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: Financial advisors, what's going on? This is a special episode in addition to my normal Monday episodes. Today, I'm going to talk about how financial advisors can get more clients with content marketing. I'm also going to reveal a few lies that financial advisors get told about content marketing and a few other things that I think can help you. [00:50.0]
But, first, I want to let you know something extremely important. The reason I'm releasing this episode is because I want you to know about the upcoming February Inner Circle Newsletter. It is going to be pretty much all about content marketing. That means if you are a financial advisor who is either currently employing a content marketing strategy or thinking about using content to get more clients, then this issue could quite possibly be the best investment you ever make in your business. That is no exaggeration, no hype. I know I can hype things up and I'm a pretty good salesperson when I want to be, but I'm telling you, no exaggeration whatsoever.
The deadline to subscribe is January 31, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Not Central, not Pacific. It is Eastern Standard Time, because the newsletter will ship out on February 1. If you want to check it out, go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. One more time—the deadline is Wednesday, January 31, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and you can subscribe by going to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. [01:56.1]
It is 26 pages long, making it the longest, most comprehensive and most in-depth newsletter issue I have ever written. I've never gotten this detailed about content marketing, my process, the process that I've used to help financial advisors. I have never gotten this detailed ever before, but I'm doing it now because I want to completely transform my Inner Circle members for the better, and I know this is going to lead to a ton of positive feedback and change lives.
Let me tell you a story about how this monumental issue came about. For about a year, I have been considering making a content marketing course for financial advisors, like a video training program or something like that. Advisors ask me for content marketing advice all the time, and who can blame them?
I have 250-plus podcast episodes of this. Before the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast, I had the Advisor Coach podcast. Altogether, my episodes had been downloaded more than a million times. I have also written 100-plus blog articles that have been viewed more than a million times, too. I've written a couple thousand emails. I've been helping financial advisors get more clients for the better part of a decade now, and a lot of the work I do revolves around content marketing. [03:06.0]
Because Inner Circle members get direct email access to me for questions, I have seen the raw, real and unfiltered stuff that they wouldn't feel comfortable sharing in front of other people at a mastermind or conference. So, I see the nitty-gritty stuff. I see the analytics. I know what works and I know what doesn't. I know what content generates leads and what doesn't. I know what truly gets people to become clients and what is a complete and utter waste of time.
The newsletter is in its seventh year now, so I've been doing this for quite some time. I've been answering a lot of questions. Heck, I had two podcast episodes that came out recently about what I have learned from 10,000-plus conversations with financial advisors. This is stuff that you're literally not going to get anywhere else. And in the content marketing realm, I have either done it personally with my own time, my own resources, my own money, or I've helped someone with it.
And here's a crazy stat. When you consider all the writing I've done—just writing, not audio, not video, just writing, just written content—I have written more words than are in Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, and the Chronicles of Narnia, combined. Yes, combined. [04:16.2]
I say all of that, to show you that I am probably “the” most qualified person in the entire world to create a content marketing course for financial advisors. And I really wanted to create this course, too, because as a business person, I knew I could put together something amazing and use my credibility as a content marketer to sell it, and I would have sold it with content and I could have made a whole bunch of money.
So, I created an absolutely amazing outline for the course. This thing was dozens and dozens of pages. It was complete with some of the best content marketing advice I could assemble in one place. It was mind-boggling, right? Usually, I'm pretty quick with my outlines, but I took my time with this one, because I really wanted to get it right I wanted to make sure I delivered the absolute best to financial advisors. [05:04.4]
But then I put the idea on the backburner because I had other priorities, so the outline has been sitting dormant for months, until now, because I put all of that information in the February Inner Circle Newsletter issue.
I'm revealing the number one reason why financial advisors fail to get results with content marketing.
How to ensure you never run out of content ideas.
How to maximize your chances of writing amazing content, even if you've never written a single blog post before.
How to set appointments with your content by begging people not to work with you. I do this all the time, it is so effective. I do it in my emails, I do it in my sales pages. I do it even in my “Contact Us” page. It is so effective.
I reveal an effortless trust-building technique that can make prospective clients feel as if they have known you, even if they have only consumed one or two pieces of your content. It is so good, and so much more. [05:56.0]
I'm explaining where to find proven content ideas. I share the exact step-by-step process I personally follow when creating content. I also reveal some of my favorite ways to generate leads with content marketing. Again, I have never revealed this much detail about my content marketing process. I can't speak about Joe's content marketing process, Billy Bob's, whoever, right? I can't talk about other people. I'm talking about my process. I've never revealed this much for any price.
