How to Handle Marketing Overwhelm: 5 Steps to Simplify Your Strategy

Summary

Podcast Summary: “How to Handle Marketing Overwhelm: 5 Steps to Simplify Your Strategy”
Advisor Marketing Made Simple
Hosts: Taylor Schulte and Kendra Wright
Release Date: January 8, 2025

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Introduction

In the episode titled “How to Handle Marketing Overwhelm: 5 Steps to Simplify Your Strategy,” hosts Taylor Schulte and Kendra Wright delve into the common challenges financial advisors face when navigating the vast landscape of marketing strategies. Aimed at both newcomers and seasoned professionals, the discussion centers on minimizing overwhelm by focusing on effective, streamlined marketing tactics that drive substantial results without unnecessary complexity.

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Origin of Marketing Overwhelm

Kendra (00:00):
The episode kicks off with Kendra introducing the core issue: the plethora of marketing options available to financial advisors, leading to significant overwhelm. She references a listener's question about concentrating efforts on the most impactful strategies—the classic 80/20 rule—asking how to focus on the 20% of efforts that yield 80% of the results.

Taylor (01:06):
Taylor identifies three primary sources of marketing overwhelm:

1. Lack of Marketing Skills: Advisors may feel overwhelmed simply because they don't possess or wish to develop the necessary marketing expertise.
2. Paralysis by Analysis: The endless array of marketing strategies can lead to indecision and scattered efforts.
3. Time Constraints: Financial advisors often prioritize client care and business operations over marketing, exacerbating the feeling of overwhelm when they attempt to quickly develop a marketing strategy.

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Five Steps to Simplify Your Marketing Strategy

Taylor (02:57):
Taylor outlines five actionable steps to combat marketing overwhelm:

1. Take a Step Back (02:57):

   • Quote: “Set everything that you've read or you've learned or heard about to the side. Hit the pause button.”
   • Explanation: Temporarily set aside all current marketing activities to gain clarity.

2. Embrace Simplicity (02:57):

   • Quote: “Simple is better than complex.”
   • Explanation: A straightforward marketing plan can often yield better results than a complicated one, mirroring successful investment strategies.

3. Define Your Ideal Client (02:57):

   • Action: Document specific demographics and psychographics of your target audience to avoid spreading efforts too thinly across a broad audience.

4. Identify Top Pain Points (02:57):

   • Action: Clearly outline the primary challenges your ideal clients face, ensuring your marketing strategies address these issues directly.

5. Set Clear Growth Goals (02:57):

   • Action: Establish measurable objectives such as client acquisition numbers, revenue targets, or assets under management (AUM) to guide your marketing efforts.

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Practical Strategies to Reduce Overwhelm

Kendra (07:25):
Kendra reinforces the simplicity of Taylor’s five steps and introduces additional strategies:

• Cutting Your Marketing Activities in Half:

  • Quote: “Cut at minimum 50%. More focused equals more results.”
  • Advice: Reduce the number of marketing activities by at least half and concentrate on executing the remaining strategies exceptionally well.

• Evaluating Marketing Efforts:

  • Questions to Ask:
    1. Are you doing something just because you should be?
    2. Are you engaged in activities you’re not genuinely interested in?
    3. Are you continuing practices out of habit rather than efficacy?

• Dedicating to Core Channels:

  • Focus on a single traffic platform (e.g., social media, SEO, direct mail) and one nurture platform (e.g., email marketing, podcasts) to create a coherent and effective marketing funnel.

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Metrics and Performance Tracking

Kendra (14:50):
The hosts introduce the concept of lead and lag metrics to measure marketing effectiveness:

• Lag Metrics:

  • Definition: Long-term business goals like revenue targets or AUM.
  • Example: “$30 million in new assets under management this year.”

• Lead Metrics:

  • Definition: Day-to-day marketing activities that drive progress toward lag metrics.
  • Example: Podcast subscriber growth, email newsletter sign-ups.

Quote by Taylor (25:47):
“Your lead metric is measuring the success of everything that you're doing day to day to drive you closer to those long term goals.”

Application:
Track lead metrics to evaluate whether daily marketing activities are advancing you toward your long-term objectives. If lead metrics aren’t contributing to lag metrics, consider adjusting or abandoning the current strategy.

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Repurposing Content: Rebuilding vs. Traditional Repurposing

Kendra (25:47) and Taylor (28:06):
The discussion transitions to content repurposing, where Kendra shares her experience of abandoning traditional repurposing methods like quick video snippets in favor of more strategic approaches:

• Traditional Repurposing:

  • Cutting and slicing content for various platforms without ensuring alignment with the overall strategy.
  • Drawback: Often ineffective and doesn't contribute meaningfully to business goals.

• Rebuilding Content:

  • Strategy: Adapt high-quality content thoughtfully for different platforms while maintaining a cohesive marketing funnel.
  • Example: Transforming podcast transcripts into well-crafted articles that drive listeners back to the podcast.

Quote by Kendra (28:06):
“If it's easy, it is a lower likelihood of being efficient and effective.”

