← Advisor Marketing Made Simple
Advisor Marketing Made Simple
Advice Line: How To Build A Digital Marketing Funnel From Scratch (Joe Eck)
00:42:35
Loading summary
Transcript55 lines
- [00:00]
Kendra
Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor and we're here to make advisor marketing simple. We are super excited to welcome Joe to the show today. If you could just let everyone listening know, what's your name, Tell us about your firm, where are you from, and give us that one big question you'd love to dive into with us today.
- [00:21]
Taylor
Sure.
- [00:21]
Joe Eck
Well, thanks for having me. My name is Joe Eck. I am a financial planner based out of Dayton, Ohio, and my RIAA's name is Stage Ready Financial Planning. The current version of the business was launched in January of this year, but I've spent about the last nine years in the broker dealer space and made the leap in January. So that's kind of just context of the business. I'm really trying to build a marketing funnel. As I start to build out what I'd like my online marketing funnel to be, I've kind of hit like a resistance point and I don't really know which way to go. So the new business is totally virtual. All of the clients that I have acquired over the years were in person, dinner seminars, you know, former clients of other people that I had worked with in the prior firm and so have never really learned to attract clients online. And so as I sit there and try to map out, well, what do I want my funnel to look like, I've identified kind of a very broad range of who I'd like to serve. It's local pre and early retirees over 50, theoretically 200,000 of income or up. And really that's less important if they decide to do, you know, work in the investment management space as well. Assets certainly suffice, like 750 and up. And so it's not highly defined. It's not defined by like a profession or, you know, something where I could easily just say, hey, I'm marketing to this company's employees or industry. And so I find myself sitting here going, okay, well what does top of funnel look like? And so far I've just focused on trying to, you know, improve my SEO ranking, of course, like local SEO and, and starting to blog twice a month, working with an SEO consultant to try to get my site to show up higher for people locally. Searching for a planner advisor. But I'm also trying to put out content on social because that just seems like the next place for me to sort of broadcast like awareness. And I'm not naturally connected with a ton of pre and early retirees online. And so I kind of get the gist of what types of questions to put out there, like putting content that would relate to retirees. But I'm struggling with trying to figure out, okay, well, like, what's a clear and distinct top of funnel activity where I can draw awareness to my business and then eventually kind of focus on the middle of my funnel and the bottom of my funnel. But, you know, I'm. I feel like I'm throwing some stuff into the void and I'm not even connected with the communities of people that I love to serve. And because the niche is so kind of location and broad, I don't even really know where to turn to try to get the content in front of the people who would, you know, benefit from seeing it. And that's my question.
- [03:05]
Kendra
All that context is super helpful and I'm really excited that you joined us today because I feel like your situation and story is going to be so relatable for many advisors throwing a bunch of noodles against the wall and they have no idea what's working. Right. One thing that you said that really jumped out to me quickly was you mentioned before how you converted clients was in person. Are you comfortable in that realm? Is that just how you were like, do you prefer, you know, is that something you want to continue doing or are you just really excited to move away from that into a different approach, more digital?
- [03:34]
Taylor
Yeah.
- [03:35]
Joe Eck
So I think part of this question is entirely because I'm trying to switch to totally virtual. So two years before I made the launch, I stopped working in person. I went completely virtual during the back part of COVID The in person part was just because that's what, you know, the company that I hired into at the time, you know, we had to have a private office. You know, it was handshake, suit and tie and the whole like. Right. And my goal is not always maybe to be here in Dayton, Ohio, at least the whole year. That's part my wife and I's big why. And so going virtual was super important for us and it's been a great transition so far. However, now, you know, the only thing I knew how to do was, you know, maybe stand up in front of people at like an in person event. And so now I'm sitting here like, you know, I just don't know how to start organically building that, that top of funnel or marketing engine virtually.
- [04:27]
Kendra
You're really comfortable on stage. Are you comfortable on video?
- [04:30]
Joe Eck
I pick myself apart to death if I record it. Like, I've thought about the webinar thing. I haven't done a ton of video stuff. But, you know, I do have a background in education before I Got into this work. So a decade ago I was a teacher before transitioning into financial space.
- [04:46]
Kendra
So do you enjoy video or is it more of. It would be terrible and I could grip my way through it.
- [04:51]
Joe Eck
I could do it. I don't naturally think. I have like a gut desire to.
- [04:55]
Kendra
You know, that's all I need to know. The reason why I ask is because when I think strategically, you, you're comfortable on an in person stage. And advisors I work with who are excellent speakers, rock on video or podcasts. So that's like a natural transition for a lot of them. However, writing is totally fine. Depending on where your zone of genius is, where you feel excited, where you feel aligned, that's where we want to point you. So I just want to make sure that we're pointing in the right direction. So it sounds like writing is where you are really most comfortable in looking to, you know, follow that path. Particularly because you mentioned you're looking at, you know, writing blogs and you've been doing SEO, correct?