This information is so valuable that I plan on reselling this issue as a standalone product. I expect to sell for a few hundred bucks, $300, $400, maybe $500. If you've been in my world long enough, you know I mean what I say. If I say something has a deadline, I mean it. If I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it, so you know I am dead serious that I am going to sell this newsletter issue for triple or quadruple the price at least that you can get it for right now because the newsletter is only $99 per month. That means Inner Circle members will get this exclusive information before anyone else. Plus, they will get it at a screaming bargain compared to what I will sell it for as a standalone product. [07:07.5]
Now, I don't want to give you this special episode and do nothing but pitch the newsletter. I have to give you a little bit of content as well, right, especially in the spirit of being a good content marketer, so I would like to talk about a few content marketing lies that financial advisors get told. Are you ready? You ready to hear these lies?
Lie No 1: “You should create content about the questions your clients are asking.” This is dangerous, very dangerous advice. Now, I will admit, I do it sometimes when financial advisors ask me questions and I create content about the questions financial advisors asked me. But if you pay attention, you will notice I do it very sparingly and I do it very carefully, because it can backfire.
I'm addressing this head on in the February Inner Circle Newsletter issue. It's going to help so many financial advisors escape the trap of basing their content on the questions they get asked. If you are someone who believes this, if you believe that you should make content about the questions your clients are asking you, then you need this issue. [08:06.6]
One of the reasons why it's so dangerous is because of survivorship bias. When you create content about the questions your clients are asking, you ignore everyone who did not become a client, meaning, you might be missing all of the little objections and sticking points that everyone else has. Also, think about this. If someone became your client, and you did not have that content, then you already know for sure that you can get clients without answering that specific question in content.
Did you catch that? Let me repeat myself. If someone became your client and you did not have that content, answering all the little questions and everything, then you already know for sure that you can get clients without that content. You know this. It’s established. It's proven. So, you're not really solving a problem. You're not advancing your business, or at least you don't know for sure if you are. I would much rather operate with certainty. [09:00.0]
Lie No. 2: “You should pick one content marketing channel and go all in.” Oh, this is dangerous advice, too, and I'll explain why, using podcasting as an example. According to Edison Research, only 64% of Americans listened to a podcast in 2023. Only a fraction of those people listened to a podcast episode every month. Even fewer listened to one episode per week. If you were to go all in on podcasting, you would likely only reach a tiny, tiny part of your total addressable market, and that would be a huge mistake. It would be like taking all of the risk involved in investing in the stock market and only getting a tiny part of the returns.
I take my advice here. I, under no circumstance, go all in on a single content channel. I have social media. I have daily emails. I have obviously this podcast. I have the blog articles, like I mentioned earlier. I even have old-school direct-mail pieces. I have videos. I have in-person presentations that are ready to go. I have print media. I could go on and on and on. I do not depend on one channel. [10:07.6]
Lie No. 3: “Artificial intelligence will create content for us in the future.” It is definitely going to create content. If it’s going to be good content, I'm not so sure, so I guess the lie is that artificial intelligence “will” create good content for us in the future.
I haven't tested this myself but I have several entrepreneur friends who have done this and they're like the pioneers getting the arrows in their backs. They have told me that A.I. generated-content has performed significantly worse than their content. Now, your mileage may vary. Maybe you're just absolutely horrible and A.I. will do better. But, I mean, for now, I think the best content is content that you create yourself. [10:47.0]
Hey, financial advisors. If you'd like even more help building your business, I invite you to subscribe to James' monthly paper-and-ink newsletter, “The James Pollard Inner Circle”. When you join today, you'll get more than $1,000 worth of bonuses, including exclusive interviews that aren't available anywhere else. Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more.
Lie No. 4: “You should prioritize short-form content,” and this lie annoys me every time I hear it or I see it online. It assumes you should create content for people with short attention spans. You should be doing the opposite. You should create longer pieces of content, not shorter pieces of content. You want to filter out the people with the attention span shorter than a goldfish on a triple espresso shot.
I take my advice here as well. For instance, the Inner Circle Newsletter signup page over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching is more than 8,000 words long, so some financial advisors who ironically give people 30-plus-page financial plans are 100-plus-page financial plans, they tell me it's way too long and that they don't want to read the whole thing, but they expect their clients to go through the financial plan. I mean, wow, right? [11:58.6]
That's the point. The length is a feature. It's not a bug. The long signup page filters out advisors with short attention spans. They aren't willing or able to sit still for 10 and 20 minutes. They won't read something that can take their business to the next level, so I don't want them anywhere near me.