Advice:
Instead of mindlessly repurposing content, focus on rebuilding it to suit each platform’s unique requirements and ensure it supports your primary marketing funnel.

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Adding Back Strategies: When and How

Taylor (31:22):
Taylor discusses the criteria for reintroducing previously abandoned marketing tactics:

• Supporting Existing Funnels:

  • Example: Adding email marketing to support a successful podcast funnel.

• Building New Funnels:

  • Example: Creating a new email marketing funnel alongside an established podcast funnel.

Kendra (33:43):
Kendra emphasizes the importance of ensuring that adding new strategies does not compromise the effectiveness of existing ones. She advises focusing on enhancing current channels before introducing new ones.

Quote by Taylor (29:38):
“Rebuilding versus repurposing... if you're going to rebuild content so that it will perform on the platform you're putting it on and you're willing to do that and it makes sense and it integrates with your marketing strategy. Rock and roll.”

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Concluding Insights

Kendra (35:14):
Kendra wraps up the episode by reiterating key takeaways:

• Less is More:

  • Overwhelm stems from doing too many things. Focus on fewer, high-impact strategies.

• Master Your Craft:

  • Become exceptionally good at one or two marketing channels rather than spreading yourself thin.

• Continuous Evaluation:

  • Regularly assess your marketing activities to ensure they align with your long-term goals.

Final Quote by Kendra (35:14):
“Everybody’s marketing gets better when they do less. If you are overwhelmed, you are doing too many things. It should be challenging but achievable.”

Encouragement:
Listeners are encouraged to revisit past episodes for deeper insights, such as how to turn podcast listeners into clients and the necessity (or lack thereof) of social media in their marketing stack.

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Key Takeaways

1. Identify Sources of Overwhelm: Understand whether it’s due to lack of skills, excessive options, or time constraints.
2. Simplify Your Strategy: Focus on a few high-impact marketing activities instead of a multitude of scattered efforts.
3. Define and Document: Clearly outline your ideal client, their pain points, and your growth goals.
4. Measure Effectiveness: Utilize lead and lag metrics to ensure your daily activities contribute to your long-term objectives.
5. Strategic Repurposing: Rebuild content thoughtfully for different platforms rather than traditional repurposing to maintain alignment with your marketing funnels.
6. Evaluate and Adapt: Regularly assess and refine your marketing strategies, abandoning ineffective tactics and reinforcing successful ones.
7. Focus Over Quantity: Strive for mastery in selected marketing channels to enhance consistency, quality, and effectiveness.

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Conclusion

In “How to Handle Marketing Overwhelm: 5 Steps to Simplify Your Strategy,” Taylor Schulte and Kendra Wright provide a comprehensive roadmap for financial advisors seeking to streamline their marketing efforts. By prioritizing simplicity, clear goal-setting, and strategic focus, advisors can overcome overwhelm and implement marketing strategies that are both effective and sustainable. The episode serves as a valuable resource for those aiming to enhance their marketing prowess without succumbing to the chaos of too many options.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor, and we're here to make advisor marketing simple. Welcome to the show. Today we're going to be talking about how to avoid marketing overwhelm. There's so many options and ways you can invest your time, your attention, and your firm revenue to grow through marketing. How do we avoid the overwhelm with all these options? And this episode is really spawned off of an amazing advisor question we got. Here's the question an advisor wrote into us and they said, hey, my challenge is really just focusing on the one thing at a time and trying to build one consistent funnel. I've done several things that have worked, like posting on LinkedIn and podcasting, but I'm trying to focus my time and my energy and my efforts on the 20% that brings in 80% of the results. So how do I avoid the overwhelm of marketing and focus effectively? So, Taylor, I know this is a big question. We get this a lot from advisors on the show and behind the scenes. Where do you think is a great place for people to start when they're looking at how to avoid marketing overwhelm? Yeah, it.

[B]

It is really a good question. I mean, marketing is overwhelming. So I think a good place to start is just where, where does marketing overwhelm stem from? Like, why. Why do we feel overwhelmed by marketing? So I think there's three things here. Number one, well, you might feel overwhelmed by marketing because you may not have the marketing skills needed or the desire to develop those skills. So lack of skills could be, you know, where that over that marketing overwhelm stems from. Number two, for those that do like marketing and do want to take marketing on head on, there are an endless amount of marketing strategies to choose from and pursue. So this overwhelm might just be this paralysis by analysis. There's so many things out there. I love marketing so much. I'm throwing all the spaghetti at the walls and nothing's working like, or, you know, what do I really spend my time on? And then, you know, number three, it might be many of us advisors are financial advisors, and we're so busy running our business and hiring and training people and trying to take really good care of our clients. We're so busy with other things that marketing just falls down on the list of things to do. You know, it's kind of like waiting to the last minute to study. If I wait till the last minute to study, all of a sudden it starts to feel really overwhelming. How do I. How do I cram this in at the last minute? You know and pass this test. So if you've neglected it and it's at the bottom of your list and you're trying to, like, hurry up and figure out a marketing strategy because you need to grow, you'll certainly start to feel overwhelming. So I think those are the three things that I can think of as to where this overwhelm really stems from. Now we can kind of dig in a little bit deeper. Like, how do we actually, you know, combat this, how do solve this problem?

