September 24, 2024 • 26 mins
Use a lead magnet. You’ve heard that before. But are all lead magnets created equal, and can you cast your net far and wide with it? (Should you?) So many questions…
How can you effectively attract and convert ideal clients using lead magnets and marketing funnels?
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the top advisor marketing podcast brought
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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 Haller. Now we
get asked all the time. I mean, like,
(00:41):
conferences
and sales and just hanging out with people.
All about leads, man. Like, it's just all
about leads and leads leads leads leads leads.
Right? And
what they don't understand is it's not in
a plus b equals c equation. You actually
need to have a system.
And so Hillary is our guest today. She's
(01:01):
the founder of Moneta Copy. She does content
strategy and copywriting for financial advisers. The second
time on the show I've been on her
show, which, by the way, you need to
listen to. We'll talk about that a little
bit. But she had this amazing post on
LinkedIn that got huge traction
really about
about lead generation and nurture sequences, the lead
funnel, and that's what we're gonna talk about
today. So, Hillary, welcome to the show. Thank
(01:23):
you so much, Matt. I'm so excited to
be here and so honored to be asked
back for a second time. So I'm excited
for this conversation. Listen. I like hanging out
with podcasters. You're a podcaster. You're a known
commodity sister. You're really good at this. Not
only good behind the microphone, but you're really
good at what you do. So okay. We
have to use some operational definitions here because
I think a lot of people
just don't really understand the foundation of what
(01:45):
we're talking about today. So
when we talk about
lead generation
slash
lead funnels,
lead magnets. See, we're gonna I don't wanna
distort everything. Where do you wanna begin with
this part of the conversation?
Sure. Let's start with maybe the 30,000 foot
view of what a lead funnel might look
like. I think there's 2 pieces at the
(02:07):
top that are top of funnel that you
might have
where anyone can find you. Right? It it
might be social media posts
and then it might be your long form
content as well. Blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts,
these are things that people can find, but
you don't know if they're watching. You don't
know if they're reading. You don't know
(02:28):
what they think. You really have no control
over that. They don't have to interact with
you at all. They might just be passively
consuming it. You don't know.
Then down below that, we have
your email system,
which I would consider middle of the tunnel,
and you get a lot more insight into
who's opening those emails, who's clicking on things
in those emails,
(02:49):
things like that. And in the middle there,
we need some sort of mechanism
that gets people from that top of funnel
content
into that email system. And so that's where
a lead magnet comes in. It's that key
or that mechanism
that people opt into. They share their email
address with you and then they get into
your
email system. So
(03:09):
that's how I see it. I'm curious to
know if you have anything to add there
that I maybe have missed. I don't think
you've missed anything. We just have a little
different terminology. We proud mouth the n eyes
everything here. You know, that's basically and we
this is actually we stole it from somebody
else. It's owned audience. Right? Hillary, that's what
we get all the time. Right? So clients
who use our system, hundreds of advisers have
used our systems over the years, and they're
(03:30):
always saying, how do I really know the
efficacy of this? Because a lot of it's
just vanity metrics. Right? And so being able
to pull somebody off your long form content
and your social media and now my partner
said this and I love this quote.
You're renting those audiences. If LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook,
or any of those go down, you lost
everything.
Right? How do you get them off of
(03:50):
those social media channels and into your own
audience, which you refer to as your email
circuit email ledger sequence? Now I'm gonna quote
you. I'm gonna read it here so I
don't say this incorrectly.
If you think you're going to spend money
on anything in your marketing, it should be
a lead magnet.
So it's a bold statement, sister, and I
like that, but I need you to unpack
that a little bit. So what do you
(04:10):
mean by that? It absolutely speaks to this
notion of having an owed audience, and
I think you have to be so strategic
about
what audience you want to own. You wanna
make sure that your owned audience is an
audience that of people that you would actually
really like to work with. Right? It's not
an audience that you own that's just anyone
and everyone who's come into contact with you.
(04:32):
It's people that you would actually be happy
to get on a discovery call with. They're
qualified to work with you. You would be
excited to work with them. And so the
lead magnet there is such an important piece
of that because you wanna make sure that
it is attractive
to the people
that you would really like to work with
and that it's not being downloaded by Joe
Schmo who you don't wanna work with because
(04:54):
he's not gonna be a good person to
have on your email list. And there's that
piece of it. You want it to be
really strategic.
But then there's also this piece, like you
said, if LinkedIn goes down and all of
your content is on LinkedIn, you've completely lost
control over your audience. You you have to
start from the ground up and rebuild it.
If the LinkedIn algorithm changes, which I think
is a lot more likely than LinkedIn going
(05:14):
down completely forever,
And all of a sudden your posts aren't
getting shown in the feed anymore.
That's a hit. Right? That's a hit. Now
now you can adapt and you can adjust
to that, but you don't have to. It's
the stakes aren't as high if you also
have this owned audience.
And so that's where I see the importance
of a lead magnet
really being. Now I will add
(05:36):
one other thing just to amend that quote
that you shared with me.
If I could choose 2 things for you
to spend your marketing dollars on, it would
be your lead magnet and it would, of
course, be your website
as well. But the lead magnet, I think,
is people know they have to spend money
on their website. Right? And the lead magnet
is when where people they
don't always realize
(05:57):
the importance of it and how much it
can actually help you get more book discovery
calls. There's a lot there. I'm gonna have
to have you unpack
2 or 3 points, and I hope I
remember all 2 or 3 of them. So
the first one is
you have to have a lead magnet that's
gonna attract your ideal target market. Right?
How do you do that? I that's one
of the we still get resistance. In fact,
(06:20):
so I was just at an event last
week, this week. And I was sitting down
to talk to you with the whole table
full of advisers.
And they luckily, I was very grateful that
they actually had an idea who we were.
And one of the advisers was like, oh,
Matt, I heard you talking about how important
it was to have a niche. And I
was like, yeah. Well, my niche is women.
Dude, this 51% is the majority of the
people in the world. How that's not a
(06:41):
niche. Right? But how do you create a
lead magnet that is gonna attract the right
people? Can you give us some examples
of what those might be?
