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Advisor Marketing Made Simple
Advice Line: How To Turn Website Traffic Into Client Growth (Preston Cherry)
00:39:28
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- [00:00]
Kendra
Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor and we're here to make advisor marketing simple. Hi everyone. A quick heads up before we dive in. During a conversation, Preston mentions getting 3,000 monthly visitors to his website. After a conversation, he dove deeper into his analytics and realized the correct number of monthly website visitors is actually 600. So when you hear 3000, please keep in mind he meant 600. Thanks to Preston for following up with the correct number so that we can be fully transparent and accurate in this episode. Now, here's our conversation with Preston. Hey, Preston, and welcome to the show. We are excited to chat with you today. We have a lot of good things coming here. Uh, before we get started, could you just share your firm, your location, and the big question that you want Taylor and I to dive in with you today and talk about?
- [00:54]
Preston
Sure. So thank you for the invite. Concurrent financial planning. We are virtual firm serving mass affluent and high affluent, Gen Xers, 40s, 50s and that nature. So that's what I'm about.
- [01:08]
Kendra
Awesome. And what's the one big question that we can really dive into with you here and talk a little bit about to help you solve some of your marketing challenges right now?
- [01:17]
Preston
Yeah, so I'm very interested in CTAs both on websites and social media. So how to get that conversion rate up?
- [01:26]
Kendra
Awesome. And so when it comes to calls to action on your website or social, explain to me from your side what you consider to be a conversion. Because there's a handful of different conversions when we look at marketing. So from the website side, you know, a call booking is an obvious one. Email subscriber, when we talk about conversion, what elements are you thinking about for conversion? What would a conversion look like for you?
- [01:50]
Preston
Yes, a conversion is booking an appointment. I love when people book that appointment. Right. So book an appointment also too a subscription on. On a newsletter, potentially, that's a conversion. Right. Also YouTube, because I have a YouTube channel. So those are conversions. Because, you know, booking an appointment is primary and then getting a newsletter or a lead magnet or. And you know, YouTube, that's indirect and. But they're in the channel. But you know, they're in the pipeline. So that's good too.
- [02:19]
Kendra
Definitely. And I think you point out something I really love there, which a lot of advisors overlook, is there's different levels of conversions. So you've got the call, you've got the email, you've got YouTube. You've also got a great podcast, so subscriber to a podcast as well. One quick follow up question there on the conversions, as I'm looking at your website and we'll link this in the show notes. Concurrent financial planning is you have a top of full assessment. How is that converting right now? Because you have that in primary real estate.
- [02:46]
Preston
Yeah. So I mean people download that pretty frequently. I like it to be downloaded more.
- [02:53]
Kendra
Okay, awesome. I have one more follow up question and then I want to have Taylor way in here because I'm sure he's probably got some good thoughts on CTAs, which is can you give us a ballpark idea right now of how much website traffic you have coming monthly?
- [03:04]
Preston
So with, with the podcast, with the YouTube and you know, the, the lead magnet and all that percentage, particularly with the YouTube channel and the podcast, I say and, and SEO on the back end. So I've been working on SEO for the last six months and I can really see percentage wise, pop. 15, I'd say 15. 15 to 20% is sometimes 15, 18, 19. In that range, percent jump every month in website traffic for the last six months because I've been working on my front end and my off on page and off page SEO.
- [03:36]
Kendra
Awesome. And when we think about website traffic, if we're thinking about a ballpark, would you say your monthly website traffic would be like 500, a thousand, 10,000?
- [03:46]
Preston
I would say. You see. Where am I? 600. Somewhere around there.
- [03:51]
Kendra
Okay, 600 visits per month.
- [03:52]
Preston
Yes.
- [03:53]
Kendra
Awesome. Okay, cool. Taylor, what quick questions are kind of popping up for you on the call to action front?
- [03:59]
Taylor
Yeah, I guess maybe before we get to call to actions and some of these tactical ideas. You know, I've always said that marketing becomes really, really, really easy once you get clear on who you're marketing to. I'd like to better understand, Preston, who your ideal client is. You mentioned Mass affluent and some of the notes when you scheduled mentioned individuals looking to accumulate wealth or people retiring soon. Like if you had to choose one person, one avatar, who is that ideal client? What do they look like? What are some of their demographics? And then second to that, what are some of the, the pain points of that ideal client that you're looking to help them solve for in the work that you do for them?