- [05:32]
Joe Eck
Yeah, I mean, so, so far, just because it's the kind of path of least resistance, I've been focusing on writing, but, you know, I could go a lot of different ways with it, really.
- [05:41]
Kendra
Okay, so something you said there that was interesting is a path of least resistance. So I wonder, have we actually found your channel? Because I feel like for most advisors, any channel you choose is going to be challenging, maybe a little bit scary, but I want you to find that thing that feels like, you know what, I'm a little nervous about podcasting or I'm a little nervous about YouTube, but I feel like I could get into this because when we look at how digital works, I'd like to set a good expectation is you could be being, you could be great at YouTube or podcasting or LinkedIn, whatever, your chosen platform of choices. But this stuff takes time. So we want you to really fall in love with whatever channel is and to get really obsessive over it. So the first thing I would say, and then I'm gonna move on, is really think about what platform, whether that's, you know, writing with SEO or blogging, or if it's speaking something like podcast or YouTube writing. You can also do like LinkedIn or Twitter. You know, there's also, in person, there's also cois, like what feels closest to what you would enjoy doing for the next 12 to 24 months. That's the first thing I would really look at. The second thing, just from a like, high level perspective. And I think Taylor's probably going to jump into this a little bit more. But when I look at your website fee only financial planning for individual couples over age 50, you know, right below your fold, Some of the copy you have actually doesn't speak to what I would say that target demos, pain points. So you have align your money, invest with purpose, reduce taxes, love that you're talking about taxes. Think about the clients you love to serve and you would totally love to clone. What are the top three things they all ask you about? And I would be putting those right below your fold. So there's some good messaging opportunities you have and you don't have to create that. You just have to listen. Your clients will tell you what their deepest pain points are and then you just use their words on your website. What's coming up for you?
- [07:31]
Taylor
Well, you hit the nail on the head. I literally typed path of least resistance. It's rare that we hear somebody say that or acknowledge it. It's usually a feeling. Like I always say, if something feels really easy to me or feels like the path of least resistance, it's a signal to me that I probably shouldn't do that thing or it's probably not going to be very effective. So the fact that you said that out loud does indicate that it seems a little bit easier. Path to least resistance. It's probably not going to be the most effective. It doesn't mean it can't support your digital marketing funnel. But I think Kendra hit the nail on the head. Like whatever you end up committing to, it should be hard, it should be scary. I've been hosting my podcast for five or six years now, large audience. I'm still terrified to hit publish. What is somebody going to say? What am I going to get wrong? Are my peers going to be listening in and find a mistake? Is a listener going to be upset? Is a client listening? Right. Like all these things still go through my head. So it should be hard, it should be scary. Before we start talking about maybe some ways to improve and like where to go from here, you mentioned a lot of top of funnel type questions. And for listeners, we talk a lot about the marketing funnel. The top of funnel activities are there to bring awareness to you, your firm, your brand, your services. Your top of funnel activities are not intended to convert this person into a client. They're simply just to bring awareness. So you already mentioned, Joe, that you're focused on improving some top of funnel stuff. What's the middle of the funnel?
- [08:52]
Joe Eck
So for right now, because I've been blogging on the website, all the blogs Have a call to action. In the absence of having like a full like email marketing campaign built out or anything like that, for sort of like a middle of funnel approach, I'm just using like the blog and the website as like a stand in. And then of course the bottom of the funnel is at least how I'm kind of framing it. And I probably don't have this correct, but in the bottom of the funnel is inviting them to an intro call. And then I have a sales process, like you know, an introductory call and an are we a good fit meeting to kind of work them through. Sort of like a mini sales funnel essentially. Okay, so it's not built out fully, but what I realized when I launched is, you know, I'm not connected to the universe of people that I need to be getting the word out to. So that's kind of where my head was with starting at the top of the funnel.
