Myths and Opportunities: Marketing Insights for the Financial Services Industry

Joanna Ehresman [00:00:09]:

Hello and welcome to Women Share a marketing guide for women in financial services where successful advisors and corporate leaders share their stories and best practices all in service of helping other women grow their businesses and careers. I'm Joanna Ehresman.

Leah Alter [00:00:26]:

And I'm Leah Alter and on today's episode we are discussing some of the most common marketing myths we've come across in our careers and also some of the biggest opportunities that we have seen for financial advisors to really help take their marketing to the next level. So whether or not you're a financial advisor or on a corporate team this should hopefully spark some ideas and inspiration for your own marketing.

Joanna Ehresman [00:00:53]:

Absolutely. But before we get into those two topics wanted to quickly review a little bit about our background since Women Share is a little bit newer in this space and so wanted to talk about my background professionally. I was at a larger corporate hybrid firm that was RIA and broker dealer affiliated and it was an interesting environment where my responsibility was helping to build the master brand of this entity while also empowering advisors to market themselves as part of the organization but under that master brand. So it was this interesting dichotomy of marketing for the mothership and also helping advisors to grow through their own programs.

Leah Alter [00:01:38]:

And similarly, I spent the majority of my career at a broker dealer and also had an RIA and served several thousand independent financial advisors. I spent time on the business development team recruiting advisors and helping to market the mothership using Joanna's words but spent the majority of my time helping financial advisors build their marketing foundation and really helping them get their brand out there to attract the type of clients that they really want to be working with.

Joanna Ehresman [00:02:18]:

And I think collectively did we do the math on this Leah? We've collectively supported thousands of financial advisors over the course of our lot and I think if you didn't catch the last episode what we are absolutely passionate about is the power of financial advice and how great financial advisors are which is why we love doing marketing to bring that advice to more people.

Leah Alter [00:02:43]:

Absolutely. At the end of the day we want more people being more comfortable marketing their services to investors so that more people are empowered with their money. Right. At the end of the day, money is power and we want to make sure that especially women are empowered by money and financial advice. So thank you all so much for being here. We're going to jump into first dispelling some of those myths. Right so as Joanna and I said, we have worked with thousands of advisors so we hear a lot of feedback from them in regards to growing their business and marketing and I will say the number one thing that I have heard someone actually said to me once I don't believe in marketing which just made me laugh.

Joanna Ehresman [00:03:41]:

Well, I don't believe in Santa Claus. So there you go.

Leah Alter [00:03:45]:

So really that first myth is that marketing is a waste of time and resources. And we know for a fact, right, that when you look across all small businesses that the financial services industry have smaller marketing budgets than any other industry. It's a difference of 20% to 30%. Sometimes when I would work with advisors and they would ask me like, how much should I budget? When I would tell them 10% of their gross revenue, their eyes would get huge. Meanwhile, every other business 10% would be on the low end. Right. We know we're already operating from a place of a smaller budget. And that is why I think it's so important about building a solid marketing foundation. You have to know who you are and you have to know who you want to attract. And a lot of times a lot of flashy, fun things get shown to advisors in terms of growing your business, getting more referrals or clients, and those are all great. But if you don't have a marketing foundation that is super solid, nine out of ten times those are going to fail, regardless of how good those services are. Because at the end of the day, the consistency about your brand, your messaging, who you want to serve, all of that foundational work has to be there. Otherwise you might get lucky a couple of times, but it's not going to give you that consistent growth over time that most advisors are looking for. So it's not a waste of time and resources if you've got the foundation and those processes and everything in place. So that when you do start getting the lead gen that you want from whatever source, you're ready to knock it.

Joanna Ehresman [00:05:59]:

Out of the park yeah. In a way that's authentic to who you are in your practice. Absolutely. And I would say yeah, myth number two that I wanted to cover is highly related to that. It has to do though, with more of the myth that marketing doesn't work because I generated all these leads and maybe sent some emails and nothing happened. And what I have experienced regularly in my career in financial services is you need to have the people and someone focused on business development. I feel like the word sales is a four letter word in Raas and I get it. We are not in the business of selling. Obviously, advisors are providing really valuable advice. However, if an advisor isn't going to invest their time and resources and upskilling and actually closing the prospect, right. Specifically if it's from a marketing channel and not a warm referral, we would regularly coach advisors in my prior role that you need to have a different playbook depending on where that prospect came from in terms of how you approach them. If it is a referral from a client or a center of influence, you have this third relationship that you need to factor into your process and be a little bit more careful. But if you're going to go out and buy ads or source your prospects more directly through, I would say true traditional marketing or advertising means run a different playbook. They're going to be less familiar with you. There's less inherent trust because it's not a referral from someone who knows and loves the work that you, you know, if you are willing to put that effort in and implement, you can grow through those channels. So I think it's an extension, Leah, of really what you said of having the strong foundation. It's the strong foundation and the clarity on I'll call it business development. If we're not going to call it sales on your business development processes because that works hand in glove with going out there and running marketing programs beyond generating referrals from people who know you so well and are providing those very naturally.

