magnets, too. Financial advisors will create these crappy little lead magnets because they hear me talk about having lead magnets, and they treat them like there's some box to check. That is the complete wrong mentality. You want to build something substantial that actually serves your market and gets them engaged, because if they're engaged, then they're more likely to set an appointment with you, which is the goal anyway.
What is distribution? I talk about distributions—90% of your time should be spent on distribution. That is email marketing, social media marketing. It's online ads. However you get your message out into the world. It is your website. It's direct mail. It's making phone calls. You are distributing your message out into the world. That's why it's called distribution. [03:56.4]
No. 4: if you're not getting referrals, then you're probably not referable. Ooh, that's a tough one for people to accept. You have to be referable if you want to get referrals. If you're not getting referrals, then chances are you are not the type of person that people feel comfortable giving referrals to.
I get a ton of referrals. I get so many referrals that it's honestly difficult for me to keep track of them all. Yes, I get referrals for the Inner Circle and I am extremely appreciative. Thank you so much. I am forever grateful if you have referred someone to the Inner Circle. But I also get referrals for everything else. Actually, I get far more referrals for everything else. I get referrals for my products. I get referrals for my content. I get referrals for coaching and consulting that I don't even do.
Think about that for a second. People are referring to me for things I don't even do. I do not offer any sort of coaching program right now. Yet, financial advisors are so impressed and get such good results with the other stuff, they refer people who are looking for coaching to me. That's because I am, at least in my opinion, referable, and in their opinions, obviously, because they're sending me referrals. [05:04.4]
I have built an ecosystem that gets financial advisors more clients and it's as easy for me as breathing. So, if you're not getting referrals, that's probably the reason why. It's probably the overarching reason why. There are a ton of little tactical tips and tricks that you can do to get more referrals, but that is the big kahuna.
No. 5: the market is noisier than ever. If your message isn't sharp, it's ignored. This means you must have a strong market-to-message match. You must know your market inside and out. You must use the words they use. You must be able to describe their problems better than they can. You must be able to describe their challenges better than they can. If you can't do that, then your conversions will suffer.
No. 6: you're not competing against other advisors. You're competing against your prospective client's priorities. Forget about all the other advisors. Many advisors wrongly assume that their biggest competitors are just other advisors, or the advisor down the street or someone with a bigger social media following. No, no, no, your real competition is the 97 other things your prospect is thinking about today. [06:06.3]
Your prospects are thinking about their kids, their jobs, their bills, their aching back, their fantasy football team. Literally anything that takes attention away from the decision to hire you is your competition. That is why clarity matters. That's why simplicity matters. That's why urgency matters. If you don't give them a reason to act now and make it brain-dead easy to do so, they'll push it off and they will never come back, or very rarely will they come back. If you've ever studied bounce rates in marketing where people get to a website and then leave, chances are these people aren’t coming back, and yes, I have the real data, because I have tools that allow me to track website visitors and I know how many visits they have, and so on and so forth. I'm not going to get into the weeds because that's a story for another podcast episode, but the source here is, trust me, bro. [06:51.2]
No. 7: “We do comprehensive financial planning” means nothing to prospective clients. It is jargon. It's vague. It's not a reason for people to hire you. No prospect is sitting at his kitchen table right now saying, “You know what I need? I need some comprehensive financial planning.” That person is thinking, I want to retire earlier. I'm worried I'll run out of money. Speak to that. Use real language that matches with what people are actually thinking and feeling.
Again, this goes back to the marketing advice that very few people want to hear. You must know your market. You cannot hire some guru to do this for you, because the guru is not going to know your market as well as you do. You cannot hire this out. You cannot delegate this. If you try to delegate this sort of thing, then you are being, pardon my quasi-French here, a moron. You are being just a straight up goofy goober, goof troop moron. [07:44.3]
And that's related to No. 8, which is that your story matters more than your services and guess who should tell your story? You because it's your story. People buy from people. If your story resonates, if your values align, if your journey builds trust, they will consider you more. You'll have an edge, even if other financial advisors have technically better offers or better pricing and I mean, better is really relative. But you know what I mean? Because your story builds an emotional connection, and marketing is emotional before it is logical.
