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: These last few weeks have been a lot of fun. I have been rolling out Pollard AI, which is the newest perk I've made available exclusively for Inner Circle members. It is a custom-trained AI marketing coach that completely obliterates every other tool and resource out there.
Let me ask you something. How much time have you wasted trying to figure out marketing on your own? Maybe you've spent hours writing posts to get no engagement, womp-womp, weeks testing marketing campaigns to flop, months burning money on strategies that never bring in clients. It can be painful, and it's why so many financial advisors struggle. [01:11.8]
So, I built the solution, and that is Pollard AI. Here's what makes it different. It is trained on my entire body of work with 300-plus podcast episodes, 2,700-plus emails, 100-plus blog posts, 1,000-plus pages of my private marketing notes that I've never made public. This is stuff that has never been published anywhere, has never been made available online because it's from my personal collection.
That also means it's built specifically for financial advisors, which means it's better than other AI tools, like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, because while those tools are valuable, they cannot give you specific advice tailored to financial advisors because they're trained on the entirety of the web. They're getting information from random websites and blogs, and Reddit and Wikipedia. They have no ability to sift through what actually works and what doesn't. They just have to take stuff at face value. [02:10.8]
So, if a random account on Reddit somewhere says, “Hey, this marketing strategy worked,” you just kind of have to believe that account, and it filters through to ChatGPT and you get it, and you believe that it's the gospel and you ruin your entire business, right? That's just not good. If some random blogger or Redditor or Wikipedia guy said that a marketing strategy works, then other AI tools will run with it. They will give you bad information.
Pollard AI solves that problem, which means you can ask which subject line has the highest chance of working in your situation. You can get content ideas to fit your style and actually attract prospects. You can figure out which marketing activities will get you clients based on where you are right now. You can ask for a referral script that feels natural that gets results for you. You can figure out a way to justify your value. You can figure out advertising headlines. You can see which prospecting activity will give you the highest ROI, and so on and so forth, and so much more—and you'll get all of those answers, at least when you ask one by one, in about a minute, 60 seconds flat. [03:15.0]
So, while other financial advisors are winging it, trying to figure it out themselves and just spending a bunch of time, money and energy that you can never really get back, you will have a custom-trained marketing weapon at your beck and call.
Pollard AI is the newest perk available to Inner Circle members. If you have not joined the Inner Circle by now, goodness gracious, you are just missing out. You are being a silly, silly goose. Honestly, if you can't recoup your $199 per month investment from this one thing alone, then there is something wrong with you. You have something physically wrong with your body or mentally wrong with your mind, because there is absolutely no excuse for not making it work with this tool. Plus, you will absolutely smoke your competitors. [04:03.6]
Let me paint a quick picture for you, two financial advisors with similar backgrounds serving the same niche, we'll call them Advisor A and Advisor B.
Advisor A is just guessing. He's reading generic LinkedIn posts. He's reading marketing books that don't even apply to financial advisors. He's testing random marketing campaigns that may or may not work. He's just copying whatever he sees. He's the monkey see, monkey do. He does it.
Advisor B has Pollard AI. That means Advisor B can instantly pull up a referral script that feels natural and gets appointments. He can ask which headline will stop prospects mid-scroll and actually get them to click. He can find out which marketing activity will bring him clients the fastest based on where he is right now. He can justify his value in a way that eliminates fee objections before they even come up. He can do all that stuff in mere minutes.
Who do you think will win in the grand battle of life, in the battle of the marketplace, right, and profit? Exactly, Advisor B, the one with Pollard AI. [05:08.0]
So if you want to check out the Inner Circle for yourself, go over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. But I'll say one more thing, and I'll be done talking about it, I promise. Do not join if you're not ready to put in the work. It will be a waste of money if you don't use it. Just being 100% transparent with you, I just want to tell you like it is, it will be a waste of money if you don't use it.
Also, do not join if the idea of investing $199 per month will cause unnecessary hardship to you or your business, or if it gives you acid reflux. Don't do it. $199 per month should not be a lot of money to you. If you're out here trying to sell multi-$1,000 financial plans and attract millionaire clients, you should not whine about $199 per month. It blows my mind that there are so many broke financial advisors out there, so I'm just giving you fair warning, because I care. [05:59.6]
If you are one of the broke financial advisors, that doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean you've done anything wrong as a human being or morally, or anything like that, but this offer is not for you. That's all I'm saying. I'm trying to save you the trouble and the agony.
All right, let's get to the topic of the day, which is LinkedIn. I haven't talked about LinkedIn on this podcast in a long time, which is a shame because it's one of my most popular topics. It's certainly one of the things financial advisors ask me about the most, and I guess it makes sense, figuring I have the How to Get Clients with LinkedIn product. It's one of the most successful marketing strategies of all time for financial advisors.
