How to Create Your Marketing Plan for 2018

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Claire Akin:

Hi, financial advisors, and thank you so much for joining me for How to Create Your 2018 Marketing Plan and Grow Your Business By 25% This Year. Now, this is the biggest webinar that I’ve ever done, and I’m giving away, normally, I give away 90% of what I know, I’m giving away 100% of what I know about marketing to you for free, because I want you to be as successful as you can be this year. Now, I know you see a lot of webinars as a financial advisor, and some of them have a lot of fluff and they move slowly. This is not going to be one of those webinars. I’m going to move a mile a minute, I’m going to give you everything I know about marketing, and there’s not going to be a lot of fluff or a lot of downtime.

               Now, I know I can move fast, so, I’m going to give you all of the slides, so that you can download them, you can always rewatch this webinar, and you can take notes with the slides. I’ll make you a deal, if you turn off your phone, put it away, put away the internet, close your browser and focus, I’m going to give you some marketing insights that are going to change the way that you grow your business forever. So, let’s get started.

               Let me tell you a little bit about my background and why I’m qualified to teach you about marketing today. I’m a former investment advisor representative. I got into this business because my dad’s a financial advisor, and I worked with him when I was in high school, and then after college, and then actually after I got my Master’s degree in Marketing. I helped him with his marketing, and through that experience, I realized, what I really love to do is digital marketing for financial services. So, I started my company to help financial advisors like you, to outsource their marketing to a professional. I also have a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and I worked for a company called FMG Suite, which is a leading provider of websites for financial advisors.

               I started Indigo Marketing Agency and I created The LinkedIn Guide for Financial Advisors, which is available on Amazon now, and the LinkedIn course for financial advisors. I also have a resource center that I’ll talk about later, that can help you with your marketing. But let’s talk about you. Now, I know a lot of you are different, you have different stories. But, what’s all consistent with financial advisors today is that marketing and growing your business is getting tougher and tougher. There’s increasing competition out there for advisors. There’s downward pressure on fees because of things like robo-advisors that barely charge anything to manage money. There’s millennials who don’t necessarily understand or trust advisors, and they don’t understand the value that you provide. And what worked in the past, from a marketing perspective, doesn’t work anymore, which can be really frustrating.

               You’ve probably wasted your fair share of money on expensive marketing schemes that haven’t worked. You’re probably confused, maybe you’re frustrated, and I’ve even seen advisors who are in despair and are looking about, thinking about leaving the industry, because what worked in the past doesn’t work anymore, and they’re frustrated. They don’t know how to reach qualified prospects anymore. So, they’re thinking of retiring. But don’t worry, I’m going to teach you a marketing strategy that can consistently work for you into the future to grow your business. Let’s talk about why I care about you as a financial advisor. Here are two pictures, the picture on the left is me with my dad, when I was five years old, in a school play, I was an angel. And on the right, on my wedding day, when I was 30.

               Now, the difference 25 years makes is clear, I got a lot taller and he got a little bit grayer. But I really care about financial advisors because of my dad. He is a great advisor, who has been with some of his clients for over 35 years. And he deeply cares about his clients. And I know how much he helps the people that he serves. And so, I want to help advisors because I know you guys do really important work, serving our community, helping people with their finances, and your only challenge is getting in front of more people and helping people find you when they need you. And so, that’s why this cause is near and dear to my heart, and that’s why I care about helping advisors like you, who really provide value to the people in our communities, so that you can reach more clients.

               What else has changed in the past 25 years? This is a visual representation of the internet and what it would look like if you mapped out all of the pathways. It’s changed everything from the way that we find a restaurant to go to dinner, to the way people choose a financial advisor. And it’s also changed the way that we consume information. And so, if you go to an airport, or if you go out in public these days, people’s eyes and ears are on their cell phones. And if you haven’t adapted your marketing to be on their cell phones and on the internet, then you’re not going to be effective today. What are we going to cover today? We’re going to cover a lot. First of all, we’re going to talk about how advisors really get new clients today. Then, we’re going to go over the only six levers of marketing to make the most impact, finding and embracing your specialization, how to grow your business by 25% this year, crafting your 2018 marketing calendar, and I’ll have a special gift for you at the end.

               Now, I always like to make my webinars a little bit fun, and so, I will make a deal with you, if you find any errors on my slides, send me an email about what you noticed on my slides that was an error, and I’ll send you a free copy of my book, The LinkedIn Guide for Financial Advisors. And that way, maybe you’ll pay a little bit closer attention because there’s a free prize in it for you. All right, let’s talk about the challenges that you face as a financial advisor in your marketing. First of all, we’re all familiar with compliance. Now, today’s, in normal industries, for marketing, what we would do is we would get customer reviews, would get testimonials online, and we’d have them all over your Google page and all over your Yelp page, and people would see so many five-star reviews that they’d be knocking down your door to do business with you.