- [09:42]
Taylor
Sure, I understand completely. There's no right or wrong way to address the different layers of the funnel. We can talk about some different approaches, but you know, just imagine this, that you hire this SEO company, you spend thousands of dollars, they end up being proving helping you find success there. And you've got thousands of people showing up to your website as a result of this search engine optimization. But then you don't have a middle of the funnel. And your bottom of the funnel needs some work like it's just wasted traffic, wasted dollars. So on the flip side, you could have an amazing middle of the funnel activity, an amazing email newsletter that nobody's reading and nobody's finding. So you have a top of funnel issue. So it's kind of a chicken and the egg thing. But you're so focused right now on top of funnel. But I'd argue there is no middle of the funnel. And I'd argue that the bottom of the funnel certainly needs some work and we can talk about why and what to do about that. One thing I want to bring to the surface here, since you're referencing blogging and writing. In my mind there's two ways to approach blogging and it's hard to do both at the same time. It's not impossible. But one way is to use blogging as a top of funnel marketing activity. So writing SEO optimized blog posts so that people find you organically through Google search. The goal is not necessarily to nurture and build trust over a period of time with that single SEO optimized article. That's just again bring awareness to you and your firm. There has to be a Next step from there. Okay, they found me, they liked what I put in front of them. But now what? The other path of blogging is more of a middle of the funnel activity. And I think a great example of this is somebody like Ben Carlson, a wealth of commonsense.com@Ritholtz, where he's not writing for SEO purposes. Sure, his blog is found and read by a lot of people, but not necessarily as a result of SEO. He is writing the things that he wants to write about that speak to his ideal clients. Pain points. He's very free in his writing and people are attracted to that. And people literally read every single post that he writes because it's his way of showing his expertise and building trust with people and nurturing his audience. So two different paths to go down. It's hard to do both of those really, really well. So I think you do need to kind of choose, okay, how am I going to use blogging? Is it going to be more for that SEO activity, that more top of funnel? And if so, once somebody, once it does start to work and people are finding me through these blog posts, then what, what am I going to be doing with them? And I know you acknowledged maybe moving them to an email list. And in that email list you can begin to nurture them and build trust and show expertise for a period of time. Because you know that 50 or 60 year old with a million dollars or more isn't probably going to read one blog post and then want to hire you. Right? It's probably going to take time to nurture them and build trust with them over a period of time.
- [12:21]
Joe Eck
Yeah, that makes sense. I would say right now I'm treating the blog entirely as option one with SEO. So I'm not working with a big SEO company. It's kind of an informal relationship with SEO expert who's working at a university nearby. And he did some overview stuff for the website and then he's providing me with twice a month outlines. So it's entirely like even the topics were chosen by like the keyword research he did for SEO purposes. And you know, the outlines are very SEO centric. So I would say I'm doing vertical version one right now just by default of not knowing like the right approach to take.
- [12:57]
Taylor
Okay, yeah, it's probably going to take a lot of time and kind of falling on your face and making mistakes to really get those posts to work. If this person's just providing you with outlines, that's just kind of one piece of the SEO process. So it's probably going to require either more, more of an investment on your end to get those blog posts to actually perform or more time on your end learning how to truly write those SEO optimized articles. But I think it's fine that you're clear on like, okay, this is how you want to use the blog. Just don't kid yourself into believing that it's also serving as a middle of the funnel, because I would argue that it isn't. So then the next step is what is my middle of the funnel going to be? So that sounds like a big question for you to answer. Whether it is, all right, I'm going to like, face some of my fears here or I'm going to like, do this hard work and I'm going to start this YouTube channel or webinars, whatever it might be. That's for you to kind of, you know, work on and figure out. And we can go back to that if you have more questions. But I do want to hit on the bottom of the funnel, which is, you know, I'd argue, you know, that final step step, or your sales process. At least that's how I think about, like, my sales process is at the bottom of my funnel. Imagine if you know your SEO does start to work, your ideal client does land on this blog post, and right now your call to action is to schedule an introductory phone call right then and there. That's already kind of a daunting thing for me to commit to. I don't even, I hardly know who you are. So to go from, I just read a blog post or went to one webinar and now I'm just going to schedule an introductory phone call is a big ask. Nonetheless, if they do click on that button, it takes them to this page. At the very top of the page it says, ready to get started? Like, whoa, I'm not ready to get started. I don't even know Joe. I don't even talk to Joe yet. I realize like below that it's like introductory call. I don't really get to see what this call is about. The Google plugin that you're using here hides the description of this call. One, it's a 60 minute appointment that is a big commitment on my end as a total stranger on the Internet who has no idea who you are. So that already is like a little bit daunting to me. But I don't get to see the description of what this call is. We're going to spend time getting to know you. This meeting is all about you and where you are in your journey at the end of this call, I don't get to see that unless I actually see the show more button and click it. So there's a lot there that I think can be improved on to help with conversions. Also, just from your end, like, I don't know that you want to be spending 60 minutes with a total stranger who may or may not be a good fit. We limit our calls to 20 minutes. And within the first five minutes, if Tyler, my partner, identifies that we're not the right fit, he's ending that call as soon as possible, not hanging up on them, just like, hey, it's not you, it's us. Let me help you find the right person. So those are just a few thoughts on the bottom of the funnel and again, reminding you that your top of funnel could be firing on all cylinders. Your middle of the funnel could be working okay, but, like, there's still some issues here that need to be addressed, otherwise all those other efforts are completely wasted. So part of it is deciding you like where you want to begin improving things. It could be dial in the bottom of the funnel, ensure that that is absolutely mastered, and then I'm going to work on my middle and then I'm going to go to my top of funnel so that people find all this awesome stuff that I've done. Got it.
- [15:56]
Joe Eck
Yeah, that makes sense, I should say. I'm actually considering, like a revamp of the website. So I'm glad you mentioned those last points because there's a lot that I don't love about how the page is structured currently.
