It's my pleasure to introduce to you Zoe Maggard. Zoe built perfectly planned content around financial planners because she firmly believes that they're changing the world one life at a time. Together with her clients, she and her team helped develop and implement unique content marketing strategies that connect and convert. Please join me in welcoming Zoe. Hello, everybody, and thank you for being here. I know last morning of the conference, everyone's gearing up to head back home, but I'm excited to see you all this morning. And we're here to talk about content marketing, which is what every financial advisor wants to spend their Saturday morning chatting about. So I'm so excited that you're here to join me today. We're going to be going over a couple of things today. So we're going to talk through how to develop a marketing strategy that best fits your needs. And then we're going to talk about how to develop a marketing strategy that's built for long-term success, how to build a content calendar that doesn't burn you out, and what elements go into your marketing funnel to make it more scalable and sustainable for the long run. If you've not met me before, hello. My name is Zoe Maggard. I'm the founder of Perfectly Planned Content. I've been doing content marketing for financial planners, specifically fee-only financial planners, since 2016. And beyond just my firm, we are a small team. Now there's a couple of us on the team, a bunch of writers who are CFPs. I'm also a mom to twin three-year-olds, so anything that advisors can throw at me, got it covered because wrangling those two is hectic enough as it is. Let's start with the basics here, which is what is content marketing? I get this question a lot from my prospective clients for a couple of different reasons, right? When you talk to a marketer, it feels like everyone these days has a very specific specialty. Someone does digital, someone does content, someone else does paid advertising. And the big question is, okay, what the heck do you do and how does that help me, right? Content marketing back in the day was, think of like the Don Draper, Mad Men advertising, right? The quippy one-liners. That's what I got into when I wanted to do content marketing in general in college. Alas, those days are kind of of a bygone era. And now we're really looking at long-form, high-education, high-impact content. And that's the foundation of content marketing is it's not a strong sell. Instead, it's more about educating and leading your audience to generate leads in a really authentic, trust-built building way. A couple examples of content marketing in the field that we're going to go over today, this first one is one of my favorites and one of the things that really turned me on to finance in general when I first got started was the Smart Money Moves podcast by NerdWallet. So this podcast is interesting because when you think of NerdWallet, they're really like an article site. But this is a long-form, educational, really actionable way for people to get complex financial topics broken down for them and it's very digestible. Now, the other thing is this podcast isn't really selling anything, right? Obviously, podcasts might have ads throughout the episode, but it's not like the whole podcast is geared towards selling an affiliate or something else that NerdWallet wants them to buy. And so it's leading people down further into their funnel. Another example in the field, and this isn't exactly finance-based, but I love it for a couple of different reasons, is the Zillow Porchlight blog. Now, we've all heard of Zillow. I myself am a self-proclaimed, like, Zillow fanatic. People constantly have to remind me, hey, are you actually moving to Tahiti? Are we just looking at houses there? What's going on? Cracks my husband up all the time. Zillow is a search engine for people to find homes to buy or to list their homes if they're selling. Now, what people don't realize is there's also this Zillow Porchlight blog, kind of almost operating on the back end, and it's really driving SEO and keyword-driven traffic because it's got highly actionable, really relevant content for people who are buying houses, selling houses, thinking about moving. They're pulling in interviews from realtors, experts, people in the space who really know a lot about what they're talking about, and they're posting at least weekly, if not more frequently than that, in order to drive traffic to ultimately get people to use their product, which is the search engine. Now, this is a question that I get from all my prospects, and I'm guessing one of the reasons that you're here today as well, which is why content marketing? Now, content marketing has both intangible and tangible benefits, and we're going to go over both today. As far as the intangible benefits go, there's a whole bunch here that really resonates with me personally, but we're just going to go over a few. So, in general, and I'm sure you've run into this through your sales funnel or just through the general marketing that you do as an advisor, everything you do is based on trust. When people trust you with their money, it is, like, a huge part of their lives. It touches every element of what they do. So content marketing helps build up that trust-based relationship by highlighting your expertise, showing your personality and your authenticity, and really making a one-to-one connection with people before they even knock on your door or schedule a phone call. It also allows you to develop a network of prospects, right? So it's driving traffic to your site based on the key questions that people are already asking. They're already coming to you for answers. It's also increasing your referrals because it's a whole lot easier for your existing raving fan clients to forward on a blog post than it is to, say, dig out a business card from their purse while they're trying to talk to a friend about the most recent meeting they had with you. So, in that way, it really is a