               Well, that’s not allowed. FINRA prohibits any form of testimonials. So, we can’t use that. Also, advisors are really, really busy. I know that you’re busy, and I know that that has probably hindered your marketing in the past. We also have a complex industry that not a lot of people really understand. And so, if you just hired your local marketing firm, they may not understand the industry and they may not understand some of the compliance constraints that we face. On top of having a complex industry, you also probably have a unique specialty. So, even somebody who is familiar with financial services, may not understand that you serve truly high net worth individuals or that you focus on retirement plans. And so, that’s another obstacle for marketing today.

               You also probably have a very different skill set as a financial advisor, than a marketer. And you may lack the technical knowledge for doing marketing today and taking advantage of some of the important tools that we have out there at our disposal. And you’re probably overwhelmed by marketing, and you just haven’t made the time to really learn what you need to know to move forward from a digital marketing perspective. My goal today is to change the way that you think about marketing forever. I want to uncover a new marketing equation that you understand, that puts you in control of your future and the future of your business. So, we’re going to turn confusion into simplicity. On the left here, we have Einstein’s theory of relativity. We’re going to turn that into a consistent and repeatable process, so that you can grow your business with a marketing mechanism that works for you.

               How do financial advisors really get new clients today? Now, I’m going to argue that there are actually only two ways that you get new clients. The first is referrals. Now, we know that the number one way that people get a financial advisor is they ask their co-workers, specifically co-workers that they respect, for a referral. They also ask friends and family. The second way is because they’re a specialist. So, people will find a financial advisor who specializes in their unique challenges. And if somebody finds you on the internet, I’m going to argue, the only reason they found you on the internet is because you’re a specialist. So, I think the only two ways people find a financial advisor today is from referrals or because the advisor is a true specialist.

               Well, you maybe ask, “Well, what about these other ways that I get new clients?” So, maybe center of influence referrals come to you. I’m going to argue that the reason your CPA friends or your estate planning friends refer your business is because you’re a specialist in what their client is facing. What about client events? Well, clients bring their friends and that’s a form of referral. What about a seminar? Well, maybe people are going to your seminar because you are the retirement income planning specialist. So, that makes sense, right? Maybe, a web search for retirement planning in San Diego. Well, maybe that’s what you focus on. Or maybe it’s a web search for financial planning for women in Albuquerque. Well, you’re a specialist in that area of expertise.

               Maybe it’s direct mail because you’re a social security specialist for divorced spouses. Or, maybe it’s through old-fashioned networking. Well, that’s really a form of getting referrals. And so, I’m going to argue that there’s two ways that advisors get new clients today, and we’re going to focus on those. How can you get more clients? Of course, you can increase your referrals, and you can embrace a specialty, or maybe two or three specialties. And you can increase your website’s conversion rate. Because, even people that are finding you on the internet because you’re a specialist, they go through your website, and we want to make sure that we convert as many of those leads as possible. So, these are the ways that we’re going to focus on getting you more clients this year.

               Let’s talk about the six levers of marketing today and let’s break it down. The first is your website’s conversion rate. The second is the traffic that your website gets. The third is the size and the strength of your network. The people who could possibly refer your business. The fourth is your referral rate. So, of the people who know you, how many of them are actually referring you qualified prospects? The fifth is your specialist campaigns that get you clients that you don’t already know. And I know a lot of you are really interested in this. And the six is events and webinars.

               Your website supports all of your referrals and leads. And it’s important to realize that your website today is your marketing hub. And this is a quote from Michael Kitces, it says, “Would you give your life savings to someone without typing their name into Google first?” No, that would be irresponsible of you. And so, we know nine out of 10 people, even if they’re referred to you by somebody that they know and trust, they’re going to look you up on Google and see what comes up. And so, we want to make sure your website and your social media profiles reflect the credibility that they would get from walking into your office and meeting you. Let’s talk about your website’s conversion rate. On the left, we have the traffic to your website, and then we have your website, and then we have the leads that actually come out of your website.

               How many leads is your website converting for you? Say your traffic stays the same at 300 visitors per month. If we can increase your website’s conversion rate from 1% to 5%, we can get you from three leads per month to 15 leads per month. And for most advisors, that would make a big impact on their bottom line. Then let’s talk about your website’s traffic. Say your website’s conversion rate stays the same at 3%, if we can increase your traffic from 300 visitors a month to 500 visitors a month, we can go from nine leads to 15 leads. And so, that will make a big impact too. And hopefully, we can do both of those things for you. And now, let’s talk about the size of your network and the impact that that has on your business. If we can increase your network from 250 to 1,000, and we keep your referral rate the same, we can increase your referrals from two and a half per year to 10 per year, without actually doing anything to increase your referral rate.

