December 3, 2024 • 34 mins
Tune in for actionable advice on what to implement next — and why — including hosting webinars, setting up email sequences, engaging with niche associations, and connecting with your audience through relatable social media posts.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the top advisor marketing podcast brought
to you by Proudmouth.
I'm your host, Matt Halloran.
Being your own loud is not new to
marketing, but the mindset, strategies, and resources to
help you get there are evolving faster than
this industry is keeping up. It is time
to find a new perspective on what works,
why,
(00:21):
and how to move your business forward.
Listen as I interview guests to help you
learn from them how to be your own
Loud. Let's
get to the show.
Hello, and welcome to another Top Advisor Marketing
podcast. I'm your host, Matt Halloran. Now this
is part 2
of our 2 part
potentially 3 part mini series to talk a
(00:43):
little bit about your influence marketing strategy. Now
the last one that we did,
we laid the foundation. Kirk and I talked
about all of the different things that you
need to do to build a very strong
foundation
when it comes to your brand, your language,
your techniques, your systems,
your thought leadership.
And now we're gonna switch gears and talk
about how you
(01:04):
start this escape velocity. So we use the
rocket analogy here a lot.
Right now, you have built this incredible foundation
that when your rocket starts to go off
into the air and really you ignite the
engines, it doesn't blow your entire foundation. We
built that foundation last time. Now is when
we're gonna start having you ignite your engines
(01:24):
and start going up into space. And, of
course, it takes time. That rocket sits there
for a little bit of time before it
starts taking off. But the farther it goes
and the higher it gets, the easier it
is, which we talk a lot about that
when it comes to escape velocity. So, Kirk,
we're gonna dive right into
how do you light these fires because it's
(01:46):
not just one thing, it's lots of things.
Yes. Absolutely. So momentum is everything.
And just like the rocket analogy, you have
to achieve escape velocity to start pushing through
the atmospheres in earth to get to weightlessness.
Weightlessness is that place where you're a celebrity
influencer in your niche,
and that's what ultimately
(02:07):
you can get to. A lot of people
are good with what we call the 3rd
stage of influence, which is authority. And authority
is where everybody sees you as that in
your niche audience and your region,
and those are powerful things. So we've gone
through the first eleven. Like Matt said, those
are foundational things.
If you don't have those things in place,
it's very hard for these other things to
(02:28):
really work. You can do them, but they're
not nearly as effective. And that's why content
part of a content strategy or an influence
strategy is everything.
You have to have that role, and it
has to be good, has to be authentic.
You gotta put the time in. You can't
show up in half ass. What do you
gotta do, mister Halloran?
You get a whole asset, baby. We're getting
(02:48):
t shirts at one of these points
for that. We just haven't gotten there yet.
Expand.
So now that you've got this foundation
rolling, you gotta be good at it and
steady, consistent.
The next thing to do is start hosting
webinars
as an example. And webinars are great because
they're so efficient.
(03:08):
I don't know that they've taken over for
seminars,
but it's I'm sure they're running neck and
neck. If anything, we'll just keep it there.
And they're both really important,
but webinars are so convenient.
I would say that
a cadence is one of the most important
things with a webinar. And getting into details,
share checklists,
(03:28):
share tools, tips, stuff like that. That's what
we do on ours.
And Matt and Jessica are really offering a
lot of value if you never hung out
on any of our webinars. We do 2
a month.
And that's a good cadence.
Easy to replicate, keep it consistent. What you
don't wanna do is start off big and
then slow down if you can help it.
So try to do those base those on
(03:50):
from time to time, a blog
or a podcast,
but get into more details. Maybe show us
some examples because now you got the value
of it being a visual
unlike a podcast. So get into some details,
show us some examples.
Those can be really good things to differentiate
what you're doing.
Invite followers on your social channels,
(04:12):
email everybody,
and try to get as relevant an audience
as you can and be clear about who
this webinar is for. Sometimes it can be
for different parts or segments of your niche
audience too.
For instance, we typically work with RIAs, financial
advisors, Fintech, stuff like that.
Sometimes we're gonna be doing a lot more
in the future with marketing assistants. So we
(04:33):
wanna make sure we're clear that this is
for marketing assistants,
not for advisors.
Although they can come and figure out what
we're teaching marketing assistants anyway. Okay. So that
was number 12, hosting webinars. So get good
at that. Make sure you are consistent with
it. If you wanna boost it, those are
options for you too. So run some ads
to get more people there, but gauge that.
(04:54):
But you should be able to get 20
to 50 people signing up on a regular
basis for those, and those are good numbers.
If you can steadily have those people, that's
good. If you can go above that, excellent.
Now there are some larger partners that we
do webinars with, and we've had as many
as 500 or 600.
Those are great those are great and very
successful webinars. They don't happen all the time,
(05:16):
but it is good to find partners you
can do them with who can
market to their base as well
and bring some exciting new people to your
world.
Number 13 is email automation. So set up
email sequences. When you set up email sequences,
you wanna make sure that they're relevant to
what somebody's interest was. Unless they're just signing
(05:37):
up for an email newsletter, in which case,
you're gonna be sharing your thought leadership, what's
going on.
The more simple we find the more simple
they are, the more engagement we get. So
the we've tested
doing really extensive with a ton of value.
Those take a lot of time. They're not
any they're not we don't feel like they're
worth it.
It's better off a lot of times to
(06:00):
get somebody get one and maybe two things,
have simple call to action, be really clear
about it,
and get people
at least to read that one thing versus
trying to get them to engage in a
much larger commitment, which may take them half
hour to get through. So try to do
that as much as you can. The sequences,
if you can, should be also based on
(06:20):
what somebody like I said, what somebody signed
up for. If they signed up for a
white paper, for example,
break down that white paper and tools and
resources and facts and stats or whatever you
can to give them more and more. And
then maybe call them back to a webinar
if that's successful. It could have been you
led with the webinar and that white paper
was who knows? But usually, you wanna get
(06:42):
the lead magnet
to drive your own audience, which is getting
their email address, which is really important. Don't
ever think that email is not important. It's
more important than social media. Okay? Because you
control that list. Nobody can ever take that
away from you. LinkedIn shuts down shuts you
down,
you're done. You just lose. You just lost
all your followers
until you can beg them and pay them
(07:02):
lots of money to get back in or
whatever you have to do. Never been shut
down. Yeah.
So email automation is important, and you might
wanna hire somebody to help out with that.
I think the first thing everybody thinks of
is going to chat
to AI and trying to figure out email
sequences. You gotta be really careful about how
you add value there. So unless you can
(07:24):
have a really great prompt and feed it
some good content to break down, you're not
gonna get much quality there. So be really
careful about how you choose to draft those
and make sure you got a good system.
Make sure you got a system that can
trigger and automate
your email. Okay?
Number 14 is an East Association engagement.
Matt's got a great example of this, but
the idea is that when you join an
(07:45):
a relevant association for your ideal audience,
you've got a great opportunity to meet lots
of people. The thing you wanna do here
is you don't wanna come flying into an
association
acting like you're gonna get a bunch of
business. What you wanna do is be the
most helpful person
in town. That's your key. And it could
take you 6 months to a year for
that to really happen.
(08:06):
Maybe it takes even longer, but you gotta
be willing to pay your dues in those
places and be so valuable
that people wanna talk about you and know
that you're not here for the wrong reasons,
which is just to do business with everybody
without adding any value to the group. Because
associations are all about adding value, so you
gotta be a leader, not value.
Can you share you got a great example
(08:28):
of that.
Yeah. So Brian Haney, who was on the
panel with when I was moderating the panel
at MDRT,
he is
a member of the National Association of Association
Executives.
Might not have that entirely correct. But, basically,
what it is, he is on this board
with all of these other association executives,
(08:48):
and he doesn't focus on the associations. He
just focuses on the executives who run the
association.