great referral engine as well. It's acting as this marketing machine in the background of everything else you're doing and creating these touch points with prospects who maybe aren't ready to buy, prospects who are ready to convert, all the way up to clients who maybe you've got a lifelong relationship with them, but this is just another way to scale that touch point. Now, I know we're financial planners, so I like to throw some numbers on the screen as well. One thing that I love about content marketing is it costs 62% less than traditional, like, paid advertising or other forms of marketing while offering three times the lead. So, everything on this screen is saying people are spending time online, right? So, seven hours a day consuming digital media, whether that's webinars, podcasts, blog posts, social media, email. Even if you're just working on your laptop, you're consuming all day long, right? Some of us may not love that, but that's sort of the post-COVID reality that we've entered. So, if they're spending this time online and it's costing less but getting you more leads, ultimately, this is driving people into your funnel in a cost-effective way. It's also an untapped market. So, according to a recent Kitsis study, only 20% of advisors are leveraging drip marketing where they're dripping content onto their prospective leads or their current clients through email marketing or another resource, right? Whereas 91% of consumers want to see authentic content from the brands that they're buying from. And even if you think of yourself as a service provider, you still have a brand that's selling something, whether it's a service, a product, what have you. And so, driving into this is really allowing you to market in a way that not many of your colleagues are. Now, today, we're going to go over the four key ideas for content marketing for an advisor. These are what I go over with my clients, what we teach in all of our courses, and it's really conducting a branding exercise to get you going, figuring out what topics you want to cover and what type of content is best for your firm, how to create a scalable strategy using something that I call the three R's, and the way that you can commit to the long game so that you actually see the results that you want and drive the leads that you need for your business. So, idea one is conducting a brand exercise. Can I see a show of hands of anyone who's conducted a brand exercise before? So, whether, and I won't call on you, if you can just raise your hand, whether it's, you know, you've done a client avatar write-up or something with, you know, okay, like, yeah, all right, great, a couple hands in the audience, that's awesome. This happens a lot at the start of your business, right? People are looking at, okay, who are we? What do we stand for? Why are we doing what we're doing? Who are we serving? Those conversations are happening early on during your launch, but often more seasoned professionals kind of stop having this conversation, right? Maybe they're comfortable, maybe they have a book of business they're really happy with, but more often than not, advisors need to be doing this sort of exercise every one to two years, and this is for a couple of different reasons. Your brand has a personality, whether it's just you or you have a whole suite of advisors and a team, and people are buying into that brand and that personality in order to create that long-lasting client relationship that they're really excited about, right? So, creating this branding exercise every one to two years is really helping you identify who are we now, now that we've matured in our firm, now that we're tackling new problems, what do we bring to the table that's unique? Unfortunately, this exercise is often super intimidating for my clients. They don't really like talking about themselves. More often than not, they're super humble, even though they're total rock stars in their field. So, we have a couple of steps to make it easier on you just to get the ball rolling. First and foremost, discover your ideal tone. We have an infographic on this that I can send out to you if you shoot me a LinkedIn message, but generally, just break into two categories. Are you super casual? Are you a little bit more buttoned up? Do you wanna be, you know, the sort of financial advisor that people can grab a beer with after work? Or are you like the suit and tie, you know, mahogany desk office? There's no wrong answer here. It's really who you are and what your clients are looking for. Second, make a plan for engagement. So, again, no wrong answer. What's gonna be sustainable for your firm to tackle that's actually gonna resonate with your clients and prospects? This could be where are your clients showing up online? Where are you finding your prospects? What social media channel are you using? A couple of different ways to look at that. Next, lean into a niche. Now, don't judge me. I know niche has been, like, the buzzword in the industry at least as long as I've been doing this, if not longer. But let's make it a little bit easier because what I hear from advisors all the time is, okay, but, like, I don't really have a niche, Zoe. I don't really wanna just narrow myself down to working with doctors or attorneys or dentists. That's okay. That's called a demographic niche, right? A pre-retiree, a young family, or a Gen Xer. These are demographics that you can totally serve, and a lot of advisors find success and personal fulfillment in that. But you may have what's called a psychographic niche. A lot of my clients kind of pursue this. So we had a client recently tell me, look, I work with young families all the way up to 80-year-olds who have already retired. I can't possibly have a niche. We kind of did some poking around, and what finally came out that he said, well, in our sales process, if they don't pass the beer test, we don't sign them. And he said it like a throwaway comment. And I was like, okay, just let's hit pause. What