               And on the other side of that coin, is increasing your referral rate. So, keeping the size of your network the same. If we can increase the awareness of what you do and how you can help, we can increase the referrals that you get each and every year. Finally, the strength of your network is important. So, what percent of your network includes your ideal clients? Now, for me, I work with independent financial advisors, like advisors with Cetera. I can’t work with any advisors with big wire houses like Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, those types of advisors, because of their compliance and because that’s just not the advisors that I’m really passionate about helping. I really care about helping true independent financial advisors.

               And so, if I had a email list of 10,000 Wells Fargo advisors, it wouldn’t do me any good because I don’t work with them. So, let’s think about your network and the strength of your network in terms of what percent of your network includes your ideal qualified clients? And we’re going to talk about your specialist marketing campaigns. I’m going to show you one advisor who created an employer-specific marketing campaign. And we ran some LinkedIn ads and did some LinkedIn prospecting, and we got him six new clients in the first month with a specialist marketing campaign. Finally, we’ll talk about events and webinars. Now, I always recommend having a Valentine’s Day lunch for your single female clients. Because, women, let’s face it, we love to get together and we love to go to lunch, especially on Valentine’s Day.

               So, it’s the perfect opportunity for advisors to have a client event, invite all your female clients, maybe 10 or 15 clients, ask them to bring a free guest. And so, maybe I’ll get five to eight non-client guests that attend. And out of that, you can reliably get two to four new clients. Now, my dad did this in his business and he was very successful. And he always got new clients each year from basically referrals from his existing female clients that came to this lunch. So, that’s just one strategy that we’re going to talk about to grow your business.

               Let’s break it down, how are we going to grow your business by 25% this year? Say, you have 100 existing clients, we’re going to increase the website leads that come from your website, five clients this year, that we’re going to increase. We’re going to increase your referral rate from existing clients, and that will bring you five new clients this year. We’re going to increase the referral rate of your network. So, everybody that you know who is not a client, by increasing the awareness of what you do and how you can help, five new clients this year. We’re going to run a specialist marketing campaign for you, to get five new clients. And I’m going to encourage you to do an event or a webinar that will get you an additional five clients. So, the total of these strategies is 25 new clients or growing your business by 25% this year.

               Now, before you say this is far-fetched or it won’t work for you, think honestly, if your life depended on running one of these strategies, say in increasing the leads that come from your website or getting five clients to refer business, could you do that? Of course, you could. It would be easy for you to do one of these strategies. So, I’m going to ask you to work a little bit harder and run all five, or maybe four or five of these strategies, to really grow your business and make this the best year your business has ever had. But first, I want you to focus, and we’re going to talk about something that’s really important, and that’s specializing your practice.

               Now, if you or one of your loved ones had a life-threatening medical condition, would you want to go to a generalist physician? Or, would you want to go to a specialist? Now, that’s easy. Of course, you would want to go to a specialist, if you had a life-threatening medical condition. And you guys all know that people’s finances are as important to them as their health. And so, with something as important as your financial future, would you want to go to a generalist? Or, a specialist who really understands you? Of course, you’d want to work with a specialist. So, I’m going to encourage you to specialize your practice, at least, through your marketing, to make your marketing more effective.

               The riches are in the niches, and this is something that you’ll hear throughout podcasts and articles about marketing. Now, it turns out that in marketing, if you’re a generalist, it just doesn’t work. But as soon as you specialize, your marketing becomes more and more effective, and it’s easier to find and convert your ideal clients. If you’re talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one. And so, I really encourage you to make this the year that you embrace a true specialty. Embracing a specialty means capturing what you do, who you serve, and how it benefits them. People don’t necessarily care about why you do what you do, they care about how it helps them.

               So, I want you to create a one-sentence statement that captures what you do, who you serve, and how it benefits them. Here’s three examples, “I help physicians catch up for retirement in a hurry.” This is an advisor that I work with, that helps physicians with their defined benefit plans. “We help Intel employees maximize their benefits package.” This is an advisor, I’ll show you some examples of his work, he only works with Intel employees. “I help divorcees create a plan for their divorce settlement to last a lifetime.” And this is a very high-end advisor in the southern part of the United States that works with only wealthy divorcees, to make their settlement last forever.

               And before you start creating your specialization, let’s just clarify, this is a common business school concept that I learned at the Rady School at UC San Diego, minimum expectations versus differentiation. And so, we all have minimum expectations, and this is an example for an airline. For an airline, when you purchase a ticket, you expect them to get you from point A to point B safely. You hope that you get there on time, and a bonus is that your bag arrives, too. These are not differentiators. And so, a lot of times, I see financial advisors referring to their minimum expectations as what makes them different. And I’ll show you what I mean here. And so, for a financial advisor, the minimum expectations that we have for you, are that you’re experienced in your credential.