- [16:06]
Taylor
So, well, you know, we're just talking about copy. We're just talking about changing text. You can change text without changing your website. Be careful about getting distracted here and thinking, oh, you know what, I'm going to go redo my website because, like, we're really just talking about changing some text here. And if you don't know how to change the text on your website, ask your developer to teach you how, because these are simple things to tweak. So I don't think you need to redo your website. Your website looks great. I just think some of the copy needs to be improved on. And you again, like, not even the copy yet. If we're just strictly thinking about your bottom of the funnel here, your sales process start to get clear on, like, what? Like map it out, like pen and paper. What does it actually look like? Okay, somebody schedules a phone call with me. What's the purpose of that call? What sort of questions am I to ask What I want them to get out of it. If that call goes well, what's the next step? Let me flesh that out. If that goes well, what's it like? What does this process look like internally? And then you can start to back into. How am I going to describe this process here on this page? So it's not like ready to get started? Because I am not ready to get started. I still want to learn more about Joe and get to know Joe and really truly understand if he's a good fit. So just pushing back a little bit there. I don't want to see you go spend time redoing your website because it looks great. It just, I think some copy improvements would go a long way.
- [17:17]
Joe Eck
Noted. Noted for sure. So it sounds like I have stuff reorganized because I actually do have it pretty mapped out. I have those meetings scripted. I could tell you kind of backwards and forwards. And it's on the experience and services page where it explains like what step one and step two are. That's like the sales funnel. So it's all kind of the way it was designed. It was kind of blended into the whole like each step of the meeting. So I have those descriptions there and maybe I need to find a way to like put that on the final page or explain that process better with better language on the page for scheduling the introductory call.
- [17:52]
Taylor
Correct. Yeah, I think, I think that's a valid point. I didn't know that was there. When I go to that page, it does show me this kind of map of my experience. I would consider breaking up what the client onboarding experience looks like and what the sales process looks like. I call it a sales process and I don't love the name but like the process that somebody's going to go through to vet me and decide whether they want to hire me or not. Because this is intro call. Are we a good fit? Okay, I'm following so far and there's like get organized. Insurance, investments, spending, like ongoing planning meetings. I haven't committed to any of this stuff. So that I think that could be a separate page potentially on its own. Like what happens when you do become a client? Oh, well, this is our onboarding process. But what I'm talking about here is I'm a stranger on the Internet. I'm potentially a good client of yours. How do we decide whether we're a good fit to work together? And seven steps is again very daunting. Hey, we've developed a simple two step process for you to determine whether or not we're a good fit. To work together. Here's what that two step process looks like. Blah, blah, blah. So I'd consider breaking those two things apart. I love it. Yeah, that makes total sense.
- [18:57]
Kendra
Okay, I have a quick question here. How much website traffic are you getting per month? Like ballpark.
- [19:02]
Joe Eck
I mean I couldn't even tell you the number because it's so small. The business just launched in January and so it's just been kind of trying to drive people to it from social media. So like the number of clicks is real, really pretty minimal to the site. I couldn't even tell you the total number of visits or monthly average. I have Google search console and analytics and everything but like haven't gotten to a point where I'm like tracking at KPI.
- [19:25]
Kendra
That's all I need to know. So Taylor just ran through what I think is an excellent strategy for you and I'm going to break it down for you and then I'm going to tell you where I think you should start. So first step for you, top of funnel is improving your writing capability. We have together today sounds like made a flexible decision that writing is your path of traffic. Right. So if you're doing these SEO posts and the person you're working with is helping you find and determine good topics, and here's the thing that's really important about SEO that people do not talk about is that you need to find topics that people are actually searching for that are aligned with your ideal client. So if they're helping you with that, you've got a really important part of the puzzle already figured out. So that's perfect. So now that you know what you want to write about strategically, I think your biggest toll also is like the writing quality. You have a solid content, but I would obsess over writing high quality, excellent posts. We'll link in the show notes to Taylor's example. If it's SEO optimized post and I want you to just take a look. What is Taylor doing that I'm not doing From a depth perspective, from a details perspective, from an expertise perspective. I think there's a lot of opportunity there for you on the SEO front. And then once you start dialing that in, we're going to need to look at your, your middle funnel, which for Taylor this is what it looks like for him. So you're kind of, in a way, I would say in my opinion a mini tailor. So Taylor took an SEO route that's one of his ways. And then in the post then his primary and Taylor, correct me if you're Wrong. Your primary next step is to get them on the podcast, right?
- [20:56]
Taylor
Yeah. My middle My primary Middle of the funnel activity, while I do have an email list as well, is the retirement podcast. So I know that if I can just get more of the right people to subscribe to the podcast. I know because the data in the rest of my funnel says that I'll continue to grow at the clip I want to grow. So for me, yeah, this is like get people to the podcast. What are the ways that I can do that?