Yeah. Absolutely. So
and this is the caveat here. Right? I
think lead magnets
can be really, really powerful
for people who have a really well defined
niche and are dialed into their niche.
(07:04):
I think when you don't have a niche,
and I'll be honest, I've drank the Kool
Aid. I'm all for niching. Right? I'm a
big believer in the power of niching.
When you don't have a niche, you're gonna
have a harder time getting people to download
your lead magnet, much less getting the right
people to download your lead magnet. So
when I think about creating a lead magnet
(07:24):
with your niche in mind,
there's a couple ways that that you can
go about this, and I'll start with an
example. One is one that I've worked on
recently this year.
It was an ebook. I know you refer
to that as a white paper sometimes. I
I really the term ebook because I think
when I think of ebooks, I think of
something that's maybe covering a broader range of
(07:45):
topics for somebody.
And this particular ebook also had a lot
of workbook components to it. And so this
particular one was called Mastering Millennial Money, the
most comprehensive guide on the Internet for millennials
who wanna take control of their finances.
And it consisted of various fairly short chapters
that were about issues that were really pertinent
(08:08):
to millennials
specifically, the financial issues that millennials specifically
are facing.
And that is a an ebook that is
only gonna get downloaded by millennials. It's not
gonna be downloaded by retirees
because retirees are facing different money issues.
And so what I like to think about
when you have your niche and you're trying
(08:28):
to come up with a lead magnet idea,
you think about what are the specific problems
that my niche faces that nobody else really
faces.
And then I also like to think about
what's preventing them from being ready to work
with me right now.
And can I think of a lead magnet
that's going to help them get closer to
that point where they're ready to work with
(08:49):
me?
And sometimes for this particular example that I
just shared,
I think one reason that a lot of
millennials are reluctant to work with financial advisors
or maybe two reasons
is one,
they don't believe that they have enough money
yet to warrant working with a financial advisor.
And so what this lead magnet did was
(09:10):
it really
communicated
that this particular advisor knows what millennials are
dealing with and how he can help them
even if they don't have 1,000,000
to invest with him. They don't need that.
So the idea here is how are we
going to get the so let's stick with
the millennial thing there. So it was small
chapters ebook with a workbook, and it was
going to appeal to them. So I'm assuming
(09:31):
that if they actually Google searched it or
does their long form content
drive them? Is there a call to action
from their long form content or their website
or their socials? How do those plug in
to getting them to consume this ebook, this
white paper? To to get this ebook. I
think there's lots of different ways to get
peep to get your lead magnet in front
(09:53):
of people, and you need to take advantage
of as many of those ways as you
can. So number 1, having it on your
website. So anyone who does land on your
website, however they land there, can see the
ebook is
here. Creating social posts with a link to
that ebook in the comments where people can
download it. So important.
If you're on LinkedIn, you can have featured
(10:13):
posts. You need a featured post with your
lead magnet. Right? If you are
writing blogs,
I used to when I was early
in this field, I used to always just
link to a lead magnet at the end
of a blog. And then I realized, unless
people don't read to the end of a
blog. Right? And so I've seen quite a
few advisers.
They link to their lead magnet at the
(10:34):
top of the blog page, the top of
every blog page, or they link to it
at this on the side
of the blog page. So it's really easily
it's really easy to find for anyone who
clicks over to your blog from Google or
wherever it might be. Anyone who has a
YouTube channel can link to their lead magnet
in the YouTube description.
Anyone who has a podcast can link to
their lead magnet in the show notes. They
(10:55):
could talk about it in their outro.
Now one caveat with that, I've run into
this with my own business is sometimes I'll
create a lead magnet for my business that
I'm really excited about in a certain season
or period. And then I decide I wanna
change that lead magnet and this I'm not
offering the service anymore that's relevant to this
lead magnet. So that can be kinda tricky
to go back into podcast outros or show
(11:16):
notes or whatever and remove that link from
every single one.
So sometimes I'm a little hesitant if it's
a new lead magnet and you're not completely
sure you're committed to it yet to to
put it in places like that. In that
case, I would rather have
a way for them to just subscribe to
a newsletter or something that's gonna live forever
and you're never gonna change. But I do
think there are just so many opportunities to
(11:37):
share the link to your lead magnet to
a landing page where they can download it.
And and those are just a few of
them. Oh, you talked at the top of
the show that you the website is the
other thing that you think people should spend
a bunch of money on, which I totally
agree. And dear god, please don't have it
be 2 old white people walking on the
beach holding hands, which by the way, saw
another one of those which is really, really,
really frustrating just because that makes you look
(11:59):
like everybody else. Now I'm not a huge
fan of when I'm on a website and
10 seconds later, there's a pop up that
tells me to download something. What how do
you
manage the expectations? Because you just said that
needs to be easily accessible on the website,
socials, and all of those things. Right? Which
I'm hanging my hat on that because I
firmly 1,000,000 percent agree with you on that.
(12:20):
But how do you do it on a
website? How do you make it so that
people will get driven to that page? Is
that your CTA? Is that where you're trying
to get everybody to just click to so
it seems
less invasive? Help me with that. Oh, this
is such a tough question, Matt. And the
reason it's tough for me so I'm gonna
I think I'm gonna lay out what the
different options are, and I really think it
(12:42):
depends on
what you're comfortable with as the business owner,
what you think your audience is most comfortable
with. Because like you, I also just hate
the pop up that blocks me for reading.
I'm likely to click away at that point.
One
alternative to that that I actually am a
fan of is the pop up that comes
(13:02):
up in the corner of the website at
a certain point. So it doesn't block you
from reading, but it does still pop up
and grab attention that way. So if you
have one of those corner pop ups with
the lead magnet, I think that's a good
alternative.