[A]

Yeah. And I feel like you're an advisor who really understands how to focus. I'm not quite sure how you do it, but every time I've seen you launch a project, you just have this ability to stay on top of things and stay focused. So I'd love to know from you, you know, what do you think is the key to maintaining marketing focus when there are so many options out there?

[B]

We're probably gonna sound like a broken record a little bit with this episode, but I do think it's really important. So, you know, what would you tell a client who is overwhelmed by all the investment options that are out there, or all the opinions that they read about online or. Or what their friends and coworkers are doing with their money? What would you tell a client in those situations? Well, first I would tell them that their unique needs and goals are different, of course, than their friends, their neighbors, or what they hear about on their news. Then I would tell them that they're specific. Their unique needs and goals should drive what strategies they pursue, that they should not attempt to sort through all the different strategies that are out there, all the different investments, all the different tax planning strategies to determine what might be fitting for them. The same thing, I think, can be said for marketing. Just because I host a podcast and I've had success growing my practice with it does not mean that you should go and host a podcast. Just because you have five different social media platforms to post content on doesn't mean that you should. Or that they all support your growth goals and. Or help you reach your ideal clients. So this all comes back to getting hyper focused on, you know, or I should say, if you're getting hyper focused on what others are doing and you're going down this rabbit hole to explore all the different marketing services that you could pay for or. Or all the different tactics that you could apply. Yes, it's absolutely going to overwhelm you. Just like if somebody went to Fidelity's website and tried to sort through the. The 5, 000 different investments that are available to them, it would overwhelm anyone. So what do we do about this? I'm going to say there's five things that you can do to start to attack this. Number one is we have to take a step back. So set everything that you've read or you've learned or heard about to the side. Everything related to marketing, just push it to the side. Forget about what your peers are doing. Forget about what you're currently doing or what you've tried in the past. I think you just need to hit the pause button for a moment. If you're feeling overwhelmed, just push everything to the side. Hit the pause button. Just take a step back. Number two, remind yourself that simple is better than complex. You don't need a complex marketing plan to find success. Again, I like to draw parallels back to our profession. You don't need a complex investment portfolio to have investment success. Right? Simple is better than complex. So you don't need a complex marketing plan to find success. Remind yourself that a simple approach will not only mitigate this overwhelm, but it's likely also going to lead to better results. This may require you to maybe abandon some of the things that you're currently doing, which is a really hard thing sometimes. So number one, take a step back. Number two, remind yourself that simple is better than complex. Number Number three, clearly document who your ideal client is. Demographics, psychographics. Be as specific as you can. If you find yourself describing a wide range of people, just know that creating a successful marketing plan will likely be more challenging. And it's going to be overwhelming if you have to reach all different people in all different places. Like it's absolutely going to be overwhelming. Number four, document their top pain points. So the caveat to my prior comment is that it might appear like you serve a wide range of people, but maybe that's not the reality. Maybe you do spend specialize in helping, you know, the, the, the certain people with a. A few very specific pain points. For example, you might specialize in helping business owners with 25 plus employees and let's say $2 million or more of revenue. You specialize in helping these people reduce taxes, right? That could apply to somebody who's 65 years old. It could apply to a 30 year old. So be careful not to get stuck on focusing on the age of your potential client because it doesn't always apply to your niche. So clearly document who your ideal client is. Those demographics psychographics be really specific, but identifying and documenting their top three pain points is going to really help reduce A lot of overall and drive you towards the finish line or drive you towards making the right decision in terms of how to apply your marketing funnel. Lastly, number five, document your growth goals. So you know, how many clients do you want? What's your revenue target, what's your, your net new assets for the year? I mean how are you measuring your growth? Set some sort of goal that you can work towards and start to build a marketing strategy to get there. We have to ensure that, you know, we're really clear on where we're headed before we develop that plan again. Just like if a client hired you, you know, if your retirement plan next we say where do you want to be? When do you want to retire? How much do you need to retire now? Let's build the plan to get you there. So the same thing applies to your marketing. Where are you trying to go? How many clients do you need? What's your revenue goals? Let's document those things first so then we can apply that the right marketing strategies or right marketing funnel that matches up and helps you get closer to those growth go.