- [21:16]
Kendra
So for you, Joe, the easiest thing is going to be how do I get them on the email list because it's going to plug right into everything else they're doing. You don't have to launch a podcast. I think that'd be a really easy next step for you. And then Bottom of Funnel Taylor pointed out some excellent stuff on the pieces around the call booking and potentially simplifying your experience page to just focus on what do people need to know before they get started? Let's not overwhelm them. There's a lot coming when it comes to getting your finances in order, right?
- [21:42]
Taylor
The thing I want to hit on there is the quality over quantity when it comes to your blog posts. I have nearly 3000 ish people per month showing up to my website as a result of one single blog post. That was the only blog post I had for a long time. Those SEO optimized and that contributed to the bulk of my traffic. You don't need a bunch of blog posts to get traffic you could focus on for the rest of this year. Writing two amazing SEO optimized blog posts that speak to your target client and that's it. And you could have thousands of people showing up to your site. So as you think about where your time is best spent, it's better spent on improving the quality of an article that you've already done the research for. You know that there's keywords that people are searching for that it matches up with your ideal client. The example that I refer back to and share is my Medicare IRMAA blog post. Taxes in retirement is one of the biggest pain points for my ideal client. Medicare IRMAA is that pesky surcharge that everybody hates and catches people off guard. I wrote a giant SEO optimized blog post on that topic. A ton of my ideal clients show up to read that blog post every single day. There are thousands of other keywords similar to that one that are that are available for you to target. So quality over quantity is absolutely huge when it comes to SEO. I love Kendra's points about the email list. It's an easy. I don't want to say easy, because email marketing is not easy. But to her point, like, writing comes natural to you. You've done a lot of it. How much content have you already written that you can just start to repurpose into that email marketing, you know, strategy there. Do you have to write new content or can you take some old content and cut it up and chop it up and deliver it via email? I mean, that's a whole, you know, other conversation on its own. But I think that's a great idea from her. Yeah.
- [23:26]
Joe Eck
Can I ask you guys one question real quick? I don't know where we are in time, but the email list said the middle of funnel. Part of the reason I punted on that is, like, initially, I don't ever personally sign up for anybody's newsletter, right. I don't want them. You know, I know a lot of people feel the same way. So I kind of avoided that, kicked the can on that whole, you know, email newsletter thing. So, you know, this conversation has me rethinking. You know, I'm not going to start a podcast. I'm not interested in the labor involved. But, you know, maybe a YouTube channel makes sense. I don't really know what the right thing is. I don't know, you know, what my alternatives are. I also avoided it because if I'm spending, you know, the time to write the blogs per month, I didn't want to also write a newsletter as well. So those were the reasons. I kind of put all that off and just tried to focus on, like, okay, what do I need to do to get content in front of people, right or wrong? So I love kind of feedback there. As I'm thinking about that middle of final piece, like, Taylor, you were talking about, like, how to think about that. Given, you know, those comments.
- [24:22]
Taylor
I agree with you. I felt the exact same way that, like, I hate popups. I rarely subscribe or put my email address in. I neglected email marketing for a long time, and once you start doing it and doing it right, you realize there's actually a ton of opportunity there. People do enter their email like real people with real money that want to hire real financial planners. So I would definitely not neglect it. Again, email marketing is not my primary activity. If it was, I do things a little bit differently. But because it is secondary, it does take a little bit of backseat to my podcast. But the popup that I use to capture people onto my email list is just the tax guide from FP Pathfinder. It's just a one page PDF of all the different tax rates for 2024. It's like, hey, you want a free tax cheat sheet? Enter email here. And roughly 2% of all people visiting my site opt in to get this tax cheat sheet. I mean, I've literally gotten multimillion dollar dream clients just from them finding the blog post, downloading this tax cheat sheet, going through my email sequence, and then reaching out and going through our sales process. If I had to reallocate your time, I would say, Joe, for the next, I'm going to say three months, I just want you to obsess over writing one single amazing SEO optimized blog post to start to get some real traffic to your website. Just spend all your time on that one thing. That's going to take some time to start to work. Even once you've done it correctly and it's up on the Internet, it's going to take some time for people to start to find it, for Google to put it in front of people. So while you're waiting for that, now I can think about, okay, once people do start showing up, what's that email, you know, marketing process going to look like? What's my opt in going to be? How, you know, what am I going to do once they join the email list? What's the email sequence look like? You know, how often am I going to drip on them? And then again, we already talked about the bottom of the funnel, the sales process, but I think you're going to reallocate your time from, gosh, I have to write blog posts every month to no, I'm just going to write one amazing one, let it sit there, and then I'm going to take all that extra time that I have now because I'm not writing two blog posts a month. And now I can work on stitching together this email marketing process. Because, yeah, if you're not going to do a YouTube channel, if you're not going to do a podcast, like, you have to have something. There has to be some way for you to nurture people. Got it. Yeah, that's great.