- [04:36]
Preston
Yeah, great question. So I mean Gen X and that's why I said my hero section. Although later on I'll be taking that out of my hero section because the website's being redesigned right now and I'm putting more Gen X in the blog and all that. But Gen X is where it's at for me and. But I want them to feel that they're being spoken to and then their pain points. I mean being sandwich generation, you know, they have, they want to live their lifestyle now because they have high incomes. Right. But they're also worried about, they don't have much confidence in their retirement even if they have, you know, six figures, seven figure assets or net, or net worth or incomes. So planning for retirement, lack of confidence there. Live your life fully right now. Also adult parents and elderly parents and adult children. Those are the areas.
- [05:22]
Taylor
Okay. And by the way, we're using some marketing lingo here. I know you mentioned hero section. So the hero section of your website is the very top of the website, one of the most valuable spaces on your website. You know, everyone is going to see that. Even if they don't scroll down or visit the rest of your site, they're going to see that area. So it is valuable real estate. You mentioned you might remove Gen X from your hero area of the website.
- [05:44]
Preston
Yes. I mean, because to your point, Taylor, you know, what are, what is Gen X looking for? Right? And they are looking for two things primarily. And then you have the indirectness. They're looking for lifestyle maximization. Right now they're in their 40s and 50s, they're thriving high incomes and they're trying to enjoy life. They're also worried at the same time about retirement. So it's living fully now and securing retirement. Okay, so with those two elements, those are Gen X elements and they want comprehensive financial planning. So we're highlighting that in the hero section as avatars for the Gen X and then placing Gen X language in the, you know, in the blogs and you know, in the FAQs and the like so they can be spoken to. And then a couple of infographics that they say, okay, this is me too. The reason why we did that is because folks ask, oh well, you know, will you work with me? And those are those pre retirees, perhaps in their early 60s. And so we didn't want to run those folks off so we moved that question down to the FAQ and didn't want to turn off folks that actually have the mindset of the philosophy that they want to work with life, money, balance, you know, how we work. And they, they really qualify as a client of ours that are not necessarily Gen X. Then you know, we'll work with them if they come in with that mindset and approach. Okay.
- [07:08]
Taylor
And then my last question is what has been working up to this point the best, like from a marketing perspective, what's, what's been working over the last, I think you mentioned you've been at it for five to 10 years now. Like what, what is the primary marketing activity that's led to the most growth?
- [07:25]
Preston
Yeah, so that would be me because I mean, I say that tongue in cheek, but it's an asset. Right. So I've been in the media a lot the last three years. Specifically the first three years, you know, I was pursuing my PhD. I was just really building the brand. So I wanted build trust into the company. You know, last three years have really been focused on, on growth. And you know, this year we announced that we're going after 100 million in 12 months, which we will achieve quite easily actually. We're on pace. But the, the point about it is, is that I've been in the media publishing articles, written articles, appearing on tv, being a thought leader, all this. And so people have been searching me and then that's been driving the, the most of the traffic, backlinks and such.
- [08:08]
Taylor
Okay, maybe a follow up question there. You mentioned 100 million in 12 months. What does that mean in terms of number of new clients? If you need, if you're looking for a hundred million in 12 months, how many clients per month do you need to achieve that?
- [08:20]
Preston
Right. We need about three to five clients per month and I think three will do it because you're talking about, what is that, 36. But I think we can get it done, you know, to be honest. I mean, because we're, we're talking about 24 new households. Uh, we, we just added three advisors through 1099. So you know, between all three of us, that's gettable. I mean I can get that on pretty much. I can get a third or fourth or half of that on my own. So with two clients a month is, is very doable.
- [08:49]
Taylor
Okay, I, I don't want to put you on the spot right now because we didn't tell you to come prepared with these numbers. But just for everybody who's listening, I think it's a helpful exercise to identify what that goal is. So it's really cool that you, you've gotten clear on what that goal is. A hundred million in twelve months. And then. Okay, how many clients do I need to achieve that goal? Roughly two to three clients per month. That's fantastic. Now I encourage advisors to take it a step further. How many prospects, how many introductory phone calls do I need in order to end up with two awesome clients per month? And I'll take it a step further. How many conversions, right? How many people do I need to subscribe to my email list or you know, listen to my podcast or join my YouTube channel, whatever it might be. How many of those people do I need per month? In order to get that number of introductory phone calls? In order to get that many new clients per month, you start to work backwards. It starts to help you solve some of these challenges and assign metrics and be able to identify is this thing working or not? Because it might say, well, I'm only getting 50 new subscribers to my email list and I really want to get that to a thousand. Maybe you don't even need that much. You identify through tracking some of these metrics that maybe 50 per month is ideal. And, and maybe it's, we need to improve the quality of these emails that we're sending or improve our copy or improve our call to action. So again, I don't want to put you on the spot right now and ask you what those numbers are, but I think it is a helpful exercise to go through especially as we start to talk through some of these CTAs and conversion, you know, opportunities for you on your website.