Leah Alter [00:08:16]:

Yeah, I love that. I love having whether you call them a playbook or whether you call them workflows, however you define them, the more personalized you can make that experience for that prospect, the better chance you're going to close it. I mean, just period, right? Absolutely. It has to be personalized. Just like once they become client, their advice is personalized. Right. It's kind of providing that same level prior to them becoming a client.

Joanna Ehresman [00:08:52]:

Yeah. And stepping into their issues and thinking about what information are they going to need to know about you, where might there be gaps, right. If they're from a different channel. Anyway, I digress. Point made. Point made.

Leah Alter [00:09:05]:

No, it's an important one. It is good. So the next one I would say is the all or nothing black and white approach to marketing. Right. So if I don't have a huge budget and I'm not on every platform doing everything, then I might as well not do anything. And that doesn't work. One, as we talked about at the beginning, right. From a budget perspective, most firms, most advisors are just not going to budget enough money to be effective everywhere. You don't have to be everywhere to be good at marketing. You don't have to be on every social platform. You don't have to hit them in 20 different ways. On the flip side of that, as we all know, there is no silver bullet. So you do have to have more than one strategy, right. So you can't just go with email or you can't just go with Facebook, right. That's only going to get you so far. But you don't have to do all the things everywhere all at once to be effective. I think we're going to talk about this a little later in the episode, but understanding where your clients are in terms of where they spend their time, how they like to receive content, that is a great place to start. Figuring out what channels in marketing you should focus on and then do really well there, even if know two or three places. Right. So it's email, it's Facebook, and it's LinkedIn, for example. Then just do those three really well versus going, excuse the language, half assed on 19 different platforms, right?

Joanna Ehresman [00:11:10]:

Yes.

Leah Alter [00:11:11]:

So that would be definitely one. You don't have to go all in. You don't have to have a black and white approach to your marketing.

Joanna Ehresman [00:11:21]:

Love it. I agree. I'd say the final myth that I came across so regularly or have come across, is that you can't really measure marketing. So this is potentially a personal vendetta that I have my brother as an engineer at Toro, and Toro is a company that makes commercial lawnmowers, residential lawnmowers, everything. So he is an engineer to the Nth degree. And he has told me, Joanna, marketing is just liquor and guessing. And that has stuck with me for so long, where I am like, I will prove you wrong, Brandon. And it is actually and that has to do with measurement. And I think what's key is first, if you're going to measure what it is you're doing, you need to be clear on your goals and your why, what are you measuring? And everything can be measured in one way or another. You may not be to the big data AI driven dashboard that looks at your results and then predicts next best action or where you should optimize. That is definitely some place where firms are. But even within your own practice, right? Just start measuring what you can and figuring out how to get there. So is it email engagement rates? Okay. If you're looking at email engagement rates, is there a way you can look at which audience opens the email more? Can you segment between clients and prospects and testing things? So I think just having an openness and a tenacity around measuring things, and then not just implementing the ability to measure, but having the discipline, whether it's a quarterly review, a monthly review, to look at the programs, what's working and make decisions, come to actual decisions based on that data of what you're going to do next. So I think the myth that things aren't measurable and marketing is just liquor and guessing. Yes. No, it is not.

Leah Alter [00:13:20]:

Well, and I think also you made a great point, which is one, make sure that if you're setting goals that they're measurable goals.

Joanna Ehresman [00:13:31]:

Right.

Leah Alter [00:13:32]:

We hear about smart goals all the time. Make sure they're smart. Make sure that they are measurable so that you can measure them. And then that is only good if you look at it.

Joanna Ehresman [00:13:45]:

If you do something with it. Yes.

Leah Alter [00:13:47]:

Right. And that's not the sexy part of marketing, right? No, the sexy part is, oh, look at this new pretty flyer we made, or this new ad that's going out or whatever, or this video that we created. We get that. That's like the fun, exciting thing. But being able to make data driven decisions regarding your marketing and your growth is the defining line between those that succeed at it and those that don't. So I think your point is just a really important one.