So talk about niche within a niche. But
here's the thing. Every time there's a new
president, he brings them on his show and
he does webinars and educational things. But he's
even gotten it to the point now. He's
been doing this for years, like 7 years.
He wrote part of the test for the
(09:10):
certification.
So, Kirk, everything that you just said is
so vitally important
that you have to put in your time.
You're looking at 24 to 36 months before
you can really
start asking for business. Now will you get
business ahead of time? Absolutely.
But they're gonna feel you out, and they
wanna make sure any of these associations,
(09:32):
any of these niches wanna make sure that
you're not gonna be a fly by night
person and come in and try to sell
stuff and then leave. Absolutely.
Take that to heart and approach everything the
way that we're talking about. If you can't
commit like that, then maybe
following that is not for you. And remember
that if you don't have the time
(09:53):
or it's really hard to be a great
content marketer if you don't wanna be generous
to put the time in. Let's be honest.
Everybody wants a shortcut.
The time when you realize there are no
shortcuts is when your marketing is gonna take
up. Number 15 is social posting on your
personal brand or your personal life.
You have to be
careful here. But I know for instance, LinkedIn's
(10:13):
been
there's definitely
a push to more personal side of business
and sometimes just purely personal.
People always tie it back in, which is
great and I think valuable,
but there's definitely more.
One of my most successful post
(10:33):
was me with my 2 youngest kids, and
we were
at Tamarameet Lake, which is a lake that
cold water and the top the entire depth
of the water is all the exact same
temperature. It's really cool. There's only 80 of
them, I think, in the world,
and it's not too far from our home.
And I just I talked about being there
and getting away.
(10:55):
I'm sure I tied in business. I don't
remember right now, but that that post did
really well.
And sometimes
so I think Matt has a formula of
4 to 1 that that he thinks is
the best, and I agree with him.
So think about that. So 4
business oriented value
post to 1 personal post. Okay? So that
(11:15):
means once a week,
we don't get to that level
because I don't get it done. But
we definitely Truth comes down. Make an effort.
Yeah. We're yeah. We're probably do one one
every 2 weeks, once a month. Yeah. Yeah.
So probably
maybe 8 to 1.
(11:35):
But it's a really good idea to
consider how people want to know who you
are, what you do, because they need to
relate to you. This is all pretty obvious
stuff, so I won't go anymore. But the
4 to 1 is a good rule.
I end up doing 8 to 1. How
I don't know what you do. You We
do I do 4 to 1. Yeah. So
I'm very strict to the 4 to 1.
Now the 4 to 1 was the goal.
(11:56):
We didn't get there right away. It actually
took a little while for us to get
there. So I think the other thing too
is we're a little more prevalent on LinkedIn.
And the rule there is a it's a
little maybe a little Squishier. Yeah. A little
bit lighter because it's
less personable on LinkedIn, typically, but it is
changing. And that I think it's a good
dynamic.
(12:16):
If people go too personal,
then I think
people may be more likely
to shut that off. It really depends on
your audience and what you're doing. Some people's
entire thing is based around that, and they
do really well with it. 1 of our
one of our clients,
Larry.
Right? He does an amazing job, basically,
(12:38):
talking about finding joy every day. I personally
don't know where he's getting all these posts
from. The guy must just live at he's
Oh, he's got a full he's got a
full time
marketing person, which actually is Denise's wife. I
know. He keeps having fun every day. He
is. He calls it joy.
Yeah. He that's a balance thing, dude, and
(13:00):
it's really intentional. I can't wait for you
to meet him, man. He is just such
a nice Yeah. ISO.
Yeah. It's incredible. I've been following him more,
and it's unreal how dedicated he is to
his brand
and to being who he says he is,
which is finding joy every day.
And it sounds like his him and his
kids in his way for having a lot
(13:20):
of fun. Congratulations.
That's a great thing. So those are the
expand. Now we're gonna talk about
other people's podcasts.
And Matt is definitely an expert on this,
so he's gonna get into that. This is
the second level of expansion. Right? So what
we talked about with Kirk is the internal
expansion of what you can do within your
own book of business, your own list, and
(13:42):
your own niches. Now we're gonna talk about
what you can do to
get on other people's shows.
So step number 1 is for you to
look at where your ideal client goes to,
like, shows that they listen to.
Not what you want to necessarily do. And
I'll give you an example. I just interviewed
Tom Tom Schwab from Interview Valet, and advisors
(14:03):
will come in and say, I wanna be
on CNBC.
No. Advisors
watch or listen to CNBC's podcast.
You need to find a podcast that talks
to your ideal client. And one of the
ones examples that he gave
was a fitness over 40 because if you
are a financial services professional or a person
who provides advice
who really wants to attract
(14:25):
that audience,
fitness minded successful people over 40, then you
need to be on that show, not CNBC.
So what you wanna do is you wanna
create a hot list. Right? You all used
to do this when you were early on
in your career with sales. Here are my
top 10 prospects, top 20 pro prospects.
We want you to do that for 20
podcasts. You have to write these down, and
(14:46):
you have to say how many episodes they
have, who is the host,
and then your system is you're gonna, 1,
subscribe to those shows, and, 2, start interacting
with their posts. So when they post on
social media about the show, you need to
start commenting.
They start seeing you, and then when you
ask to get on the show, it works.
You also want to promote their show. So
(15:08):
if there was an episode of fitness over
40 that you absolutely loved, repost that sucker
on your social. I loved this episode. Here's
what I loved. It's just, again, showing support
for shows you wanna be on. And then
after being a guest, we have a rule
here that if you're gonna be a guest
on our show, you have to agree ahead
of time that you're gonna share that show
with your entire audience. You wanna do the
(15:30):
same thing for the shows that you're a
guest on. Share it far, share it wide,
send it to your email address, talk to
your clients about it. All of those things
are super super important.
Engaging anything that you can possibly engage with
on social media,
especially after they post. So the goal is
so when I'm on another person's podcast, I
(15:50):
tag that person in that podcast of our
post here at Proudmouth,
then hopefully
that host
interacts with the post, and that gives me
an opportunity to again start interacting with that
host. It's all about the traffic and it's
all about the social communication.
And then I'm going to dive just a
little bit more deeply into the 4 to
1, if you don't mind, Kirk, because I
(16:11):
think there's a lot of times too that
you can use an OPPs
for your own personal life. So Larry is
a wonderful example. We'll use Larry Sprung again.
Submit Linn Money podcast,
and his whole thing is what did you
do today that brought you joy?
He's a huge hockey guy, and so, like,
he's been on hockey podcast talking about hockey,
(16:32):
and he's got a couple of kids who
play pretty competitive hockey and how he also
has this thing about what rink is he
at today. And you guess the rink, he'll
donate x amount of money to your favorite
charity.
This is how all of this stuff starts
really working together, and an OPP strategy can
be really powerful for you to hit that
next engine that you're igniting to continue that
(16:54):
rocket going up into the air.
So now we're gonna talk about or Matt's
gonna talk about how to be proud of
your show.
And this is something
that seems so obvious,
but you have when you have your own
show, so whether podcast and video,
being proud of it and talking about it
(17:15):
can be one of the most important things.
Because if you don't,
the people who are most likely to start
spreading the love and cheer about it
are the people that are gonna think you
don't it's not for them or you don't
care about it or you're not proud of
it. So take it away.
Yeah, dude.
It just blows me away. I'll be in
office hours or ask an expert with our
(17:37):
clients,
and I will ask them how often are
they talking about their show in client meetings.
And they still they're clients of ours, and
they still don't do it. And I'm like,
look. You have to put it on your
agenda.
It's really important
because if you don't show that you're excited
about it, then nobody else is gonna be
excited about it.
