I am, I'm the co-founder of Proud Mouth. We're an influence accelerator company for financial services professionals, pretty much exclusively. Podcasting, video, creating content is pretty much all we do. My specific job is I'm the chief revenue officer of the CRO and the chief relationship officer for our company. And yeah, today what we're talking about is, you know, with Laura and Zoe, man, this is our bailiwick. We're super excited to talk more about all of these wonderful topics today. So thanks for having me. Laura, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. I'm Laura Galloway and I'm the chief marketing officer at Goldstone Financial Group. We are based in Chicago, but expanding all across the world. Just kidding. All across the United States right now. And part of my job here is just to really help an incredible firm that's been around for about 20 years, CEO, Anthony Pellegrino, his major vision. And I'm here to help him expand it and grow it so that he can reach that target demographic that all of us are trying to reach, right? Make sure that we stay connected with our clients. And I've been, I kind of honed my knowledge of marketing for financial advisors at White Glove, doing a lot of seminar marketing over a lot of years. And now I'm at a firm that does about 80 seminars a year. So I know a lot about that and a lot about the kind of clients that brings in. And I'm happy to share some thoughts here with the group today. Thanks for having me. And last but not least, Zoe. Hey, I'm Zoe Maggart, CEO and founder of Perfectly Planned Content. We're a boutique content marketing firm, primarily work with financial advisors, specifically fee only. And we really plug in as like fractional CMOs. And we really focus on like brand messaging, copy and content as our kind of bread and butter. Super excited to be here today and have some great panelists next to me. So honored to be a part of it. Excellent, excellent. So I'd like to maybe set the scene on why we're even talking about this. So we before we jump into specifics, you know, I want to go over what what tools and strategies we should consider before implementing any type of communication or marketing strategy in our practice. I think it's I think it's important for us to talk a little bit about the why, right? Why do we need to think about our marketing and our communication now more than ever? So why do we need to discuss that? And how can we enhance our marketing strategy based on the things that you're all seeing happening in the industry? And maybe we can start a little bit with Matt. Yeah. So the number one reason why clients leave their financial advisor isn't because of performance. It's about lack of personalized communication. So many people are out there just regurgitating canned content that, by the way, your clients get from the five other advisors they have relationships with. And it just doesn't make them feel special or really appreciated. And then you piggyback that with the great wealth transfer, which is what every stage is going to be talking about over the next 10 years. Really it's anywhere from 72 to 80 trillion dollars that's going to be passed down from the baby boomers to Generation X and then the millennials. And if you don't have a strong communication strategy, you're missing out on the biggest transfer of wealth ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And we know that if you're trying to get the attention of Generation X and below, you have to have a strong content strategy, a strong social media strategy, which then leads to a strong social proof strategy. Love that. Laura, I think you have a few things we can add here, which I think helps, again, set the scene for why we're talking about this and now more than ever. Yeah, you know, a lot of the advisors that I work with at White Glove, when we ask them what they were doing for their current growth plan, how are they getting new clients? Oh, I'm all referrals. Like, no, you're not. I know better. Or if you are, if you're not growing, you're dying. And by the way, waiting around for referrals, that is that's a hope. That is not a growth plan. That is not a strategy at all. So to what Matt said and everything that we're talking about today, why are we doing this? Because you have to communicate content. Us marketers, we like to talk about content a lot. But what that is, is really just figuring out how to way to speak the language that your clients speak, that your prospects speak and speaking it in a way and talking to them about things that that matters to them. And if your firm isn't out there sharing this kind of information that matters, like, will I have enough to retire? How do I how do I make this work when my spouse is no longer here? How do I take care of my kids? How do I not pass down money to that awful person that my daughter married that I don't want to, but I want to keep the kid, whatever. Right. So if we're not talking about these things and we're not communicating them, then we don't realize it, but we're actually not attracting and not building the relationship with that next gen that Matt just mentioned, the great wealth transfer. The heirs of your current clients need to be in communication with you. That is the only way you are keeping that that massive AUM that you've built up over all these years inside your firm. Otherwise, it's going right outside to talk to somebody else that is talking to those people. Good point, good point. And so, yeah, I want you to chime in, because I think as we hear our why, you know, so it's great. This is our why, why we need to focus on this. But how do we determine which services or differentiators to focus on when it comes to marketing? And I think that's an important question, because I remember when we bought this firm out and I hired a very powerful CFO, COO. And one of the things he said is, hold off on marketing, right? Hold off, because I think we need to think about our strategy and where that fits in. But I want to hear from you. How do we determine what it is we should be focusing on from a marketing perspective? That's such a good question, and I think, honestly, it gets overcomplicated a lot in the world of advisor marketing, right? And I just talked to an advisor this morning who is feeling nervous, thinking about pivoting her strategy. And that stuff happens, those moments, those pivotal moments happen throughout your career. But more than likely, most advisor firms, unless you are brand new, starting out, freshly minted REA, you already have some A-list clients who you love, right? So thinking about those clients who light up you and your advisors when they're on the calendar, who are the right revenue and you're charging the right amount, whatever it needs to be for your firm, however you define that. Think about those people who you would copy and paste and just ask them, right? Ask them what their pain