Making money on LinkedIn has been one of the easiest opportunities in human history. There is nothing else like it, because it tells you exactly what people do for work and those people will post stuff online that allows you to connect with them and build rapport and all that good stuff. If old school marketers and copywriters were alive today and they could see what's possible on LinkedIn, they would smack you upside the head for not using it. [07:08.0]
Lots of people over complicate LinkedIn, the same way they over complicate marketing in general. Oh, and like I mentioned, I have the “How to Get Clients with LinkedIn,” so if you want to grab it, then you can go to TheAdvisorCoach.com. You can click on the “Get Clients with LinkedIn” tab. There's a lot more information there. There's multiple hours of video and PDFs with content ideas and just a bunch of stuff that you can use. It's far more than I can cover in this podcast episode.
So, are you ready to learn about what you should do on LinkedIn to get better results? Here it is. Have real conversations with people. Yes, that's it. You don't need to have some crazy step-by-step sequence mapped out in advance. You really don't. If you want to do something like that and you enjoy doing it, then, by all means, go ahead, but I'm telling you right now that the actual trick for making LinkedIn work is legitimately just to have conversations with people. [08:04.4]
This is something that I originally only shared with Inner Circle members, but I thought about it, and I realized that was kind of unfair, since I offered the LinkedIn product and I talked about LinkedIn elsewhere, so here it is—you need to have more real, genuine conversations with people, not copy-and-paste slop, not long-drawn-out automated messages. You need to have real conversations.
Now you might be wondering, Okay, James, how do I have “real conversations” with people? I'll tell you, you robot of a human being. You start with content you see in your feed. That solves a major problem that many financial advisors struggle with, and that's the fact that they message people who simply aren't active on LinkedIn.
That's one of the biggest flaws I see with all the other LinkedIn training out there when they focus on what to say in the message or connection request. You could have the greatest message in the entire world, but it doesn't matter if it never gets seen, and if someone isn't active on LinkedIn, that person will not see your message. [09:07.4]
That's why, again, you start with the feed, because if someone posted something on LinkedIn today, then guess what? That person was active today, you have proof, so the odds of getting a response from that person will skyrocket. In fact, you could make this one change and immediately see better results in your marketing on LinkedIn. You base your messaging off activity, not anything else.
If you're sending 100 messages to random people that you find on Sales Navigator, and I'm sending 100 messages to people I found on my feed or in my feed, my response rate is probably going to be at least double yours, even if our messages are exactly the same. Do you understand that? Do you get what I'm telling you here? We could send the exact same thing, but by me simply starting with the feed, I would smoke you—so, we start there. [10:00.0]
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.
Next, let's talk about what you say in your message. There's a lot I could say here, but I'll give you a few key points. [11:06.7]
First, there is a time and place for mass messaging, if that's what you want to do. This is basically when you send the same message or a variation of that message to a ton of people. The problem is that a lot of financial advisors use that strategy incorrectly and inappropriately. In fact, so many financial advisors do it the wrong way that I even hesitate to recommend it anymore.
Second, and this is something I previously only shared with Inner Circle members, and that is that LinkedIn prioritizes engagement, meaning, they want people to engage with each other, because it keeps them on the platform and it makes LinkedIn a bunch of money for their advertising revenue and all that, so they want people to engage not just in content, like liking and commenting, but also in messages. [11:52.5]
So, think about what's happening here. Let's say you send 100 messages and you get 10 responses from people. It's no big deal for you to send these messages because you're just copying and pasting anyway. You can send 100 messages in no time flat. Now, let's say I send 15 messages in that period of time, but I get seven responses. So, you send 100. You get 10 responses. I send 15. I get seven responses. Even though I got fewer responses than you did, I will likely get better results than you over the long run, and here's why—because my engagement rate was so much higher. Seven out of 15 is so much higher than 10 out of 100.
When you message someone on LinkedIn and that person doesn't respond, LinkedIn basically thinks that person isn't interested in hearing from you. Therefore, what happens? Your content doesn't show up as frequently in that person's feed, which means, when you send those 100 messages and only get 10 responses, the other 90 people are less likely to see your content in their feeds. And honestly, long-term content is what builds trust, familiarity and rapport anyway. It's very powerful when you have people who see you again and again and again. But if you send a message that gets ignored, you are only hurting yourself. [13:09.8]
The reverse is also true. When you send messages that get responses, what does LinkedIn think? LinkedIn thinks, Oh, this person must be interested in what this financial advisor has to say, and therefore, I'm going to show more of this financial advisor’s content in this person's feed. So, you will show up in the feed even more.
Let's go back to what I did in the hypothetical scenario. Even though I only got seven responses out of the 15, my actual engagement rate was through the roof compared to yours, because seven out of 15, again, is so much higher than the 10%, the 10 out of 100, and since I'm playing the long game, I can keep doing it while minimizing the number of people who won't see my content in the feed—so, I get more responses. I minimize my damage. The people who respond to me are more likely to see my content in the feed, and it just gets ridiculously powerful. [14:01.4]
That's the part most advisors don't get. They think LinkedIn is a numbers game. They think if they just spray enough messages out there, someone has to respond, and eventually, that's going to trickle down to new business for me. They're not entirely wrong, but they're really, really mostly wrong.