is the beer test, and what does that look like in your firm and your sales process? He said, oh, well, our whole firm knows on a sales call if I don't wanna grab a beer with this client at the end of the day to talk through their financial question, I don't wanna work with them. And I was like, that is a niche. Like, you have a psychographic right there that's so clear because it presents values, it presents a personality type. It's a certain type of person that you wanna work with. And you may have a combination, right? I have a lot of clients who maybe they work with retirees, but they only wanna work with retirees who are super, like, family values, legacy-minded because they love the estate planning piece or the taxes that come with that. You can develop as honed in of a niche as is comfortable for your firm. Finally, prioritize authenticity. And we see this a lot in advisor marketing where it feels like, okay, I've got maybe this canned content or these different pieces from different organizations I'm part of, but none of them really feel like me. And ultimately, people connect to people or personalities, not businesses. And so trying to figure out what's authentic to you and to what your audience and what they wanna see is really gonna help you develop a solid brand. And I'm gonna say this trust factor a lot today because it's so important. Consistent branding across all marketing channels equals stronger trust. Now, that's relevant for your current clients who wanna see consistency and develop that trust-based relationship with you. It's also relevant for prospects, right, who maybe want to learn more about you and understand what you're bringing to the table and how you're showing up in the world. If you need branding help, we have a bunch of free resources. I'm gonna highlight a couple here today. Go to our website. This is free. It has some questions to kind of walk you through this process. Some of them might be uncomfortable. Some of them might be a little woo-woo. Some of them are much more concrete, like tell us a client story you love. So this is just to help you get the ball rolling. Idea number two today, and this is where a lot of advisors get stuck, is trying to figure out what the heck is a content calendar and how do I start one for my firm? We're gonna talk about the topics that you can cover as well as the type of content to create. When you're choosing your content topics, this is how I bucket things for our clients. Four different categories, and they can be one of two things in each category, evergreen or timely. Evergreen content is stuff that's going to last into the future in perpetuity. It's things like social security, retirement cash flow planning, the questions that your prospects are gonna have until the end of time, right? Timely is, oh my gosh, my student loan payments are starting this month. What the heck do I do? And so we're trying to figure out what's the right balance between these two things to both have evergreen content that's driving your strategy and timely content that shows, hey, I know what I'm talking about. I'm up with what's going on in the world. You can trust me as your advisor. Generally, we build calendars around evergreen content, making space for timely content as it comes up. And what will serve you is having a process in place for creating that timely content in a quick manner. Maybe that's you're grabbing templates from organizations you're a part of. Maybe you're collaborating with other advisors to create a piece that you're all releasing, but that helps you stay up on timely content and not drop the ball there. Next is niche-focused or general. Again, because I'm a proponent of niche, I'm going to say that niche content generally takes the cake, right? But, and especially, like, here at NAFA, you're fee-only advisors, what general topics are all of your clients asking that maybe aren't related to whether or not they're a doctor or are going to retire in five years? What is fee-only? What is fiduciary? What does that mean for me as a client? Those are general topics that may still be foundational in your strategy but not be niche-focused. Third is educational or inspirational. Creating educational content, again, usually is where financial planners really, like, find their sweet spot. We're trying to educate our audience. There's so much they don't know. We're trying to fill the gaps. Inspirational, you know, you may feel like, okay, that's just kind of fluffy, right? Like, I don't want to write, excuse me, a fluffy post, sorry. But you can make educational content inspirational as well, right? So you can include case studies or client stories, even your own backstory, to take that educational content up a notch and make that emotional connection. Finally, we've got opinion-based or fact-based. Due to compliance reasons, we're going to say opinion, I'm sorry, fact-based is the way to go. Having opinions is often, like, kind of a no-no in the world of compliance, but you can still add your unique take, right? So Social Security is not a secret. It's pretty dry, right? But you can still say, all right, how do I talk to my clients about this? Like, what is specific about how I do this general topic that's going to resonate with people? I'm sorry, guys. I have twin preschoolers. They brought home a bug, so we're getting through it, but forgive me. Okay, so now we're going to talk about how to come up with those content topics that are really going to hit a home run with your prospects and your clients. This is, again, really tricky for advisors because they think of, all right, like, everyone has already said that before, or how is that relevant to my unique audience? So here's what we recommend. Start with your client service calendar, right? Pull up the meeting notes that you have from your annual surge or your twice-a-year surge and figure out, okay, what are the big topics? Retirement planning, taxes, charitable giving. Now, of course, you can't have one