[A]

I feel like we could just end this episode right here because you covered so much great stuff around how to reduce overwhelm. It's such a clear approach, those five straightforward things. So I've got one way that I would approach it based off, you know, kind of similar to what you said and then also on this kind of a high level approach and then also maybe more tactical funnel driven recommendation. So from a high level, one thing that I often say to advisors, this is a very wide range of things that you're often doing is sit down and make a list of all the marketing activities you are currently doing to try to reach new people. And let's just say there was 10 things on that list I want you to cut at minimum 50%. There's this big misconception that more marketing equals more results. And the opposite is actually true in my opinion. Often more focused equals more results. So if you did nothing from this episode besides cut half of what you're doing off the table and really just focus on doing half as many things twice as well, I think that will cut your overwhelm. Now when you're looking at also cutting some of those things out, a couple good questions you could ask yourself is, and Taylor, you alluded to one of these, which is what are you doing just because you feel like you should be doing it should is a dangerous world in marketing. Hey, this advisor over here is growing. You know, using YouTube or LinkedIn or you paid ads should, should be a big giant alert for you. The second thing I would ask yourself is like, what are you doing that you are genuinely not interested in? And I imagine some of those would overlap with what you think you should be doing. You're like, yeah, I don't really like video, but here I am haphazardly throwing a couple videos on YouTube. Third thing that I want to really inspire you to look at this list and ask yourself is, what are you doing that you've just always done? I think it's really easy to get kind of set in this path of, you know, we do this because we've just always done it that way. It's really good to reevaluate, you know, what are you doing because you've always done it and consider does that meet your current goals and the path that you're aiming towards with your firm? So when we talk about overwhelm, it doesn't just really clear up the mental bandwidth, but you're also getting back your marketing budget. Because some of these things I see advisors doing, you know, repurposing video across all these different platforms and cutting them up into all these short videos. This stuff is expensive and it's a lot to spray and play these things out across all these different platforms. So to start, do half as many things twice as well. All right, so now let's look at a more tactical, funnel driven approach. So when it comes to growing your firm using marketing, you really only need one traffic platform and one nurture platform. And a traffic platform is just where are you going to get in front of people? How will they find out that you exist? So that could be something like social media or YouTube or SEO, optimized blog content. It could even be offline. It could be something like direct mail or trade shows. You know, the thing here is that we just need to know, where will you get in front of people? That's your traffic platform. And then you need one nurture platform. And the nurture platform is just that middle of funnel where you're going to stay on top of people's minds and build trust until they're ready to work with you. The most popular middle of funnel is email, but also podcasts are middle of funnel. Webinars can be a great middle of funnel. But, you know, when you start to look at how do we build a streamlined, simple approach? A lot of people have multiple, you know, traffic platforms and they're trying to attack multiple nurture platforms. And they're also wondering why all these things aren't Working together is because you haven't stepped back in the way that Taylor discussed. And really looking at, you know, what are we doing here and where are we moving towards? So those are a couple things that really come to mind for me when I think about how do we really start to streamline and reduce so many options. You know, at minimum, cut your list in half. If you're looking for something more advanced, start to look at your traffic platform and your nurture platform.

[B]

There's two things there that you said that I really, really want to emphasize. I love that comment. Do half as many things twice as well, right? Do half as many things twice as well. Really, really powerful. The other thing I love that you said was, what are you doing? Because you should be doing, like, how often do we hear like, well, I just. I thought I should be doing this. I. One thing comes to mind is those who do any form of video or even, you know, podcast audio stuff, sharing those. Those short clips, right? Like using the services to. To clip their videos and share them on social media. Often you're like, well, I just thought I should be doing it because I saw everybody else doing it. So I thought that's what I should be doing. It may or may not be very effective. It may not be a good use of your marketing dollars. So why are you doing something? Is it truly supporting your growth goals? So what are you doing that you think that you should be doing? I think it's a great way, a great lens to kind of evaluate, you know, the current marketing activities that you're committed to and trying to help avoid some of this marketing overwhelm. So in thinking about this, you know, I think one of the hardest things about taking action here, Kendra, is getting rid of stuff. I think it's the hardest thing to do is, gosh, you know, you know, I got a new client from Instagram last month. Do I really want to shut down Instagram? It's one of the 10 things that I'm doing. So it's really hard for us to convince ourselves to stop doing something, because once in a while it might work, and there's this kind of fear of missing out. So when should advisors truly consider abandoning a marketing tactic? When should they really consider getting rid of something entirely and cutting that list in half so they can double down on the other. On the other 50%?

[A]

You pointed out something that is so important that I don't want advisors to gloss over, which is sometimes that works. And we're not here to build a marketing strategy that sometimes works. We need it to be predictable and repeatable. And you'll see that a lot when we talk about on the show is there's a lot of ways that you can build your firm, but we need it to be predictable and repeatable. And so when I look at, you know, when should an advisor, you know, maybe cut some things off a list or abandon a marketing tactic, the first thing that is really going to impact predictable and repeatable is you should cut it off your list if you do not have a consistent posting schedule. So, for example, if you're just randomly posting something on LinkedIn or you're randomly publishing videos on YouTube, you could just set that aside. I think there are a lot of ways to grow your firm, but no marketing channel succeeds predictably and repeatably without consistency. So if it's. If you don't have a plan that is consistent, that's a quick sign to you that that might be a marketing channel that could be on the chopping block. The second thing is that if you do start to see traction with a marketing channel like Taylor, you just mentioned Instagram, that could be your sign to really start taking that, that platform, that channel more seriously. You know, when I see something like thoughtful comments, you know, decent engagement, or maybe a comment like, I binged all your episodes, you know, longer watch time, that can be a really good signal that you're starting to get some traction and it is time to cut other things away. And the last one I'll say here is, it sounds so simple, but we don't often take that time to step back. But if you are overwhelmed, it's a sign that you need to take things off your list because your marketing strategy, when built well, should be challenging, but achievable to keep up with your posting schedules and things like that. It can, it can still be challenging. Right, but it needs to be achievable because if it's not, you're just not going to stick with it. And again, there are a lot of ways to grow online, but very few ways to do it predictably and repeatably without consistency.