- [10:14]
Preston
Oh no, that's great information. I pay attention too. So no thanks for that information. And I that listeners would benefit greatly from that for working backwards. I just pulled out my analytic number, So I thought 600 was low, but I get about 3,000, particularly 3,000 visitors on my website per month. And that's been going up, like I said, steadily because of the other work we've been doing. That said, if you work backwards, you know, I used to be in real sales where you had to detract the numbers. We're selling anyway far as our sales, our services. But when you have hard line sales, you have to really do the numbers in back end. But if you do that, it's a 10% rule, right? So if I have 3,000 visitors, how many of those folks are engaging in some sort of way? Like you said, Taylor and Kendra, you kicked off with, you know, is, is there an action being taken? Right? So if I cut that in half and that's 3,000, right. People are just stopping by, you know, and lop off those folks. You got 3,000, I need 20% of those folks to do some sort of action, right? So if I take 10% of 3,000, all right, then I've got 300 somewhat prospects or something and they're doing something. But if I even cut that in half right down to 150, because I do the half, I do the 10% and then cut in half, right? Because I don't want to be overly rosy Right. So if I have a bucket of 150 and I can schedule, say, you know, 25. Right. 25 meetings per month, I will close the amount of folks that I need out of 25 per month.
- [11:37]
Taylor
Okay. Obviously, SEO is a really big topic. I'm not sure we'll go deep down that rabbit hole today, but one thing I do want to highlight is the quantity of traffic is not as important as the quality of traffic. There's a lot of great hacks out there to get more people to your website, but if they're the the wrong people, right, they're just looking for free information or, you know, you're luring them into your website through a blog post that doesn't even speak to your ideal client, then it's not going to help you achieve your long term goals. I just want to warn advisors not to get, you know, distracted by the quantity of visitors. That quality is going to matter more than quantity. So with that, Kendra, what's on your mind right now? Where should we take this?
- [12:15]
Kendra
Yeah, two things. One, I love what you said about don't get distracted by the quantity, but also don't get discouraged by the lack of quantity because I've seen some really killer stuff happen from lower traffic sites. The other thing that really came up for me is Preston, and maybe you do this on the back end, but one thing that I talk to advisors about on your call booking form, it's a really simple question, which is how did you hear about our firm? And you could give them a dropdown of, you know, six to 10 different options or whatever, or you might ask that in your prospect call. But what I find really fascinating about that is if you review that source, you know, let's just say quarterly. So yesterday I went through a advisor's calendar booking and I pulled out year to date all their sources for all the prospect calls. And it was interesting because I found 50% were referrals. One fourth was Google search. So basically out of, you know, every four calls they book, two of them were for referrals, one of them was from Google Search, and then the rest kind of shook out through podcast cois and a few of the all obvious things that we talk about, you know, listings, things like that. But why I find this really fascinating is you might discover that a platform like YouTube or podcast is sending you more or less, you know, qualified leads than you realize. And then that really helps you start to learn where to focus your efforts and energy on the marketing front.
- [13:32]
Preston
Yes, I agree with you 100% there at first was going for a lot more quantity. Like 3000 to me was like, I mean, why aren't we getting like 20 or 30,000, right? I'm like, what the heck? Right? Then my thought process shifted. I'm comfortable now going from. And I remember that 600 number because that 600 number literally was like November or December of 2023. Here we're in 24, six months later. I'm comfortable with the growth. I'm also comfortable with, you know, our newsletter growth. We, we went from, you know, 50 or 60 or something like that. And you know, now we're upwards to 300, you know, something to this effect. So I mean we, I mean that type of growth is again, six months of really intentional building. We send our newsletter out every Saturday morning and you know, for, I think this year we've gotten, I don't know, six unscribed something to this effect. I mean, it's not in the double digits. I know that for a fact. So people read our newsletter. So these are the type of metrics that say we're doing right. Also, too far as booking calls, I had four meetings last week. And you know, that's the type of metric that I like. Right. And that wasn't happening all the time. Right. We were having one, well, one meeting a week or something to his effect in 2023. And we did decent business last year, but now we're seeing what we really want to see this last six months, which, you know, like, like last week, four, week before three, you know, so, you know, people get on the phone with us, if they're, if they're there already, we're, you know, we're closing.