- [26:24]
Kendra
We actually just did this for a client of ours and something that's really interesting, this client, they have some posts that are already ranking and it had a decent amount of traffic. We basically went through, it was already ranking. I interviewed a client of ours first. I got our SEO guy to say, hey, where's all the gaps in this? Where could we add some keywords? And then I did a 30 minute interview with the client, got all their info and just added to. And we also built custom graphics to break up the text. I noticed that none of your posts have any graphics. And then, you know, basically what we're doing now, this. And it popped pretty quickly at the top. That doesn't always happen. Give it a little bit of time. But, you know, I think Taylor's right on the money when he said, you know, obsess over writing 4 excellent blog posts per year. I think the question you're going to have to ask yourself is, if I could only write four blog posts this year, you know, and pair up with your SEO guy, because you got to make sure the traffic is coming to those keywords. What are the four posts that I would write for my blog? And I mean, we, we put probably my team put 30 hours into improving a post that was already written. So when Taylor says go deep, we ain't playing. So just obsess over how do we make this awesome? Like, and then also step back from it and pretend like, hey, I don't know squat about Irma. What would I want to know? What are my questions? Read it as if you were a person who didn't know anything. Like, you know, that's really helpful because we forget we are in this world. We are talking to people who don't get to jam on this stuff every day. These big words. People don't know what that stuff means.
- [27:58]
Taylor
Right.
- [27:58]
Kendra
So that's the way I look at this and the way that Taylor said, you know, to spend your time. He's really on the money there. So I really agree with that.
- [28:06]
Taylor
Awesome. Joe, One thing I want to go back to before we close up here is I know part of your question was still, like, I don't know who my niche is necessarily. Like, you feel a little bit lost because you don't have like a job specific niche or an industry specific niche. So I just want to hit on that really, really briefly and say, you don't need an industry specific niche. I know there's a lot of great advisors out there that, that have really, really tight niches that only work with dentists making a certain amount of money in a certain area of the country. It's not necessary if you don't have that tight of a niche. And I'm a broken record by now. On this podcast, I would encourage you to start to think in terms of pain points. What are the top three pain points that my ideal pre or early retiree has? Just, like, nail those things down. They can Be broad. One of them could be taxes in retirement. Great. There's a thousand different articles, a thousand different emails that you could set a thousand different topics subtopics on taxes in retirement. So once you identify those three core major pain points like content creation topic ideas, become really, really easy. All of your content is going to speak to those three pain points. Those three pain points could speak to a 55 year old attorney who's retiring or a dentist or an optometrist or a teacher. It doesn't have to be job or industry specific. So don't, don't feel like you have to find that. And then if you are marketing locally, that helps you narrow it down even more. Like I'm not just looking for early retirees that are 65 that have a pain point of taxes, but I'm also looking for those that are in Dayton, Ohio that gets you even to a tighter niche. Now differ strategy there for going local, but that still allows you to tighten up that niche even more. So I would highly encourage you to think in terms of pain points or like really think long and hard about what those three core pain points are and then that is going to translate into some of the updated copy on your website. Because your niche is not the only Financial planning for individuals and couples over age 50 in Dayton and Southwest Ohio.
- [29:56]
Joe Eck
That's the SEO revamped tagline.
- [29:59]
Taylor
Yeah, right. But I mean my sites are SEO optimized and I don't have any of that stuff. Like you don't have to keyword stuff the website in order for Google to recognize you. So there are other ways you can. And this is where like studying some basic SEO will help. But imagine if that headline was like, you know, we help people, you know, early retirees reduce taxes in retirement. You know, click here to learn how we can help you do that. Like that is very, very different than what's currently there. I know a lot more to think about a longer conversation here, but you know, hopefully all this stuff is helping give you some ideas on how you can improve going forward.
- [30:33]
Joe Eck
Yeah, great, thank you.
- [30:34]
Kendra
Joe, do you have any questions for us about anything that feels ambiguous or a little confusing that we can answer for you here as we wrap up?
- [30:41]
Joe Eck
No, I mean I think this, this covers a lot of it. The only thing that is kind of lingering in my head is, you know, when I get back to sort of that top of funnel, the only thing we kind of talked about was like getting traffic to the website from blogging. Right. So I guess what is looming for me and what Made me reach out. Is like, is that alone enough or do I need to also be like, syndicating content on social? In which case, like, if I'm throwing it out to a bunch of 30 year olds or 40 year olds, you know, is my content even getting to the people who would know I exist? Right.
- [31:14]
Taylor
So I guess we need, we need one thing to work. That's it. So choose, choose one. Right now, you only need one thing to work. It could be SEO, if that's what you want to spend your time on. It could be social media. If it is social media, what social media platform? Also, let's ensure that your target demo lives there. Your target demo may not live on Twitter or LinkedIn, I'm not sure, but just choose one. If you go all in on SEO right now and it starts to work, then you can ask yourself, do I need another top of funnel activity? Do I need to now stack on something else to, you know, continue to get more visibility? But if you're going to try to do SEO and social at the same time, you're probably not going to have success. Got it. So the answer is yes, but it's more of a timing thing. You might find out. I mean, I've grown my firm substantially over the last five years with zero social media. I'm on social media to connect with people like you and peers and colleagues and stuff, but zero social media, so you don't have to have social media in order to grow your practice. Awesome.