I'll give you a specific example. I have heard from several Inner Circle members. Actually, I mean, several makes it seem like it's five or six. I'm talking like 20-plus. They have all said that sharing social media content about their lives and stuff that they like to do and basically their personal lives on LinkedIn is working better than ever, and I can attest to that, too, because I've gotten more attention. I've made more money from posts about my home gym, buying a car, tools I'm using, books I’m reading, and so on. I've gotten more attention and more money from those posts than nearly every other traditional business post I have ever written. Why? Because certainty is largely built through connection, and if you want to stand out from all the other suspicious, polished, too-perfect marketing out there, you need to share your real life. [09:04.8]
I have seen my Inner Circle members post stuff about traveling, spending time with their children, going on dates for their spouses, books they're reading, movies they're watching, things they like to do, where they go on the weekend, all sorts of stuff. It works because people want to work with someone they feel like they know, someone who they believe gets them. If you're not doing this, then you're already behind.
No. 9: hope is not a strategy. You cannot hope your way to a better business. You need systems. I don't care how talented you are, if you don't have a predictable way to attract and convert leads into prospects and prospects into clients. You are at the mercy of luck. You're just gambling. That's not a business. That is just gambling. Systems win. I know within a respectable range of variance exactly what is going to happen in my business today. I know exactly how many people are going to see my content. I know exactly how many people are going to convert, again, with any respectable range of variance. I don't know that it's going to be 2.713% but I know it's going to be between two% and 3%. I just know, because I've been doing it, I've been tracking it, and that is how I approach it. [10:13.5]
I know if I want to make a little bit more money, I have to figure out a way to cost effectively get more eyeballs on my content. If I want to make more money, I can figure out how to convert more of those eyeballs without getting more I guess. We're going to talk about that later. That's one of the points that I have on this list.
No. 10: you're probably undercharging. Back in late 2024, I think it was the December 2024 Inner Circle Newsletter issue, but I'm not 100% I think it was December, I talked all about pricing, and that was one of the best issues I've ever written because it showed financial advisors how they should think about their fees and why they're probably not charging enough. In fact, it is rare that I meet a financial advisor who I believe is charging enough for his or her services. [10:56.7]
Getting your pricing right is also a very easy way for the Inner Circle to pay for itself, because let's say you raise your fees and you get one more client, that's it, just one more, the Inner Circle is only $199 per month, so chances are that one client, again, one after a fee increase, will be more than enough to pay for it forever. Again, I rarely meet financial advisors who I believe are charging what they're worth, so you are probably undercharging. [11:25.1]
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.
No. 11: most email newsletters are so boring. They just are so boring, they make me want to fall asleep when I read them. Market updates and happy Thanksgiving emails, they just don't cut it. If your emails sound like they were written by ChatGPT trying not to offend anyone, they're going straight to the trash. That is true literally, they're going straight to the trash folder.
So, add personality. Tell stories. Take a stand. Say something worth reading. Back to the referral thing. If you're not getting referrals, you're probably not referable. If people aren't reading your emails. Your emails are probably not worth reading, and if no one reads your email, nothing happens from your email. [13:04.6]
I'll give you an example. I'll tell you a story here. I'll practice what I preach. I tell people to tell stories in their marketing so I'm going to tell you a little story. I used to work out in this old Powerhouse gym with a bunch of interesting characters, and this was back when Powerhouse was just full of manly men and bodybuilders and power lifters, instead of like the yoga and Zumba classes that they have now. Nothing against yoga and Zumba and Pilates, if that's your thing, if that's what you like to do. I love that you're in there, but the powerhouse of today is not what it used to be like.