I also
just really like this notion. As I mentioned,
if you have a blog on your website
and you have it at the top of
(13:24):
every blog post
or off to the side of every blog
post,
you have some sort of opt in form
that you're embedding onto each page. And so
if you can also embed that opt in
that same opt in form on your home
page
and on your contact page or wherever else,
you just make it
whatever page people are on or whatever page
(13:46):
they're most likely to land on first,
put that
form link there or embed that form there
so that they can find it. I really
like putting it on a contact page because
some people will click over to the contact
page but not be ready to contact you
yet, and you still have a chance to
grab them. It's a lot less of a
lift for them to say, okay. I do
(14:07):
still wanna hear from this person, get to
know them a little bit more before I'm
ready to book that Calendly
call with them. I think that can be
another I'll give you my phone number
and my email address and my first name
and my last name and my date of
birth. It's unbelievable what some people will ask.
Now now so we've been focusing a little
bit on this ebook, right, as as a
(14:27):
really good way. What are some other examples
of lead magnets that we can incorporate in
case that isn't our bag of tricks?
Yeah. Absolutely. And I will say a lot
of people are very against ebooks and white
papers because they're a little bit longer. They're
boring. Right? They or they can be boring.
They don't have to be boring. But there
are so many options for lead magnet excuse
(14:48):
me, lead magnet, especially for financial advisors. A
couple creative ones that I really like are
if you have a really compelling case study,
whether it's hypothetical or it's real, I think
that really depends on your compliance department,
or you even have a little collection of
case studies that, you know, are, again, very
specific to your niche, someone would say see
(15:10):
themselves in those case studies and say, oh,
they helped them with this problem. I have
that problem. Let's see how they did it.
And case studies can be a great option.
One that I see a lot that I
actually don't like is budget templates
because
I think that budget templates
(15:30):
this is why I don't like them.
I think that budget templates, they have to
be
very dynamic. Right? I think that everybody has.
We can all go download a budgeting app
that makes it easier for us to you
that that makes it easier for us to
budget rather than using somebody's spreadsheet.
Now I will say if you have a
(15:50):
specific niche
or with a very specific budgeting need or
budgeting problem and you can create a budget
template for that that someone can use. If
you have fluctuating income, here's the budget for
you. Right?
Something like that. Then that can be good.
But otherwise, I like to stay away from
budget templates because they're just so overdone and
I just don't think they're very compelling anymore.
(16:12):
But other good ones that I've seen are
specific workbooks. So workbooks to help people
reduce debt or workbooks to help people
do their own tax planning or whatever it
might be. I think those can be good.
And then another one, I actually see financial
coaches
doing a lot more with this type, but
I think they can work for financial advisors
(16:32):
or as well are quizzes.
I will say, and I'd love to ask
you this question, Matt.
I don't know how certain compliance departments
would feel about quizzes. I'm curious if you
have any insights. I don't know anybody who's
doing that. So whoever's listening to this right
now, like, I don't I'm sorry. I was
just scanning my brain there thinking to myself,
who have I seen? All of the other
(16:54):
ones that you listed are things that I've
seen
quite successful when it comes to a lead
magnet. But quizzes, I don't know how many
advisers that that's not true. So Thomas Koppelman
does that regularly
on Twitter.
In fact, I've seen a bunch of people
do that on Twitter. Now he is an
RIA,
so he has a little bit more flexibility
there. But I'm telling you, that's such a
(17:14):
magnificent way to engage people. I really love
that. And, Hillary, one of the things that
I really like about,
chatting with my fellow marketing,
friends
is
you can uncover stuff like this. Right? So
listen, if you're listening to this and and
you can,
all you have to do is ask the
question. And then you have to ask this
follow-up question, which is what can I do
(17:34):
to make this compliant? Which is, I think,
one of the best questions you can ever
have when you're actually talking with your compliance
department, especially if they say no, is a
wonderful way to engage.
But I'm gonna go back to the worksheets
because one of the other things that we
have seen is checklists.
So people really like checklists. Now you said
like a budgeting thing, like a budgeting form
(17:54):
or checklist, but just having an overall checklist,
are your kids,
you know, are your kids ready to go
to college? Here are 10 things that you
need to have. Click here, and I'll send
you this thing. And I've seen a bunch
of people. In fact,
I interviewed this guy many moons ago, and,
yeah, he just came back into this
weird conversation that I had. They're like, do
(18:14):
you know this guy? I was like, yeah.
I interviewed him, like, episode, like, 200.
And that's his lead magnet. His lead magnet
is, so your kids were just born. Here's
the college checklist. They just turned 13. Here's
the college. They just started studying for their
SAT or maybe they're in AB classes or
whatever. He's got all of these checklists, and
that's how he fills up his pipeline.
I just think that's a that's really, really
(18:35):
cool. Now I have to
dive a little deeper and maybe turn the
screws on you a little bit more
because
I don't fully think our audience understands
how you're going to
differentiate
using this lead magnet
and having the right people download the lead
(18:55):
magnet. So can you unpack that a little
bit more?
Yes. Absolutely.
So I love this example of the checklist
that you just
brought up here because I think checklists are
they also work really, really well if they're
specific for a specific market of people. This
adviser, I'm assuming,
clearly loves to help his clients do some
(19:15):
education planning, and he's probably knowledgeable in doing
financial aid and dealing with student loans and
making smart decisions around that. And so that,
to me, is a great example of getting
the right people into your pipeline because that's
what I'm then going to help you with.
Whereas,
I think some of these more generic
budget templates.
So let's just take I've created a generic
(19:38):
budgeting spreadsheet,
and that's my lead magnet, and that's what
I'm gonna put out there.
If you don't say who it's for or
the budget spreadsheet doesn't help you achieve a
specific goal,
anyone who wants to budget might download that
budget spreadsheet.
It could be a college kid who's definitely
not ready to work with you. Right? It
could be someone who is
(20:00):
getting ready to
retire
because they're like, I just need to budget
for my retirement.
But, really, the people you like to work
with are older millennials or Gen X. Right?