[B]

Yeah. So really good concepts there, things to hang on to and think about as you go through your list of marketing activities and start to weed through them and determine what you're going to cut out. I'm going to take it a step further with, you know, some actual kind of, you know, nerdy data that we can use to help us drive our decisions. There are these things called lead and lag metrics, and we can start to track these different things with our marketing activities to determine if something's working, if we need to pour gas on it, if we need help improving the thing, or if we need to abandon it completely. So a lag metric who, for those who are not familiar with these metrics, a lag metric is in short, your businesses or measures your business's long term intended goals or objectives. So for example, your revenue goals, your AUM goals, however you measure your business's longer term intended goals. For example, my lag metric might be $30 million in new assets under management this year, or maybe it's $500,000 in new revenue in the next three years. Theoretically, it could be a 10 year goal or a 20 year goal. But I think for today's conversation, something shorter and more attainable is more fitting. So that's your lag metric. Like where am I headed? Right? That's that I want to retire in five years. You know, how do I get there? The lead metric is measuring the day to day activities, the things that you're doing every day, in this case your marketing strategies, the marketing strategies that you're engaging with every day or every week, every month, whatever. Your cadence is measuring those specific activities that lead. Right, the lead metric that lead to the results of your lagging indicators. So your lead metric is measuring the success of everything that you're doing day to day to drive you closer to those long term goals. Again, think about, I want to retire in five years. I need a million dollars. Where are you at now? How many more, how much more money do you need to save in between now and then to get there? Right? You're saving money every day or every week, every month. You're making investment decisions. Those little, those little decisions that you're making are getting you closer and closer to that lag metric or that lag goal. So you could build up a giant social media following through all these day to day activities. You could build this giant social media following by posting every single day and you're tracking this, this lead metric and you could convince yourself that your marketing is successful because I built up this giant social media following. But if all those social media followers are not supporting the longer term growth goals of your firm, then you need to rethink your marketing strategy. Because yes, the lead metrics are important. Want to track and make sure that if, if we're trying to grow a social media following, that it is growing in the right direction. But then we also need to ensure that it's supporting the lag metrics, our longer term goals. On the other hand, If I know that I need to build my social media following or my podcast audience or my email newsletter, if I know I need to to grow these things and I know who I need to grow them with and it's just not working, right? I'm not, I'm not seeing my podcast grow, I'm not seeing my email newsletter grow, social media not growing if it's not working. That would be helpful information to me to know like I'm trying to reach this longer term goal and my day to day activities are not getting me closer to that goal. So it'd be helpful to track those lead metrics, my podcast subscriber count my email newsletter subscribers every day or every week, every month to determine if I should continue putting time and energy into this thing or if I need to ditch it entirely or maybe it is starting to work, but maybe I need to hire an expert to come in and help me make the right improvements to iterate a little bit, improve and kind of pour gas on this thing. So at the end of the day I like to follow this magical three year rule that it typically takes about three years for a marketing activity to have success. If my lead metrics are not contributing to my lag metrics, then I might consider helping and support or start to consider abandoning this thing if I'm getting closer and closer to this three year mark and I'm just not seeing the success. So I would identify this lag metric, what are you working towards? And then start to measure those day to day activities to determine am I really getting closer? Are these things really supporting my longer term goals?

[A]

I love that you added the element of metrics to that because I think that can really give us clearer grounding on our marketing activities and a way to measure results and impact versus just randomly throwing things out there. I think if we asked a lot of advisors, you know, let's say you're posting on Twitter and LinkedIn, what are the key metrics you're measuring for success and are those metrics leading to new revenue? If that's your long term goal, I know there's a lot of advisors out there will be like, I have no idea what those metrics are. So what a great way to just kind of step back and look at what are those lag and lead metrics and what is your long term goal over maybe the next two or three years. And I think once you start to dial that in, you'll see, oh yeah, for me to really connect these marketing activities to business revenue or business goals, I just can't have so many things happening all at once. And, you know, I think a lot of times we see people adding things, but we also have, even in our own scenarios, abandoned a lot of tactics. And I'd love to really talk to you, you know, a few things that maybe we've abandoned over the years and why. I think that could be helpful for people listening as they start to take things off their list. Just see how things have changed for each of us over the years. Yeah.