(17:58):
It just it I don't know. I've heard
objections, Kirk.
Matt, makes me sound salesy, but you're not
selling anything. You're giving something away for free,
and it's your personality and your expertise. Yeah.
It's not a sales thing. So I think
the new wave of
advisers
doing content marketing
really get it.
(18:18):
Yeah. I think it's generation that's been marketing
for a decade or 2 that have had
experiences where
I hire you to do my marketing for
me, so I'm not gonna do anything.
But I can tell you that the younger
generation,
maybe a little bit maybe a little bit
less experience,
are so hungry,
(18:39):
and they are absolutely killing it. They do
all the right they're just soaking everything up
that we say, whether it's in our academy
or becoming a client of our managed service.
It's really fun to see.
Yeah. And I think that's exciting about this
industry,
but I think if you've been around for
a couple decades and you're not and you're
(18:59):
trying to do a set it and forget
it and you're not involved,
you are gonna find out the hard way
that
you should have been paying more attention, and
you should. Gary Vaynerchuk said this, I think,
a decade ago,
that every company now is a media company.
Yep. And if you don't know how to
do media and content marketing,
(19:20):
you are really gonna struggle. And it's we're
already seeing that enough financial companies. Right? Organic
growth for RIAs has been nonexistent for 5
years. There's been all kinds of talk about
it. It's one of the most talked about
organic growth topics
in that space.
And why is that?
I think it might relate to exactly what
we're just we just talked about. Anyway, keep
(19:41):
flowing here because there's Yeah. How do you
show pride in your show? And keep
pride isn't just about talking about it. It's
about coming prepared
to be generous and valuable.
And preparation is such a huge component. I
think the more prepared you are and you
know that you did a good show, the
higher probability it is that you're going to
(20:01):
be proud of it. The number one thing
that you have to do is you have
to make sure that you're actually writing a
show or doing a show that's applicable to
your ideal client. And the best way to
do that is to make sure that you
are just keeping on top of reading, not
always reading what's going on in the markets,
which is what a lot of you do,
but when you pick that niche that we
talked about in the first part of this
2, 3, 4, 5 part miniseries that we're
(20:23):
working on right now is that what your
niche is looking for. You know what they
want, you know what they need, and that's
what your content's gonna be.
When you're sitting in a client meeting, when
a client says something about their niche or
let's say an investment management strategy
like a Roth conversion,
what you need to say is, hey, look,
you know what? I did a really deep
dive on this in a 3 part miniseries
(20:45):
on our podcast. Are you subscribed to our
podcast yet? No. I haven't meant to that.
Well, grab your phone real quick. Let's go
ahead and get you subscribed. I'm gonna show
you where the Roth conversion
miniseries is, but I'm still gonna answer for
it today. But, listen, I understand that you're
not gonna remember everything that I say today
because we cover a lot. Please go back
and listen to that episode or those episodes.
That is absolutely huge.
(21:07):
You also always have to send everything that
you're doing to your email list. This is
that owned audience that Kirk and I are
talking about. Kirk just talked about at the
top. Listen. If LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram shuts
down, you don't have
those people. You don't own them. You own
your email list. Please make sure that you
are constantly emailing people. And
with your niche or your centers of influence,
(21:29):
they need to be on those lists too
because you're gonna be providing them with wonderful
pieces of information. Sorry. Just to it's not
just that those
just going back to the idea of owned
audience, and
we're creating a little bit of fear for
you there. It's not as so much that
they might shut you down as much as
it is. They change their algorithms,
and all of a sudden, you were getting
(21:49):
all kinds of visibility engagement, and then all
of a sudden, you're not. And you're not
doing anything different. They've just changed something. You
gotta figure it out. Between that happening, you
have a lot more control over email, not
complete control because
spam and all that kind of stuff. So
you gotta work hard to be only to
communicate with people who wanna be communicated with
because that really drives up your acceptance.
(22:11):
But anyway, back to this. Just wanted to
make sure people didn't think it was this
drastic thing that was the real risk. It's
there's all kinds of other risks in there
or.
You just made it even scarier at your
forum, dude. But I absolutely agree with you.
So when you do come out with new
content and that content is applicable to a
meeting you might have had 3 weeks ago,
email that client and say, hey, missus Johnson.
(22:34):
I don't know if you remembered, but we
talked about these Roth conversions again. Roth conversions,
hey. I just did a show about it.
This might even help you make a more
informed decision. That's really important. Yeah. That's where
having those great
CRM systems where you really dedicated your team.
Look. We just talked about these four things.
Just put the keywords in there, and then
(22:54):
you could look for those keywords and say,
anybody who we talked about this with, send
them that episode.
The number one thing that clients don't like
about their advisers is they don't feel like
they're getting personalized communication enough. And, Kirk, that
is the solution.
And that this is why this is I
don't like using this word very much, but
it's so holistic
(23:15):
because it has so many applications, not just
for you to bring in new business, but
client communication and retaining assets, getting greater share
of wallet. It's really powerful. Alright. I'm gonna
blow through a couple of these real quick
and then I'm gonna switch it back over
to you.
The other thing that I want you to
do is promote. Right? So this is that
be your old loud, be proud of what
you're doing, ProudMouth, right, which is the name
(23:36):
of our company, which we named specifically
because we wanted you to be proud of
the content that you create.
You have to talk about it. In fact,
I was hanging out early on, it was
probably 2 or 3 years ago before COVID,
actually, that an adviser, when they would go
to networking events, she would say that she
was a professional podcaster. People would be like,
what? You make a living with podcasting?
(23:57):
No. I don't make a living with podcasting,
but that's what I do. I love to
educate the general public. And so she would
lead instead of saying I'm a financial adviser,
or I sell insurance, or I'm a wealth
manager or financial planner. She would lead with
the fact that she was a podcaster, which
kept the conversation going. So So wait a
second. So you actually podcast on financial topics,
not just financial topics. We talk about what
life is like in blankety blank niche, whatever.
(24:19):
And she was like, Matt, I get so
much more engagement, and I get people to
sign up for my show, But, yes, I
am a financial adviser. Just such a different
way to communicate who you are and what
you do and what makes you unique and
different with your elevator pitch instead of just
saying, oh, I help people live the retirement
dreams that they've always wanted. Man, they probably
heard that a 1000000 times. Yeah. But if
you could tie in a really interesting
(24:41):
hooker or niche
and what you do for that niche, and
then that's what I talk about in my
podcast Yep. You get both accomplished. And they're
not easy. But what you just said, if
they've heard it a 1000000 times,
then you gotta figure something else out to
say. Yeah. And that's where a podcast can
be, oh, that's interesting. You have a podcast.
Some people say stuff like, oh, everybody's got
(25:01):
a podcast. That is not true. That's so
not true. That is not true. Yeah. Most
of them, when they they say they have
a podcast, they probably should say, I had
a podcast,
or I'm probably not gonna have one for
long because 90% of them are done at
before 10 episodes.
And it's not a good show, and they're
not prepared. And, again, this is that whole
pride thing. The other thing that I think
(25:22):
a lot of advisors
in our audience don't do with their shows
is they don't ask for audience engagement. So
here's another example. The keyword search that you
were talking about within your CRM,
I send you a social media post, I
send you a blog, I send you an
email, right, or I send you a link
to the podcast.
Part of your
(25:43):
CTA
isn't to just listen to the show.
Listen, I'd love for you to like, share,
and comment on this.
It's okay to ask people to do that
because if we start getting more and more
audience engagement,
that's going to please the algorithm and get
it even higher. But the flip side of
that is is when somebody does comment on
your posts
from the long form content creation turned into
(26:04):
short form stuff,
you have to comment back.
The first line of my first book, The
Social Media Handbook for Financial Advisors, has to
do with the fact that it's social media.