- [15:10]
Kendra
I love it. I love it. So let's jump into. I'd love to talk a little bit about the call to action piece because I have two thoughts that are coming up for me. One is because you're at the level of, you know, 3,000 website visitors per month. That's a good little chunk of traffic. So what I'd really like to see, do you have anyone on your team or as a consultant that does any kind of Google Analytics for you?
- [15:29]
Preston
Yes. Yes. So, yep.
- [15:31]
Kendra
Awesome. So one thing I'd love to see when Advisor's website traffic starts to get into that, you know, 2000, 3000 level traffic is what are your top landing pages? So for example, client right now who, you know, they're in that range, but the lion's share of that traffic is actually hitting one or two optimized posts inside their website. And so the where where my brain goes on that is if you have a blog post or something like that that's getting a lion's share of your traffic, then we can start to optimize that post for email subscribers and then opt ins and different things based off that topic. So if you're getting a bunch of traffic to one of those pieces, I'd love to see what are the top landing pages. And you can just ask, you know, for you or any advisor listening, if you have someone, you can also hire someone very cheaply off some of these, you know, websites for freelancers is, hey, can you pull out the top, you know, landing pages on the website, the top five, and then look at where that traffic is going? That's my first thought when it comes to having that much traffic is where is that traffic actually hitting? And how do we optimize that page for the different kinds of opt in points we talked about?
- [16:36]
Preston
Absolutely 100%. So I pay attention to that and my three pages. Where's the homepage, the about page and the pricing. Now the pricing was third and what was not getting the attention that I wanted. These were 4th and 5th where the blog and the podcast posting. Obviously I want people to, you know, learn more about the firm. The homepage is great. That's where I want people. Then I want them to go to the pricing. That would be great. And then the third click would be to book an appointment. I mean, that would be a rosy picture, right? The homepage and the about page was tied and in some months the about was, was number one. And the reason why I didn't like that all that much is because they spent more time investigating me, so to speak, than they would on the company. So I've been on for years, I've been saying, okay, well how do I leverage the, you know, now it's meet the team, right? So how do I do that? So I've been taking less less over the last three years and particularly last two. Less, less, less, less about, you know, about me per se and, and hiding, you know, the, the description of or whoever. They want to learn more, they can click a button, right? So I've been trying to use that page in order for them to learn more information about them, you know, why, why are you here? They want a personal connection. They can click one more time but also have a CTA there as well. And so I want to take advantage of that opportunity. The whole thing too is to get them either back to the homepage or to the pricing page, but that next click, if they're coming to see something about me, so to speak, their advisor. They're trying to get a personal connection. Then that next click is something about, you know, them to take action, to engage with the company.
- [18:17]
Kendra
That makes a lot of sense. Taylor, what's coming up for you here as he talks about that different flow and how that relates to conversion?