blog post about retirement planning because it would be, like, a million words long. And so then walk it back into different, like, micro sections of those larger topics. The example we have here is retirement planning down to Social Security, right? Everyone needs to withdraw Social Security at some point. Everyone's nervous about whether or not it's still going to be around. Lots of different content fodder there, but, again, it's still too broad. We can't just have, like, all questions you ever have about Social Security. That would take us weeks. So then walk it even further down to meet your ideal clients where they're at. The example we have here is Top Social Security Tips for Divorcees. Within this topic, you could talk about what happens if you get remarried? Will my ex-spouse know that I'm withdrawing? How does that impact my withdrawal strategy? What does that look like? People don't know how it works, right? So this is getting further and further down and drilling down into a really honed-in topic to make it easier for you to create. When you're making your content calendar, the more specific you can make it, the better, okay? So here we have just... This is a general template we use for our clients that I threw up here, but yours can look however you feel comfortable. We've got things like, what month is it going out? When is it due from our team or from our client in order for us to have a little bit of buffer for editing and review? When is it going live on the website? Are we promoting things in this blog? Is this a, you know, we want people to schedule a call? Are we promoting a lead magnet or something specific that's relevant to the time? And then, finally, where is it going out? We don't want it to die on the vine. So we've got this content. It's up on the website. Is it getting shared on social? Are we sending it out on an email newsletter? The more specific you can get with your content calendar serves a really specific purpose. Obviously, it's just great, right, to have a specific game plan so that you know what to do. But also, it's showing you how your work connects to every part of your strategy. So you are more likely to stay motivated when you say, okay, if I don't write blog two in month one of the year, I'm not going to have a newsletter sent to my clients. And that's going to have a more complete effect, especially if you've got a team or if you're the one who's like solo in charge of your marketing to know, all right, this creation that's taking me time is really going to help me get to where I want to be both with my clients and my prospects. If you're still feeling stuck with topics, I think of topic brainstorming as like an intersection, right? On one line is things that light you up as a financial planner. Everybody has their thing, the stuff that they're really excited to chat with clients about, the aha moment people see when you tell them that they're going to be okay and they can retire on time, right? That's the stuff you love. What do your clients love? That's what exists on the other line. Is it, wow, I saw my lifetime tax bill and what I'm going to save when you help me, right? Like maybe that's the aha moment for them. And then where do those two things intersect? If you're feeling a little lost here, you've got a couple options. I recommend sending out a three-question client survey. What do you want to learn more about? What questions do you still have even though you're working with a financial advisor? This really helps clarify what they're looking to find and you may find yourself inspired. Again, free resource if you are feeling stuck. We have 50 free blog post topic ideas on the website. They're categorized by like time of life, like retirees, positions, tech employees. So this just helps you get the ball rolling, hopefully get some inspiration going. Now we've talked about building out the content calendar. Now we're going to talk about what type of content to create. And I think this is also overwhelming because advisors often get shoulded to death, right? So you hear, well, you should have video. That's like the highest ROI in marketing. You should have really long blog posts on your website because they drive SEO and traffic. You should really do a podcast. Your clients listen to that. And you're thinking, with what time? Like how am I going to do all of these different things? So how do you figure out what's best for your firm and your unique journey? I go with the two dos and one don't strategy. Do find a medium you love. I'll use myself as an example. I was a creative writing major at Michigan State. Go green. And I love writing. The foundation of all of our marketing is writing because I know I like to do it. At the end of the day, I'm not going to drop that ball because it's something I enjoy. Also, ask other people what they've tried. That's our second do. You are at a conference. Look to your colleague after the session and say, hey, what are you up to? Like what are you doing? What's working for you? Now you may hear them say, oh, I'm doing TikTok reels. And you may say, ooh, nope. And that's OK too. You get to kind of get inspiration and figure out what's working for other people and how that sits with you and your firm and what your brand needs. Don't create content that makes you really uncomfortable. Now there's a difference between stepping outside of your comfort zone and wanting to stick pins in your eyes rather than create your content. Another, using myself as an example, shamelessly hating on myself here. I had a podcast. It was three episodes long. There's a reason you've never heard it. It's because I hated running it. I wasn't consistent. Totally dropped the ball. Again and again. My whole team was like, we've invested all this time in creating this brand. What are we doing? And I was like, we're scrapping it. I can't do this weekly. It's just not something I enjoy. I love coming up and talking to you guys here. I love being on other people's