And they're needing to ramp up their savings
or whatever it might be. So I think
that's the importance of thinking about, can I
make my lead magnet solve a really specific
(20:20):
problem for a really specific person
that then I can help them
in my services
when they're ready to work with me? It's
the same problem that I'm gonna dive deeper
into
with them. So I don't know if that
answers if that helps provide some clarity. And
I think that's the level of clarity that
our listeners Oh,
(20:52):
wait. This Oh, wait. This is really valuable
to me. I really like Hillary because she's
giving me something that is gonna make my
life better. Oh, it's just an email address
is fine. And then you get them into
that that owned audience. Now I'm sure you
and I could spend years
talking about what to do next. Right? Because
after we own their audience and the lead
magnet's work, now they're a lead. Now what
(21:13):
do we do? We don't have time for
that. We'll have to either have you back
or one of these days you and I
need to share the stage and really dive
deeply into these at a conference here in
the near future because I know you're going
to be indisposed a little bit here for
a little while, but when you I don't
even know when that's gonna be, so I'm
not even gonna go there, sister. Anyway, I
want to thank you very, very much. Now
before before we go, though so Jessica and
I were working. Jessica produces the show, and
(21:35):
we were working on the question that we
were gonna ask you about the lead magnets
and stuff. And it was based off of
social media posts that, by the way, I
think we're just gonna link to in the
show notes so that people could see the
conversation. It's a very good conversation.
But what should I have asked you that
I didn't?
We don't have time to get into
email sequences, which is what you should do
after.
But I think that's there's 2 other parts
(21:55):
to this lead magnet for it to be
really, really effective and for it to actually
result in those book discovery calls, which is
what you want when you get people into
your email list.
I don't think it's enough to create just
a simple opt in form
for a lead magnet.
When you create your opt in form, you
wanna have a little bit of copy there,
maybe some bullet points of the benefits of
the lead magnet. You wanna sell the lead
(22:17):
magnet even though it's free.
Right? You wanna really sell that lead magnet
so that they are like, I absolutely need
this. I'm not even gonna hesitate to put
my email address into this opt in form.
And so that's, I think, maybe the one
piece that we haven't talked about yet. And,
yes, we could spend a whole another episode
talking about the welcome sequence that comes on
the back end that you need with the
lead magnet. But that opt in form or
(22:37):
the landing page, if you're sending people to
a specific landing page to download. And I'm
sorry if that's, like, again, more jargon that
I
would need to define. But wherever it is
that people can actually input their first name
and their email address, and I wouldn't ask
any more questions than that, have a little
bit of copy there that really speaks to
the benefits or what they will get out
of this lead magnet.
(22:59):
We do need to dive more deeply into
the back end of that because I think
what ends up happening is people build these
email nurture sequences, and it's so aggressive.
Like, for instance,
I just bought a pair of jeans
online.
There's a very specific company that I'm old.
Right? These fit me well, and I like
them, and they're super company and whatever. And,
(23:20):
but so I bought 5, 6 pairs of
jeans from this company.
But, man, after I buy it, it's like
they just every day you're in my I
would know. I unsubscribe.
Right? And I don't want that. Right? I
want you to be top of mind, but
not, like, schmucky, salesy. What can I do
to get you in this car today? And
this could just be a great social media
(23:41):
post that you and I need to maybe
potentially work on together too is
what is the cadence that's appropriate?
How can you keep top of mind without
being annoying?
I just that stuff drives me crazy. Alright.
Anyway, Hillary, I'm sure that there are gonna
be people who are gonna wanna reach out
to you and find out more about who
you are and what you do. Where should
they go? What should they do? They can
go to monettacopy.com.
That's a website. I know you'll link to
(24:02):
it in the show notes. Moneta can be
a little hard to come up with the
spelling on your own. I am always on
LinkedIn. Hilary Gail Meehan is what I am
on LinkedIn.
I am, as you mentioned, gonna be out
on maternity leave for the rest of 2024
starting next week. But I'll be back in
2025, and my team is gonna continue
dropping podcast episodes and things like that. So
I'll still be around, but just not as
(24:24):
often as I usually am. And check out
my podcast, the Finance Marketing Podcast, which you
can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.
The only place and I know
I don't even wanna say this out loud
while I'm looking straight at Matt Haller, and
the only place it's not yet is on
YouTube.
Oh, you just that hurt me. I didn't
know that. I would have poached you in
the eye of that one way earlier.
(24:45):
Yeah. You yeah. Oh my gosh. It's the
2nd largest podcast player. And one of the
things that has really blown us away with
we have a new something called enhanced video
services with our managed influence services. And our
clients right now, Larry, they're getting 10 to
20 times more interaction with the YouTube shorts
than they're ever getting downloads. But you know
what? The here's the thing. You already have
such a wonderful foundation of social proof and
(25:07):
libraries that people can go to to learn
from Vue. That's when you implement that YouTube
strategy. You're gonna be even more successful than
you are right now. And I wish you
all of the success in the world. I'm
so happy to count you as one of
our friends here at Proudmouth. I know that
my team absolutely loves the stuff that you
post on social, so please please please follow
Hillary on LinkedIn specifically. She's always putting out
such good, high quality,
(25:29):
zero click important content
that you can just learn from very quickly.
Now I don't think you'll be surprised that
there is a lead magnet built into that,
but whatever. It's because she practices what she
preaches. And we wanna practice what we preach
to your to to all of you too.
So the long and short of what where
we're at with ProudMouth is this.
Please just make sure that you're following us
on social to pay attention to all of
(25:49):
the stuff because here between now and the
end of 2025,
we're launching a whole bunch of new stuff
that you're gonna wanna pay attention to that
I'm just gonna tease you with right now.
There are some really, really cool things that
we've been working on. We've got a new
team that is helping us really bring products
to market, which is so wonderful, Hillary. I
know that you and I have talked about
that in the past. It's one of the
biggest banes of being a marketing company is
(26:10):
actually marketing for yourself instead of marketing for
everybody else, and we're really excited to bring
these things, and we will. And so please
stay tuned. And if you have not subscribed,
make sure that you do. And more importantly,
go check out our YouTube channel. That's alright.
I had to totally do that to you,
sister, because we do have a lot of
stuff there. But anyway, for Hillary and all
of us here at Proudmouth, this is Matt
Halloran. We'll see you on the other side
of the mic very soon.