points are. Think about what got them in the door. Why did they contact you? Because more than likely, those are the same people who you want to work with in the future who aren't already part of your firm, right? So we'll be putting out this content that, yes, attracts your current clients and the next generation, but also those A-list prospects you've not even met yet. And so the number one reason or number one way I recommend doing that is just ask those people via a survey. A lot of advisors feel iffy about surveys. We send them out for our clients like once a year for their client base, right? We just want to get a feel for the room, right? Do they enjoy the content they're putting out? What other things could we be doing to support them better? Because if they're your clients and they love working with you, they'll be honest with you there as well. Right, and I love that you touched on that, and I think sometimes where I know for us, right, I love what I do. I love meeting with clients. I love doing all the planning. But running a business is a whole different ballgame. And I quickly learned that I wasn't enjoying that part. So it's kind of hard for us to step out of our role as advisors and think of how do we align our marketing strategy to our overall business strategy? And I think that that's where sometimes it's the cart before the horse, right? Let's get some direction on who we want to be, where we want to play, and then how do we get there? So I know for us, it was kind of building that framework from the top down. And we work with Out and About, and they were instrumental in kind of helping us really outline how we were going to strategize on this. So let's jump into some really fun areas. And maybe Matt can tell us a little bit about what are some ways that us as advisors can talk about our services in a way that prospects connect? I get really energized, and if you take me and you want to talk about taxes, I can do that for a whole eight hours, right? But who am I going to connect with if I do that, right? So I think I want to hear from you guys, what are some tips on how we can better communicate what we do that the prospect is able to resonate with? So Matt, why don't you give us a little bit of insight? Yeah, if you don't mind, I'm going to just take one quick step back because Zoe said something that was going to lead me into answering that question a little bit more succinctly. So as Zoe knows, and all of us and all of you who are on this know, a lot of advisors are terrified to ask their clients what they want. I mean, Zoe and I actually, I think we did a whole podcast on that at one point because of the system that she's got with her firm. You can just do it with AI. And I know there's a lot of strong feelings about artificial intelligence, but if you know how to ask the right question, especially if you're focusing on a niche or anything like that, the internet is going to tell you what God's name they're looking for. And I know that's not what this is about, but I just wanted to say, you know, if you're not going to use perfectly planned content, you're not going to use Zoe and her survey system that they built in, that's part of their whole integrated marketing plan, you can literally just ask the internet. But okay, so that leads me into really looking at things differently. I am now of the age that my children remind me that I was born in the 1900s. It stings, I lean into it, but it stings a little bit. Traditional marketing doesn't work like it used to, and Laura did it, she was just talking about that. If you only grow by referrals, which is how 98% of advisors have wanted to grow because it's cheap and it's easy, right? Very low cost of client acquisition. It just doesn't work the same. Now, referrals are still vitally important, but you have to have a really, really strong social proof strategy so that when somebody does say, hey, I want you to call Zoe, they're going to Google the hell out of Zoe and want to feel who Zoe is and what her thought leadership is and all of this stuff. Your clients are already doing that, and the referrals are also doing it. But what's most important, and this is something I'm going to hang this hat on that I wear all the time really for the rest of my career, clients and prospects don't want to be sold to anymore. They want to be given the opportunity to buy from you. So what happens in a lot of financial services practices is you're talking to skeptics, people who really don't like, know, and trust you very well, and you have to sell them. And Noah, I've been through Sandler sales training, and Laura and I have talked about that before. Man, I've been through all of them because I do all of the sales here for Promet. I know how to get you from trial closes and presumptive. I mean, I can walk you through all of that stuff. But here's the deal. Nobody likes that. It's yucky. They don't want, they want to be able to come in pre-sold. And that's when you really start talking to fans. And with a really strong content marketing plan and strategy, which is the social proof that I'm talking about, that's when everything changes. So advisors have to change their thinking on that. You have to give everything away so that when people come in and Nella want to talk to you about taxes for eight hours, they know that you're the eight hour tax talking lady that they absolutely love and respect and already feel like they know you. That's just that, that's, that's, that is a huge mindset shift that we have to stop thinking like it's the 1900s, that it's not anymore. And by the way, that was 30 years ago. And we really have to do modern marketing today, which is that strong social proof. I love that you said that because I'm of the opinion that if I'm sitting with a prospect, I want them to leave that room feeling like they already learned something. They already learned something. They already gained something by meeting me, regardless of what happens after they leave. And you know what? It'll happen a year later. I'll get that call. I met with you last year because that's the thing. Another, and I don't want to, you know, you guys are the marketing experts, but sometimes it's not on our time. It's on their time. So I want to hear a little bit from Lara, because I think that there's, you know, your thoughts are really helpful here. Well, thank you. I have to say something for Matt, because Matt is one of the most generous marketers, one of the most educated marketers, and he's doing so much to help advisors do exactly what he said. To put the content out the way we're talking about it, it's hard. Why are you getting continuing education credit about this guy to talk about this? Because it's something you should do, but it's actually quite hard. You know, one of the easiest ways to do it? If you're going, Matt said something, he said, you have to give away everything. I believe when he