[B]

And for those who know me well, I mean, I've experimented with a lot, I've tried a lot of different things, and it does take me a lot to start to abandon or push these things to the side. I've learned my lessons the hard way, but there's a number of things that I've had to quit or push to the side momentarily to get really focused, to have the success that I'm looking for. One of the big ones and one of the harder ones for me. It reminds me of your comment about what do I think? What am I doing? Because I think I should be doing it. Early on, it was my email newsletter. Everybody had an email newsletter where Wirehouse Advisor, Independent Advisor, everyone had an email newsletter. They sent out every week or every month. I just felt like I should have an email newsletter because everyone has one, I should have one. So that was a really hard one for me to set aside. But if I wanted to have the success with my podcast that, you know, that if I wanted to reach the goals that I had stated, I couldn't be doing everything. I couldn't manage my email newsletter and write it and distribute it the way I wanted to and also get really hyper focused on building my podcast both at the same time, I determined that that was just really challenging to do. So as hard as it was pushing my email newsletter to the side and just going all in on the podcast, three years after starting the podcast, or three years after seeing the success that I was aiming for, I was then able, because I had really good processes in place to manage the podcast and continue to grow it. I was then able to add email marketing back in and just last couple of years have grown the email list pretty substantially, have a really good, consistent process for managing that email newsletter. So just because you push something off to the side and you abandon it, it doesn't mean you can't bring it back. Right. But we need to get rid of some things so we can get hyper focused on, you know, that. That other 50% that Kendra referred to, the other thing that Comes to mind is a couple of years ago hired a, a quiz funnel expert. So I think quiz funnels are fantastic. They can be a great way to grow an email list to get engagement online. That certainly, you know, a great funnel activity that you can include in your marketing funnel. I tried this thing and it just didn't really feel authentic to me. It was like, use this quiz to kind of, I don't want to say trick people, but like get them to answer these questions and then feed them this. What I felt like was like a low quality lead magnet. As a result, I just didn't really like the whole process wasn't something that I would go and do myself and it was just kind of resulting in a lot of people taking this quiz, a lot of people jumping on my email newsletter. But nobody was truly a good fit. And I just didn't really feel great about the whole experience. And again, I've shared this on prior episodes. If it's not something that I'm really excited about, if I can't see myself going like, I can't wait to take this quiz and like get the result, then it's not something that I want to pursue. So those are two things that come to mind. Just the quiz funnel was like, I want to experiment with this, like flashy new interesting thing. Just didn't really feel authentic to me. And then the email newsletter was like, very, very intentional. Like, I got to set this aside.

[A]

I like that you pointed out just because it's a no for now doesn't mean it's a no forever. And we'll talk a little bit about here in a moment. You know, when should someone consider bringing something back in? Maybe like that newsletter. But it's a really good point. I think a lot of times if you can actually realize, like, just because it's no for now doesn't mean it's not a no forever. I think it eases a little bit of that FOMO feeling where you're just like, okay, this is just on ice. It's not like burned to the ground forever. A few things that I've changed my mind on over the year or kind of ripped out of what we do. I used to really push our clients to try to get media quotes for creative SEO backlink building. And you know, over time, what I found, this is a really good reason why you have to ask yourself, what am I doing? Just because I've always done it over time. I found that they stopped linking to your website. And also I found that some of those there was Something weird just happening with these, like re these news articles, or they would just scrape the article off the website. I'm not sure what that's about. That's a newer occurrence. But my clients will get quoted in articles and I go look, and three months later that whole article is just gone. So it really was an evolution of strategy. And even though it was again, a great social proof for current clients and prospects, when I looked at our business goals, like you said, Taylor, it just didn't drive the results we were looking for. It didn't drive good awareness. I looked at our analytics. People weren't coming from these websites. To my advisor, clients websites didn't drive any kind of, you know, revenue. And so again, you know, what are you doing? Just because you've always been doing and should your strategy evolve, that's why it's so important to take a step back when you're overwhelmed. The second one, and I'm probably going to get some hate on this one, is content repurposing. And there's a lot of, you know, advisors and really a lot of people who just want to kind of slice and dice and sling content all over the Internet. And I feel like it's my personal duty to make sure, like, what I'm doing, I believe is going to be effective. And of course that evolves over time. But one thing I have changed my mind about a bit over the years is content repurposing. You know, my, my business could make a lot of money by doing content repurposing. Um, I don't actually recommend that to a lot of our clients. Again, it's not driving the awareness and the results that I want to see. A lot of times when people want to repurpose content, they, you know, for example, like your podcast can be a really popular one. They think that they want to repurpose it to YouTube and they think that they're growing their audience, but they're actually growing a completely separate audience because YouTube is so different. The same way that social media media is so different. The way people interact, the way that you have to create content to perform on each platform is totally different and always evolving. So I've stopped doing a lot of content repurposing. There's a couple clients of mine who still really love to do it in a few different ways. I recommend against it, I'll execute on the wishes, but I make them my recommendation. And I think a lot of people will be really surprised to hear that, that I don't recommend content repurposing. So Again, it's just taking a step back. Is this activity driving toward the business result that you want? And sometimes it can be hard to say, nope, nope, it's not. And you gotta cut it a little.