(26:31):
Thanks for listening to the Top Advisor Marketing
Podcast brought to you by Proudmouth.
If you wanna know more about how you
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proudmouth.com
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
(26:51):
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 Haller. Now we
get asked all the time. I mean, like,
(00:41):
conferences
and sales and just hanging out with people.
All about leads, man. Like, it's just all
about leads and leads leads leads leads leads.
Right? And
what they don't understand is it's not in
a plus b equals c equation. You actually
need to have a system.
And so Hillary is our guest today. She's
(01:01):
the founder of Moneta Copy. She does content
strategy and copywriting for financial advisers. The second
time on the show I've been on her
show, which, by the way, you need to
listen to. We'll talk about that a little
bit. But she had this amazing post on
LinkedIn that got huge traction
really about
about lead generation and nurture sequences, the lead
funnel, and that's what we're gonna talk about
today. So, Hillary, welcome to the show. Thank
(01:23):
you so much, Matt. I'm so excited to
be here and so honored to be asked
back for a second time. So I'm excited
for this conversation. Listen. I like hanging out
with podcasters. You're a podcaster. You're a known
commodity sister. You're really good at this. Not
only good behind the microphone, but you're really
good at what you do. So okay. We
have to use some operational definitions here because
I think a lot of people
just don't really understand the foundation of what
(01:45):
we're talking about today. So
when we talk about
lead generation
slash
lead funnels,
lead magnets. See, we're gonna I don't wanna
distort everything. Where do you wanna begin with
this part of the conversation?
Sure. Let's start with maybe the 30,000 foot
view of what a lead funnel might look
like. I think there's 2 pieces at the
(02:07):
top that are top of funnel that you
might have
where anyone can find you. Right? It it
might be social media posts
and then it might be your long form
content as well. Blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts,
these are things that people can find, but
you don't know if they're watching. You don't
know if they're reading. You don't know
(02:28):
what they think. You really have no control
over that. They don't have to interact with
you at all. They might just be passively
consuming it. You don't know.
Then down below that, we have
your email system,
which I would consider middle of the tunnel,
and you get a lot more insight into
who's opening those emails, who's clicking on things
in those emails,
(02:49):
things like that. And in the middle there,
we need some sort of mechanism
that gets people from that top of funnel
content
into that email system. And so that's where
a lead magnet comes in. It's that key
or that mechanism
that people opt into. They share their email
address with you and then they get into
your
email system. So
(03:09):
that's how I see it. I'm curious to
know if you have anything to add there
that I maybe have missed. I don't think
you've missed anything. We just have a little
different terminology. We proud mouth the n eyes
everything here. You know, that's basically and we
this is actually we stole it from somebody
else. It's owned audience. Right? Hillary, that's what
we get all the time. Right? So clients
who use our system, hundreds of advisers have
used our systems over the years, and they're
(03:30):
always saying, how do I really know the
efficacy of this? Because a lot of it's
just vanity metrics. Right? And so being able
to pull somebody off your long form content
and your social media and now my partner
said this and I love this quote.
You're renting those audiences. If LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook,
or any of those go down, you lost
everything.
Right? How do you get them off of
(03:50):
those social media channels and into your own
audience, which you refer to as your email
circuit email ledger sequence? Now I'm gonna quote
you. I'm gonna read it here so I
don't say this incorrectly.
If you think you're going to spend money
on anything in your marketing, it should be
a lead magnet.
So it's a bold statement, sister, and I
like that, but I need you to unpack
that a little bit. So what do you
(04:10):
mean by that? It absolutely speaks to this
notion of having an owed audience, and
I think you have to be so strategic
about
what audience you want to own. You wanna
make sure that your owned audience is an
audience that of people that you would actually
really like to work with. Right? It's not
an audience that you own that's just anyone
and everyone who's come into contact with you.
(04:32):
It's people that you would actually be happy
to get on a discovery call with. They're
qualified to work with you. You would be
excited to work with them. And so the
lead magnet there is such an important piece
of that because you wanna make sure that
it is attractive
to the people
that you would really like to work with
and that it's not being downloaded by Joe
Schmo who you don't wanna work with because
(04:54):
he's not gonna be a good person to
have on your email list. And there's that
piece of it. You want it to be
really strategic.
But then there's also this piece, like you
said, if LinkedIn goes down and all of
your content is on LinkedIn, you've completely lost
control over your audience. You you have to
start from the ground up and rebuild it.
If the LinkedIn algorithm changes, which I think
is a lot more likely than LinkedIn going
(05:14):
down completely forever,
And all of a sudden your posts aren't
getting shown in the feed anymore.
That's a hit. Right? That's a hit. Now
now you can adapt and you can adjust
to that, but you don't have to. It's
the stakes aren't as high if you also
have this owned audience.
And so that's where I see the importance
of a lead magnet
really being. Now I will add
(05:36):
one other thing just to amend that quote
that you shared with me.
If I could choose 2 things for you
to spend your marketing dollars on, it would
be your lead magnet and it would, of
course, be your website
as well. But the lead magnet, I think,
is people know they have to spend money
on their website. Right? And the lead magnet
is when where people they
don't always realize
(05:57):
the importance of it and how much it
can actually help you get more book discovery
calls. There's a lot there. I'm gonna have
to have you unpack
2 or 3 points, and I hope I
remember all 2 or 3 of them. So
the first one is
you have to have a lead magnet that's
gonna attract your ideal target market. Right?
How do you do that? I that's one
of the we still get resistance. In fact,
(06:20):
so I was just at an event last
week, this week. And I was sitting down
to talk to you with the whole table
full of advisers.
And they luckily, I was very grateful that
they actually had an idea who we were.
And one of the advisers was like, oh,
Matt, I heard you talking about how important
it was to have a niche. And I
was like, yeah. Well, my niche is women.
Dude, this 51% is the majority of the
people in the world. How that's not a
(06:41):
niche. Right? But how do you create a
lead magnet that is gonna attract the right
people? Can you give us some examples
of what those might be?