               So, if somebody hires a financial advisor, we expect them to be trustworthy, we expect them to have reasonable fees, and we even expect them to look out for our best interests. And so, saying that these things are what makes you different, those aren’t your differentiators, those are minimum expectations. So, I’m going to ask you to go a step further, and talk about what truly makes you different. So, what really makes clients choose to work with you, instead of a competition? Who do you serve best, and what benefits do you provide to them? That is what we’re going to use to really kick off your marketing and to supercharge your website’s conversion rate. I’m going to walk you through ways to increase your website’s conversion rate today.

               First of all, we’re going to want to take the traffic and convert it into more leads, like we discussed before. And here are the proven ways that I have tried and tested, to do that. First, it’s really important to have a mobile responsive website. We know that over half of the traffic that comes to financial advisors sites is from a mobile device. So, if your site isn’t mobile responsive, then it’s not going to convert as well as it can. And so, what I mean by mobile responsive is not that it just looks okay on a mobile device, but it actually changes its design, based on which device you’re coming to the site from. And so, you can check if your site is mobile responsive, there’s all kinds of tools online to determine whether or not your site is actually mobile responsive. So, I encourage you to try that out.

               And we’re going to increase your conversion rate by capturing your visitors’ attention, lowering the emotional stakes, and offering an easy next step for them to take, even if it’s midnight on a Tuesday night. Five tricks to a high-converting website are, adding your differentiator, adding a sample financial plan, featuring a case study, and making it personal with a blog post or a video, and adding a call to action that converts. And I’m going to walk you through exactly how to do these five things right now. First of all, adding your differentiator. Now, we just talked about specialization and why it’s so important to embrace a true specialty, this is your differentiator, what one urgent problem do you solve for a specific group? Now, I want that to be front and center on your website, so that no one can come to your homepage without understanding one urgent problem you solve for a specific group.

               Now, here are three examples, “Helping business owners retire with true wealth.” This is an advisor that helps business owners sell their firms so they can take some chips off the table and find better work-life balance. “Retirement planning for certified registered nurse anesthetists.” “Guiding breast cancer survivors to financial independence.” This is a financial advisor in San Diego that works with breast cancer survivors. So, what is your differentiator? Let’s put that front and center on your website, so the visitors’ reaction will be, “This advisor will understand my unique situation.” And they don’t have to explain to you what’s different for them about being a lawyer or about being a breast cancer survivor, because you already understand them. The second is a sample financial plan. We want to add a sample financial plan to your website.

               Now, it is crazy to me, how rarely I come across an advisor who features a sample financial plan on their site. Now, we know that we would never buy a car without test-driving it. And in most experiences, we see a sample of what we’re going to be purchasing, but it’s just not something that’s caught on for advisors. However, for the five natural advisors that I work with, it’s incredibly successful, and it’s one of the most visited pages of their website, when they feature a sample financial plan. So, what are people buying when they work with you? Here’s one example of financial life advisors. And they have a button right below their video that explains what makes them different. They have see a sample financial plan, and it is one of the most clicked buttons on their website.

               And then, when you go and you check out their financial plan, you can see, it goes through the financial goals that this hypothetic couple had, and it goes through the asset evaluation, the process they went through, and the outcome. And so, it doesn’t need to be complex, it doesn’t need to be too fancy, it just needs to give an example of how you work with clients and the outcome that they can expect. The third thing we’re going to add to your website to increase your conversion rate is a case study. Now, you probably don’t have a case study on your site, because you may be worried about compliance. Case studies are not testimonials, and so, you don’t need to worry about compliance. Of course, we’re going to get everything approved by compliance in advance, before it goes on your site. But, you can do a case study that explains how you helped a client that you worked with.

               And so, case studies are designed to explain what types of clients that you serve, and how you help your clients. Here’s just one example of a case study on an advisor site, and this is the advisor’s Google Analytics that shows the traffic to their website. And the case study is the most visited page on their website. So, I guarantee you that your clients, your prospects, people considering doing business with you, really want to understand, how do you work with clients? And what’s the outcome? Here are two examples of case studies that my firm has worked with our clients to create. The one on the left is tackling complex executive compensation. This is an advisor that works with LGBT people in San Diego, and so, they work with LGBT executives, and this is a case study of how they went through and overcame some of the challenges for this particular person.

               The case study on the right is managing an unexpected inheritance. And so, this is a great example of how one of their clients got an unexpected inheritance, and how they used it to address some of their financial planning concerns. So, whatever you do best, you’re going to want to feature those in case studies of clients that you’ve worked with, to help people really understand how you help. The fourth thing is how to make it personal. Now, of course, working with financial advisor is extremely personal, and people want to know what you’re like, do they like you? Do they trust you? And so, featuring something that makes it really personal on your website, can help people to know, like, and trust you, and take the next step to do business with you.