[B]

Side tangent here because I love this topic about content repurposing. Maybe we should do a longer episode on it. I think a lot of people revert to content repurposing because it's easy. I have this piece of content, I'm just going to repurpose it a dozen different ways. There's a service online I can pay a hundred bucks and they'll repurpose it in all these different formats. It's just really easy. And when something is that easy, it's probably a signal to you that's not going to be very effective. Some marketing activities can be easy and efficient and effective, but the content repurposing is one of those traps where like, oh, I've got this great piece of content. I'll just repurpose it a dozen different ways and it'll support my goals. And I agree with you that I don't think that is a good use of time or money or resources. I do think there is a way to pursue content repurposing. It's just not as easy. So I had a lot of success taking podcast episodes that I did, transcribing them, taking the transcription to a writer, an editor, to turn it into something that's more easily read. Right? See, like reading a podcast transcript is not like reading a great, well written article. So converting it to something that's more easily read online, me spending time putting that into my own voice, helping the editor through the editing process, and then befriending some different media outlets to publish that article on their websites in front of their audience. So leveraging their audience, something else that we've talked about in the past, and in the beginning of those articles, linking to the podcast episode that that content was repurposed from. So, hey, if you want to learn more about, you know, three reasons why you shouldn't do a Roth conversion, I did a podcast episode on this very topic. So I'm leveraging the audience. I'm repurposing this content, I'm leveraging the audience. I'm getting eyeballs on my podcast, which is my. Was my primary goal. But again, there's a lot of pieces there. I had to spend more money, have an editor involved. I had to spend time networking with different media outlets and building trust with them, being able to link to my podcast. So, you know, it took Time to build up that credibility, build up those, you know, relationships. But it's a form of content repurposing that does work and can work, but just not as easy as paying a hundred bucks to some online agency to, you know, cut and splice a bunch of things. So I'll get off my, my tangent there as we wrap up here. We've talked about one of the most important things to do and also one.

[A]

Thing I want to push back on for that because I think repurposing and rebuilding for a different platform for success are different.

[B]

Good point.

[A]

Most of the time when we see repurposing, it's the easy route that we're talking about, right? Hey, let me just take this video, slice it and sling it across four different channels. Whereas I feel like I am all for taking a piece of content that you have crafted that is high quality and saying, how do I make this successful on another platform? And here's what's really smart about what you did. You were still driving into the same funnel. You weren't trying to build another audience over here, over there, you're still driving. You know, that article becomes a top of funnel piece that drive to your podcast. So very strategic. And a lot of advisors may not see that connection point there. But if you're going to rebuild content so that it will perform on the platform you're putting it on and you're willing to do that and it makes sense and it integrates with your marketing strategy. Rock and roll. Like, let's do that. But if you just think you're going to be able to cut and snip a couple videos and sling that one on Instagram and that one on LinkedIn and that one on YouTube. The algorithm and what you are rewarded for in each of these platforms is so different. And I love that you gave that distinction. Because if it's easy, it is a lower likelihood of being efficient and effective. That doesn't mean that can't work and that can't happen. But I think looking for these like silver bullets really doesn't seem to work well. And a lot of times when advisors are repurposing all this, all this content, the question I ask them is, is it working? Is it impacting your business? Effective. If it is and you're that unicorn that can make that work, that's amazing. Congratulations. But for most advisors, think very thoughtfully and very intentionally about how you repurpose content.

[B]

I really like that a lot. Rebuilding versus repurposing, I think that's a really important distinction. Rebuilding this content that's appropriate for that platform. So. So we'll get off that tangent. Really great topic, something we could dive deeper into. But I'll just really quickly say, we've talked a lot about removing things from our list and getting really hyper focused. And I shared an example of where I added email marketing back into something that I abandoned. I got rid of so I could get focused and then I added it back in. So just as we wind down here, let's talk a little bit about how advisors should think about adding other marketing tactics, you know, onto their plate when it is a good and appropriate time to add these things back in. And I'll just quickly say, and I've got. I know you have some great things to share here. I'll just quickly say that you would add something back in if it supports an existing activity in a funnel. So my example of the email newsletter, right. So podcast funnel is working great. It's growing. Everything is firing on all cylinders now. I want to support that funnel in a different way. I can pour gas and add some additional activities to continue to grow that podcast funnel. I could also start to create a new funnel. And that's my example with the email marketing is that that email newsletter is now a middle of the funnel activity. It's almost a separate funnel from the podcast. How do I get more subscribers? How do I nurture and build trust with these subscribers and then how do I convert those subscribers? So I had a great funnel with the podcast. It's working. It's firing on all cylinders. I want to kind of take things to the next level. I'm going to build a new funnel. I'm going to build an email marketing funnel so you can add activities to support an existing funnel or add activities to build an entirely new funnel. And that's how I would think about adding new things. And I'm just like, I'm not just experimenting. I'm just throwing spaghetti at the wall. I'm saying I know that if I add this thing, if I do this other thing, it's gonna only help the current things that I'm doing right now.