LinkedIn is watching. The algorithm is tracking and it rewards the quality of interaction over sheer quantity of activity. So, the guy blasting out copy and paste messages every single week is actually digging his own social media grave. He might get a couple of pity responses, but he's simultaneously training LinkedIn to bury him, to bury his content in the feeds of all the people who ignored him.
Meanwhile, the advisor who takes the time to write thoughtful, relevant personal messages, and that person has higher engagement rates and real conversations with people, that advisor increases the odds that his future content will show up where it matters, and that's the bigger picture. [15:01.8]
Every ignored message is a silent strike against your visibility. Every responded-to message, every engaged-with message, is a boost for your future reach. Over time, those small percentages will add up to a massive difference in the advisors who dominate the feeds of their prospective clients and those who disappear into the void.
So, if you have been wondering why your LinkedIn posts feel like they're falling into a black hole, it might not be your content at all. It might be all of the ignored messages sitting in your inbox. It might be the fact that you're just spraying and praying and using automated tools, and just doing dumb stuff.
Now, of course, you might be wondering at this point of the podcast episode, how to send messages that get responses, and to that I say, let's go right back to the feed. If you get nothing else from this episode, I want you to understand that a lot of the answers you seek can be found on your LinkedIn feed. [16:03.6]
If someone posts something about a vacation that he recently took, then your message should be about the vacation. Ask him where he stayed. Ask him what he enjoyed the most. Ask if he would recommend it, what advice he has for you. Why? Because he's already signaled to the world that this is a topic he wants to talk about. Do you understand that? The proof of concept is already there. It's already baked right in. If you're trying to get someone to talk to you, then the smartest move is to talk about something that the person has already demonstrated interest in.
Imagine someone walking around town with a sign, like, “I just bought a new car and I'm super happy.” Would you go up to that person on the street and just start talking about yourself? “Hey, I'm a financial advisor from down the street and I work on retirement plans, and you might need help with your retirement planning. Therefore, you should talk with me, because I'm super awesome.” No, no, you would talk about what is on the gosh darn sign. People are putting their signs out to the world and you should talk about that. [17:01.3]
If someone posted about something five minutes ago, you should strike while the iron is hot, because that person obviously just wanted the world to know about that topic. If you think a message about that thing will get ignored, then you're just being goofy, and honestly, you probably can't be helped. Contrast that with the advisor who ignores all of what I'm saying here and sends a tone-deaf message, like, “I help pre-retirees with tax efficient income strategies. Do you have 15 minutes for a quick call?” But that's what a lot of advisors are doing and they wonder why they don't make that much money. They wonder why they struggle. It's because they do dumb stuff.
If you comment or message in alignment with someone's post, what's already been proven, right, you're stacking the deck in your favor. You're not guessing what will spark a conversation. You're using the evidence right in front of you. [17:56.8]
Sometimes, when I talk about this concept with financial advisors, they'll respond with something like, “But if I never talk about business in the messages, then how am I going to get someone to send an appointment with me?” and it's just weird. It's just goofy, because you have a headline on LinkedIn and your headline should say something like, “Financial advisor helping this occupation do whatever,” or “Serving this niche market.” You should call them out in a headline. People see your headline, right? Of course, if they want to work with you, then they can always go to your profile. They can always go to your website. They can click a call-to-action button. People are not stupid. They're not naive. You don't need to just shove this stuff straight down their throat.
I've told so many financial advisors that the secret to succeeding on LinkedIn is really just to have genuine conversations with people, and only a small percentage of advisors believe me. They just think I'm lying to them or something, I don't know. They think it's about posting the most amazing content ever. They think it's about making these awesome hooks that where they try to make hooks that are scroll-stopping. Now, that can be helpful, right? But they think that that is the secret, or they think it's about blasting out hundreds of messages with the same tired script, like, “Would you like to connect for a quick call?” That is not marketing. That is digital begging. [19:08.7]
The truth is, the advisors who went on LinkedIn are not the ones who are shouting the loudest. It's not the ones who believe the little numbers game B.S. It kind of sort of is a numbers game, but it's not a numbers game in the sense that you just send message after message after message. The number that you want to track is how many people are engaging with you, and then how many of those people do you have, period, right? So, it kind of sort of is a numbers game, but it's not a numbers game in the way that financial advisors like to talk about it.
The best financial advisors marketing-wise on LinkedIn are curious. They notice what people are sharing. They engage with what people are sharing. They don't treat conversations as a pure numbers game. They treat them as opportunities to connect. And you can believe me or not, I really don't care at this point. All I know is that the advisors who do what I say here are going to get better results, and that's what I want the most.
So, that's all I have for you this week—have real conversations with people if you want better results on LinkedIn—and I will catch you next week. [20:12.4]
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