Many financial advisors have been brainwashed to believe they should only create short-form content, and I don't mind short-form content in and of itself, but I don't think it's all the financial advisors should do. Sadly, some advisors tried to hire content marketers or agencies to help them with the content, and they usually get sold nothing but short-form content and canned content. Why does this happen? Charlie Munger once said, “Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.”
Content marketers and content marketing agencies are in business to earn a profit. I'm all for the profit motive. If you've listened to the show for a long time, you know I'm about that, and capitalism has done wonders for our world and our society. However, let's think about this. Let's be realistic. Their incentive is to sell content. The shorter they can make that content, the cheaper it is for them to make and the bigger their profits. [13:08.3]
In pursuit of bigger profits, content marketers and agencies often shortchange financial advisors, not in every scenario, not in every instance, but let's just keep it real, they do shortchange financial advisors because that is the way the game goes.
The good news for you is, if you've been making short-form content and you haven't gotten the results you'd like to see, it truly isn't your fault. I know that's the thing that marketers teach, like you have to tell your audience, “Oh, it isn't your fault. There's this new unique thing that you don't even know about.” But this is true, right? I'm telling you, it is truly not your fault, because you have been brainwashed into believing this, and the statistics don't lie either.
There was a report done called “The State of Content Marketing Report”, and it found that short blog articles attract 21% less traffic. They also attract 75% fewer backlinks than average-length articles. Plus, according to the Content Marketing Institute, 94% of marketers use short-form articles and posts, just short-form content. [14:08.5]
And that should be enough right there to convince you to never depend solely on short-form content, because you do not want to do what most people are doing, unless you want to get the results that most people are getting—and, newsflash, most people are broke, so you should probably do something different.
Finally, according to HubSpot, 73% of people admit to skimming blog posts. Only 27% of people consume them thoroughly. That's interesting, let's think about this. Have you ever heard of the 80-20 rule, also known as The Pareto principle? It states that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. In many businesses, approximately 80% of revenue comes from 20% of customers, 80% of the complaints come from 20% of customers and so on and so forth. [14:53.4]
Guess what? The best clients are usually the ones who thoroughly read your blog posts. If only 27% of people consume them thoroughly, the chances are they are the minority that generate the majority of revenue and profits. Those are the best clients. This is not my opinion. This is not my theory. This is quite literally an economic principle that has been replicated hundreds of times.
Lie No. 5: “You should create content on a set schedule.” This is when people say, “Oh, you need to blog every two weeks. You need to upload a video every business day. You need to post to LinkedIn five times a week.” Whatever, right? This isn't necessarily true, because it depends on the content itself.
This Financial Advisor Marketing podcast that you're listening to right now has aired every Monday for over five years. I'd say that's pretty darn consistent. However, I used to post my blog articles sporadically. I might have published two in a week and then not published anything for a few months, and that's all I'll say about that for right now. I explain a little bit more about that in the February newsletter issue. [16:00.0]
Lie No. 6: “Your content needs to be informative.” Sigh. No, it doesn't. I’ve talked about this in previous podcast episodes before, but some of my best-performing content has had no information, no education, no hard teaching in it. Some of my worst-performing content has had a truckload of it where I really try to teach people stuff. It just doesn't work.
People who say this that you need to educate in your content, they have no idea what they're talking about. Let me explain by telling you about the contrast effect. It describes how one thing can influence our perception of another. Imagine you plunk your hand into ice-cold water. If you then put it in lukewarm water, the lukewarm water will feel hotter than it really is. Likewise, if you sink your hand into scalding water first, the lukewarm water will feel frigid. [16:48.8]
Now, how does this apply to content marketing? Perhaps the most obvious way is this. If you want your content to be effective, it must stand out from all the other content your prospective clients see. You must have contrast. This is why financial advisors who do nothing but teach in their content often fail to get the results they want. It's also why financial advisors who used canned content pretty much never get the clients they desire, and it's why everyone who hops on any sort of content marketing trend usually ends up fizzling out, because there is no contrast.