Joanna Ehresman [00:14:24]:

Yes, absolutely. Okay, so now that we've covered some of the common myths, should we talk about opportunities?

Leah Alter [00:14:31]:

I'm sure people are dying to know the opportunities, not all the things they do wrong. What are some opportunities?

Joanna Ehresman [00:14:37]:

Yes. Well, and this ties to actually one of the myths we covered, but I think the first opportunity is to identify, regardless of your firm's size, have processes and people focused on growth. So it doesn't have to be someone's full time job. It doesn't have to be complicated. But are you clear? Say you're a smaller advisor, practice of two to five people who on your team is clear that a portion of their job is related to growth. And also if you are not prioritizing growth and you're not willing to put that on someone's job description, then marketing probably isn't for you. Right. You can't say, I want to have marketing programs and grow and not invest the resources to actually make it happen. I know that sounds intuitive. I suppose now that as I'm saying it out loud, I don't mean to sound condescending, but it was mind bending how many practices we worked with that would not invest. And allocate time to focus on meeting with prospects because their client books were so full, which was great. Good for them. But if you want to grow, make sure that's clearly in someone's job description.

Leah Alter [00:15:49]:

Absolutely. And then also figuring out resources, third party resources, that can help you depending on the capacity within your firm. Right?

Joanna Ehresman [00:16:00]:

Absolutely.

Leah Alter [00:16:03]:

Putting it as part of someone's job description is really great, but also understanding truly what their capacity on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is, and then filling that gap with a resource, and there's a lot of resources to help you fill that gap. Being like everyone's too busy is not a good enough excuse.

Joanna Ehresman [00:16:23]:

Yeah. Then maybe you should have different growth goals. Yeah.

Leah Alter [00:16:30]:

All right. So I would say this is, again, going to sound very intuitive, but I was always surprised at how few advisors actually did this. But understanding where your clients spend their time consuming content. So I talked about that when we were talking about the spelling myths. But most advisors sort of think that they know, but they've never actually asked. So doing client surveys, not just about how you're serving your clients, those are great surveys to do. But in those also asking, just asking what social media platforms they're on, how they like to hear from you, how often they like to hear from you. Do they read blogs? Do they listen to podcasts? Where are they consuming content? Because if you know that information, it can help you figure out the best use of your time and resources. Right. Going back to your point. And then you're also able to then narrow the focus of the messaging for all that content on who you know, I think we talk about this all the time, right. Which people are afraid to niche down. And our producer, Sarah, always says niche down till it hurts. But it's true, not just for us, but also for advisors. You have to get real crystal clear about who you want to work with. And that can't be like people with money, because duh. Right. All advisors want to work with people with money. You have to get into the touchy feely part of the clients that you want to serve about the people that you resonate, the people that when you see their name on your calendar, you are so excited about that meeting. And it's like, okay, well, what is it about that person that gets me so excited versus this person, which I'm like, oh, that's going to be a rough one, right?

Joanna Ehresman [00:18:37]:

Yeah.

Leah Alter [00:18:39]:

And then start to create content and marketing that is going to help attract more of those people that you're excited to work with and less people that you dread.

Joanna Ehresman [00:18:51]:

Yeah, well, and it ties to, again, I think the perception if you've done a lot of mass advertising, right, or say, well, I bought this ad, I did this thing and it didn't work. The number one place to start when you are looking at your marketing is who are you targeting and where right. Do you have the right audience? And so it takes it from commercial net fishing, right, of, I'm casting this big net out there, and I hope I get the right people to you're putting specific bait out that will attract the exact type. I am bass fishing today. I'm going to put up my bass lure, my hula popper, and reel in a bass, right. Because I don't want the muskie or the northern pike. Sorry. My husband's a fisherman, so we've been fishing a lot.

Leah Alter [00:19:35]:

I'm like, this is going. Yeah. But we are eating our own dog food, so to speak, when we're talking about this, right. And creating this podcast. Right. This podcast is specifically for women in financial services, advisors, corporate leaders who are interested in marketing growth and advancing their careers. That's pretty specific. This podcast is never going well. Who knows? But we do not have a goal of this podcast reaching millions and millions of people. That's not who we're focused on. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a woman in financial services. You're who we're focused on. It's no different for advisors who are offering their services. Get really specific about who you want.

Joanna Ehresman [00:20:29]:

To work with and where they are. Fish. Where the fish are. That will be my last fish metaphor of this episode. All right. Okay.