says you have to give it away, what he means, and kind of Nella, to your point, you can talk about taxes for eight hours. Why? Because you're passionate, you're educating. What we give away, guys, is education. Education should always be free. Always. We don't have tricks up our sleeves that other people don't. Explain how taxes work. Explain how the market, this is not rocket science, but it's very difficult for people to understand. Matt's program, the Proud Mouth program, if you see, and I've been a client at White Glove, we were clients. If you see the whole process, I would say the key to giving everything away, yeah, great idea, but do not make this mistake. When you're giving it away, don't give it away one person at a time. Give it away to everybody at once. Right, Matt? I mean, that's what a podcast is. You're out there speaking, sharing one-on-one. Your time is so expensive, but you know what? If you can share in a way that is one-to-many, and you can educate those people, and they feel like, wow, I learn so much every time I listen to this person, and I feel like they're really talking to me. Education should always be free, but do your best to always make it one-to-many, not one-on-one. If you educate and empower these people, this generation can go online and talk to their best friend Google, and in .013 seconds, have all the answers to everything. We're not going to win on having expertise. That's not what's going to work. It has to be sharing, empowering, and educating, and if you have that mindset, and you produce your content, and you share it in a podcast, on a beautiful blog, on a website, whatever it is, webinars that you do, that's how you get across to these people. That's going to keep them with you. Zoe, do you want to add anything here? I think we'd love to hear from you as well. Absolutely. First of all, I love everything that both of you just said, and I love this idea of not selling, right? And for inviters I talk to, you get so stuck on selling your services. I give financial plans. I am flat fee. I do this, right? And that's awesome, and you're probably killing it. That's why you're being successful, and that's why you're looking to market and grow even more, right? You love what you do, but I like to kind of shift that messaging perspective to you're not selling what you do, or even how you do it, because as much as people like to hear that you have a process, they don't care that you've got a fancy process. They want to know what the end result is. So to your point, Laura, you're selling empowerment. You're selling that. We don't recommend saying financial peace of mind because every advisor under the sun says that, but that's what you're selling, right? You're selling the end result, and so I think when you talk about your services, instead of talking about the technical ins and outs, talk about the result you are guiding your client to, because ultimately they're the hero in this story, and your educational content and your content marketing strategy should make them feel like, okay, when I work with firm X, I'm going to feel Y, and that's ultimately what's going to, Matt, to your point, empower them to want to say yes to you, which just makes your sales process so much easier. Absolutely, and I think when we're sitting in front of the prospect, what is that going to look like at the end, and maybe adding a little bit more color. You work with us. You're going to achieve this, and maybe along those same lines, how do we know what a prospect pain points are so that we can say, once you work with us, you'll know that you've saved the maximum amount of income taxes every year through our process of planning, but how are we able to dig deep and really find out what those pain points are, and really, how do you know how to talk to them about those pain points? Zoe, do you want to continue? Yeah, for sure. I can roll on this one for a long time, because I talk about this every time we do a web coffee project, which you're like, what are the core pain points your clients experience, and often when I talk to advisors, what they're talking about is, well, they want to retire, the goals that they want to check off the list, but actually, the pain points are usually a lot more urgent. There's something that inspired those A-list clients I talked about earlier to book the call. They received an inheritance. They got diagnosed with something. They are five years out from retirement and just realized like, uh-oh, my pension doesn't work the way I thought it would. Whatever the immediate uh-oh is that kind of forced them to book, those are the pain points that your content strategy should really hinge on. Because those are the questions people are Googling, they're seeking expertise and empowerment in those areas. And I always like to use the ER example, right, because I find a lot of advisors, when a new prospect comes in, they're like, awesome, we have this holistic process. But the client is like, okay, but I'm worried about this very specific thing. So when you walk into an ER, and you've got a big, bleeding wound, the doctor doesn't look at you and say, you need cholesterol medication. That's not the goal, right? The goal is optimized later, address the immediate wound now, and that's exactly what your marketing should do. It should be giving away that free content education that patches the bleeding wound, so that later, you can have them optimize everything and make a lifelong client relationship really fantastic. Fantastic. I know, Laura, you talked a little bit about being able to deliver this empowerment, this education to the masses. So what do you think, in your opinion, are the best communication methods to be able to showcase that value? And maybe while we're trying to showcase that value, what are certain things we shouldn't say? What are your thoughts on that? Well, one of the best ways to talk about how to showcase it, I think we need to address that elephant in the room, the technology, the social media, Matt mentioned earlier. I find a lot of advisors love one platform and hate most others. And I think that's so common, right? There are advisors who only want to do dinner seminars and hate all forms of media, including their website, social, everything else. And so what I would say is just first and foremost, Zoe, you mentioned part of it is the ego. I think so much of it, we work with advisors who are really good at what they do, these entrepreneurs, these founders, they're amazing at what they do because they believe in themselves so much. I mean, it's kind of required, right? But just that one of the conversations that I'm having with advisors is saying, look, this makes sense to you, but we want to turn it around and say, what makes sense to the audience you want to work with, those ideal clients Zoe's mentioned? What platforms are they on? If they're on Facebook, then you need to be on