podcasts, managing my own. Just wasn't my cup of tea, and that's OK. So don't do something that's not going to be enjoyable. You won't be consistent, and you won't get the sort of feedback and general leads that you're looking for. Idea number three here is going to be the three R strategy. Now, this is where creating a scalable plan comes into play. It's the reduce, reuse, recycle plan. We use this for all of our clients. We recommend it to all of our consulting clients. It's the best way to get the most bang for your buck with your content. First, reduce. I think that most business owners, myself included, are actually over-creating. Now, you may be asking, how is that even possible? It's because a lot of people are creating a blog a week, or they set out on this really ambitious journey to, I'm going to podcast twice a month, even though they're the sole practitioner in their firm. And honestly, with the new Google helpful content algorithm update, this is not necessary. We are no longer in the era where Neil Patel at Uber Suggest is telling us that we need to blog three times a week to be successful. That's just not the case anymore. And instead, we want content that goes deep, that actually answers helpful questions, is well-researched, well put together. This is good news for business owners, because it means you can spend your very valuable resources, time, money, energy, on really quality content, not trying to create until you drive yourself into the ground. Next, reuse your content. Consistency is key. I'm going to steal a quote from Matt Halloran from the PodRocket Academy and the Proud Mouth podcast. And he is so fantastic. I talked to him recently. And he said, what do you do when your favorite song comes on the radio? You sing along. You don't change the song, right? And the idea here is that so many advisors feel like, well, OK, am I going to talk about financial planning all the time? Yes, you are. Because people want to hear that from you, the expert. They're not going to get bored. They're not going to change the metaphorical channel. They want to hear the same thing from you again and again, building that consistency, building that trust, building up your brand. Now, there's a couple of different ways that we can reuse your content. And we're going to have a bunch of different ideas here. But the first is to develop a standard brand message around your cornerstone topics. So I'm going to use a client as an example. He works with retirees and pre-retirees in Oklahoma. And he is big on the bucket strategy, the bucket strategy for retirement. That's how he does his investment portfolios, his drawdown strategies. All of his content relates to the bucket strategy, his blog posts, his podcast interviews, when he did mailers. It was about a bucket strategy webinar. The images on his website that we put up were like sandcastle buckets. We wanted it to be as consistent as possible. And his clients loved it. They thought it was fantastic. They knew he was the bucket dude. He had prospects coming in saying, all right, I know that this is your investment philosophy. I feel confident in that. I'm ready to work with you. It was fantastic for him. And you can do the same thing with your niche regardless of who you're working with. Second, work your archives. I actually just watched a marketing video from Neil Patel at Uber Suggest about this saying, this might be the highest ROI driver for marketing in 2024, which is a lot of advisors or business owners in general have past content, right? You've got that old blog post that you wrote in 2018 about taxes and retirement. Have you touched it since then? Probably not. It might be time, right? So look back at your archives, check your Google Analytics, and see what's still working, what's driving traffic, or just what's still coming up in client meetings, and update those pieces. It can be new information, adding a video to the top, making it a multimedia experience with images or infographics. Just take those old pieces, update them, and bring them forward on your blog to reshare. Third, take snippets of longer videos and divide them up into shorter clips to share out on social media. This gets rid of the excuse of I don't have anything to post. If you've ever done a webinar, you can send that MP4 file to someone on Fiverr and have them slice and dice it into 10 different 10-second clips or 30-second clips. That's a fantastic way to reuse your content. Fourth, use elements of a really long piece to, again, snip up into social media posts or to send to a Fiverr designer to create graphics. Or if you've got someone in-house who's talented in that sphere, that can really help too. With the advent of chat GPT and AI, there's no more excuses not to be doing this. Even if it's not perfect the first time around, you can copy and paste your blog post into chat GPT. Treat it like an intern. Say, hey, chat GPT, here's my blog post. Can you give me 10 social media posts about it? Will they be perfect? No, we don't want it to say, salutations, LinkedIn family. That feels a little awkward and weird. But you can take those as inspiration and edit them down into something that's going to work for your brand. Finally, recycling your content. Our team says that recycling is the best way to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to your content marketing. You've put so much time and energy into creating content at this stage in the game, right? If you've done this presentation steps, you've done a branding exercise, you have a content calendar, you've been brainstorming, you've started creating. You don't want it to die on the vine once you've spent all this time, money, energy getting it done. You want to recycle your content so that it lasts for forever if you can, for evergreen topics. A couple of different ways to recycle your content. Post old and new content to social media. We have so many new clients come to us and they're like, oh, we have social media covered, Zoe. We have