Leah Alter [00:20:36]:

I would say the third episode, I did a fish episode or a fish one in the first episode.

Joanna Ehresman [00:20:45]:

Yeah. There you go. See it?

Leah Alter [00:20:46]:

Here we go.

Joanna Ehresman [00:20:47]:

Okay. All right. I would say the third opportunity and I don't know if this was just unique to the firm where I was because it was a very marketing driven firm where advisors were used to getting leads from the marketing department. But I've run into so many advisors in my career that do not want to ask for more business from their current clients. And I think it's because they see themselves as their fiduciaries. They're providing advice in the best interest. And that starts to feel like, okay, I'm not getting outside the fiduciary responsibility but they're just not wired that way. They didn't get into this business to be salesy. However, I think back to knowing your client Leah and understanding who your most enthusiastic clients are. That nudge that request that clients are happy to reciprocate if you're providing them value. I'm an advocate for asking clients when you've demonstrated that you've added value. Asking them if they know of anybody in the similar situation that you can help. Right. But referrals it's right up there with prospecting seminars is very polarizing. Advisors either love them or hate them. Asking for referral. Every advisor loves to get referrals. But asking for them is very polarizing. And I just feel like why not ask? Why not ask?

Leah Alter [00:22:10]:

This just reminded me. So I'll share this. There is a firm that I worked with while I was at Kestra that did it was genius. Feel free to steal this.

Joanna Ehresman [00:22:21]:

That's the whole point of this podcast. Steal these ideas. People steal these ideas was that they.

Leah Alter [00:22:26]:

Would update their website and they would say no longer or not currently accepting new clients.

Joanna Ehresman [00:22:36]:

Scarcity yes. Right.

Leah Alter [00:22:40]:

Must be referred by an existing client and they would share that with their current clients because that's really who this was for and then it would never fail. A handful of them would you know my Aunt Becky really is looking for someone. Would you please just have a conversation with her? And it was sort of like the reverse way of asking by saying we're all full right now.

Joanna Ehresman [00:23:12]:

Interesting.

Leah Alter [00:23:13]:

And it worked every time. Every time they'd get a handful of referrals. And I'm not saying that will necessarily work for every firm but I'm saying you can be creative about it too. You don't have to just go to a client and say, do you know anybody that I should be talking to? Because I know that makes most people uncomfortable. But there's creative ways of getting those referrals sharing that because I thought it was genius. The fact and it worked. It really did work.

Joanna Ehresman [00:23:44]:

We might have to do a whole episode sorry. Related to this that brought to mind one other idea. A credit to an advisor that worked with for a long time at Wealth Enhancement Group. But the referral ask that he would have is referring he'd ask his clients to refer people they cared about to a process he had kind of an introductory process that there would be a set of steps and a certain deliverable at the end. And so it wasn't saying refer them to me to become a client, but refer them to this introductory discovery process where they will get X. So that's another kind of way to position referrals where it's not asking for such a huge commitment of give us all of your money to manage and we will help you. Right, but that's the end goal. But it's introducing them to something that's bite sized, that adds value.

Leah Alter [00:24:29]:

Yes, the value add is huge. Especially free value add at the beginning.

Joanna Ehresman [00:24:33]:

Yes.

Leah Alter [00:24:35]:

Okay, so I'm going to say a little inception moment for another great opportunity and that is podcasting. If you have a point of view, if you like kind of long form discussions like we're doing, podcasting can be a fantastic way to market your business there's. Ted Jenkin with Oxygen Financial has a great podcast where he invites local business owners on and has conversations about their business. It's a very two way street, so everybody wins and has used that as a great way to bring on those guests as clients. So podcasting is not just for conversations that just end at the end of an episode. They can be a real great way to market your business, help you establish yourself as an expert in your field, so many different ways of doing that. If podcasting is something that you're interested in and you're not sure how to get started, send us an email. We happy to help you.

Joanna Ehresman [00:25:59]:

We know people.

Leah Alter [00:26:01]:

We know people. So hopefully you guys got some great tips and tricks and if you had some of those same beliefs, hopefully we've dispelled some of those for you today.

Joanna Ehresman [00:26:15]:

Absolutely. And we'd encourage you if you're finding that this content is resonating with you. You can relate to what we are talking about or we've run into similar situations. Please subscribe to WomenShare on your favorite podcasting platform. And do us a favor, please share this with another woman who you think could benefit. Thanks for joining us today and we'll catch you next time.