It's back and forth. If you're just screaming
into the void, social media doesn't care. It's
all about the interaction.
And then last but not least, I wanna
(26:25):
touch on is
get out there, have your podcast
or your show, I actually like calling it
a show a little bit more, your show,
sponsor a local team. It shouldn't be Kirk
Lowe's Financial Practice.
It should be the Top Advisor Marketing Podcast
sponsors the triple a hockey team. Or that's
(26:47):
the sort of stuff that makes a huge
difference.
Get more visibility to the content that you
create so people can start building a relationship
with you
before you start asking them to do business
with you. So, Kirk, I know there's a
couple other things in this list I know.
But I wanna stay true to time here,
and I want you to wrap up with
this. Skipped 2 things.
I know I did, but we're gonna run
out of time, dude. Do you just wanna
(27:08):
done, dude.
I'm not letting our audience down. Oh, you're
okay. Alright. That's fine. That's fine. Okay. So
guest expert.
I love the guest expert. This is actually
a huge thing that I have that's kinda
part of my old job here is when
I'm on other people's podcast, I am there
to become a guest expert. I'm an expert
on podcasting performance,
(27:29):
on client communication,
on client retention,
influence,
obviously,
how to accelerate. The big thing that I'm
starting to talk more about is this great
wealth transfer and how are you gonna get
Gen x and millennials attention.
I'm getting a lot of bites on that.
Now is it's a content marketing strategy,
but you gotta have that hook. You have
to have that hook. One of my favorite
(27:51):
hooks that I actually heard in MDRT again
was an advisor who says, I work with
broke doctors.
And the you're a financial advisor. Yeah. So
early on in a doctor's educational journey, they're
broke. Right? They're not making any money. They're
accruing all of this debt. My job is
to prepare so when they get that first
big paycheck
(28:11):
that we can use that really wisely.
And so he speaks at medical schools and
he speaks at residency
programs, and he speaks at post doc programs,
and this guy is the guest expert. When
you have a niche, you can start seeing
how all of these doors open. So many
of you think when you have a niche,
the doors close, but they don't. Doors just
(28:33):
open and open. And then the last thing
is, which,
man, I don't understand why more of you
don't do this, but you have to optimize
your Google My Business.
Listen, it's gonna be there if you like
it or not. If you have a physical
address, Google My Business is gonna be there.
You have to talk to your compliance department
to see what you can do to maximize
(28:54):
that,
to make sure that that goes for in
your favor.
Kirk, when you go we talk about this
a lot. You just traveled to the States
a little while ago. Right? And you were
trying to find places for your family to
eat. I'm assuming
that things like Yelp and Google played into
the fact of where you guys chose to
go eat. Is that fair? Google, yes.
(29:15):
Yep. I don't know because I my wife
was the copilot. That was her job, to
be honest.
We should probably bring her at an ask
for anything. She was very happy. We're looking
for vegan restaurants, and it was not easy
going through the Appalachians,
West Virginia, and some of us yeah. It
was very difficult.
But
But if you're in a new city now
(29:36):
I do this all the time because I
travel a lot here at ProudMouth for conferences.
The first thing that I'm doing is I'm
yelping, and I'm looking for their reviews. Yes.
I'm looking at what the people say, and
I think I don't know if you told
me this or somebody else I'm close to
told me this, that they read the first
two positive reviews and the last two negative
reviews so they can really see what the
contrast is. Guess what? Google is googling you
(29:59):
regardless if you want the googling to happen
or not, so you need to get in
front of that. Yeah. Absolutely. Any opportunity,
search is still a big thing.
Mhmm. It's weird. It seems to be not
as popular right now, or maybe that's just
me. I know there's people talking about it,
marketing professionals. Not all of them, but it
is huge.
One of the things that we take a
lot of pride in is, from a from
(30:21):
an SEO standpoint, is when we're pushing the
agenda of authentic
content, which really drives SEO.
So you've got an advantage if you're doing
your own content, but just optimize things. So
in particular, we're talking about your my business
page, not SEO
in general, but they're both really important.
But, yeah, if you can get that done,
(30:42):
it's just one more thing
that is pretty front and center that's gonna
come up, because they're gonna look for your
address
and they're or learn about you.
But I think most advisors have ratings turned
off or reviews turned off. Correct? Or can
you not do that? No. Google won't let
you. There there are ways to get around
it, but it's gonna be there regardless if
(31:04):
you really want it or not. I think
there are ways to do it, but it's
not easy nor is it intuitive.
But the goal is to make it the
Internet work for you. And I'm gonna give
you one more tip and then, Kirk, we're
gonna have to do the next thing in
our next episode because we're over on time.
And here it is.
Go to chat gbt or just go to
the Internet
(31:24):
and type this question in.
What searches
do my niche
search the Internet for when it comes to
my financial services practice?
That's Don't type in my niche because
it doesn't no. Just to be clear,
type in what your actual niche is. Yes.
(31:45):
They can describe. Best as you
can. Sorry. Go ahead. Thank you. Just intentional.
Yeah. Please don't do that word for word.
I was trying I should've said insert here
is what I should've said. But, yeah, if
you do that, then all of a sudden,
the Internet is gonna tell you what your
ideal target market is always searching for. That's
what you're gonna put on your website. That's
the questions that you're gonna answer. That's what
(32:07):
your content's gonna be. That's what your podcast's
gonna be. That's what you're showing this what
social media posts are. Because if you become
the person who's answering that question, which ProudMouth
has done for last, what, 7 years now
is we're answering a number of questions. 1,
how do you stop being the best kept
secret? How do you go ahead and create
a content marketing strategy that's compliant? What do
you need to do to stop, rise above
the noise, and be your old loud? People
(32:28):
actually search that stuff, and now that our
language is becoming ubiquitous within the space, if
you type in b, you're allowed into
the Internet, we come up. Right? Rise above
the noise. Best Kepsi, we come up because
that's something that we've been working at for
a really long time. Compliant content marketing strategy
for advisors. There's all sorts of different things
that we've been really working really hard to
(32:50):
do. So, Kirk, okay, we're already over on
time. Yeah. I wanted to give a talking
talk. A preview just and then let you
shut this down.
So
next show, we're gonna talk about referrals.
We're also gonna talk about expanding your reach
into a year and scaling up in year
3. We'll try to get that done in
in episode 3 of a 3 part series.
(33:11):
If it becomes a 4 part series, it's
likely my fault because Matt's list were typically
he got through them quicker than I did.
That. Although not as quickly as he makes
it out that he's gonna get through them.
But
I just talked back than you do. That
Yeah. Seems faster, but it was. But we
are gonna have a part 3, maybe a
bread 4. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And what we
(33:32):
haven't talked about yet,
as I smoke my hit my
microphone here, send it flying, is that we
are going to document all this so so
that you can download it all. So
we're actually we've already shared 30
different tactics that you wanna be thinking about.
We stopped numbering these. I apologize for that,
(33:54):
But we will get back to numbering maybe
or not. No. I you were number I
stopped numbering because I skipped around, so that's
all I needed. Point me fingers.
There's only 2 of us, so I figured
our audience might pick up on that on
their own. But since you mentioned that one.
Yeah. You're so focused on answering the question.
And
that's the wonderful difference about having 2 people
(34:15):
on a podcast is they do things differently.
We'll leave it at that. So for Kirk,
this is Matt, and we'll see you for
part 3 of a potentially 4 part miniseries
on the other side of the mic very
soon. Thanks,
mini series on the other side of the
mic very soon. Thanks, everybody.
Thanks for listening to the Top Advisor Marketing
Podcast brought to you by Proudmouth.
If you wanna know more about how you
can be your own lab, visit us at
proudmouth.com
(34:36):
and sign up for the PodRocket Academy.