an RSS reader that anytime we post something new on the blog, it just auto posts to social. Or WordPress does that for us with a plugin. That's great. I am so glad that you're posting your new stuff to your audience. But if you're only blogging once a month, are you only posting once a month and you had that post from three months ago that still is relevant? Are we not gonna reshare that? You need to have a system in place for getting old posts back into the queue, especially for social and for email marketing. So this could look like content roundups to your newsletter. Hey, it's back to school season again. Here's our top five of all time blog posts about how you can get your family's money in order. Or for social media, it might be, we wrote this post last year about HSAs and how to leverage them in your financial plan. They're still relevant during open enrollment. Here's what you need to know. Make sure that stuff is going again and again. One tool that I like for this, and you'll hear a lot of different social schedulers, Buffer is good, Hootsuite is good. Our team is newly using SmarterQueue. And no affiliation, we just really like it. I use it for my firm. What you're able to do is you can queue a post so that it reshares and you set when it reshares. So maybe it's after five weeks, maybe it expires after the end of the year because you know the numbers will be outdated. But you can re-queue your content again and again. And again, the line of a social media post is not that long. So I think a tweet is minutes, a LinkedIn post is 24 to 48 hours. People are not gonna recognize that you're resharing similar content. But SmarterQueue also allows you to add post variations. So if you have a blog post that you're gonna link and have a post for it, you can add two to three variations of the same post and it'll re-queue it for you again and again. So again, just not letting your content die in the vine, keeping it shared, making sure that it's out in front of your audience. We talked about this, but update outdated content, another great way to recycle. Let's say you've got a couple of past blogs, maybe all around a similar topic. I see this a lot with my firms that have been in business for like 10 to 20 years. Maybe you've written about social security four times, right? And you're like, Zoe, I'm not writing about that anymore. It is dry, I do not like it. Totally fine, I understand. Let's take your old posts and figure out how we can combine them to create something new, right? Again, it's your content. You get to do what you like with it. You own it. So there's no rule book on what you can or can't do there. Combine evergreen posts to create something longer. If you're feeling like, all right, looking at my marketing funnel, I don't have a lead generator. There's nothing that people can sign up for on my website where I'm getting their email address and then nurturing them long-term. This is a common problem for financial advisors. One easy way around it is to combine a slew of your old posts into an ebook or a PDF or a white paper that then you can deliver to people when they give you their email address. Generally speaking, if you have been creating content, you've already got this stuff available, right? Like we might as well get the most mileage out of it that we can. This is similar but with a video or you could do this with podcasting too. Create an e-course. We just had a client do this where he had a variety of videos about charitable gift giving, right? So at the end of the year, we kind of pulled together. It was a five-day. We called it a bootcamp. People could sign up and then he had five videos kind of go out one day a week around, I think, Giving Tuesday was what we scheduled it for and people could sign up for it and it was like a free e-course. He had already done the work. All we were doing was repackaging it and re-delivering it in a different way. Idea four is playing the long game with your marketing strategy. So I like to look at marketing a lot like investing, right? You would never tell your clients, invest for six months and if you don't see results, pull everything out of the market and we're gonna call it a day, right? That would never happen. So think of your marketing as the same way. You're not going to get your marketing results like Amazon two-day delivered, right? You need to be playing a long game to build a legacy and a brand for your firm. Now, of course, there should be some quick hit wins for you but in general, especially with content, we have some clients where a post that we wrote in 2020 but continue to update with new information, repackage, reshare are still driving traffic and leads for their brand. So you just never know how long that content is going to last. I think one of our top ranking posts, please don't look it up, but it's about the content organization system. I think I wrote it in 2017, guys. Like it's still driving traffic to our website. It was early and frankly, if you're not embarrassed by your early marketing attempts, then you don't need to be in this session. But the point is that it will continue to drive traffic and leads. It will pay dividends in the future. Now, this is a client case study and I have it here because I feel like it just totally resonated with me with everything we talked about today. So one of our clients had someone reach out to them, booked a call on Calendly on their website and they were really nervous during the call. And the client was like, let's go, like this is a little bit unusual. Usually people come in kind of like I'm an order taker and like, okay, this is what I want done with my financial plan. Can you help me? And this client said something totally different. They said, hey, I've been following you for years, right? Years on LinkedIn. I've been on your newsletter list. I wasn't ready, but I've been taking all of your advice, all of the blog posts you've written. I've tried to DIY it myself and I finally am at a point where