- [32:14]
Kendra
More channels do not equal more results. The opposite is often true. All right, Joe, we've covered a lot today and honestly, I'm super excited for you because I feel like we just gave you some really good ideas. You know, really a core. Couple core things I wrote down was like really dialing in those SEO basics. So you're going to be looking at on page SEO and off page SEO. Just read up on a handful of that. Like, start there. The second thing you're going to want to look at is how do you become a better writer. It's already in alignment with what you enjoy doing. It's going to allow you to stay virtual, which is a big piece of your why with your wife. So we're building the firm that you want to own. And then also, as you get some traffic there and some traction, we're going to look at a next step for your middle of funnel. It sounds like email is probably going to be the easiest lift for you because you're already writing that. There's a lot of ways to make that Very easy. And then also while you're working through this process, really right away, let's dial in the call booking process. Let's make it clear, let's simplify how much of the process map we show on the website, and then let's just stay focused on getting great at writing, you know, getting your SEO dialed in and being patient. So we are super excited that you came on the show with us today.
- [33:27]
Taylor
I want to jump in. I want to clarify something. You've said this a few times. You've said, become a better writer. I want to clarify what that means to me and I want to make sure it's clear for Joe. Again, I talked about the two paths of blogging and where those could fit in the funnel. When I hear Kendra say, become a better writer, it doesn't mean you suck at writing. It means become a better writer for SEO purposes. When I write, an SEO optimized blog post is going to look and feel and read very, very differently than if I just open up a blog post and just start going to town. I love reading. You know, Josh Brown's rambling on his blog. It is by far from a perfect grammatically correct article. It's just his style. He's not writing for SEO. It's just his personality. He's being himself. So I don't want you to think when you hear better writer means I got to go, like, take writing classes. It's just like, learn how to write better for SEO if that's what you're writing for.
- [34:19]
Kendra
I love that distinction because it's totally two different styles, two different paths, two different people reading. So that's the magic of Taylor and I. I say be a better writer and Eve, hold up one second. I love it. I love it. It's great. Thank you so much for joining us today, Joe. We really appreciate you coming on here, being open minded and just, you know, swinging open the door, the back door of your firm and letting us see what's happening inside and seeing how we can help. So thanks for listening and if anybody else has any questions on SEO, we make sure that we put a few more podcast episodes in the roadmap so we can go a little bit deeper on these. And Joe, we hope you'll enjoy those too, and they'll be really helpful. We'll be thinking about you when we put them together. Thanks, guys.
- [34:57]
Taylor
Awesome.
- [34:57]
Joe Eck
Thanks, guys.
- [34:58]
Taylor
Thanks, Joe.
- [35:00]
Kendra
All right, Taylor, we had some great stuff in this episode with Joe. We dove deep into a couple areas that I know advisors are really curious about and would Love to learn more. I'd love to hear, you know, after our conversation here, what kind of deeper thoughts do you have on what we discussed with Joe?
- [35:16]
Taylor
Yeah, there's a couple of things. You alluded to this in the conversation that, you know, if you don't know what Irma is, you know, you know, you can start to look at this through that lens of, like, what questions do I have? What would I want to know? And I think what you're getting at is something that I've talked about before as well. And just what I, what I live every single week when I, when I work on my podcast is, it is a learning opportunity for me. It's so funny every time I think of a new topic that I want to cover on the podcast. For example, one of my most recent topics was on dividend investing. And in my mind, I'm being very truthful here. In my mind, I'm like, this will be easy. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do an episode on dividend investing. Like, I know everything about it.
- [35:52]
Kendra
I'm going to slam dunk. This is what Taylor thought.