               So, I’m going to encourage you to create and make a personal blog post, or even better, create a video, if you’re comfortable creating a video. It’ll be the virtual first impression on your website, to answer people’s question, “Do I like and trust this advisor? And what is their motivation?” Now, to make it personal, I recommend using Simon Sinek’s book or his TED Talk, Start with Why. And so, you can look it up on TED, you can watch his concept of Start with Why. And the idea is that people want to know why you do what you do. So, just like I explained in the beginning of this presentation why I work with independent financial advisors, I want you to explain why you’re passionate about being an independent financial advisor. Create a blog post or a video that explains why you do what you do.

               This is Steve Hutchison with Hutchison Family Office, and he has the most beautiful video about his story of growing up in Greensboro, South Carolina. And he had a single mother, and she had no money, he grew up really poor, and he decided that he was going to devote his life to helping the people he cared about financially. And so, he’s a very successful advisor, and you could see the video that he created on his site. Another option is creating a blog post. And so, this is Ricky Biel, out of Pasadena, California. And his blog post, Why I Became a Financial Advisor, talks about when he was 12 years old, at Christmas, he got zero presents because his family was not in a position to give gifts that holiday season. And that was when he decided he was going to become a financial advisor, to help his family to get out of debt and to become financially independent.

               And so, add your personal blog post or video, put it front and center on your website, so that people can understand why you do what you do. The fifth way to increase your website conversion rate is to add a call to action that converts. What I mean by that is an easy way people can take the next step with you, 24 hours a day. Here are some examples of calls to action that actually convert website visitors into leads, book your 15-minute Q&A phone call, take a risk questionnaire, schedule a social security review appointment, get a complimentary financial plan, request a complimentary business valuation. This was from that advisor that I mentioned who works with business owners, find out how much you’re paying in 401(k) fees.

               And so, of course, you’re going to want to customize this to what your prospects would find valuable, but we’re going to want to add something that is super valuable and super targeted to your site, to get people to take the next step with you. So, you’re going to want to create a landing page on your site, that lowers the emotional steps for people, and offers an easy next step for your prospects to take, 24 hours a day. And so, we want to include how you start working with clients, what your prospects can expect in this meeting, what they need to bring, if anything, and I recommend telling them, “You don’t need to bring anything.” The questions that you’ll review, the benefits that they’ll walk away from the meeting with, and how they can get started now.

               Because, you wouldn’t maybe know it, but a lot of people have financial urgency, not during the business hours. And so, the key time that people realize that they want to take action on their financial plan is likely not during business hours, maybe it’s when, after they’ve had an argument with their spouse about finances, maybe at 11:00 P.M. on a Tuesday night, or maybe it’s on the weekend when they’re finally trying to pay their bills and trying to figure out how they’re going to pay for their kids’ college. So, it’s not necessarily during business hours, but it’s during times that they maybe feel a sense of urgency and they want to take the next step. And so, we don’t want them to have to wait until you’re in your office to answer the phone. We want to give them the next step, 24 hours a day.

               So, building a call to action that converts. You’re going to want to create a landing page that explains the next step. Explain the benefits of taking the next step. Add a calendar scheduler so that people can automatically get on your calendar and create a direct link. So, even if you’re out at a networking event or you’re telling your clients who have a hot referral for you, you can tell them exactly how to take the next step, “Go to indigomarketingagency.com/2018.” And so, they have an easy way to tell their friends how to take the next step with you. All right, we’ve talked about increasing the conversion rate for your website, let’s talk about increasing the traffic to your website. And we’re going to do that with search engine optimization.

               Now, it’s really important to come up for a search for a financial advisor in XYZ city, the town that you work in. And it’s easy to do if you focus on local search engine optimization. So, we are going to talk about how to get your business to show up for a local search. And so, the way to do that is to take advantage of a search engine optimization package. And I have a package, it’s a one-time fee that you are welcome to take advantage of. It’s 875 dollars, and it registers your business with all of the local search engines. And it takes about 30 days to complete, but we do everything that you need to do, to show up for local search for financial advisor in your city. So, get in touch if you want to get started on that. If you want to do it yourself, I’m also going to give you some resources at the end of this webinar, so that you can do this entire process on your own.

               First, you’re going to want to create your listing with Google Business Profile. Also, with Bing and Yahoo. You’re going to want to claim your listing on Apple Maps, your Facebook business page, your info group, and your Acxiom listing. And so, from that process, you are going to go from the before, to this after. So, instead of showing up on the left for the search for your business name, you’re going to show up with a Google Business Profile listing, that shows your logo, photos of your office, your business hours, your website, your phone number. So, it’s really important to claim your Google listing, so that you show up like the right-hand side of this equation, that you’re really highlighted on Google.