Facebook. If they're on YouTube, you need to be on YouTube. If they're on wherever, right? So that's the whole thing for me is I think we get attached to one modality, that's normal. And it feels comfortable and complacency is something hard to overcome. But if you can take that and that mindset and just say, wait a minute, this is what's comfortable to me. That's comfortable to the people that I want to serve, the people I want to empower. And wherever that platform is, that's where you need to be. Zoe, what do you think? I kind of focus on like the content language around this, right? So totally to your point, be on the platform your clients are on, those A-listers who you want to copy and paste and fill your book of business with, but also try to focus on client centered language. So kind of going back to, again, you're not talking about the robotic service kind of offerings that you've got, any AI tool will spit out for you, right? We want to kind of flip that on its head and talk about the end result, make them feel like the hero. What questions are people Googling? Matt, I want to hear more about sort of plugging that into AI even because we use that for our clients as well. What questions are people asking and what language are they using to ask it? And that's kind of how your messaging strategy should be formed, at least in my opinion. Matt, what do you think? Do you want to chime in? Any thoughts here? Yeah, yeah. A lot of thoughts on all that stuff. But I will make this very succinct. Marketing has fundamentally changed. You have to market to your ideal target market in the media they prefer while they're there with organic content. So that's taking everything that Laura said and everything that Zoe said and just mashing it together into a bite-sized statement that I'm hoping really sinks into advisors' brains. Just very quickly on the AI thing, and you can literally do this on Google. I just did this, by the way. So we have, they're called office hours where some of our clients come in and meet with us, kind of a group coachy thing. And they were talking about this specific niche that they wanted to go after. And I said, well, you go to Google and go to Gemini, and I'm going to go to JAP GPT-4, and we're going to ask it roughly the same question. And it really is just how you ask the question. And with what Zoe had just said there, what language, that is a large language model. It's all about the language. If you ask AI about the language that senior executives at Verizon, what are their biggest concerns, and ask the question, how do I use the appropriate language to get their attention in my marketing content, it'll tell you, oh, it's not perfect, but it'll freaking tell you. Why not lean on that? And then you take, oops, then you take that in, I got too excited there. When you take that, then you take that to perfectly planned contact, and you give it to Zoe and say, hey, this is what we want. Then she perfectly plans your content strategy to make it so that you're going to get those people's attention. It's again, it's not an or, it's an and. It's all hands on deck now, everybody. And you really need to have that sort of a strategy to have the focus that you need to have. Yeah. And I find that when I'm trying to communicate what it's going to look like in the end, right, if I'm talking about loss harvesting, that can get lost, right, in translation, pun intended. So really, we need stories, right, so kind of to bring this to life so the client can resonate. So where do we incorporate that? How are we incorporating that and case studies into all our marketing? Maybe it is through blogs and things like that. What do you think, Matt? Do you want to jump right into that one? So let's just use the other two people that are on this call. Both of them have used stories repeatedly, talking about their clients, talking about their past experience, because we know as marketers, that's what people connect with. If I, as your ideal prospect, see myself in the story, I already think I'm a client, right? So we have something called the perfect content formula here, which is storytelling, education, entertainment call to action. And so every piece of content that you have, you should be incorporating these four things. Now, for some people, they're going to say, because now you used a very specific word there, case studies, which some compliance departments equate to testimonials, and so we're going to just clear the air right out of the gate. So here's the deal. Don't say stupid stuff. I usually say that with different language on stage, but don't say stupid stuff, number one. Number two, be vague and say, this is typical of a client experience, right? You're not guaranteeing anything. You're saying the word typical, or you could even say, hey, I'm going to share a story with you, and these results aren't typical. Compliance loves that even more. But you have to tell that story, and it needs to be something that shows the desired outcome that you were just asking about. Yeah, talking about tax loss harvesting, for some people, they're on the edge of their chair. I'm not. But if you tell me a story about how this strategy allowed me to spend more time doing something that I love because now I'll have more resources in my own pocket, that's a win-win. And then they're going to say, wait a second, so how did you do that? When they ask you the how, you need to tell them the why and the ultimate experience. So anyway, that's the storytelling part, and then you've got to be education. We've already talked about that half a decent amount. I want to spend a little bit of time on the last two, which is being entertaining. People don't realize that content creation is a performance, and if you can start giving yourself the gift of believing that and putting the time in, everything fundamentally changes. I told this story a whole bunch of times. I've got an exercise bike sitting over here. I was on that exercise bike before the show, this show that we're doing right now, because I know this is a show. I did my vocal warms up. I reviewed all of the notes. That sort of preparation, you look at the greatest performers and actors, they just don't show up, right? They don't half-ass it. They whole-ass the performance, and you have to do that with your content, right? You have to do that with your social proof. You have to do that with your communication strategy, because if you are excited, just like you were talking about, you can talk about taxes for eight hours, you're excited about that. That excitement is contagious, so when you show up, you have to be prepared. You have to be warmed up physically, mentally, spiritually, educationally, everything. You have to be really dialed in. And then the last thing is the call to action. If I give you, and I'm just going to use podcasting as an example, because that's what we do and kind of what I'm known