Through courses and office hours led by a
professional podcast producers and digital marketers, you will
learn everything you need to know to become
the trusted subject matter expert you were meant
to be.
Welcome to the top advisor marketing podcast brought
to you by Proudmouth.
I'm your host, Matt Halloran.
Being your own loud is not new to
marketing, but the mindset, strategies, and resources to
help you get there are evolving faster than
this industry is keeping up. It is time
to find a new perspective on what works,
why,
(00:21):
and how to move your business forward.
Listen as I interview guests to help you
learn from them how to be your own
Loud. Let's
get to the show.
Hello, and welcome to another Top Advisor Marketing
podcast. I'm your host, Matt Halloran. Now this
is part 2
of our 2 part
potentially 3 part mini series to talk a
(00:43):
little bit about your influence marketing strategy. Now
the last one that we did,
we laid the foundation. Kirk and I talked
about all of the different things that you
need to do to build a very strong
foundation
when it comes to your brand, your language,
your techniques, your systems,
your thought leadership.
And now we're gonna switch gears and talk
about how you
(01:04):
start this escape velocity. So we use the
rocket analogy here a lot.
Right now, you have built this incredible foundation
that when your rocket starts to go off
into the air and really you ignite the
engines, it doesn't blow your entire foundation. We
built that foundation last time. Now is when
we're gonna start having you ignite your engines
(01:24):
and start going up into space. And, of
course, it takes time. That rocket sits there
for a little bit of time before it
starts taking off. But the farther it goes
and the higher it gets, the easier it
is, which we talk a lot about that
when it comes to escape velocity. So, Kirk,
we're gonna dive right into
how do you light these fires because it's
(01:46):
not just one thing, it's lots of things.
Yes. Absolutely. So momentum is everything.
And just like the rocket analogy, you have
to achieve escape velocity to start pushing through
the atmospheres in earth to get to weightlessness.
Weightlessness is that place where you're a celebrity
influencer in your niche,
and that's what ultimately
(02:07):
you can get to. A lot of people
are good with what we call the 3rd
stage of influence, which is authority. And authority
is where everybody sees you as that in
your niche audience and your region,
and those are powerful things. So we've gone
through the first eleven. Like Matt said, those
are foundational things.
If you don't have those things in place,
it's very hard for these other things to
(02:28):
really work. You can do them, but they're
not nearly as effective. And that's why content
part of a content strategy or an influence
strategy is everything.
You have to have that role, and it
has to be good, has to be authentic.
You gotta put the time in. You can't
show up in half ass. What do you
gotta do, mister Halloran?
You get a whole asset, baby. We're getting
(02:48):
t shirts at one of these points
for that. We just haven't gotten there yet.
Expand.
So now that you've got this foundation
rolling, you gotta be good at it and
steady, consistent.
The next thing to do is start hosting
webinars
as an example. And webinars are great because
they're so efficient.
(03:08):
I don't know that they've taken over for
seminars,
but it's I'm sure they're running neck and
neck. If anything, we'll just keep it there.
And they're both really important,
but webinars are so convenient.
I would say that
a cadence is one of the most important
things with a webinar. And getting into details,
share checklists,
(03:28):
share tools, tips, stuff like that. That's what
we do on ours.
And Matt and Jessica are really offering a
lot of value if you never hung out
on any of our webinars. We do 2
a month.
And that's a good cadence.
Easy to replicate, keep it consistent. What you
don't wanna do is start off big and
then slow down if you can help it.
So try to do those base those on
(03:50):
from time to time, a blog
or a podcast,
but get into more details. Maybe show us
some examples because now you got the value
of it being a visual
unlike a podcast. So get into some details,
show us some examples.
Those can be really good things to differentiate
what you're doing.
Invite followers on your social channels,
(04:12):
email everybody,
and try to get as relevant an audience
as you can and be clear about who
this webinar is for. Sometimes it can be
for different parts or segments of your niche
audience too.
For instance, we typically work with RIAs, financial
advisors, Fintech, stuff like that.
Sometimes we're gonna be doing a lot more
in the future with marketing assistants. So we
(04:33):
wanna make sure we're clear that this is
for marketing assistants,
not for advisors.
Although they can come and figure out what
we're teaching marketing assistants anyway. Okay. So that
was number 12, hosting webinars. So get good
at that. Make sure you are consistent with
it. If you wanna boost it, those are
options for you too. So run some ads
to get more people there, but gauge that.
(04:54):
But you should be able to get 20
to 50 people signing up on a regular
basis for those, and those are good numbers.
If you can steadily have those people, that's
good. If you can go above that, excellent.
Now there are some larger partners that we
do webinars with, and we've had as many
as 500 or 600.
Those are great those are great and very
successful webinars. They don't happen all the time,
(05:16):
but it is good to find partners you
can do them with who can
market to their base as well
and bring some exciting new people to your
world.
Number 13 is email automation. So set up
email sequences. When you set up email sequences,
you wanna make sure that they're relevant to
what somebody's interest was. Unless they're just signing
(05:37):
up for an email newsletter, in which case,
you're gonna be sharing your thought leadership, what's
going on.
The more simple we find the more simple
they are, the more engagement we get. So
the we've tested
doing really extensive with a ton of value.
Those take a lot of time. They're not
any they're not we don't feel like they're
worth it.
It's better off a lot of times to
(06:00):
get somebody get one and maybe two things,
have simple call to action, be really clear
about it,
and get people
at least to read that one thing versus
trying to get them to engage in a
much larger commitment, which may take them half
hour to get through. So try to do
that as much as you can. The sequences,
if you can, should be also based on
(06:20):
what somebody like I said, what somebody signed
up for. If they signed up for a
white paper, for example,
break down that white paper and tools and
resources and facts and stats or whatever you
can to give them more and more. And
then maybe call them back to a webinar
if that's successful. It could have been you
led with the webinar and that white paper
was who knows? But usually, you wanna get
(06:42):
the lead magnet
to drive your own audience, which is getting
their email address, which is really important. Don't
ever think that email is not important. It's
more important than social media. Okay? Because you
control that list. Nobody can ever take that
away from you. LinkedIn shuts down shuts you
down,
you're done. You just lose. You just lost
all your followers
until you can beg them and pay them
(07:02):
lots of money to get back in or
whatever you have to do. Never been shut
down. Yeah.
So email automation is important, and you might
wanna hire somebody to help out with that.
I think the first thing everybody thinks of
is going to chat
to AI and trying to figure out email
sequences. You gotta be really careful about how
you add value there. So unless you can
(07:24):
have a really great prompt and feed it
some good content to break down, you're not
gonna get much quality there. So be really
careful about how you choose to draft those
and make sure you got a good system.
Make sure you got a system that can
trigger and automate
your email. Okay?
Number 14 is an East Association engagement.
Matt's got a great example of this, but
the idea is that when you join an
(07:45):
a relevant association for your ideal audience,
you've got a great opportunity to meet lots
of people. The thing you wanna do here
is you don't wanna come flying into an
association
acting like you're gonna get a bunch of
business. What you wanna do is be the
most helpful person
in town. That's your key. And it could
take you 6 months to a year for
that to really happen.
(08:06):
Maybe it takes even longer, but you gotta
be willing to pay your dues in those
places and be so valuable
that people wanna talk about you and know
that you're not here for the wrong reasons,
which is just to do business with everybody
without adding any value to the group. Because
associations are all about adding value, so you
gotta be a leader, not value.
Can you share you got a great example
(08:28):
of that.
Yeah. So Brian Haney, who was on the
panel with when I was moderating the panel
at MDRT,
he is
a member of the National Association of Association
Executives.
Might not have that entirely correct. But, basically,
what it is, he is on this board
with all of these other association executives,
(08:48):
and he doesn't focus on the associations. He
just focuses on the executives who run the
association.