               And it’s easy for people to search for you and find you on Google Maps, or Apple Maps, when they, say, want directions to your office, or they want to call you. And once you’ve registered your business with local search engines, and people are finding you through a Google search, you’re going to be able to see your organic or your unpaid search traffic is going to increase. You’re going to get more overall traffic to your website, coming from searches through Google, Yahoo, or Bing. All right, let’s talk about the next step, which is increasing referrals from existing clients. Now, this is kind of the low hanging fruit. But, I would argue that it’s the most important part because your qualified A+ clients know other people that are just like them. So, you really want to focus on getting as many referrals as possible.

               Let’s talk about how to do that. This is a video that was a really popular video that I released last year, The One Sentence My Dad Used to Add 2 Million in Assets Under Management Last Month. If you want to see the whole video, go to indigomarketingagency.com/video, and you can check it out. But, basically, what I’m talking about in this video is the one thing my dad says at the end of every in-person appointment, to help him get, at least, 10% of his clients who he meets with to refer clients, new clients that are just like them. And I’ll tell you what that sentence is in a second. But it cuts through two mistaken assumptions that I think advisors have about client referrals.

               The first is that your clients know that you’re taking on new clients. In my dad’s case, he’s 70 years old now and he plays a lot of golf. And his clients know that he loves to be on the golf course and he’s really busy. So, I think a lot of them, who are also in their retirement years, don’t realize that he is actually actively growing his business and taking on new clients. And so, your clients may not know that you are looking to grow your business. The second is that maybe clients who have already referred you business in the past and maybe have been clients with you for decades, if not multiple decades, you may think that they have no one else to refer. But that’s not true. Your clients are meeting new people all the time.

               So, even if they’ve referred you to their close friends in the past, that doesn’t mean that they’re a referral source that is used up, they are still meeting new people. And so, you need to make an effort to still ask for referrals from clients who have referred your business in the past. And so, the one sentence my dad used to add $2 million in assets under management in one month is, at the end of a client meeting after they say, they’ve gone over the reports, everything’s good, he says, “If you know anyone who needs my help, let’s get together for coffee, breakfast, or lunch.” And that’s the one thing that he says. And about 10% of his clients, one out of 10 who he meets with, say, “Oh you know what? We do know somebody who needs your help. Let’s get together for breakfast.”

               And so, the first in this example, they went to Panera for Coffee. And nobody wanted any breakfast or anything. It cost him $15 to buy coffee for his existing clients and their referral. And this person had $1 million that they transferred, they became a new client. So, you always want to take the conversation in the transfer of trust to meet in person. And so, this is a great way by asking your clients, “If you know anyone who needs my help, let’s get together for coffee, breakfast, or lunch.” Meet in person with your clients and with the prospect, and you will get more referrals this way.

               Let’s talk about growing your network. And this is really where the rubber meets the road. Your network is your email list and your LinkedIn connections, multiplied by the percentage of ideal clients represented. So, if you have an email list of teachers in Texas, but you do business in California with lawyers, that doesn’t count. We want the percentage of your ideal clients represented in your email list and your LinkedIn connections to be as high as possible. And so, that’s your network. The hardest part about marketing, I think, is growing your network. And there’s no really quick fix to this, there’s no sheet way around this, you have to work hard to grow your network. So, you have to add prospects and referral partners to your email list, and add LinkedIn connections. And this is the most important part about growing your network and growing your referral sources in your business over time, as you always have to be growing your network.

               How do you do that? Well, there’s a lot of different ways. Hosting events and webinars, of course, is a great way to share your expertise, and start the conversation and start that relationship with new people. Asking for referrals is important because the more referrals that you add, the larger your network grows. Sharing valuable content, both by email and on social media. Networking with new referral partners, actively using LinkedIn. So, reaching out to people on LinkedIn. And if you want to learn more about that, check out the LinkedIn course for financial advisors or The LinkedIn Guide for Financial Advisors, which is available on Amazon now, to use LinkedIn to meet qualified prospects. Guest blogging, if you do business, say, with an estate planning attorney, you may want to do a blog post on a financial planning concept that their clients may be interested in, and ask them to share it with their network. And that puts you in front of new people that you don’t already know.

               Of course, things like being active in your community, doing charitable things, being involved in your church. These are all great ways to grow your network. Automating your network growth and outsourcing. And so, what I mean by that is having a personal assistant use LinkedIn to grow your network and reach out to referral partners in your area. Or, using company like mine to do the same and outsourcing it. Let’s talk about once you’ve grown your network, increasing the referrals from your existing network. And this is a little bit easier, and it’s something that you can more easily outsource. And so, we want to use inbound marketing to accomplish this. And what I mean is helping people find you, when they need you most. That’s the heart of inbound marketing, instead of outbound marketing, which was basically advertising to people. We want to use inbound marketing by sharing content and helping people find you when they need you most.