I have one more lie for you. Lie No. 7. This would be the last one I discussed on this show. “The goal of content marketing is to create brand awareness and drive traffic.” Nope, that's not it. The goal of content marketing is to, say it with me, get clients—and I reveal my absolute best advice for doing just that in the February Inner Circle Newsletter issue. You can subscribe over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching.
Oh, and I almost forgot, that issue is going to have a really cool bonus, too. It's something I'm calling my “Perfect Content Checklist.” It is a one-page PDF that I'm giving as a bonus to Inner Circle members. There will be a link on the last page of the newsletter issue where subscribers can download it, print it out, put it on their desk, laminate it, do whatever they want to do. They can keep it handy whenever they are creating content. [18:11.8]
You could also take that Perfect Content Checklist and use it to improve your existing content, and that way, your entire newsletter subscription could pay for itself many times over, because you could just go to your content and just make it better.
If you're truly on the fence, meaning, you haven't gone to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching yet, you haven't looked at the newsletter, you haven't considered signing up, you're truly on the fence, let me give you a sneak peek of what will be inside.
I am revealing the most effective content marketing strategy I can give to financial advisors who want to set more appointments with their content. This one thing is so important that skipping it renders every other content marketing tip, trick or tactic practically worthless to you. [18:55.2]
I'm revealing content marketing advice from one of the world's most successful YouTubers, who routinely reaches more people than the Super Bowl, the World Series and the NBA Finals combined. Fortunately, it is directly applicable to financial advisors, and virtually all forms of content marketing, not just YouTube, so you can take this information and immediately apply it to your blog posts, to your social media posts, whatever you're doing, right, because this is a strategy, not a tactic.
I'm talking about how Joe Rogan got more than 3 billion podcast downloads despite offering almost no original content and not having a clearly-defined personal brand. It is not just Joe talking about himself every single episode. He'll have someone who is a sleep expert. Then he'll have a politician. Then he'll have an actor. These people, there's a wide variety of guests that he has, so there is nothing tangible or specific when you tune in, right?
If you tune into the Financial Advisor Marketing Show, you know that you're going to hear stuff about financial advisors and about marketing, but Joe Rogan did something different. He had a whole bunch of variety, and if you worry about not being able to create content because you have nothing fresh or nothing groundbreaking to say, then this is for you. [20:04.1]
I'm also sharing three things you can do in a blog post’s first few sentences to maximize the chances of it getting read and acted upon. I've conducted 5,000-plus tests tracking people online and seeing how they interact with web pages, and these three things can make all of the difference. If you have a blog or you're writing articles for social media where you have the LinkedIn articles, this will make everything worth it for you.
I'm talking about how to get away with obnoxious bragging in your content, while making it feel helpful, and your prospective clients might even thank you for bragging and boasting so much.
I'm talking about the two absolute best content marketing resources I have ever encountered. I've read hundreds of content marketing books. I've taken dozens of courses. I’ve paid thousands of dollars for one-on-one help. These two things, I'm distilling everything down, these two resources were worth more to me than all of them put together. [21:01.4]
I'm revealing an effortless trust-building technique that can make prospective clients feel as if they know you, even if they've only encountered one or two pieces of your content. This method is so powerful that, for the longest time, I’ve been on the fence about releasing the course and I’ve said, Hey, you know what, I'm going to put it in the newsletter. I really didn't want to share this, so I was like, Ah, should I? Should I not? But I trust that my newsletter subscribers will use it responsibly and for good.
I'm talking about how to set more appointments with prospective clients by begging them to work with someone else. Now, I acknowledge that most financial advisors will be too afraid to implement this technique, but it works like you would not believe.
Finally, I'm talking about the specific way you must write your content if you want to appeal to high-net-worth clients. Research supports this. I cite my sources in the newsletter. I tell you exactly where to go. I backup everything. Now, this technique is especially attractive to people who have a net worth of $15 million or more, so if you want to play in that space and you want to attract high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, then this will help you. [22:09.6]
I cannot wait to ship this to financial advisors all across America and all over the world. It is such an amazing issue that I had to record this special podcast episode for it. If you're someone who has been listening to the show for a while and has not become a member of the family yet, now is the best time ever to do so. If I haven't convinced you by now, I don't think I ever will, so I'm going to stop.
Now, for those of you who are interested, the deadline is Wednesday, January 31, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Depending on when you're listening to this, it may already be too late. And what's that URL again? Do you remember? It is TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching.
Thank you so much for listening. I'll catch you on Monday when we get back to the regular weekly episodes. [22:55.2]
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