for, so you give me 27 minutes of really kick-ass information, right? And you're like, damn, I just learned, like, I've had both of Laura and Zoe on our show. Oh, my God, I just learned so much from Laura. She's the greatest thing in the world. I want people to then connect and try to follow up with her, and if she gave me 27 minutes of great information, it is okay to ask. So there's this amazing book, and if there's one thing that you take away from me from this time that we're together, it's by Dr. Robert Cialdini's Seven Principles of Influence book. It's the greatest sales book I've ever read in my life. We built our entire business off of this, because we're influence accelerators, but one of them is called The Principle of Reciprocity. We are socially obligated to do something nice for somebody who does something nice for us, and I'm not saying to be a schmuck about it, but if I give you 27 minutes of great education, it's okay for me to say, and if you want to know more, I'd love to talk to you. Here's my phone number, or download my white paper, or here's a worksheet to help you work through this, or go to my website, or follow me on social. Take that real estate and lean into it. Don't go to, buy my product, because again, that goes against what we were talking about earlier, but it's okay to ask people to do something. Zoe, what are your thoughts on incorporating client stories and case studies? Well, we are a big story brand, story-based marketing believer at First Blue Client Content, so again, everything that Matt is saying is fully resonating with me, but I always kind of like to structure content, because you're totally right, Matt. Regulators, if they see a case study, you've got to be really careful, and say it's fictionalized, and that can kind of feel hokey. People are always asking, well, but how do I tell stories about eight hours of taxes that I want to talk about, or whatever it is, right? I literally start it like a story. We're bloggers, so we don't do podcasts, so we leave that to Matt, but I say things like, does this sound familiar at the top of a blog post? Then you can dive into a scenario that you've built out, or that you hear all the time, or it's a tale as old as time. So-and-so is going to college, and you're realizing you can't foot the bill, right? You're literally telling a story in your blog. It doesn't have to lead with, these are all of the tax prep things that you need to do for retirement. That can be a hook for a lot of people, but I still think that, again, just starting with a story can kind of get you off on the right content, but again, use the right language as well. Excellent. I think the million-dollar question is, right, as we think about incorporating all these different marketing strategies, the how, the where, I think oftentimes is, well, okay, you're saying I need to be doing all these things because we have the biggest transfer of wealth we've ever seen during our time, but how do we know that all this marketing is working, right? How do we know our message is resonating with our audience, our target audience? And if it's not, when do we know we have to pivot, right? Because marketing is one of those things that you just don't know it's working, but it's working slowly, right? It's hard to quantify that ROI. So Matt, do you want to kind of talk a little bit about how we would either get some sort of a hint whether it's working or not? Yeah, nobody's going to like this answer. I will preface that right away because in our world of marketing, ROI is like, it's not an A plus B equals C equation. That's the problem, right? We talked about at the top, the number one reason why people leave their advisor is lack of tailored, personalized communication. None of you are tracking that. When a client leaves, you're like, oh, they just A-catted all their money out. You don't ask them, well, why'd you leave? Because I haven't heard from you in nine years, right? And so that's a really, really important piece. So how do you know if it's working? There's two ways that you know it's working. Number one, you put in the time and the effort over 12 to 24 months with a specific campaign and you ride it out. No advisor wants to hear that. Lara and I used to have fun, heated discussions when she was at White Glove because White Glove, it's an A plus B equals C equation. You spend $10,000 on your seminar, you get 30 buying units, 10 make appointments, you get three sales, right? I'm sure my numbers aren't entirely right there, but that's the model. Well, our marketing, Zoe's marketing, long-term business marketing is very, very, very different. So many advisors run their practice, okay? We want you to think about running this like a business. And so I'll give you a couple of quick statistics, and this is actually from Michael Kitsis. High growth firms spend 12% of gross, not net, on marketing. So we can do math here if you'd like. So let's say you make a million dollars. So okay, Nella, you're the financial advisor here. So I make a million dollars gross, right? So if I'm supposed to spend 12% on marketing, what is that number? 120,000. Yeah, it's $120,000. So how many advisors do you know, Nella, that are million dollar producers that are spending $120,000 on marketing? Probably not very many. But if you look at businesses, right, like where Lara has gone, right, this really large firm with multiple advisors, they're making decisions like that, all right? And I just think that that's, so many advisors are using their business as their own personal piggy bank, and they really need to switch that gear. If they close a big client, they're like, ooh, I'm going to buy myself something. Really? Shouldn't you run it like a business? And the other last thing is this, and this is going to sound mean. So this is Matt just jabbing everybody right now. So we haven't lost anybody, but I'm poking. I know I am. Okay. A lot of you are financial planners. You are constantly saying, don't look at what's going on in the market today. Look at where we need to be six years out, five years out, three years out when you're getting ready to retire. But you don't apply that to marketing. Marketing is a long-term planning strategy. If you do it right, we know that it's going to get you the results that you want, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen today. Your least favorite clients are the ones who come in and say, I saw something on CNBC and I need to sell everything and buy Nvidia. No, my God, are you kidding me? That is not what you all want. And that's not what we want as marketers either. I want people coming in and saying, hey, you know what, in five years from now, here's where I want to be. And then companies like Zoe's and companies like ours can help you get there with certainty if you give us the time. We're telling our clients that they shouldn't be looking at their business as the pot of gold