- [18:22]
Taylor
Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to change gears here a little bit. Preston, I told you, we're going to, we're going to give you the hard truth. You know, in a perfect world, what I would tell you is like, set the conversions aside for a moment. It's tough because you have this goal of a hundred million in the next 12 months and I know you've got other people on your team that you know you need to, to take care of. So it's a hard thing to do. But in a perfect world, I'd say set all this conversion metrics, tracking prospects, intro calls, like, set all that to the side for a moment. Because what I think your biggest challenge is is that you're not crystal clear on exactly who your ideal client is. Well, I shouldn't say you aren't. It's not clear to me someone who is not familiar with your firm. It's not clear to me who that ideal client is and what pain points they have that you help them solve for. So, you know, I heard you say that my ideal client is looking for comprehensive financial planning. I'm not so sure that, like, that's a pain point. I think, number one, I'm not sure that people know exactly what comprehensive financial planning is. And I don't think anybody is, you know, laying awake at night thinking, gosh, like, I need a comprehensive financial plan. It's keeping me up at night. So I also heard you say, you know, living life to the fullest. I understand, like, busy professional, making money, you know, wants to live life again, I'm not sure that that's necessarily a pain point. So I would start. I would really urge you to start to like, go back to the drawing board and like literally a drawing board and start to sketch out and write out who this avatar is and what their pain points are. Now, I'll help you out a little bit because down, further down your homepage, I know you're changing your homepage or you're changing your website, so I don't want to talk too much about the existing one. But further down on your homepage, you have a couple statistics about Gen X and then really quick comment on Gen X. I'M not sure that everybody knows what Gen X is, what age group that is. So might think about defining Gen X if we're going to use the term Gen X. But you mentioned 44% lack confidence in their retirement date. The other statistic you have is 9 out of 10 Gen X believe that retirement won't fit the traditional mold. That's interesting to me. And what it makes me think about is when I used to target this demographic in my practice, one of the pain points that really struck a chord with people is making work optional. That it is no longer. I'm going to work at the Same company for 30 years and retire at age 65 and collect my Social Security check and like, ride off into the sunset. That these generations enjoy the work that they do. They can't imagine just like stopping work and, you know, sailing off into the sunset. So there could be something around that. That's just one example. I would encourage you to find, like three really solid pain points. But imagine if you're top of fold. Your. Your hero section of the website said nine out of 10 Gen X believe that retirement won't fit the traditional mold. You know, we don't either. Like, we help our clients make work optional. And that word work optional really resonates with people. And I think you can even take it a step further. I'm just, you know, talking on the fly here, but that starts to hit on a pain point of mine or something that I've been thinking of. I'm a busy professional. God, I can retirement. I don't want to retire. I don't know, like, I love my job or I want to be doing something like work optional. That's interesting to me. So I would really encourage you to think about really crystal clear pain points. And then the second thing I want to hit on here is I think you're doing too much. And I think it's going to be really challenging to host a podcast, write a blog, host a YouTube channel, pursue SEO, and pursue email marketing, you know, and lead magnets, like, all at the same time. It's really, really, really, really challenging to do all those things unless you have a massive team behind you helping you. So my advice would be to choose one thing. I know this is the hardest thing in the world for advisors. We want to be doing it all. But choose one thing. I mean, I quadrupled my firm in the last four years just strictly from a podcast. Now there's some other things I've been experimenting with and stuff, but most of the growth can be Attributed back to the podcast. All I did was just get hyper focused on creating a quality podcast, growing the podcast and then converting podcast listeners into prospects and then building a great sales process to convert those prospects into clients. I didn't need anything else. I didn't need a YouTube channel channel. I don't even have a social media presence for prospects. So I didn't need anything else other than just get hyper focused on the podcast for a number of years. How can I grow it? How can I convert people, how can I build a great sales process? So I think it's going to prove to be really challenging to do all these things and do them all really well. I think they're also going to prove to be really distracting. So again, I know it's a really hard thing to do to set these things to the side, but like, which one gets you really excited? Like which one do you want to do all day? I really, really encourage you to just choose that one thing and then once you know what those pain points are of your client, all of your content in your podcast, if that's the thing you choose, should just be focused on addressing those pain points. I'll stop rambling here in a second. But it just makes me think, you know, one of the big pain points for my ideal clients is taxes in retirement. Now that's one pain point. But how many subtopics can I discuss on my podcast addressing that single pain point? I can talk about Roth conversions, I can talk about charitable giving, I can talk about tax gain harvesting. I mean, the list goes on. I can talk about taxes in retirement in a hundred different subtopics. So understanding those core pain points just gives you, you know, a world of content ideas that you can build on and add to, you know, your content.
- [23:29]
Preston
Yeah, no, all great feedback and I appreciate all of it. Yeah, there's a couple of things there. So I encourage folks all the time is to your point is not do too much. Right. That said, it's very important to build a team. And not only build a team, but build a system. And so you can, I say you, I mean the advisors out there, right. If you're working on a, on a podcast, then that means that you can switch that into multi level content very easily with a team. Right. You can have, you know, a copywriter assistant that can help you, a distributor, a editor, all of this. Right. So there's a pinpoint system that I have with the team in order to, when I'm filming, say a what you call a life money balance lesson. When I'M on a topic. Right. We switch that. When the team does, they take that and then now filter, you know, all the areas that you're talking about. They do that and we have, you know, one meeting a week and then all that's chopped up. So if you have a good team, you can accomplish that. It's very important to systematize and have a team.