Yeah. Absolutely. So
and this is the caveat here. Right? I
think lead magnets
can be really, really powerful
for people who have a really well defined
niche and are dialed into their niche.
(07:04):
I think when you don't have a niche,
and I'll be honest, I've drank the Kool
Aid. I'm all for niching. Right? I'm a
big believer in the power of niching.
When you don't have a niche, you're gonna
have a harder time getting people to download
your lead magnet, much less getting the right
people to download your lead magnet. So
when I think about creating a lead magnet
(07:24):
with your niche in mind,
there's a couple ways that that you can
go about this, and I'll start with an
example. One is one that I've worked on
recently this year.
It was an ebook. I know you refer
to that as a white paper sometimes. I
I really the term ebook because I think
when I think of ebooks, I think of
something that's maybe covering a broader range of
(07:45):
topics for somebody.
And this particular ebook also had a lot
of workbook components to it. And so this
particular one was called Mastering Millennial Money, the
most comprehensive guide on the Internet for millennials
who wanna take control of their finances.
And it consisted of various fairly short chapters
that were about issues that were really pertinent
(08:08):
to millennials
specifically, the financial issues that millennials specifically
are facing.
And that is a an ebook that is
only gonna get downloaded by millennials. It's not
gonna be downloaded by retirees
because retirees are facing different money issues.
And so what I like to think about
when you have your niche and you're trying
(08:28):
to come up with a lead magnet idea,
you think about what are the specific problems
that my niche faces that nobody else really
faces.
And then I also like to think about
what's preventing them from being ready to work
with me right now.
And can I think of a lead magnet
that's going to help them get closer to
that point where they're ready to work with
(08:49):
me?
And sometimes for this particular example that I
just shared,
I think one reason that a lot of
millennials are reluctant to work with financial advisors
or maybe two reasons
is one,
they don't believe that they have enough money
yet to warrant working with a financial advisor.
And so what this lead magnet did was
(09:10):
it really
communicated
that this particular advisor knows what millennials are
dealing with and how he can help them
even if they don't have 1,000,000
to invest with him. They don't need that.
So the idea here is how are we
going to get the so let's stick with
the millennial thing there. So it was small
chapters ebook with a workbook, and it was
going to appeal to them. So I'm assuming
(09:31):
that if they actually Google searched it or
does their long form content
drive them? Is there a call to action
from their long form content or their website
or their socials? How do those plug in
to getting them to consume this ebook, this
white paper? To to get this ebook. I
think there's lots of different ways to get
peep to get your lead magnet in front
(09:53):
of people, and you need to take advantage
of as many of those ways as you
can. So number 1, having it on your
website. So anyone who does land on your
website, however they land there, can see the
ebook is
here. Creating social posts with a link to
that ebook in the comments where people can
download it. So important.
If you're on LinkedIn, you can have featured
(10:13):
posts. You need a featured post with your
lead magnet. Right? If you are
writing blogs,
I used to when I was early
in this field, I used to always just
link to a lead magnet at the end
of a blog. And then I realized, unless
people don't read to the end of a
blog. Right? And so I've seen quite a
few advisers.
They link to their lead magnet at the
(10:34):
top of the blog page, the top of
every blog page, or they link to it
at this on the side
of the blog page. So it's really easily
it's really easy to find for anyone who
clicks over to your blog from Google or
wherever it might be. Anyone who has a
YouTube channel can link to their lead magnet
in the YouTube description.
Anyone who has a podcast can link to
their lead magnet in the show notes. They
(10:55):
could talk about it in their outro.
Now one caveat with that, I've run into
this with my own business is sometimes I'll
create a lead magnet for my business that
I'm really excited about in a certain season
or period. And then I decide I wanna
change that lead magnet and this I'm not
offering the service anymore that's relevant to this
lead magnet. So that can be kinda tricky
to go back into podcast outros or show
(11:16):
notes or whatever and remove that link from
every single one.
So sometimes I'm a little hesitant if it's
a new lead magnet and you're not completely
sure you're committed to it yet to to
put it in places like that. In that
case, I would rather have
a way for them to just subscribe to
a newsletter or something that's gonna live forever
and you're never gonna change. But I do
think there are just so many opportunities to
(11:37):
share the link to your lead magnet to
a landing page where they can download it.
And and those are just a few of
them. Oh, you talked at the top of
the show that you the website is the
other thing that you think people should spend
a bunch of money on, which I totally
agree. And dear god, please don't have it
be 2 old white people walking on the
beach holding hands, which by the way, saw
another one of those which is really, really,
really frustrating just because that makes you look
(11:59):
like everybody else. Now I'm not a huge
fan of when I'm on a website and
10 seconds later, there's a pop up that
tells me to download something. What how do
you
manage the expectations? Because you just said that
needs to be easily accessible on the website,
socials, and all of those things. Right? Which
I'm hanging my hat on that because I
firmly 1,000,000 percent agree with you on that.
(12:20):
But how do you do it on a
website? How do you make it so that
people will get driven to that page? Is
that your CTA? Is that where you're trying
to get everybody to just click to so
it seems
less invasive? Help me with that. Oh, this
is such a tough question, Matt. And the
reason it's tough for me so I'm gonna
I think I'm gonna lay out what the
different options are, and I really think it
(12:42):
depends on
what you're comfortable with as the business owner,
what you think your audience is most comfortable
with. Because like you, I also just hate
the pop up that blocks me for reading.
I'm likely to click away at that point.
One
alternative to that that I actually am a
fan of is the pop up that comes
(13:02):
up in the corner of the website at
a certain point. So it doesn't block you
from reading, but it does still pop up
and grab attention that way. So if you
have one of those corner pop ups with
the lead magnet, I think that's a good
alternative.