at the end, that they should be planning now as they're running their business. Because I think if COVID taught us anything is that you could be thriving in one environment and not in another one. So the planning needs to happen while you're running your business. So I love that. And I think I want to hear from Laura a little bit on her thoughts on marketing and how do we know it's resonating and working? Well, Matt touched on, I have two analogies that I think resonate pretty well with advisors. And Matt touched on one of them, which is as advisors, we're furious thinking that our clients want to time the market. Like tell me when I want to see this rate of return. I want to see, it's got to go one direction. That's it. We're like, guys, come on. Don't look at it every day. Just relax. It's a setting. Forget over the hall. Look at my chart. Look at it goes up. We try so hard to help people, to help them manage volatility and to learn to wait and to know that the yield comes, like Matt said, 12 to 24 months down the road. So it's such a good analogy. You as an advisor are saying that to your clients. You're asking them to trust you for the long haul. And yet you don't want to trust your marketing for the long haul. It's the same thing. It hurts, right? It hurts because we want to see that quick fix. We want to see it. Just like our clients want to, you know, double whatever their nest egg is. Sure. Of course. But that's not how it works. And you know that if anybody knows that it's a disciplined financial advisor who has to sit across from a client at a desk all the time and say, guys, that's unrealistic. That's not how it works. Let me show you the charts over time. This is how it works. Same exact principle. Marketing, I tell you, that's one analogy. But one thing you can to your question, Nella, how do you know if it's working? I can tell you if you know how it's not working. That's when, wow, people just aren't reaching out anymore and our competitors are eating our lunch. So that's how you know it's not a good, not a good thing. And it also happens gradually over time, perhaps, right? But the second analogy I want to give you is that investing in your marketing, that 12% gross gulp, right? That 12% that the best RIAs, advisory firms out there using as their benchmark is kind of like owning insurance, which is another thing that you sell, probably, and if you're not just an AUM-only shop, probably something you sell, again, every day. So if you can understand that insurance is something you buy and hope you never need, it's something you buy that you pay every month or you pay quarterly or a year, whatever it is, right? Whatever that is, you've got it in the background. Marketing works the same way. Marketing is your insurance that you are visible to your target audience, the end. So beautifully said. Love that. And I think Zoe, I think you like to also try to focus on data too, because I think data tells us a lot about whether it's working or not. What are your thoughts there? So my clients are advisors, they're numbers people, right, as a creative, I was an English major, not a numbers person. And so I had to sort of get creative with like, all right, like, how are we as Matt said, ROI with marketing is like a pinball machine, where like one thing might work over here and then it's really hard to track like what is working and what is not. So what I tell advisors is, let's pick three. What are our three KPIs that are going to like actually move the needle? This also helps detract from like the new shiny thing issue that people run into. I fell prey to this as a business owner, oh my gosh, social media engagement is up. I'm going to start tracking social engagement, but like, is that actually moving the needle? I don't know. And so like, that's not where you want to be. So instead of focusing on what do I know is moving the needle in my business? It's for often, this might be different for you, but new prospect calls booked, right? That's one of them. Bottom of the funnel marketing, top of the funnel, is your site traffic increasing? Great. If that's consistently going up, you've got a solid bottom and top of the funnel, middle might be like our email list growing, our podcast subscribers growing. Then I also like to throw in there like just for fun to spice things up, like what content is actually driving that traffic? Like what's getting the engagement? So is it a specific podcast? Is it a blog? Is it one seminar we do every single year that knocks it out of the park? Track those things over time and try to pay attention to trends and seasonality, or does the topic that's driving traffic suddenly change because we've had a COVID or an election cycle, right? Like different things will impact it. And so you can kind of gauge what's working, what's not with real time data, and it helps inform your long-term strategy, and then you don't make pivots out of fear because you're making it based in numbers, which I think is helpful. So speaking of fear and the election, we're always dealing with crises, right? And the media does a really good job making our clients panic, but I think that we can use that as opportunity, right? Use those moments of crises. And I want Laura to maybe address this a little bit. How do we use marketing strategy when we are in moments of crisis to turn that around into a positive thing? Well, it's such a good question. I mean, think about what is it in a time of crisis, what is it that your clients need? What is it that they want? Comfort. And what'd you say? Comfort. Right? Exactly. I mean, number one, they need to hear from you. So that's the first piece. Zoe, you said we sometimes make things too hard. Oh my God. Please don't make it too hard. In a time of crisis with crazy volatility and a lot of fear going on, the number one thing you need to do is communicate. And how you do it is truly secondary, okay? But if your client is sitting there and they're worried, oh my God, the markets sell off 10%, oh my God, what's going to happen? If they're sitting there feeling that and they're not hearing from you, wow, that silence is deadly. Okay? So the number one thing is first, just communicate. I don't care if it's calling them, I don't care if it's an email, I don't care if it's a video, if it's podcast, if it's a carrier pigeon, whatever it is, please just communicate. And secondly, you know what they want, like that first piece of comfort, that first hit is just knowing that the advisor knows that this is a scary time and thought enough to reach out and give that comfort and say, I'm here if you need me, I'm here if you want to answer questions. And I know that's hard for advisors because guess what? When the market's really scary, oh, I don't want to take any phone calls. It's so uncomfortable. It's like, it's going to get better guys, I know, but like, honestly, these are opportunities for an advisor to