- [24:31]
Taylor
I want to jump in really quick because I hear that rebuttal a lot. And again, you know, people can disagree here. I'm just sharing like my perspective here, but I hear the rebuttal a lot. As a content creator myself, if I'm going to script and publish a YouTube video that Pro, like, I mean, hyper focus, I'm going to script and publish the best YouTube video for my ideal client. That process and that recording process is going to look wildly different than if I'm scripting and producing and publishing a podcast episode for that ideal client. I know there's this whole idea of like repurposing. I can do a YouTube video and scrape the audio and put it into a podcast. But the content creation process for that specific platform to be done really, really, really well is going to look very different for each medium. So I think we have to be careful on day one in the beginning stages of our marketing to try and repurpose all this content. I go back to like, just do one thing really, really well. Once that one thing really works, once that podcast or YouTube channel is really working and firing on all cylinders, I promise you, it becomes really, really easy to start to repurpose that content. But I do think there's some danger in trying to repurpose everything all at once and turn the video into a podcast and turn it into a blog post and all these things. So again, I mean, people could disagree. Yeah, yeah.
- [25:46]
Preston
I think there's two ways of pressing. I, I do get what you're saying. If there's no system and there's no, is there's no intention, then then yes, you people can get that wrong very quickly. But I haven't, you know, coaches myself if you can do it right. I mean, first of all, I mean there's a couple of channels to where they're video based rather than, rather than written based. Right. So if you have IG, YouTube, TikTok and, and they're video based, then very much so. Right. Because you have a system on how you do your podcast, which I do. You know, it's a 10 second lead, it's an introduction, it's this. And then you have Your three pain point, I mean, three points. Bam, bam, bam. You have your closing, bam. Right? So all that, that system, right, is now you have three clips, you have this, you have that, right? So it's very systematized and very intentional. How we can go with three video platforms, it may platforms, but it's three video platforms and a video is the key.
- [26:37]
Kendra
I just want to piggyback off of one thing that Taylor said, and I think, Preston, you may be a good example of this. I haven't looked into how you repurpose, but for most advisors and Taylor, you might agree, you might disagree with this, a little bit of a hot take, but I think repurposing is a waste of time because unless you are an anomaly, and I think there are a few advisors, you can just do this really well. But for most advisors, if you take, let's say, you know, a video podcast and then you cut those clips and publish them on Instagram, that will give you Instagram content, but that will not guarantee growth on Instagram. Insert other platforms, right? Same thing with LinkedIn. You could have a video podcast and you cut that and then publish those clips to LinkedIn. But just publishing content does not equal client conversion. So there's a whole strategy behind how you would be successful on LinkedIn versus YouTube versus podcasting. So for anyone listening, you might be an anomaly, but for most of us, you would likely be better served to do something like Taylor, which is how do you become a masterful podcaster, a masterful YouTuber, or absolute mastery at LinkedIn? Because the more you can narrow down, I think focus is a competitive advantage. It's easy to say, it's hard to do. And for most of us listening and even, you know, Taylor and I, it's like that ability to cut some of those pieces. And Preston, you may be in a position where you have that team, but also I think thinking about how could you level up and take those platforms that are working to, to a whole new level? Because before you add another platform, you really have to get to a point where publishing and converting prospects off a platform like your podcast is operating very efficiently, almost on autopilot, before you can add another one. And it's really hard to get to that point. So I just wanted to say I love what Taylor said there. I think, Preston, you could be one of those anomalies who just you're able to crank it out. But for everyone listening, that could get you back five to of your week. Just what will you stop doing and what platform will you become a Master at. Because it's not just about getting views. It's about also how do you connect with people, start real conversations or move them off these platforms onto something like your email list, which then allows you to have more communication with you till they're ready to give you a call.
- [28:51]
Preston
Oh, Yes, I agree 100% with both of you about mastering a channel for sure and being really efficient with that. So to the listeners, I love the feedback about doing one thing and doing it well. I agree with that 100%. I also think too, there, there are sometimes there, I don't know what you call animal unicorns or whatever. There are systems and there's folks that do this really well. I've studied them a lot. Right. That can, that can do this. But you need, you need system. Some of the things that I, that I said, which is it has to have a system. You have to have, you have to be able to scale it. Your message has to be very tight. How you do things has to be very tight so it can fit different channels. For example, you know, some of the things that when I film, you know, I film in bulk, I film with, with a pattern. I film with intent to know where my team knows I film. And now that we have that system, the team takes it and we rock. I promise you, I don't spend 10 hours.