So talk about niche within a niche. But
here's the thing. Every time there's a new
president, he brings them on his show and
he does webinars and educational things. But he's
even gotten it to the point now. He's
been doing this for years, like 7 years.
He wrote part of the test for the
(09:10):
certification.
So, Kirk, everything that you just said is
so vitally important
that you have to put in your time.
You're looking at 24 to 36 months before
you can really
start asking for business. Now will you get
business ahead of time? Absolutely.
But they're gonna feel you out, and they
wanna make sure any of these associations,
(09:32):
any of these niches wanna make sure that
you're not gonna be a fly by night
person and come in and try to sell
stuff and then leave. Absolutely.
Take that to heart and approach everything the
way that we're talking about. If you can't
commit like that, then maybe
following that is not for you. And remember
that if you don't have the time
(09:53):
or it's really hard to be a great
content marketer if you don't wanna be generous
to put the time in. Let's be honest.
Everybody wants a shortcut.
The time when you realize there are no
shortcuts is when your marketing is gonna take
up. Number 15 is social posting on your
personal brand or your personal life.
You have to be
careful here. But I know for instance, LinkedIn's
(10:13):
been
there's definitely
a push to more personal side of business
and sometimes just purely personal.
People always tie it back in, which is
great and I think valuable,
but there's definitely more.
One of my most successful post
(10:33):
was me with my 2 youngest kids, and
we were
at Tamarameet Lake, which is a lake that
cold water and the top the entire depth
of the water is all the exact same
temperature. It's really cool. There's only 80 of
them, I think, in the world,
and it's not too far from our home.
And I just I talked about being there
and getting away.
(10:55):
I'm sure I tied in business. I don't
remember right now, but that that post did
really well.
And sometimes
so I think Matt has a formula of
4 to 1 that that he thinks is
the best, and I agree with him.
So think about that. So 4
business oriented value
post to 1 personal post. Okay? So that
(11:15):
means once a week,
we don't get to that level
because I don't get it done. But
we definitely Truth comes down. Make an effort.
Yeah. We're yeah. We're probably do one one
every 2 weeks, once a month. Yeah. Yeah.
So probably
maybe 8 to 1.
(11:35):
But it's a really good idea to
consider how people want to know who you
are, what you do, because they need to
relate to you. This is all pretty obvious
stuff, so I won't go anymore. But the
4 to 1 is a good rule.
I end up doing 8 to 1. How
I don't know what you do. You We
do I do 4 to 1. Yeah. So
I'm very strict to the 4 to 1.
Now the 4 to 1 was the goal.
(11:56):
We didn't get there right away. It actually
took a little while for us to get
there. So I think the other thing too
is we're a little more prevalent on LinkedIn.
And the rule there is a it's a
little maybe a little Squishier. Yeah. A little
bit lighter because it's
less personable on LinkedIn, typically, but it is
changing. And that I think it's a good
dynamic.
(12:16):
If people go too personal,
then I think
people may be more likely
to shut that off. It really depends on
your audience and what you're doing. Some people's
entire thing is based around that, and they
do really well with it. 1 of our
one of our clients,
Larry.
Right? He does an amazing job, basically,
(12:38):
talking about finding joy every day. I personally
don't know where he's getting all these posts
from. The guy must just live at he's
Oh, he's got a full he's got a
full time
marketing person, which actually is Denise's wife. I
know. He keeps having fun every day. He
is. He calls it joy.
Yeah. He that's a balance thing, dude, and
(13:00):
it's really intentional. I can't wait for you
to meet him, man. He is just such
a nice Yeah. ISO.
Yeah. It's incredible. I've been following him more,
and it's unreal how dedicated he is to
his brand
and to being who he says he is,
which is finding joy every day.
And it sounds like his him and his
kids in his way for having a lot
(13:20):
of fun. Congratulations.
That's a great thing. So those are the
expand. Now we're gonna talk about
other people's podcasts.
And Matt is definitely an expert on this,
so he's gonna get into that. This is
the second level of expansion. Right? So what
we talked about with Kirk is the internal
expansion of what you can do within your
own book of business, your own list, and
(13:42):
your own niches. Now we're gonna talk about
what you can do to
get on other people's shows.
So step number 1 is for you to
look at where your ideal client goes to,
like, shows that they listen to.
Not what you want to necessarily do. And
I'll give you an example. I just interviewed
Tom Tom Schwab from Interview Valet, and advisors
(14:03):
will come in and say, I wanna be
on CNBC.
No. Advisors
watch or listen to CNBC's podcast.
You need to find a podcast that talks
to your ideal client. And one of the
ones examples that he gave
was a fitness over 40 because if you
are a financial services professional or a person
who provides advice
who really wants to attract
(14:25):
that audience,
fitness minded successful people over 40, then you
need to be on that show, not CNBC.
So what you wanna do is you wanna
create a hot list. Right? You all used
to do this when you were early on
in your career with sales. Here are my
top 10 prospects, top 20 pro prospects.
We want you to do that for 20
podcasts. You have to write these down, and
(14:46):
you have to say how many episodes they
have, who is the host,
and then your system is you're gonna, 1,
subscribe to those shows, and, 2, start interacting
with their posts. So when they post on
social media about the show, you need to
start commenting.
They start seeing you, and then when you
ask to get on the show, it works.
You also want to promote their show. So
(15:08):
if there was an episode of fitness over
40 that you absolutely loved, repost that sucker
on your social. I loved this episode. Here's
what I loved. It's just, again, showing support
for shows you wanna be on. And then
after being a guest, we have a rule
here that if you're gonna be a guest
on our show, you have to agree ahead
of time that you're gonna share that show
with your entire audience. You wanna do the
(15:30):
same thing for the shows that you're a
guest on. Share it far, share it wide,
send it to your email address, talk to
your clients about it. All of those things
are super super important.
Engaging anything that you can possibly engage with
on social media,
especially after they post. So the goal is
so when I'm on another person's podcast, I
(15:50):
tag that person in that podcast of our
post here at Proudmouth,
then hopefully
that host
interacts with the post, and that gives me
an opportunity to again start interacting with that
host. It's all about the traffic and it's
all about the social communication.
And then I'm going to dive just a
little bit more deeply into the 4 to
1, if you don't mind, Kirk, because I
(16:11):
think there's a lot of times too that
you can use an OPPs
for your own personal life. So Larry is
a wonderful example. We'll use Larry Sprung again.
Submit Linn Money podcast,
and his whole thing is what did you
do today that brought you joy?
He's a huge hockey guy, and so, like,
he's been on hockey podcast talking about hockey,
(16:32):
and he's got a couple of kids who
play pretty competitive hockey and how he also
has this thing about what rink is he
at today. And you guess the rink, he'll
donate x amount of money to your favorite
charity.
This is how all of this stuff starts
really working together, and an OPP strategy can
be really powerful for you to hit that
next engine that you're igniting to continue that
(16:54):
rocket going up into the air.
So now we're gonna talk about or Matt's
gonna talk about how to be proud of
your show.
And this is something
that seems so obvious,
but you have when you have your own
show, so whether podcast and video,
being proud of it and talking about it
(17:15):
can be one of the most important things.
Because if you don't,
the people who are most likely to start
spreading the love and cheer about it
are the people that are gonna think you
don't it's not for them or you don't
care about it or you're not proud of
it. So take it away.
Yeah, dude.
It just blows me away. I'll be in
office hours or ask an expert with our
(17:37):
clients,
and I will ask them how often are
they talking about their show in client meetings.
And they still they're clients of ours, and
they still don't do it. And I'm like,
look. You have to put it on your
agenda.
It's really important
because if you don't show that you're excited
about it, then nobody else is gonna be
excited about it.