               The content we want to share is valuable, current, educational, entertaining. And it is so valuable that it feels gift-like. And so, you want to share something with your clients’ near prospects, that they will share with their network because they got it for free, and they find it really valuable. It answers their most pressing questions. And so, for my dad’s firm, he works with a lot of widows. And so, they might Google, the steps to take when they’re widowed. And so, we created a report for him, that’s, The First Financial Steps for Widows to Take. And this is something that his network will share with widows that they know, who are going through this difficult transition, because it’s a valuable resource. And then, of course, they can call him and ask him any questions.

               The goals of content marketing are to position you as the subject-matter expert on this particular topic. To give away 90% of what you know for free, to prompt specific questions about their situation, and to just start the conversation and engage with people. You’re going to want to take each piece of content that you produce, and share it via email marketing. Now, social media is great, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, they’re great, but email marketing is still at the core of marketing today. Over 90% of people check their email every day. I know I do, I’m sure you do, too. 70% of advisor’s new leads come from email marketing. And you can email people up to once a week to stay top of mind, without seeing your unsubscribe rates go up. You also going to want to share all of your content on social media.

               And that’s important because, for better or for worse, people spend a ton of time on social media. This is the average minutes per visitor per month to social media sites. 405 minutes per visitor on Facebook. LinkedIn has people spending less time there, but there’s a lot less competition of content. There’s less cat videos, there’s less pictures of your grandkids. And so, if you share content on LinkedIn, you have less to compete with. So, I recommend spending some time on there. And also, of course, on Twitter. And so, you want to be sharing your content daily. Here’s an advisor who works with business owners, and here’s one post that he shared of it, Is an ESOP a Good Fit for Your Business? And so, you want to be sharing your blog posts, all of this content that you created that’s really valuable, be sharing it on a daily basis to stay top of mind with your network.

               And target your ideal prospects. We can use LinkedIn to find people who fit your target demographic and send them a connection request so that they become part of your network, and they see all of the content that you’re sharing. Finally, we want to track your progress with Google Analytics. And so, you can see, from this advisor’s Google Analytics, a lot of their traffic is coming from Facebook. So, you can see that 90% of their social media traffic is coming from Facebook. You want to make sure, all of your efforts are paying off and you want to understand where your traffic to your site is coming from.

               Finally, we’re going to talk about creating your specialist marketing campaign. And so, for this, I’m going to give you the example of Point Wealth, who created a specialist marketing campaign by employer. And so, they’re in a small town in Wisconsin, and the town happens have one major employer. And so, we created a report for them about How To Maximize Your Greenheck Benefits Package. And that’s the main employer in this town. This advisor created this great report, it talks about their 401(k) plan, it talks about their paid time off, their disability insurance, life insurance, all the benefits available through this company. And it’s a really valuable report. It’s the only thing like it that exists out there for these participants or these employees of this company.

               And so, we added it to their website where they have to put in a name, a phone number, and email address, to download this report. And then, we use LinkedIn to find people who work at this company in this area. And so, we reached out to everybody that works at this company and that lives in this town. We sent a message that says, “Let’s connect on LinkedIn.” And then, when they accepted that connection request, we sent a follow-up message, sending the report to these people. A lot of the people who we sent the report to, actually followed up. One of them was somebody who worked at the company, and wanted them to come in to do a lunch and learn at the company. So, this was incredibly successful. Everybody who signed up to receive the report, of course, the advisor now has their email address. So, we sent them follow-up emails that say, “You could get a retirement plan and save 50%.”

               And then they have a button to schedule an appointment to start working with the advisor. And so, it’s an incredibly successful campaign, that position this advisor as a specialist with his benefits package, and he was able to get six new clients out of this effort. The last effort that I want you to focus on is having events and webinars. Now, events, like we talked about the Valentine’s Day event, that is really powerful for getting new client referrals. So, your existing clients bringing new people to an event, and introducing you to them. Webinars are going to be the better avenue for people that you’re not connected with, who you don’t know. Let’s say you did a webinar for employees of a specific company, or how physicians can catch up for retirement in a hurry.

               And then you can use that webinar to capture new leads of people who don’t already know you. And just like you’re spending some time with me on this webinar, those people spend a half hour or an hour with you, and they get to understand what you do, and they get to trust you. And so, that’s a great way to get new leads that you’re not already connected with. Having a specialist webinar is very powerful, you can create an evergreen webinar and you can use it for months or even years, to get new qualified prospects. Here’s one example of the advisor that I mentioned that only works with Intel employees. They created this awesome webinar that was about Life After Intel, with Ben Manny, who is a Intel executive who had retired.

               And they did a nice Q&A with him about how he transitioned from Intel into retirement, and had the advantages, the disadvantages, what he learned, and some of the lessons he learned along the way, and things that he recommends to people preparing for retirement at Intel, which is exactly who this advisor wants to meet. And so, having this webinar is a perfect way for people to self-qualify themselves as prospects, and then get to know this advisor and how he helps people who are retiring from Intel. And so, this is something that you could use LinkedIn or you could use Facebook, or you could use email marketing to get new people into your pipeline, to get to know you and basically listen to your webinar and then take the next step.