I feel confident enough to reach out like I'm your ideal client now. Whoa, like basically this client had content groom a perfect prospect for him, reach out. At that point, they were an ideal fit and they already knew this advisor. They already felt like, I know I'm gonna work with you. I'm not talking to anybody else. I've been following you for a long time. And they were like so nervous that the advisor like wouldn't accept them. And the advisor was like, what? Of course you can work with us. But I think that this is really important because this person loved their approach. They loved their content and they just weren't ready to buy right now. And you just never know when someone's ready to buy. So it's another good benefit of content marketing is to add that touch point into your marketing cycle. I think recent studies have shown it takes like 11 touch points in your sales cycle to get a prospect to convert to a client. That's bananas. And so if you have this content marketing going and can then divide it up and repurpose the content, you're just spending less time to convert that ideal lead. We just talked about this, the big takeaway here is just content really allows you to solidify that expertise, to build up your brand and to increase that trust factor, the no like trust factor that everyone says, no, this is the beginning of time that you need during your sales funnel. This is just the first step in that. Now we're gonna revisit the four content marketing ideas to remember here, right? So we talked about doing a branding exercise, which a lot of you have done. Again, round of applause for that. But if you need help, that's on our website too if you need it. Think through the content topics you wanna cover and the type of content you wanna cover and take some time in like pre-production with this decision. Do some research, survey your clients, figure out what's really gonna work best for your brand and your firm before making a commitment. Get the most bang for your buck, whether you're DIYing it or you're paying someone else to do it for you by reducing the content you're creating and recycling it and reusing the brand messaging again and again to create consistency and commit to the long game. We tell people, look, you're gonna need probably at least six months with this. You'll see some immediate site traffic increase. You might get referrals or clients might say, hey, I love the new newsletter. Those are kinda like squishy numbers, right? But you're gonna get the hard numbers of, okay, this has return on investment. At the six to 12 month marker, most of our clients have been with us for multiple years. So just to kinda give you a sense of how well this works and how it pays dividends in the future. As a follow-up, you can scan this QR code. I think NAPFA has this available as well like on their little app or in their program. This has information about the free resource library, blog posts. We are big believers in educating advisors and empowering them. So tons of free stuff on our website. Also some discount codes and things like that for our courses. I see some phones, so I'll give it a second. Also, how neat are QR codes? I know I'm behind the times, but I just started incorporating them in my presentations this year. And I was like, where have I been? Like, why have I not been doing this? So marketing pro tip, use QR codes and your social media or whatever else to make it easier for people to find you. And I can go back to this if you guys need it. And reach out to me. I love talking to advisors, even if you're not looking for a marketing professional. I'm on LinkedIn most. I am not a big Twitter advocate. I just am not. I don't like being on Twitter. And I'm not on Facebook or Instagram. So find me on LinkedIn, shoot me a message, send me an email, get a free resource on the website to get going. Lots of different options here available to you. And thank you. That's the whole thing. And I'm happy to take questions if you guys want, or if you feel like a little uncomfortable asking to the whole room, I'm happy to answer them up here, too. Oh, yes, yes, sorry. Do you want QR code or contact? Contact, okay. Go ahead. If you were looking for someone like you, I'm sure you're the best person. Thank you. Okay. Lots. Oh, good. I have a blog post on this. Yes, absolutely. So first of all, go to our blog, or send me a LinkedIn connection and I'll send it to you. A lot of good questions. Sorry, go ahead. Oh, repeating the question, since she's not mic'd and I am, thank you, is if you're interviewing for a marketing professional, what do you ask them to know if they're a good fit for your firm? Again, we've got a blog post on this on the website, because I get this question a lot, and honestly, I'm really good friends with a lot of the marketers in this space, and the truth is, we all generally, well, most of us generally, buy into the same marketing tenets, but our approach might be a little bit different. So you should be asking, hey, what are some client case studies, right? How have you gotten success for clients, or how do you define success as a marketing firm? Because it may or may not be the same as the sort of success that you want to achieve, right? And that's critical. Do you buy into content? Do you create content, and what type? There are some people who do podcast and blog. We do podcast and blog. Some people are just video editors, right? The women at Idea Decanter are fantastic video editing people. You might find someone who's just a social media strategist. Maybe that's all you need, maybe it's not. You should ask them, how are you tracking analytics? Really, how are you, yes, you define success, that's great. Can you prove that to me with numbers, right? Can you show me an increase to site traffic? What does that mean for my firm? You can also ask them things like, do you have any credentials or financial planning people on your team? What's your experience in the finance space? A lot of people