(17:58):
It just it I don't know. I've heard
objections, Kirk.
Matt, makes me sound salesy, but you're not
selling anything. You're giving something away for free,
and it's your personality and your expertise. Yeah.
It's not a sales thing. So I think
the new wave of
advisers
doing content marketing
really get it.
(18:18):
Yeah. I think it's generation that's been marketing
for a decade or 2 that have had
experiences where
I hire you to do my marketing for
me, so I'm not gonna do anything.
But I can tell you that the younger
generation,
maybe a little bit maybe a little bit
less experience,
are so hungry,
(18:39):
and they are absolutely killing it. They do
all the right they're just soaking everything up
that we say, whether it's in our academy
or becoming a client of our managed service.
It's really fun to see.
Yeah. And I think that's exciting about this
industry,
but I think if you've been around for
a couple decades and you're not and you're
(18:59):
trying to do a set it and forget
it and you're not involved,
you are gonna find out the hard way
that
you should have been paying more attention, and
you should. Gary Vaynerchuk said this, I think,
a decade ago,
that every company now is a media company.
Yep. And if you don't know how to
do media and content marketing,
(19:20):
you are really gonna struggle. And it's we're
already seeing that enough financial companies. Right? Organic
growth for RIAs has been nonexistent for 5
years. There's been all kinds of talk about
it. It's one of the most talked about
organic growth topics
in that space.
And why is that?
I think it might relate to exactly what
we're just we just talked about. Anyway, keep
(19:41):
flowing here because there's Yeah. How do you
show pride in your show? And keep
pride isn't just about talking about it. It's
about coming prepared
to be generous and valuable.
And preparation is such a huge component. I
think the more prepared you are and you
know that you did a good show, the
higher probability it is that you're going to
(20:01):
be proud of it. The number one thing
that you have to do is you have
to make sure that you're actually writing a
show or doing a show that's applicable to
your ideal client. And the best way to
do that is to make sure that you
are just keeping on top of reading, not
always reading what's going on in the markets,
which is what a lot of you do,
but when you pick that niche that we
talked about in the first part of this
2, 3, 4, 5 part miniseries that we're
(20:23):
working on right now is that what your
niche is looking for. You know what they
want, you know what they need, and that's
what your content's gonna be.
When you're sitting in a client meeting, when
a client says something about their niche or
let's say an investment management strategy
like a Roth conversion,
what you need to say is, hey, look,
you know what? I did a really deep
dive on this in a 3 part miniseries
(20:45):
on our podcast. Are you subscribed to our
podcast yet? No. I haven't meant to that.
Well, grab your phone real quick. Let's go
ahead and get you subscribed. I'm gonna show
you where the Roth conversion
miniseries is, but I'm still gonna answer for
it today. But, listen, I understand that you're
not gonna remember everything that I say today
because we cover a lot. Please go back
and listen to that episode or those episodes.
That is absolutely huge.
(21:07):
You also always have to send everything that
you're doing to your email list. This is
that owned audience that Kirk and I are
talking about. Kirk just talked about at the
top. Listen. If LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram shuts
down, you don't have
those people. You don't own them. You own
your email list. Please make sure that you
are constantly emailing people. And
with your niche or your centers of influence,
(21:29):
they need to be on those lists too
because you're gonna be providing them with wonderful
pieces of information. Sorry. Just to it's not
just that those
just going back to the idea of owned
audience, and
we're creating a little bit of fear for
you there. It's not as so much that
they might shut you down as much as
it is. They change their algorithms,
and all of a sudden, you were getting
(21:49):
all kinds of visibility engagement, and then all
of a sudden, you're not. And you're not
doing anything different. They've just changed something. You
gotta figure it out. Between that happening, you
have a lot more control over email, not
complete control because
spam and all that kind of stuff. So
you gotta work hard to be only to
communicate with people who wanna be communicated with
because that really drives up your acceptance.
(22:11):
But anyway, back to this. Just wanted to
make sure people didn't think it was this
drastic thing that was the real risk. It's
there's all kinds of other risks in there
or.
You just made it even scarier at your
forum, dude. But I absolutely agree with you.
So when you do come out with new
content and that content is applicable to a
meeting you might have had 3 weeks ago,
email that client and say, hey, missus Johnson.
(22:34):
I don't know if you remembered, but we
talked about these Roth conversions again. Roth conversions,
hey. I just did a show about it.
This might even help you make a more
informed decision. That's really important. Yeah. That's where
having those great
CRM systems where you really dedicated your team.
Look. We just talked about these four things.
Just put the keywords in there, and then
(22:54):
you could look for those keywords and say,
anybody who we talked about this with, send
them that episode.
The number one thing that clients don't like
about their advisers is they don't feel like
they're getting personalized communication enough. And, Kirk, that
is the solution.
And that this is why this is I
don't like using this word very much, but
it's so holistic
(23:15):
because it has so many applications, not just
for you to bring in new business, but
client communication and retaining assets, getting greater share
of wallet. It's really powerful. Alright. I'm gonna
blow through a couple of these real quick
and then I'm gonna switch it back over
to you.
The other thing that I want you to
do is promote. Right? So this is that
be your old loud, be proud of what
you're doing, ProudMouth, right, which is the name
(23:36):
of our company, which we named specifically
because we wanted you to be proud of
the content that you create.
You have to talk about it. In fact,
I was hanging out early on, it was
probably 2 or 3 years ago before COVID,
actually, that an adviser, when they would go
to networking events, she would say that she
was a professional podcaster. People would be like,
what? You make a living with podcasting?
(23:57):
No. I don't make a living with podcasting,
but that's what I do. I love to
educate the general public. And so she would
lead instead of saying I'm a financial adviser,
or I sell insurance, or I'm a wealth
manager or financial planner. She would lead with
the fact that she was a podcaster, which
kept the conversation going. So So wait a
second. So you actually podcast on financial topics,
not just financial topics. We talk about what
life is like in blankety blank niche, whatever.
(24:19):
And she was like, Matt, I get so
much more engagement, and I get people to
sign up for my show, But, yes, I
am a financial adviser. Just such a different
way to communicate who you are and what
you do and what makes you unique and
different with your elevator pitch instead of just
saying, oh, I help people live the retirement
dreams that they've always wanted. Man, they probably
heard that a 1000000 times. Yeah. But if
you could tie in a really interesting
(24:41):
hooker or niche
and what you do for that niche, and
then that's what I talk about in my
podcast Yep. You get both accomplished. And they're
not easy. But what you just said, if
they've heard it a 1000000 times,
then you gotta figure something else out to
say. Yeah. And that's where a podcast can
be, oh, that's interesting. You have a podcast.
Some people say stuff like, oh, everybody's got
(25:01):
a podcast. That is not true. That's so
not true. That is not true. Yeah. Most
of them, when they they say they have
a podcast, they probably should say, I had
a podcast,
or I'm probably not gonna have one for
long because 90% of them are done at
before 10 episodes.
And it's not a good show, and they're
not prepared. And, again, this is that whole
pride thing. The other thing that I think
(25:22):
a lot of advisors
in our audience don't do with their shows
is they don't ask for audience engagement. So
here's another example. The keyword search that you
were talking about within your CRM,
I send you a social media post, I
send you a blog, I send you an
email, right, or I send you a link
to the podcast.
Part of your
(25:43):
CTA
isn't to just listen to the show.
Listen, I'd love for you to like, share,
and comment on this.
It's okay to ask people to do that
because if we start getting more and more
audience engagement,
that's going to please the algorithm and get
it even higher. But the flip side of
that is is when somebody does comment on
your posts
from the long form content creation turned into
(26:04):
short form stuff,
you have to comment back.
The first line of my first book, The
Social Media Handbook for Financial Advisors, has to
do with the fact that it's social media.