               And so, let’s talk about putting it all together and creating your marketing calendar. You’re going to want to focus on one piece of content, each and every month, for 2018. And for each piece of content, you’re going to share it on your website, by email and across social media. The types of content I recommend are some personal content, some content aimed at getting referrals, some timely topics because they do really well with your clients and prospects, specialist content to position you as an expert in a unique niche, event promotion, we talked about having events and webinars, and, of course, client education. Because, part of getting more referrals and growing your business is staying in front of your current clients. I’ve put together the sample marketing calendar for you, your 2018 marketing calendar.

               The first post is that make it personal post that we discussed, Why I Became a Financial Advisor. The second is, What We Do and How We Can Help. This helps your existing clients and your referral partners to understand exactly who you work with, and how you help those people. So, this is a critical flagship piece of content that you need on your website. Of course, for March, we have, Does Someone You Know Need Our Help? And this is a call to action for your existing clients to refer the people that they know. And it’s important to ask for those referrals on a regular basis, twice a year. In April, we have, You Can Now Schedule an Appointment Online. And this is your call to action that we talked about adding it to your website. And so, this explains the way that you get started meeting with prospects, and how they can schedule an appointment online. And so, this is important to announce to your network.

               In May, we have those case studies that we discuss, Case Studies of Clients We’ve Recently Helped. In June, we have, Please Join Us for Our Client Appreciation Event. And this is the event that you want to have targeted at having your clients bring their friends to introduce them to you in person. In July, See a Sample Financial Plan and Share it With Your Friends. And that way, when someone asks your client about their financial advisor, they could say, “Yeah, yeah, let me send you a sample financial plan that my advisor has on their site, so you could check it out.” Give people an easier way to refer you. In August, we have an Exclusive Specialist Report. And that’s the report that we just discussed, maybe an employer-based report or maybe whatever captures who you serve, and what’s ever uniquely valuable for the clients that you serve, you’re going to want to produce and send out to your network.

               September, Please Join Us for an Exclusive Webinar. And that’s going to target your specialist campaign. So, both August and September are focused on your specialist campaign. And then in October, Take Our 2018 Client Survey. And that’s really important to survey your clients, at least, once a year. Ask them about their satisfaction with your team, with your processes. And then at the end of the client survey, guess what? We ask, “Do you know anyone who needs our help?” And you’ll end up getting a few new clients out of your client survey. An added bonus about your client survey is your clients will tell you why they chose to work with you, instead of someone else, and why they think you’re uniquely suited to help people like them.

               November, we have, Financial Actions to Take Before the End of the Year. And this creates a sense of urgency, so people can forward it to their family and friends to get them acting before the year is up. And then, December is another personal post, What We’re Grateful For This Year. Make sure, in your happy holidays, post your clients, you let them know that you’re never too busy to help somebody that they care about. As they go into the holidays, and they’re going to be around their family and friends, you want to stay top of mind and let them know that you are open to working with their family and friends, and that you’re accepting new business. So, this is your 2018 marketing calendar that’s going to grow your business by 25% this year.

               Of course, you’re going to want to customize your strategy to your unique business, but use this as a framework to create your own marketing calendar, and commit to achieving it this year. If you need help, I have the resources for you to do this yourself at Indigo Marketing Academy. Go to indigomarketingagency.com/academy, and you can sign up, you can download a customizable marketing calendar, you can download all of the blog post templates that I discussed in the marketing calendar. You can download templates and customize them and make them your own. So, this gets you so much closer to actually producing all of the pieces of content on this calendar. And I’ve included all of my courses, including the LinkedIn course for advisors, as well as all of my webinars, and how-to videos, to actually execute your strategy for 2018.

               So, check it out, indigomarketingagency.com/academy. It’s only $39 a month, and you can sign up today, to do this yourself. If you need more help and you want to outsource, I have a deal for you for 2018. You can invest in search engine optimization, which is normally $875. We’ll set up and optimize your social media profiles, we’ll do your email marketing engine setup, and we’ll include a year of custom content marketing every single month, as well as a custom report or white paper. And the total value of this is normally over $7,800, you pay only $6,900, you save almost $1,000. It’s just $1,500 setup and $450 per month. If you want to sign up now, we’re only taking the first 15 advisors. So, go to indigomarketingagency.com/2018 to claim your spot now.

               Please connect with me on LinkedIn, so we can stay in touch. I share weekly marketing tips for financial advisors on LinkedIn. So, you can check me up there. And, at this point, I will open it up for any questions. You can type a question into the chat box, and I will respond personally to you by email. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that this webinar was valuable. Please get in touch either through the academy, or hire us to do this marketing plan for you, so that you can make it this year, your best year yet. Good luck in the future and let’s keep in touch. Thanks so much for joining me.