shine. If you show up in a moment of crisis and you communicate and you let them know, I mean, guys, we know what the answer is. Stay with the plan. You got a plan. That plan was crafted with volatility built in. We don't know who's going to win the election, but we know that this plan is okay for you and is going to take care of you no matter what. So we're going to stay the plan. So that's the biggest thing that I have to say, I'm sure Zoe's got something amazing and Matt's got something amazing to add to it, but I just think first and foremost, in times of crisis, communicate. It is your job and it will pay huge dividends if you reach out to your clients when they're scared. Absolutely. So assuming we survived the crisis and now we're thriving, we're kind of really honing in on what our clients want and need, and we feel that we're confident we can roll out new service offerings or new service lines, Zoe, what do you think if we survive, we're kind of rolling out new platforms, what do you think is the best way to announce this before you hear the firm is changing too much? This is not the same firm that I started with in 1990. You better bet it isn't, but how do we communicate this in a way where clients aren't worried that all of a sudden what you're providing to them is going to change? Yeah. And honestly, this is like one of the number one concerns I hear from our clients, whether it's a new service, a new niche market, I hear this a lot when they want to niche down, you're like, but I've got Bob and Sue and they're great and they don't pitch that footless niche. That's totally okay. And honestly, I think that from your past clients, most of the time you're, again, probably the overcomplication thing, right? It's probably being overcomplicated. I do think messaging is important around this stuff. I do think rolling out new service offerings with a mind to existing clients makes sense, but this is an easy thing to do. Even if in the back of your head, you know, I'm pivoting this firm, I'm going to right sides, like we're going to get rid of clients that maybe aren't a foot, your clients don't know that. All they need to hear is that this is a value add. The service I'm bringing to the table, this niche that we're newly servicing, here's why it adds value to your lives. Even if it's as a client who recently is now semi-retired, you know, yay him, he's an advisor. His son works in the business still, he is like full-time RVing, living his best life with his wife. And he was like, well, I kind of would like to start speaking at these RV rally conferences about financial planning, but like, we don't serve RVs. My son doesn't ride an RV. And I was like, does that matter? Like if you get to just talk about something you love, won't your clients just be excited for you that now you have the ability to talk about insurance when you're living in different States, that's applicable to like 10 different situations. So regardless of what you're trying to roll out, whether it's a service or a niche, I think focusing on how it benefits the other clients you've got, whether that's, I have continuing education going on, we're bringing in new advisors to service you, whatever that might be. I think that's just such a win for them to see that you are not just growing by, you know, seeing that client ticker number go up, but also you're growing an experience and knowledge base. And I think that is just a huge messaging shift. Honestly, we can spend eight hours here on all of these amazing marketing strategies and I can't believe we're almost at time. But before we start taking any audience questions, I wanted us to kind of touch on each of our key takeaways from if I know, I know Matt said this a couple of times, if you take anything away from what we've talked about today, here it is. What is your one key takeaway from today's session? Matt? Yeah. Stop thinking that you can market like it's the 1900s and realize that you have to have social proof. You have to have a content marketing strategy. It's not an if, it's a now and you have to do it. Laura, what are your key words of wisdom? Oh, you're on mute. There we go. Content means communication. Yes. In a nutshell. And so if you're growing a big firm and you're getting busy, it's going to be hard to do that one-on-one. So everything that Zoe and Matt can offer to you are strategies to help you communicate one to many. And that way, anything that you're spending your hard earned time on to educate and empower and do that service, be of service and help your clients be smarter investors, anything you do is going to be just magnified when you put it out there. And that has so many, it pays so many dividends the way it comes back, but do it one to many and do it often. Zoe? I think that the number one thing for me, and I tell consulting clients this all the time is start with one thing. Don't, if that 12% gross revenue number has you like hiding under your desk, I feel you, I would have me feeling the same way. And so pick like one thing, whether that's, I'm going to talk to somebody who does podcasting. I'm going to work on doing a blog a month. I want to send a monthly newsletter, pick the one thing that you know you can do consistently, build some self-trust there, show yourself that you're going to show up and do that thing, even if that thing is delegating it or giving it to a team member and build that trust. So that then when you decide to continue rationing up the intensity, you know, you can do it because you've done it before. So that's my big takeaway is pick one thing from what we've talked about today, whatever resonates most with you, start small and build from there. And speaking of one thing, we have a question here from the audience. And we had to pick, you know, one platform for content, delivering content. What do you think would be the best platform? Is it blog, podcast, social media, where we're going to do one thing this year, where do you recommend we focus on? This is for whoever would like to answer that. Well, I know Matt's answer, so I'll give a different answer. But Matt's answer is right. Here's what I would say. And this is something, you know, I work with several advisors at our firm. Pick, you know, what Zoe said is right. Put the bar to where you know that you can do it and be consistent. Our CEO is such a magnificent speaker. He is so great. And you said, Matt, a performer, quintessential performer, every bit, every inch of a movie star that anybody is, right? So he's so comfortable speaking in front of an audience. But we have other advisors that are like, nope, not going to happen. No way. Never. What's the number one fear? Public speaking, not dying in a plane. OK. Not snakes. OK. Those are good. But public speaking. Don't sign up for something that is going to be this high bar where you think, well, podcasting is so great. So I'm going to sign up for podcasting. If