- [29:49]
Taylor
I mean, I was going to say you might save five to 10 hours by removing it or advisors might save five to 10 hours. They might also save five to $10,000. Right. Because it might not be your time. It might be, I'm outsourcing this to somebody to cut up all my content and create all these clips. And again, to Kendra's point, there are people out there that have a system and are having success repurposing. And again, there is a right way to go about it. But, you know, you could be spending money on something that's not really serving you. So, you know, we have to be careful about that too. So I don't want to keep picking on that. I think, like to summarize it all, I agree with you, Kendra. I think there's a place for repurposing. My, my take is that you should only repurpose once one of your things is working. Once your YouTube channel is growing, it's predictable. I know what my process is. It's working. Now I can think about how do I pour gas on this thing and start to repurpose, you know, this content in other areas. My kind of summary of all this is if it seems easy if it's something easy to do, then it's probably not going to be as effective. So if it's easy to throw money at an agency to cut up all your content and throw it out to all these different channels, in my opinion, it's probably just not going to be very effective. So if it seems easy or you can throw money at the thing, probably not as effective. So that's just my. Again, there are exceptions, there are anomalies. People can put together good systems. But in general, I do think it takes a lot of hard work in the beginning to build up that thing and have success with that thing before you can start to repurpose stuff.
- [31:17]
Kendra
I love what you shared there because there's a lot of people that work with me and I do have a team, and one of the first things I still do is I look at what can we stop doing immediately so that we can master one or two channels? So I agree with you there totally. Preston, as we start to wrap up here, I know we've thrown a lot of stuff at you. Is there any just kind of overarching questions, you know, anything to ask as we wrap up here that could help us give you and the listeners something tangible to take away? Anything that might be unclear or you just love a little more depth on.
- [31:46]
Preston
No, I think we went pretty much in depth. No, I appreciate it. No, thank you for all the feedback and all the work you do. It's good. It's great stuff. I mean, I think that one of the common threads that I could take away from both what you all were saying. What I was saying is really, you know, focus. Intentionality, right? To really have a plan on getting your visitors you're trying to attract, to convert into the ideal life that they want to have. And if your. Your systems are. Are doing that and your intentionality is doing that, then cool. And pick the right thing for you. Because like you said, getting overwhelmed, you know, oh my goodness, that can happen quickly.
- [32:22]
Taylor
Awesome. Well, I'm glad it was helpful. Preston, I appreciate you joining us today. I know this is a kind of a new format that we're trying out here on the podcast, and I enjoyed the conversation. I wish you the best luck and I'll be rooting for you to get to this hundred million in twelve months. I would say if. But when that happens, we're going to have you come back on and tell us all about it.
- [32:39]
Preston
Will do.
- [32:39]
Kendra
Awesome.
- [32:40]
Preston
Thank you, Preston.
- [32:41]
Kendra
Thanks so much, too. Because coming on and being open and vulnerable and just letting us be so honest with you is such a gift, and you're doing so many things so well. Your website, I know you're redoing it, but it already looks great. The quality of the content you're putting out is amazing. So you're doing great work getting up to a couple thousand visitors a month. You're already winning. So just really dial in who you want to serve those big pain points they have, and, you know, stay focused on the right platforms for you and you're well on your way.
- [33:07]
Preston
Thank you. I appreciate y'all. Thank you so much.
- [33:09]
Taylor
All right, thanks, Preston.
- [33:10]
Kendra
Thanks. Hey, everyone. We hope you enjoyed that call with Preston. We really appreciated how open and honest he was, and I love that Taylor and I both went different directions on that discussion. Taylor, what are your thoughts as we wrap up here with Preston?
