Transcript
Taylor Schulte (0:00)
Hey everyone.
Kendra (0:01)
Really quick. Before we start today's show, if you're listening to this right now, you've likely listened to one of our advice line episodes where Kendra and I help real life advisors solve their biggest marketing challenges right here live on the show. It's like a free marketing consultation, but recorded so fellow advisors with similar challenges can learn alongside you. It doesn't matter if you have decades of experience or you're just getting started as an advisor. If you have a marketing challenge that's slowing you down, we would love to invite you to join us on a future advice line episode. To be considered, just head over to taylorschulte.com apply and fill out the short form. That's taylorshulte.com apply. We've also included a direct link to the form right there in the episode description in your podcast app. Do not miss this opportunity to get two experienced industry marketers in one place with one goal to provide honest feedback and actionable solutions so you can reach and help more of your ideal clients.
Kendra (1:06)
Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor and we're here to make advisor marketing simple.
Taylor Schulte (1:15)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I'm your co host, Taylor Schulte, and today I'm sharing an episode that I recorded a couple of years ago addressing what I think is the best, best marketing strategy for advisors. The the strategy that provides the best bang for your buck and if done correctly with the right systems and processes in place to support it, can lead to quick, sustainable success. So whether you need to grow ASAP to reach personal financial goals, or you simply have the capacity and processes in place to take on more clients right now, and you're looking for a proven strategy, this episode will give you the steps you need to take action.
Taylor Schulte (1:56)
Okay, so I've had this great tweet from my friend Samantha Russell over at 20 over 10 set aside for a while now, about six months to be exact. And I think this is just a really fitting time for me to share some of my thoughts and response to her tweet. So late last year, Samantha turned to Twitter and she asked the following question. She asked, which one of these 10 questions would you want the answer to? You can only pick one. And then she listed all of the questions in a thread. She did this to get an idea of marketing pain points that advisors were currently experiencing so that she could create content and use her marketing expertise to help them. It was a great idea. So a few of the questions were, what makes for a well executed website that actually converts visitors? Another one was what type of social media content posts actually gets engagement? And another was what are, what are best practices for email marketing? You know, sender name, subject lines, the time to send, things like that. So everyone of course had different replies and opinions to her tweet. But the one that jumped out to me was from Jess Bost, who some of you might know. Jess is a financial planner and VP of brand partnerships at Alpha Architect. And Jess replied to Samantha's question with what I thought was a great follow up question. She said, which one of these, if embraced, has the most impact on generating new business? Some of the confusion for me was which one of these moves leads to the greatest outcomes? Not confusion in your questions, just confusion for me as a new advisor with so much to work on. And Samantha had a great answer in which she acknowledged, well, it's tough to say because of two things. Number one, the answer depends on your business and your target audience. True. And two, all of these questions and marketing topics that she posed are all very interconnected. They all work together. Jess is not the first advisor to ask this question. It's quite common, especially with new advisors or advisors struggling with marketing. You know, what's, what's the quickest path to marketing success? What marketing strategy is going to have the most impact? Or what's the best use of my time and dollars? When it comes to marketing, it's really not all that different from a client or prospect asking us what the best mutual fund is or what the best insurance policy is. While a lot of people are looking for shortcuts because they don't want to do the hard work or they don't have the patience to let their boring, low cost investments, you know, slowly compound over time. I, I know that's not where Jess was coming from. She recognizes that time and money are often, very often wasted when it comes to marketing. She's being smart and intentional and she's trying to avoid chasing shiny objects. Resources are not unlimited. So what's going to have the most impact on growing my firm? It's a very valid question and one that I'm not sure we talk about enough. So given that, I wanted to share some thoughts about how I might answer Jess's question. So to kick it off first, before we consider or pursue any marketing strategy, SEO, podcasting, blogging, email marketing, whatever it might be, we we have to document where that strategy or activity fits into our marketing funnel. You might remember the marketing funnel from the Kitsis marketing summit in 2021. But to quickly recap, the marketing funnel has three layers, the top, the middle and the bottom. Top of funnel marketing activities is where we build awareness to our firm, to our brand, to our services. When we engage in top of funnel activities, our goal is not to convert someone into a client. Our goal is just to get visibility. We attract our ideal clients into our ecosystem, our funnel. And there are a few different opinions on what marketing activities fit where. But to me, top of funnel marketing activities include things like SEO, search engine optimization or paid advertising, or paid social media ads or direct mail. Even cold calling could be considered a top of funnel marketing activity. These activities build awareness and they help us get in front of people who we do our best work for. Once we have their attention, then we want to move them into the middle of our marketing funnel. The middle of our funnel is where we build trust, we show our expertise and we nurture our ideal clients. Again, the goal here is not to convert them into a client. The goal is to just build trust and show them how we can solve their specific pain points. Some people are ready to take action right away and move to the bottom of the funnel asap. And others might take months or years for before they're ready. But when they are ready, we want to have a good process for moving them into the bottom of our funnel. And that's where we take them through a thoughtful process to show that potential client that our solution, our services are the most fitting for their needs. The goal at this stage is for, in my opinion, 60% or more of the people who go through the bottom of the funnel process in its entirety to become a client. Anything less than that and your bottom of the funnel activity likely needs some help and attention. Notice I said in its entirety because some people do drop into the bottom of your funnel who aren't a good fit. And in those cases we might refer them to another firm or provide some resources to help them get to the right person. Again, there are some different opinions here, but to me a bottom of the funnel activity as it pertains to financial advisors would be some sort of process a potential client goes through to evaluate your services. In other words, a sales process, a journey of some sort that leads them to make a final decision about engaging services. At my firm, it's a three step process that starts with a short introductory phone call, then moves to a discovery meeting where we collect some key documents from them and learn more about their situation. And then it ends with a presentation and a proposal. And over the last 24 months, exactly because we measure this and track it exactly, 61% of the people that we took through that process became clients, which led to about $400,000 in new recurring annual revenue just over the last two years. So back to my initial comment that got us here. Before we consider or pursue any marketing strategy, we have to document where that strategy or activity fits in our marketing funnel. Why? Because it allows us to set proper expectations. Think about Jess's question for a moment. She asked which one of these strategies will have the most impact? To answer that question and set proper expectations with Jess, we have to get clear on where that activity fits in our marketing funnel. One of the most common frustrations I hear from advisors is with regards to paid social media ads. Taylor I hired the best marketing agency I could find to run social media ads for me. I'm spending thousands of dollars per month and I haven't seen a single client as a result. I hear similar things about SEO as well. Taylor. I'm getting all sorts of traffic to my website, either on my own or I paid somebody and I'm not seeing any clients from it. To which I say, well, where does that specific activity fit in your marketing funnel? Those examples, those two examples were both top of funnel marketing activities. The purpose of those activities is not to generate new clients. The purpose is just to simply build.