I also
just really like this notion. As I mentioned,
if you have a blog on your website
and you have it at the top of
(13:24):
every blog post
or off to the side of every blog
post,
you have some sort of opt in form
that you're embedding onto each page. And so
if you can also embed that opt in
that same opt in form on your home
page
and on your contact page or wherever else,
you just make it
whatever page people are on or whatever page
(13:46):
they're most likely to land on first,
put that
form link there or embed that form there
so that they can find it. I really
like putting it on a contact page because
some people will click over to the contact
page but not be ready to contact you
yet, and you still have a chance to
grab them. It's a lot less of a
lift for them to say, okay. I do
(14:07):
still wanna hear from this person, get to
know them a little bit more before I'm
ready to book that Calendly
call with them. I think that can be
another I'll give you my phone number
and my email address and my first name
and my last name and my date of
birth. It's unbelievable what some people will ask.
Now now so we've been focusing a little
bit on this ebook, right, as as a
(14:27):
really good way. What are some other examples
of lead magnets that we can incorporate in
case that isn't our bag of tricks?
Yeah. Absolutely. And I will say a lot
of people are very against ebooks and white
papers because they're a little bit longer. They're
boring. Right? They or they can be boring.
They don't have to be boring. But there
are so many options for lead magnet excuse
(14:48):
me, lead magnet, especially for financial advisors. A
couple creative ones that I really like are
if you have a really compelling case study,
whether it's hypothetical or it's real, I think
that really depends on your compliance department,
or you even have a little collection of
case studies that, you know, are, again, very
specific to your niche, someone would say see
(15:10):
themselves in those case studies and say, oh,
they helped them with this problem. I have
that problem. Let's see how they did it.
And case studies can be a great option.
One that I see a lot that I
actually don't like is budget templates
because
I think that budget templates
(15:30):
this is why I don't like them.
I think that budget templates, they have to
be
very dynamic. Right? I think that everybody has.
We can all go download a budgeting app
that makes it easier for us to you
that that makes it easier for us to
budget rather than using somebody's spreadsheet.
Now I will say if you have a
(15:50):
specific niche
or with a very specific budgeting need or
budgeting problem and you can create a budget
template for that that someone can use. If
you have fluctuating income, here's the budget for
you. Right?
Something like that. Then that can be good.
But otherwise, I like to stay away from
budget templates because they're just so overdone and
I just don't think they're very compelling anymore.
(16:12):
But other good ones that I've seen are
specific workbooks. So workbooks to help people
reduce debt or workbooks to help people
do their own tax planning or whatever it
might be. I think those can be good.
And then another one, I actually see financial
coaches
doing a lot more with this type, but
I think they can work for financial advisors
(16:32):
or as well are quizzes.
I will say, and I'd love to ask
you this question, Matt.
I don't know how certain compliance departments
would feel about quizzes. I'm curious if you
have any insights. I don't know anybody who's
doing that. So whoever's listening to this right
now, like, I don't I'm sorry. I was
just scanning my brain there thinking to myself,
who have I seen? All of the other
(16:54):
ones that you listed are things that I've
seen
quite successful when it comes to a lead
magnet. But quizzes, I don't know how many
advisers that that's not true. So Thomas Koppelman
does that regularly
on Twitter.
In fact, I've seen a bunch of people
do that on Twitter. Now he is an
RIA,
so he has a little bit more flexibility
there. But I'm telling you, that's such a
(17:14):
magnificent way to engage people. I really love
that. And, Hillary, one of the things that
I really like about,
chatting with my fellow marketing,
friends
is
you can uncover stuff like this. Right? So
listen, if you're listening to this and and
you can,
all you have to do is ask the
question. And then you have to ask this
follow-up question, which is what can I do
(17:34):
to make this compliant? Which is, I think,
one of the best questions you can ever
have when you're actually talking with your compliance
department, especially if they say no, is a
wonderful way to engage.
But I'm gonna go back to the worksheets
because one of the other things that we
have seen is checklists.
So people really like checklists. Now you said
like a budgeting thing, like a budgeting form
(17:54):
or checklist, but just having an overall checklist,
are your kids,
you know, are your kids ready to go
to college? Here are 10 things that you
need to have. Click here, and I'll send
you this thing. And I've seen a bunch
of people. In fact,
I interviewed this guy many moons ago, and,
yeah, he just came back into this
weird conversation that I had. They're like, do
(18:14):
you know this guy? I was like, yeah.
I interviewed him, like, episode, like, 200.
And that's his lead magnet. His lead magnet
is, so your kids were just born. Here's
the college checklist. They just turned 13. Here's
the college. They just started studying for their
SAT or maybe they're in AB classes or
whatever. He's got all of these checklists, and
that's how he fills up his pipeline.
I just think that's a that's really, really
(18:35):
cool. Now I have to
dive a little deeper and maybe turn the
screws on you a little bit more
because
I don't fully think our audience understands
how you're going to
differentiate
using this lead magnet
and having the right people download the lead
(18:55):
magnet. So can you unpack that a little
bit more?
Yes. Absolutely.
So I love this example of the checklist
that you just
brought up here because I think checklists are
they also work really, really well if they're
specific for a specific market of people. This
adviser, I'm assuming,
clearly loves to help his clients do some
(19:15):
education planning, and he's probably knowledgeable in doing
financial aid and dealing with student loans and
making smart decisions around that. And so that,
to me, is a great example of getting
the right people into your pipeline because that's
what I'm then going to help you with.
Whereas,
I think some of these more generic
budget templates.
So let's just take I've created a generic
(19:38):
budgeting spreadsheet,
and that's my lead magnet, and that's what
I'm gonna put out there.
If you don't say who it's for or
the budget spreadsheet doesn't help you achieve a
specific goal,
anyone who wants to budget might download that
budget spreadsheet.
It could be a college kid who's definitely
not ready to work with you. Right? It
could be someone who is
(20:00):
getting ready to
retire
because they're like, I just need to budget
for my retirement.
But, really, the people you like to work
with are older millennials or Gen X. Right?