- [35:54]
Taylor
It could be an easy one. I, every single time I say that and I start, you know, scripting out and mapping out the episode, I'm like, oh, but what about this? Gosh, if I was in, like, the issues, I'd be, I don't even know what that is. Like, I'm going to look that up and all of a sudden down this deep research rabbit hole. So I do use my content production process as a learning opportunity. I learn new things every single time. It forces me to learn because I'm putting myself in the users or the listener's shoes and thinking, like, what questions they're going to have as I'm sharing this perspective about this thing or teaching them about this thing. So, yeah, I think creating content is a great opportunity to learn. The other thing I want to highlight is, and we've touched on this a little bit before, is if we're looking for quick wins in our marketing, it can sometimes lead us to or lure us into some destructive activities. I mean, destructive is a strong word, but I think, you know, his, at the top of his website, the keyword stuffing that's going on there, it may help with some SEO, but I think it's, it's destructive in terms of helping him reaching his goals. It's not clear to that ideal client what's happening here, because there's all these keywords that are stuffed. So him wanting some quick SEO Wins is potentially leading him to maybe do a disservice to his growth goals for his firm. So we have to be careful about chasing these quick wins, which is why we talk a lot about having patience, you know, in your marketing and giving these things time to work. And then lastly, just highlighting how important that the funnel is. I mean, if you Google marketing funnel, there are some funnels out there that are like 16 different layers and you can get really nerdy with this stuff. I love just like thinking about it in terms of these three layers as top, middle and bottom. We haven't done this yet, but I've created an awesome TEMPL marketing funnel template that explains really simply what each layer is. Some example activities for each layer and then some actual marketing funnels from myself that I built and other advisors and then some blank pages for you to start to create and brainstorm your own funnels. Along with that PDF template, I recorded like a 20 minute video walking advisors through how to use it and expanding on some of the concepts. So we'll link to all that in the show notes if you want to learn more about the marketing funnel based on today's conversation.
- [38:07]
Kendra
Yeah, we'll definitely link to that. And I've seen that presentation and it is super, super helpful. I love the way that you break it down. You know, you bring up something that I think is not talked about. And I've seen this happen with advisors behind the scenes is, you know, when people go to write. You pointed out a very interesting distinction. There's the path of SEO optimized content and then there's like what I would call the path of feeling, the path of muse. What am I excited to write about? And I have a client who's an amazing writer and they like to follow the muse. I could give them the best topics and I've done it before and they'll write like one and then they drive off like in another direction. They do not follow the SEO optimized approach. And I think as an advisor, if you're considering SEO, a really important question to ask yourself is, can I write on demand about specific topics or do I like to follow the feeling what am I excited to write about? Because a big mistake I see advisors make is they really struggle to follow. SEO is a very structured approach and now you can have a lot of creativity within the post in some ways. But it's not like Josh Brown's example of, you know, in his content. It's great. That's the one thing you know when you're thinking about Going after SEO, are you willing to follow a structure or do you think you're going to chase a muse?
- [39:19]
Taylor
Yeah. And what feels authentic to you and what like, feels good and like, you enjoy? Like, I enjoy crafting these SEO optimized with, like, I love, I love that process and you might hate it, and that's fine. Now I get to scratch the itch of kind of saying whatever I feel like, however I want to say it on the podcast. And I'm not optimizing anything other than I'm just trying to produce high quality content in a way that feels natural to me. So I get to scratch that itch there. More Josh Brown style, still pretty structured, but I get to be myself more. So, yeah, I think that's a really important distinction to pay attention to. If it's not fun, you're not enjoying it, then like, rethink your approach.
- [39:55]
Kendra
Definitely. And I think you also highlighted something that isn't talked about often, which is that the upside of choosing a, you know, content and digital strategy is like, it will sharpen you as an advisor, you know. And so marketing has a lot of different outputs, but one of the ones we don't talk about enough is how much better you get at your craft. And a really big piece of what we've been talking about, what we will continue talking about is the kind of element of mastery of your craft and how we just do that in different forms. So I love that you explained that and shared that. So we'll do some more thoughts on SEO. I know we got a lot of great stuff there. The other thing about SEO is that the Runway can be a little bit long. You know, it can be one to three years. So a lot of times for a lot of advisors, they won't choose SEO as their primary traffic platform because it's a little bit slower. But once you get that ball rolling, there's a lot less effort and energy that has to be put into that. So that's another thing that came up for me. As we think about SEO as a primary platform, a lot of advisors use it as a kind of tack on platform to another one as well.
- [40:58]
Taylor
Yeah, I mean, it's worth mentioning though that, you know, writing for SEO can be a roller coaster. You are susceptible to algorithm changes. We've experienced some giant algorithm changes in the last year. I mean, my traffic got more than cut in half due to these algorithm changes. I'm just now working on recovering that lost traffic strictly due to Google algorithm changes. So, you know, one day you could wake up and have 10,000 visitors and then the next day something's changed and how Google's looking at things and you're penalized and you lost all that, you know, all that visibility. So it can be a little bit of a roller coaster.
- [41:32]
Kendra
Definitely. And it really reminds us of that middle of funnel piece where moving, you know, the eyeballs and the viewers and people to a platform you control like email is a really good, I just call it insurance method, you know, for all of our efforts. So thanks everyone for joining us. We are really excited about what you chat about in this episode. I think there's some really good stuff on the SEO front. If you're listening and you're loving it, the way that you could help us out is jump on your favorite platform that you listen to podcasts and just give us a quick thoughtful review. We're going to read every single one of them. If you have a topic you want us to talk about, you can pop it in there too. I'll look at that. We'll put it in our content roadmap. We are watching, we are listening and we have appreciate you doing the same. Thanks so much. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. To get the resources shared or sign up to join us as a guest on one of our advice line episodes, check out the links in the show notes. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.