- [33:25]
Taylor
Yeah, my first thought is that everything that Preston is up against, you know, the challenges he faces on the marketing side of things, I think are extremely common. So hopefully advisors listening can. Can relate to Preston. I think it's extremely common to, you know, want to do all these things. You feel like you're missing out if you're not on LinkedIn or if you're not on YouTube or if you're not on, you know, doing podcasting. So there's this, like, fear of missing out. And, well, you know, these people are doing it, so I should probably do it too. One of the things that I always kind of chuck a lot is these podcast clips that people cut up and share on social, or video clips from a YouTube channel that are cut up and shared on social. I mean, personally, it's personal experience. You're like, I don't ever stop to watch them. If I do, I never find them really valuable. I think it's one of those things that, you know, these media agencies started doing for their clients is this little, like, extra value ad. So everybody's doing it. Everybody's cutting up their, you know, content into small clips. I guess I have to do that too. I just struggle to see how that's extremely valuable because again, if I'm going to produce a 30 second or one minute short form video, I'm going to attack that very differently than if I just took 30 second clip from a YouTube video that I did or a podcast episode. Those two processes are very, very different. So that's the one thing that jumps out is like, I just think his challenges are very, very common. The second thing is, to a certain extent, I think it's okay to be doing a couple different things. Like, you know, I go Back to like, do this one thing. But it does require a few different marketing activities in order for an advisor to see success. That's why I like to think about this in terms of a funnel and the basic marketing funnel of, you know, top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. Your top of funnel activities should bring awareness to you and your brand and your firm and your services. And it should also bring awareness or help convert those top of funnel people, those people that find you somehow, it should convert them to the middle of your funnel. So an example of this is, you know, SEO is great, but I don't want just like random scattered SEO traffic showing up to all different pages on my website. When I think about SEO, my goal with SEO is I want the right type of people showing up to a page on my website and there's some different strategies there when they show up. My goal, my only goal is for those visitors to subscribe to my podcast. Now, not all of them are going to do it, but that's my goal because my primary middle of the funnel activity is my retirement podcast. That's where I really nurture people, educate. That's where I show my expertise. It's ultimately where I convert them to becoming a prospect, to reaching out to my firm. So when people show up to my website, my goal is not for them to become a client. My goal is not for them to schedule an introductory phone call. That is a top of funnel activity. That just brings awareness to me and my firm. My only goal is a percentage of those people subscribe to my podcast. So I've got a process, you know, when SEO works and people show up, I've got a process to help nudge them, start to move them to my retirement podcast. A small percentage are going to do it right? Not everybody's going to subscribe, but that's my goal. Now, once you're on the podcast, I know at this point after doing the podcast this long, that if I just get more of the right type of people subscribing to the podcast and I just continue with my podcasting process and my call to action process on the podcast. I know because I've tracked the data, a certain percentage of those listeners are going to convert to introductory phone calls. And then I know how many introductory phone calls it's going to take in order to get the number of clients that we're targeting. So I like to think about this in kind of a funnel. And it's not like I'm doing SEO over here and podcasting over here and Email over here. These things all do work together, but we have to think about how they're all supporting each other in the marketing process. So again, we kind of hit on, like, do one thing, but I think you can do a few things if you know how they're all supporting each other in the funnel.
- [37:09]
Kendra
Definitely. I also love how you said, you know, when you think about SEO and you have these different posts, you're putting out their SEO, optimized for the right kind of traffic, having one goal. Right. You know, there's a common remark in the marketing world, if you confuse them, you'll lose them. So more calls to action do not equal more conversion. And what I would also say reminds me of something we talked about I really think is truly important. Big numbers do not equal big results. You could have a ton of website traffic that does not equal you having a ton of calls. So don't get discouraged if you have a smaller amount of website traffic. We want quality traffic to clear, you know, conversion pieces, calls, podcasts, whatever kind of your platform of choice is. And the other thing I would. I want to say is just, you know, when I'm behind the scenes with growth focused firms, the ones I see succeeding and growing the most realize that their competitive advantage is being focused. They're only working on a couple platforms just like you, and that doesn't mean they do one thing. You know, I've got one firm right now who is. They're really heavily focused on LinkedIn and SEO. We've got some really good results coming in from listings. And like, multiple times they have come to me and said, hey, should we add on YouTube or this or that or a podcast? And I'm like, no, we are winning. Double down, triple down. Focus on being masterful at right on LinkedIn. You know, if you're a podcaster, going from I want to be a good podcaster to I want to be an amazing podcaster, a masterful pod, different mindset, different quality show. All of a sudden you start thinking about, well, what's my intro sound like? And do I have dynamic ads? And how can I drive more listeners from the show? How do I get better content mapping? Like, it just allows you to focus in a new way. And so there are a few advisors out there who can do it all, but most of us have more to do than marketing. And I love what you said. It's not just about the time that you spend, but it's also the money that you spend. So thank you so much, Preston, for coming on with us. We discuss some amazing topics and I can't wait to hear what everyone has to say about what they learned. 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.