you really are breaking out in hives every time you do public speaking. Now, podcasting could be good because you're behind a mic and Matt can work that out with you. But there are if you're if you're a great writer, then there's writing. If you enjoy, you know, like you can do interviews with webinars and that's something I use for some of my shyer advisors. We started a little ask the advisor series, walk around with an iPhone and we just ask a question. We say, hey, so and so, I've got a question for you. Will you answer this? And they talk directly to the camera. It's a minute and a half done. They just got their content out there. And those are so easy to do. So whatever, whatever you choose, whatever platform, I would just say, make sure it's one that's that really highlights your skills and your talents. Excellent. That makes so much sense. Matt, Zoe, do you want to add anything to that or have a couple more questions we can try to get to before we get I'm going to do if you don't mind, I'm just going to jump in quickly because. If you do it correctly, whether you're doing, you know, blogging, whether you write a book, whether you do, you know, videos, whether you do podcasts, whatever, what we want you to understand at Proud Mouth is something called content atomization or atomic content method, which is taking whatever you love to do and chopping it up, doing the Gary Vanderchuk model of marketing and chop it up into all sorts of other pieces that you don't actually have to do more work because one, it's already approved and two, it's already the voice that you love. And so that's something that's really, really important. When we record a podcast, you don't just get a podcast, you get videos, you get YouTube shorts, you get social media posts, you get a blog, you get an email, you get all of these things because we know that if I can narrow you down for 30 minutes to 45 minutes and get some long form content, we can turn that into anything else that you want. And that's still my line. We do that, but reverse with blog. So we write blog posts, we call it the hub and spoke model. The blog is your hub. The spokes are social posts, infographic, email marketing, video script for you to record podcasts, transcriptions, all of the above. So that's what, pick your favorite piece of content and then know that you can delegate out the rest. So if you don't want to record a video or you want to, but you just want to do it behind a PowerPoint or whatever, you can have a professional do it, you can get a Fiverr editor to chop that up for you. There's so many options. Just pick your favorite thing and be consistent. And Zoe, while I have your attention, I think this question is for you. So if we're launching a new service line, new niche, do you recommend that just be part of our general website or have like a test page for it? How do you generally recommend that be rolled out? Oh boy, this is hard. And it depends on how niche your website is currently. If you work with physicians and you're going to pivot and all of a sudden you're going to serve the morticians in town, those are two very different niches, right? So we should probably noodle on how to best represent that with your brand messaging. But if you have like a very general site, which a lot of advisors do, even if they're high quality, they focus on the big pain points, retirement, stuff like that. And let's say, you know, your niche all of a sudden is like attorneys. I think you can create a landing page or a couple of subsections on the homepage pretty seamlessly. Like it doesn't have to overtake your site. It doesn't have to be attorneys all the time. But like, I think of it like this, this is kind of how I talk to a client about it. Your website is your business home online, right? But in order to get to home, there's a bunch of roads to get there and there's billboards all along the way. So you can have your home represent all of your different niches kind of seamlessly like that, where you've got maybe a landing page, maybe a subsection on your homepage or on your about page that talks about a specific niche or case study. But then the billboards would be maybe your LinkedIn is like, Hey, hi, I work with attorneys exclusively because not everyone's going to find you there. That's just who you're trying to attract on that billboard. So that's kind of how I would balance it. I hope that helps. That helps. And we have a question and this is all for Laura here. We talked about crisis communication and doing it quickly and immediately following the crisis. So what do you think is the best way? Obviously, we want to call our all our clients if we could. But if we can't, we want to get the message out quickly. What do you think is the best way to do that? Is it emails or video? What do you recommend? You hit them both at the same time and email video in it. So yeah, email, we know the deliverability of email to our clients is very high. We know that our clients read our email. We've got good open rates, good click through rates. That's when when you need to reach people in a one to many way when you need to reach your clients. Let me be clear in a one to many way to let them know that you're thinking of them. You absolutely do it via an email blast. And you do it would be it's so easy to include a succinct doesn't need to be more than three minute video from the head, their advisor, whoever it is that they normally would receive communications through and just have that person being very warm, very authentic, very I thought this would be important to talk to you about just lean in and have that like that really deep rapport. But you can also include some bullet points, some things, maybe some links, some helpful articles and tools. And email is going to be a workhorse for you in terms of getting that communication out very quickly, very reliably, and allow you to include different modalities because some people need to read and they need to see charts. Some people need to hear a voice. Some people people need the lifestyle fluffy stuff. Some people need some really analytical stuff. So your email can accomplish quite a lot. If you're thinking about serving all those different kinds of clients. This has been great. Probably one of my favorite sessions. I'm not just saying that because I'm moderating, but I want to thank you all three of you were amazing. This is so useful. And I hope the audience got as much out of it as I did. Please remember to look out for the surveys that you can get your continuing education credits. And thank you, Matt, Lauren, Zoe, I'm so happy to have been a part of this panel with you. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Thanks for having us.

marketing strategies

financial advisors

wealth management

personalized communication

content creation

audience engagement

platform selection

crisis communication

performance tracking