It's back and forth. If you're just screaming
into the void, social media doesn't care. It's
all about the interaction.
And then last but not least, I wanna
(26:25):
touch on is
get out there, have your podcast
or your show, I actually like calling it
a show a little bit more, your show,
sponsor a local team. It shouldn't be Kirk
Lowe's Financial Practice.
It should be the Top Advisor Marketing Podcast
sponsors the triple a hockey team. Or that's
(26:47):
the sort of stuff that makes a huge
difference.
Get more visibility to the content that you
create so people can start building a relationship
with you
before you start asking them to do business
with you. So, Kirk, I know there's a
couple other things in this list I know.
But I wanna stay true to time here,
and I want you to wrap up with
this. Skipped 2 things.
I know I did, but we're gonna run
out of time, dude. Do you just wanna
(27:08):
done, dude.
I'm not letting our audience down. Oh, you're
okay. Alright. That's fine. That's fine. Okay. So
guest expert.
I love the guest expert. This is actually
a huge thing that I have that's kinda
part of my old job here is when
I'm on other people's podcast, I am there
to become a guest expert. I'm an expert
on podcasting performance,
(27:29):
on client communication,
on client retention,
influence,
obviously,
how to accelerate. The big thing that I'm
starting to talk more about is this great
wealth transfer and how are you gonna get
Gen x and millennials attention.
I'm getting a lot of bites on that.
Now is it's a content marketing strategy,
but you gotta have that hook. You have
to have that hook. One of my favorite
(27:51):
hooks that I actually heard in MDRT again
was an advisor who says, I work with
broke doctors.
And the you're a financial advisor. Yeah. So
early on in a doctor's educational journey, they're
broke. Right? They're not making any money. They're
accruing all of this debt. My job is
to prepare so when they get that first
big paycheck
(28:11):
that we can use that really wisely.
And so he speaks at medical schools and
he speaks at residency
programs, and he speaks at post doc programs,
and this guy is the guest expert. When
you have a niche, you can start seeing
how all of these doors open. So many
of you think when you have a niche,
the doors close, but they don't. Doors just
(28:33):
open and open. And then the last thing
is, which,
man, I don't understand why more of you
don't do this, but you have to optimize
your Google My Business.
Listen, it's gonna be there if you like
it or not. If you have a physical
address, Google My Business is gonna be there.
You have to talk to your compliance department
to see what you can do to maximize
(28:54):
that,
to make sure that that goes for in
your favor.
Kirk, when you go we talk about this
a lot. You just traveled to the States
a little while ago. Right? And you were
trying to find places for your family to
eat. I'm assuming
that things like Yelp and Google played into
the fact of where you guys chose to
go eat. Is that fair? Google, yes.
(29:15):
Yep. I don't know because I my wife
was the copilot. That was her job, to
be honest.
We should probably bring her at an ask
for anything. She was very happy. We're looking
for vegan restaurants, and it was not easy
going through the Appalachians,
West Virginia, and some of us yeah. It
was very difficult.
But
But if you're in a new city now
(29:36):
I do this all the time because I
travel a lot here at ProudMouth for conferences.
The first thing that I'm doing is I'm
yelping, and I'm looking for their reviews. Yes.
I'm looking at what the people say, and
I think I don't know if you told
me this or somebody else I'm close to
told me this, that they read the first
two positive reviews and the last two negative
reviews so they can really see what the
contrast is. Guess what? Google is googling you
(29:59):
regardless if you want the googling to happen
or not, so you need to get in
front of that. Yeah. Absolutely. Any opportunity,
search is still a big thing.
Mhmm. It's weird. It seems to be not
as popular right now, or maybe that's just
me. I know there's people talking about it,
marketing professionals. Not all of them, but it
is huge.
One of the things that we take a
lot of pride in is, from a from
(30:21):
an SEO standpoint, is when we're pushing the
agenda of authentic
content, which really drives SEO.
So you've got an advantage if you're doing
your own content, but just optimize things. So
in particular, we're talking about your my business
page, not SEO
in general, but they're both really important.
But, yeah, if you can get that done,
(30:42):
it's just one more thing
that is pretty front and center that's gonna
come up, because they're gonna look for your
address
and they're or learn about you.
But I think most advisors have ratings turned
off or reviews turned off. Correct? Or can
you not do that? No. Google won't let
you. There there are ways to get around
it, but it's gonna be there regardless if
(31:04):
you really want it or not. I think
there are ways to do it, but it's
not easy nor is it intuitive.
But the goal is to make it the
Internet work for you. And I'm gonna give
you one more tip and then, Kirk, we're
gonna have to do the next thing in
our next episode because we're over on time.
And here it is.
Go to chat gbt or just go to
the Internet
(31:24):
and type this question in.
What searches
do my niche
search the Internet for when it comes to
my financial services practice?
That's Don't type in my niche because
it doesn't no. Just to be clear,
type in what your actual niche is. Yes.
(31:45):
They can describe. Best as you
can. Sorry. Go ahead. Thank you. Just intentional.
Yeah. Please don't do that word for word.
I was trying I should've said insert here
is what I should've said. But, yeah, if
you do that, then all of a sudden,
the Internet is gonna tell you what your
ideal target market is always searching for. That's
what you're gonna put on your website. That's
the questions that you're gonna answer. That's what
(32:07):
your content's gonna be. That's what your podcast's
gonna be. That's what you're showing this what
social media posts are. Because if you become
the person who's answering that question, which ProudMouth
has done for last, what, 7 years now
is we're answering a number of questions. 1,
how do you stop being the best kept
secret? How do you go ahead and create
a content marketing strategy that's compliant? What do
you need to do to stop, rise above
the noise, and be your old loud? People
(32:28):
actually search that stuff, and now that our
language is becoming ubiquitous within the space, if
you type in b, you're allowed into
the Internet, we come up. Right? Rise above
the noise. Best Kepsi, we come up because
that's something that we've been working at for
a really long time. Compliant content marketing strategy
for advisors. There's all sorts of different things
that we've been really working really hard to
(32:50):
do. So, Kirk, okay, we're already over on
time. Yeah. I wanted to give a talking
talk. A preview just and then let you
shut this down.
So
next show, we're gonna talk about referrals.
We're also gonna talk about expanding your reach
into a year and scaling up in year
3. We'll try to get that done in
in episode 3 of a 3 part series.
(33:11):
If it becomes a 4 part series, it's
likely my fault because Matt's list were typically
he got through them quicker than I did.
That. Although not as quickly as he makes
it out that he's gonna get through them.
But
I just talked back than you do. That
Yeah. Seems faster, but it was. But we
are gonna have a part 3, maybe a
bread 4. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And what we
(33:32):
haven't talked about yet,
as I smoke my hit my
microphone here, send it flying, is that we
are going to document all this so so
that you can download it all. So
we're actually we've already shared 30
different tactics that you wanna be thinking about.
We stopped numbering these. I apologize for that,
(33:54):
But we will get back to numbering maybe
or not. No. I you were number I
stopped numbering because I skipped around, so that's
all I needed. Point me fingers.
There's only 2 of us, so I figured
our audience might pick up on that on
their own. But since you mentioned that one.
Yeah. You're so focused on answering the question.
And
that's the wonderful difference about having 2 people
(34:15):
on a podcast is they do things differently.
We'll leave it at that. So for Kirk,
this is Matt, and we'll see you for
part 3 of a potentially 4 part miniseries
on the other side of the mic very
soon. Thanks,
mini series on the other side of the
mic very soon. Thanks, everybody.
Thanks for listening to the Top Advisor Marketing
Podcast brought to you by Proudmouth.
If you wanna know more about how you
can be your own lab, visit us at
proudmouth.com
(34:36):
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