reach out to me. We're financial planning specific. A lot of my marketing friends are, too. But they'll say, hey, I talked to a local marketer who works a lot with doctors, but they don't know anything about financial planning. Maybe they've done some blogs, and there's just too much education there to make it worth it. So those are a couple questions to ask that'll help you kind of figure out if you're a good fit. Any other questions? Okay, I'll go blue shirt. So this is great. So let's say you're looking for email help. That's an issue, you need to find them. So can you comment on different email services that you use? Yes, so like different. Contact? Nope, that's perfect. And so the question for anyone who didn't hear him is what email marketing services do you use for your clients or just in general, right? Does that sound fair? We use a couple. So we are tech agnostic at our firm. We have experience with MailChimp, Constant Contact. Personally, I use ConvertKit, and I really like it. It's called ConvertKit. So convert, like converting a client kit, like a marketing kit. And I like it because it's got a visual editor for funnel building. So like for our firm, we have like 10 different lead funnels just because we've been doing this for so long. And it's so easy for me to see at a glance, like which ones I have, how they're working, how they flow together. It also, unlike MailChimp, you don't have just like one or multiple audiences that you have to segment. You have one audience that you can segment from there. But I like MailChimp for a free option. I think that that's really solid. And MailerLite is very similar. Both are good. I don't recommend Constant Contact. It's not that I don't like them. I just like think that there are better tools out there. We also have some clients who use ActiveCampaign and really like it. Personally, I think it's a little bit clunky and it's kind of like driving a Ferrari to pick up your kindergartner. It just, you probably already have a CRM tool like Redtail or Wealthbox. And ActiveCampaign is really best used as a CRM and email marketing system. Keep. I have a couple clients who use it. I have not been fortunate enough yet to use it myself. I think I used it, I think they just went through a merger, I'd say just, maybe a couple years ago. Thank you. Yeah, I think I used that previously. Was it Infusionsoft before? Yeah, okay, I used Infusionsoft with a client way back in the day. I liked it. I thought it was good. Again, it may be too robust for what you need. Just, it depends on your marketing needs. But I would go with free. If you can find it, I think ConvertKit is low cost. It's like 20 to $40 a month. We have a lot of our clients migrate to that. It's also a plain text tool. So it sort of depends on what you're looking for design-wise. MailChimp is probably better if you want something that has a ton of graphics and visuals. ConvertKit feels more like it's an individual email that you're sending to somebody and generally gets higher reply rates. But that's just our opinion on that. Go ahead. Yeah, yes, and several advisor consultants can help with that too. If you're already creating, this is great for people who already have a team in place and who are like, all right, we're rolling. We're like, we've already entered production. Like, we're getting it done. Can someone tell me this is working? Because sometimes it feels like you're just blogging or podcasting into the void. Yes, hiring someone in a consultant capacity to come in, check your analytics, look at your funnel. And I call it like looking for the holes in your funnel. So where are we losing prospective clients? That can be really helpful. We do that, but there are some other great marketers who do that as well. Kristen, I always want to say Harad, I think does that. I think Kristen Luke used to do that, but I think now she just does Mitch. But you can come to me after and I can give you some names. Any other questions? Yes. Yes, and it depends on your number of contacts. So I don't know how big your email list is, and you don't have to share to the room, because I know sometimes that's personal. But if you have a large enough list, they will migrate for you. So they'll move everything for you and migrate your funnels and get all of that set up. You can hire someone to do it. I think they have a suite of experts that they connect you with that we used for our last client who did a migration. Or it's so user-friendly, you can do it yourself. The question is just like, is that the best use of my time? In the back. Well, that's a good question. Okay, I think it depends on your, and you probably won't like this answer. It does depend. It depends on your goals, right? So in general, conversion from your list, I think people are usually looking at like between five and 10% conversion of cold leads to their list. So people they've not talked to yet, things like that. I've seen advisors have success with a list of two to 400, and I've seen advisors who have two to 3,000 and still struggle to convert. It really depends on how you're using it. So again, making sure. Oh, good, okay, gotcha. So as far as the migration question for ConvertKit goes, I would have to double check that. I wanna say you had to be over, I think they do it in like segments. I think it's over 1,500, but I can shoot you a message if you connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll double check for you, okay. Any other questions? No, okay, cool. Well then, if you have stuff and wanna come chat with me up front, I'll be here for a second, just sipping my water. I promise I'm not contagious with the preschool bug. And thank you so much for being here. Again, I know last day of the conference, it's like tricky with flights getting out and stuff, but I really appreciate you coming today. Thank you.

Zoe Maggard

Perfectly Planned Content

content marketing

financial planners

marketing strategy

branding exercise

authentic content

content calendar