One time this guy loaded up the leg press with every weight he could find. It looked like he was about to leg press a small car. I watched him stack the machine until it was full. He just put a 145-lbs plate, clink on top of another. Clink, another one. Clink, another one. People stopped to watch. They were just, Hmm, what's this guy going to do? What's going on? He sat down. He got hyped up. He's like, Oh, lightweight, baby. If you know where that's from, then you're a Ronnie Coleman fan. [14:01.5]
He unlocked the sled. You can see everything tense up, and then he moves it two or three inches, maybe 3.1 if you're being generous, just a tiny little baby bounce of his knees, no full range, no depth, no real work being done. No movement, no weight applied, no force. Then he locks it back in. He slaps his chest like he just did something. He walks off like he conquered Mount Everest, but in reality, what he did, that little baby bounce, did almost nothing for his legs.
Later on, as I was working out, no one was on the leg press after that, eventually, this guy got on the leg press, and he started doing controlled, full-range reps with less than a third of the weight that the other guy used and unlike that other guy, the one who was leg pressing the lighter weight, was actually getting stronger. He was building muscle. [14:56.0]
Lots of financial advisors treat their marketing like the first guy. It looks like they're doing a ton, but when you examine it closer, it's just a bounce. There's no follow-through. There’s no depth. There's no real traction, no progress is being made. Meanwhile, the advisors who stick to simple, consistent and effective strategies are the ones who are actually growing. What looks unimpressive at first glance often delivers the biggest long-term results—and since we're talking about emails in this case, the best emails look unimpressive. They're just plain text. They're story based emails. They don't have fancy HTML. They don't have images. They don't have anything like that. They're legitimately just stories. You're talking directly to your prospective clients, kind of like I just did here.
I just gave you a little story. I gave you a little metaphor about how marketing is unimpressive or it looks unimpressive, but it really gets great results, because honestly, someone leg pressing 200 or 300 pounds doesn't look as impressive as someone leg pressing 1,000 pounds, but chances are, if you're doing the full range of motion, you're going to get results, so that is the way to do it. [15:57.0]
No. 13: one of the biggest objections you need to overcome is indifference. It's not “I can't afford it,” even though that might be valid. It's not “I already have a financial advisor,” even though that might be valid. It's not “I don't have time,” again, even though that might be valid. It is just “Meh, like, I don't know, I don't feel like hiring a financial advisor right now.” If you don't give people a compelling reason to act and to act now, they probably won't, not because they don't like you, not because of any other objection. It's just because you didn't make them feel anything.
No. 14: don't wait until you have it all figured out before you start. Have you ever had a prospective client tell you that now is not a good time for them or him or her to hire you? Many times, people who say that will talk about how busy they are and how they're waiting for things to settle down before they start with the financial planning and investing, and they just tell you whatever weird, wild goose chase story about how they don't have time. That's a horrible idea, though. [16:55.6]
Imagine you want to take a road trip and you tell yourself that you will only leave your driveway if all of the traffic lights on the entire route are all green. You would never leave. You would never back out of your driveway. Guess what? I have financial advisors tell me “Now is not a good time” quite frequently. They are waiting for all of their metaphorical traffic lights to turn green. That will never happen.
Besides, it is actually better to start something new when you're busy. Do you know why? Because if you tell yourself that you'll wait until things are easier than you're unconsciously telling yourself, “I will quit when I get busy.” If you wait until things are easier, then you will quit at the first sign of resistance. However, if you start when you're already busy, if you start when you feel like you can't add another thing to your plate, then you're more likely to stick with it. [17:48.3]
That's one of the reasons why some of my most successful Inner Circle members are the ones who subscribed when they felt busy. They could have easily said, “Now is not a good time,” and their excuse would have been more valid than 99% of the people out there who say they don't have time because these Inner Circle members who are actually successful and actually running real businesses, they really are busy. They could have easily said, “Now is not a good time,” and they could have let the opportunity slip through their fingers, but they didn't. They realized that starting during a, quote-unquote, “bad time” is the smartest and most logical move. I really hope you understand that. Don't say that you'll start when all the metaphorical lights are green, because you're just going to say, “The first time I get a red light, I'm just going to quit. I'm going to go home.” No, that is not what you want to do.