[A]

Yeah. And again, we're thinking about what's the next support mechanism for what's in place, not what should I do, what did I do before that I enjoy. But set to the side, how does this bolt on to my current approach? Or am I accepting that I'm building another funnel here? So I love that. Um, so when I think about when advisors should maybe consider adding another channel or tactic, the first thing I Think about is really just like, when has your primary marketing channel got easy? So for you, you didn't just jump into the email list, you really dialed in your process and your approach for the podcast where it was maybe not nearly automated, but you really, you were far ahead probably, I imagine somewhat scheduled out, and you had a process for creating content consistently where you could kind of step back and that process was going to run. So when your primary marketing channel has gotten easy, potentially nearly automated, that's a good point. Point to step back and say what makes sense to do next. The other thing I would add to this is that if adding an additional channel will affect your quality or consistency. So if you adding email would have impacted the podcast in a negative way, I would have pushed back against that. You know, I've got some clients right now with that same conundrum where they're like, I want to add another channel. And I'm like, I do not recommend that because it's going to affect the consistency of your primary marketing channel. And I think a lot of times instead of adding another channel because really you're building another audience. So let's just say you have a podcast and now you want to go over to YouTube. I often encourage advisors to consider adding a nurture platform. I've found that a lot of advisors don't really understand how the middle of the funnel works. So maybe they're posting on something like social media, but they haven't really found a way to move people from social media to their email list. So a lot of times it's not a new channel you need, it's another layer of your funnel. So we have to make sure that all these pieces are working together. And I also think, you know, so email is a really popular middle of funnel. And the thing about email, that's really amazing, it's really effective, which also means it's really freaking hard. So that's something to think about if you are, you know, seeing a lot of success on a certain platform, especially one that's driven by an algorithm like social media or YouTube, how could we potentially layer in not another channel, but a better middle of funnel tactic to move those subscribers, viewers or followers to a channel you own, like email.

[B]

I think the last thing that I would add here is just to emphasize that, you know, you don't have to add more things. Right? There's that quote that more is not better, better is better. And so you could have a great, you know, existing funnel. Let's just go back to the podcast example. It's Got a great podcast. You've got a great podcast funnel. It's firing, it's working, it's growing. You have this urge to, like, do more. You could start a whole new funnel. You can start to add more tactics and start to complicate things, or you could just improve that single funnel. I shared the example in a recent episode about hiring a voice coach to help me, right? You can, you can find all these little things. One of our recent guest, Joe Marshall, we were talking about his LinkedIn strategy and we had suggested that he buy a LinkedIn course. Well, I talked to him yesterday. He bought two LinkedIn courses, right? And he's going deep down that rabble, just improve his approach to LinkedIn marketing. So something could be working really, really well. It doesn't mean you can't get better. I mean, you could spend the rest of your life, life improving as a podcast host and not have to add any additional things or layers to your marketing funnel. So you don't always have to add more. It depends on, on your longer term growth goals. I, I really like where this episode shaped out. I learned some great things. I love, I really love what you said, Kendra, about, you know, what are we doing that we just think that we should be doing? Why are we doing something because everybody else is doing it. So that's something that really stuck out to me today was, yeah, what, what am I doing? I'm probably doing things today that, like, I just think I should be doing that I don't really need to do. So I think it's a great way to kind of approach this marketing overwhelm. How can I get rid of things? What am I doing that I really shouldn't be doing? Kind of tricking myself into believing that I should be doing it. So really enjoyed the episode. Kendra, what are some of your big takeaways?

[A]

You know, I think really it comes back to something really simple. If you are overwhelmed, you are doing too many things. It should be challenging but achievable. And I actually really love what you said. It's like, hey, we don't actually need to add anything else. What would it look like to become a master of your craft? You know, you talk about with the podcast, you, you hired a voice coach. It's like you would have never gotten to that level of detail without becoming obsessed with becoming an incredible podcaster. And quite frankly, I feel like it's really fulfilling when you get to that level of obsession of just like, how do I become amazing at this one channel? And I think if you're listening to this today. If you're in doubt, cut it out. If you're questioning, should I be doing this? I think you can generally cut a lot more than you think. And I also think it's important to, you know, set some kind of reminder for yourself to prioritize focus. Because just like Taylor, I have the same issue. I actually have a recurring reminder in my project management software to prioritize focus. I call it fighting for focus. Because what I've realized is I need a systematic way to remind me to stop doing so much stuff. Because I know that more does not equal better. Better equals better, better quality content on a great, consistent level. Learning about the audience you serve and the pain points and how that flows down into the content you create. There's, there's so many things that you can be doing. But I think everybody's marketing gets better when they do less. And so if you, you know, are thinking about, what could I cut out? We get this a lot from advisors. They also want to know, do they need to have social media as a tactic in their, you know, stack of marketing activities? I would really love to encourage you to go back and check out an episode that we did with Eric Baskin. The title of that episode is how to Turn Podcast Listeners into Clients. The big question we answer on that episode is, what if I hate social media? Do I have to use it to grow my firm? And in the spirit of cutting things out, I want to give you one more opportunity of something you could cut out, which is social media. Our answer will really surprise you. I mean, it may help you take just one more thing off your to do list and hopefully help you avoid marketing overwhelm. So go check that out. We encourage you to cut, you know, 50%, if you can, off of your list list and hopefully this will give you more focus, less overwhelm, and we'll see you next week. 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.