And they're needing to ramp up their savings
or whatever it might be. So I think
that's the importance of thinking about, can I
make my lead magnet solve a really specific
(20:20):
problem for a really specific person
that then I can help them
in my services
when they're ready to work with me? It's
the same problem that I'm gonna dive deeper
into
with them. So I don't know if that
answers if that helps provide some clarity. And
I think that's the level of clarity that
our listeners Oh,
(20:52):
wait. This Oh, wait. This is really valuable
to me. I really like Hillary because she's
giving me something that is gonna make my
life better. Oh, it's just an email address
is fine. And then you get them into
that that owned audience. Now I'm sure you
and I could spend years
talking about what to do next. Right? Because
after we own their audience and the lead
magnet's work, now they're a lead. Now what
(21:13):
do we do? We don't have time for
that. We'll have to either have you back
or one of these days you and I
need to share the stage and really dive
deeply into these at a conference here in
the near future because I know you're going
to be indisposed a little bit here for
a little while, but when you I don't
even know when that's gonna be, so I'm
not even gonna go there, sister. Anyway, I
want to thank you very, very much. Now
before before we go, though so Jessica and
I were working. Jessica produces the show, and
(21:35):
we were working on the question that we
were gonna ask you about the lead magnets
and stuff. And it was based off of
social media posts that, by the way, I
think we're just gonna link to in the
show notes so that people could see the
conversation. It's a very good conversation.
But what should I have asked you that
I didn't?
We don't have time to get into
email sequences, which is what you should do
after.
But I think that's there's 2 other parts
(21:55):
to this lead magnet for it to be
really, really effective and for it to actually
result in those book discovery calls, which is
what you want when you get people into
your email list.
I don't think it's enough to create just
a simple opt in form
for a lead magnet.
When you create your opt in form, you
wanna have a little bit of copy there,
maybe some bullet points of the benefits of
the lead magnet. You wanna sell the lead
(22:17):
magnet even though it's free.
Right? You wanna really sell that lead magnet
so that they are like, I absolutely need
this. I'm not even gonna hesitate to put
my email address into this opt in form.
And so that's, I think, maybe the one
piece that we haven't talked about yet. And,
yes, we could spend a whole another episode
talking about the welcome sequence that comes on
the back end that you need with the
lead magnet. But that opt in form or
(22:37):
the landing page, if you're sending people to
a specific landing page to download. And I'm
sorry if that's, like, again, more jargon that
I
would need to define. But wherever it is
that people can actually input their first name
and their email address, and I wouldn't ask
any more questions than that, have a little
bit of copy there that really speaks to
the benefits or what they will get out
of this lead magnet.
(22:59):
We do need to dive more deeply into
the back end of that because I think
what ends up happening is people build these
email nurture sequences, and it's so aggressive.
Like, for instance,
I just bought a pair of jeans
online.
There's a very specific company that I'm old.
Right? These fit me well, and I like
them, and they're super company and whatever. And,
(23:20):
but so I bought 5, 6 pairs of
jeans from this company.
But, man, after I buy it, it's like
they just every day you're in my I
would know. I unsubscribe.
Right? And I don't want that. Right? I
want you to be top of mind, but
not, like, schmucky, salesy. What can I do
to get you in this car today? And
this could just be a great social media
(23:41):
post that you and I need to maybe
potentially work on together too is
what is the cadence that's appropriate?
How can you keep top of mind without
being annoying?
I just that stuff drives me crazy. Alright.
Anyway, Hillary, I'm sure that there are gonna
be people who are gonna wanna reach out
to you and find out more about who
you are and what you do. Where should
they go? What should they do? They can
go to monettacopy.com.
That's a website. I know you'll link to
(24:02):
it in the show notes. Moneta can be
a little hard to come up with the
spelling on your own. I am always on
LinkedIn. Hilary Gail Meehan is what I am
on LinkedIn.
I am, as you mentioned, gonna be out
on maternity leave for the rest of 2024
starting next week. But I'll be back in
2025, and my team is gonna continue
dropping podcast episodes and things like that. So
I'll still be around, but just not as
(24:24):
often as I usually am. And check out
my podcast, the Finance Marketing Podcast, which you
can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.
The only place and I know
I don't even wanna say this out loud
while I'm looking straight at Matt Haller, and
the only place it's not yet is on
YouTube.
Oh, you just that hurt me. I didn't
know that. I would have poached you in
the eye of that one way earlier.
(24:45):
Yeah. You yeah. Oh my gosh. It's the
2nd largest podcast player. And one of the
things that has really blown us away with
we have a new something called enhanced video
services with our managed influence services. And our
clients right now, Larry, they're getting 10 to
20 times more interaction with the YouTube shorts
than they're ever getting downloads. But you know
what? The here's the thing. You already have
such a wonderful foundation of social proof and
(25:07):
libraries that people can go to to learn
from Vue. That's when you implement that YouTube
strategy. You're gonna be even more successful than
you are right now. And I wish you
all of the success in the world. I'm
so happy to count you as one of
our friends here at Proudmouth. I know that
my team absolutely loves the stuff that you
post on social, so please please please follow
Hillary on LinkedIn specifically. She's always putting out
such good, high quality,
(25:29):
zero click important content
that you can just learn from very quickly.
Now I don't think you'll be surprised that
there is a lead magnet built into that,
but whatever. It's because she practices what she
preaches. And we wanna practice what we preach
to your to to all of you too.
So the long and short of what where
we're at with ProudMouth is this.
Please just make sure that you're following us
on social to pay attention to all of
(25:49):
the stuff because here between now and the
end of 2025,
we're launching a whole bunch of new stuff
that you're gonna wanna pay attention to that
I'm just gonna tease you with right now.
There are some really, really cool things that
we've been working on. We've got a new
team that is helping us really bring products
to market, which is so wonderful, Hillary. I
know that you and I have talked about
that in the past. It's one of the
biggest banes of being a marketing company is
(26:10):
actually marketing for yourself instead of marketing for
everybody else, and we're really excited to bring
these things, and we will. And so please
stay tuned. And if you have not subscribed,
make sure that you do. And more importantly,
go check out our YouTube channel. That's alright.
I had to totally do that to you,
sister, because we do have a lot of
stuff there. But anyway, for Hillary and all
of us here at Proudmouth, this is Matt
Halloran. We'll see you on the other side
of the mic very soon.
(26:31):
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 loud, visit us at
proudmouth.com
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
(26:51):
to be.
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