No. 15: what is right is not always popular, and what's popular is not always right. The crowd is often wrong. Just because most advisors do something doesn't mean it works. I see so many things, people do goofy stuff on social media. They post these little dumb things and financial advisors ask me questions about it, like, Do you think I should start doing it? No, no, no, just because some guy is doing it doesn't mean you need to do it. [18:55.6]
No. 16: You're not tired, you're uninspired. You don't need an app. You need to win. You need something that reminds you why you started in the first place. Nothing reignites your fire like getting results. Go get some results, even a small result, if that's all you can get.
No. 17: trust is critical for good financial advisor marketing. You will not get clients without trust. And, no, a professional headshot. No, a ton of designations in alphabet soup. It's just not enough. Trust comes from transparency, proof and consistency, and there's a lot more that goes into it that could be an entire podcast episode by itself. But if people don't trust you, they will not convert, no matter how polished your marketing looks.
No. 18: your credibility is meaningless if no one feels connected with you. Let’s go back to the alphabet soup. You could have alphabet soup after your name, but if you're cold, you're robotic, you're generic, you will lose to someone who is warm, human and relatable because people want connection. They don't just want competence. [19:54.7]
No. 19—and yes, I'm going kind of quickly because we're running out of time. I want to make sure I get all of these out: saying you help people with their money is like saying a chef cooks food. Be more specific or get ignored. Okay, we get it, you help people with the money. A chef cooks food. Now, what else?
No. 20: having a niche forgives a lot of marketing sins. I talk all the time about niche marketing in this podcast, so if you want to learn more, just listen to the other 300-plus episodes I have.
No. 21: if you don't have a clear process for turning attention into appointments, you do not have a marketing plan. You have a wish list.
No. 22: there are only two ways to improve your marketing. You can either get in front of more people and/or convert more of the people you're already in front of. That is it, those are the levers, traffic and conversion. Figure out which one is your bottleneck. Then work on that. Everything else is just fluff. You can make more money by getting in front of more people, with all else being equal, and you can make more money by converting more of the people that you have, all else being equal. [21:01.8]
I recently created a four-part video training series with more than two-and-a-half hours of video content about discovery meetings that is focused on the second part. You can convert more of the people who are already in front of you and you will get more clients and make more money. If you learn how to have better discovery meetings, then you can be more profitable and you can have a better business, a bigger business, with the existing marketing that you're already doing, because if you're only converting, let's just say one out of every three people into clients, so one out of every three discovery meetings, and you bump that up to two out of every three, then that's a tremendous difference that you have made in your business.
Those are the two things that you can do—get in front of more people. That's marketing, yes, content, social media, email, online ads, that's cool, or you can convert more of the people that you already have, and that is in sales and the process and your systems and your discovery meetings. If you want to get that program, “How Financial Advisors Can Have Better Discovery Meetings,” go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/meetings. Once again, that is TheAdvisorCoach.com/meetings. [22:05.8]
No. 23 is great marketing should make you uncomfortable, because growth lives outside of the comfort zone.
Let me wrap this up with a truth that ties all 23 of these things together, at least kinda sorta. At the end of the day, marketing is not about being cute. It’s not about being clever. It’s not about being creative. It's about getting clients. That's it. These harsh truths might sting a little, and if they do, good. That means you're awake. That means you care, because the financial advisors who embrace these truths and they act on them, are going to be the ones who win, not someday, not after they get everything perfect, but now. They're going to get started now. They're going to become better advisors and better marketers and better business owners now.
So, take a hard look at your marketing. Take a hard look at your business. Strip away the fluff. Be honest with yourself about what's working and what's not working, and then do something about it. Don't just listen to podcasts all day. Do something about it. The market rewards action, not intention. I'll catch you next week. [23:05.8]
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