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Happy Wednesday everybody. First of all, thank you to everyone who subscribed to our new YouTube channel. Secondly, I am recording this video today for leaders, advisors, or not advisors who are feeling a bit overwhelmed, or maybe a lot of bit overwhelmed at all of the information and advertising and marketing that’s out there around financial advisor marketing. And meaning, it feels like every five seconds there’s a new FinTech marketing platform emerging, and everybody’s now running, you know, hosting a podcast and people who you never thought would be blogging are now blogging and posting videos. And all of this coming at us at once can feel actually completely paralyzing to the point that we ended up doing absolutely nothing, instead of filtering through, and trying to take advantage of the strategies that will work for us. There’s two underlying themes to this video. The first is that, I want to give advisors permission to ignore a lot of the noise in the industry. And the reality is that regardless of what tech platform you’re using, or what newsletter you’re sending out, or where you’re posting, what works for the best in the business, the advisers that are growing exponentially, and the firms that are doing really well, hasn’t changed. In other words, it’s the firms and the advisors who best understand the client who will win the business. So you can be signing up for the most expensive, coolest, you know, marketing tool that’s helping you pump out, you know, information and blogs and posts on social media. But guess what? If your clients aren’t spending time on Facebook, or on LinkedIn or on Twitter, then the money that you’re spending, and everything you’re posting is irrelevant. And so that’s the first piece. The second piece is that I want advisors to take a common sense approach, which is what I’m gonna talk through today to thinking about their marketing. Developing and implementing a marketing strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars hiring somebody to help you think through all of this. Although, you know, you could if you want to, but every single quarter, you should be asking yourself the same questions, and self-coaching your way through a marketing strategy. Okay, so here’s what I’ll start with, and for those of you who were thinking about what your Q1 opportunity is related to marketing, I want you to think about two things. Number one, where is there an opportunity to garner new business and generate interesting leads right now? The only ways that you can do that right now are number one, through current clients, number two, through centers of influence, number three, through your visual identity. So we’ll consider that outbound marketing, right? What your website looks like, what sort of generic, “of what advertising” you’re doing, and fourth through inbound marketing. Meaning you’re putting out content out there that is very specifically designed to draw interest, and pull people back in to you and your business. So, current clients, COIs, outbound marketing, so advertising and things, you speaking on a random podcast, and then four, inbound marketing. And so, your entire marketing strategy for the quarter should be built around those four buckets. So, let’s take the first one, your current clients. The first thing I would do, and you may wanna get in the habit of doing this every quarter, but I’d certainly do it at year end for the first quarter, survey your current clients. Survey your current clients with marketing oriented questions. What do you find most valuable about, you know, the information that we put out to you? Do you read our newsletter? If not, what information would you be inclined to click on? Number three, we wanna get into the habit of hosting more virtual client events next year, which type of events would you be most interested in attending? What did you think about our approach to virtual client events this year? Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! So now you’ve gathered some information from your current clients, the people who are already engaged with you about what they wanna see differently, or what they wanna see more of. It’s likely that prospects and other people who think and act like them would likely respond the same way to those questions. And so, the information that you get from your current clients is gonna formulate your strategy for Q1. Number one, you’re gonna hold, by the way, no excuse now to not host virtual client events. My recommendation is always that you host one of them, and this is virtual or a non virtual. One event that’s purely value add and not business oriented. Meaning, it’s tied to something psychographically about the client, but it doesn’t necessarily have to do with the markets or the economy. So, if we know that, you know, our clients are business owners who are struggling to keep their employees engaged, maybe similarly to you during this pandemic when everyone’s virtual, maybe you’re gonna bring on a business coach to talk for 20 minutes about strategies to improve your relationships with employees, you know, during this chaotic time that we’re in. So purely value add, something that’s relevant to their lives, and their businesses. And that’s no pressure on them to do anything on those events, great. Based on what clients share with you, you may also consider hosting, you know, beginning of the year kickoff sort of economic overview event that is purely for the benefit of clients who really care about having, you know, that thought leadership on an ongoing basis. Some people are not at all engaged with that type of content, some people are. So, we’ll aim for two client events for the quarter, one personal and sort of intimate, and one that’s business related. And the other thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take the clients who responded to the survey the quickest, who are maybe our top clients, and or who may be engaged with our content the most. So if you already sent out a newsletter, and there are certain clients that are always reading, and clicking and responding, those 10 clients are gonna get a surprise gift in Q1. Thank you for being a partner to us, thank you for engaging with our content, and being a good sport, as we ramp up, you know, our social media presence. I always like when advisors are vulnerable to clients, and sort of share with them that, hey, marketing is not our forte, but we’re really trying. You’re sending a gift out to those 10 clients. So, client event, your top clients can invite somebody to come to those client gifts, moving on. Now we have our centers of influence. Centers of influence should be treated just like top clients. My recommendation is that you set up a practice of meeting the same way you would with anybody you’re networking with. A meeting once a quarter with your center of influence, where you’re having a really intentional conversation about, hey, we wanna be a partner to you. So talk to us about how things are going, how can we help you? What types of clients are you working with? You know, what information or collateral could you give to me that might help me position you better with our clients? And then in turn, you’re also sharing all of that information with them. So you’re inviting them to one of those sort of one-on-one networking events for the quarter. You’re also inviting them to your client events. Okay, that’s centers of influence. The other ask, I would make of centers of influence in that meeting in Q1 is, hey, would you be open to partnering on some thought leadership content that we’re thinking of creating? So now the responsibility isn’t just on you to create that thought leadership content, but you could really do it in partnership with somebody else who serves the same clients as you. Okay, so that’s COIs. Then we have our inbound and outbound marketing. Outbound marketing at a minimum advisors, and again, this can get really stressful if you’re within a broker dealer, and compliance is an issue. At a minimum ensure that you have a polished website that doesn’t have too much fluff in extra information about your broker dealer that really tells the prospect, you know, who you are, what type of people you serve and what you do for them. Keep in mind, I didn’t say a website that lists out, you know, wealth management, investment management, risk management, but that actually articulates what you do for the client. We help people make decisions about X, we help business owners do X, Y, Z. So, a website that’s really specific. And that’s reflective of all of your other social channels, and visual identity elsewhere. In other words, if you have a website, that’s saying that you’re a financial planner, but you have a LinkedIn profile that’s saying you’re an investment manager, you definitely wanna change that. So, making sure that you’ve audited your social, and digital presence and channels, and having uniform message across all of them, just make sure that you do that for next quarter. And then inbound marketing, so your strategy of putting out content that attracts people in, I shared this with you folks in an earlier video, go through the exercise and go through this exercise every single quarter of listing out all of the questions that clients have asked you over the course of the last three months. The questions that they’ve asked you, that you’ve helped them answer. Your content strategy. Meaning, whatever you put out, whether it’s a blog, whatever’s easiest for you to do by the way, and whatever system, can be systematized, so whether it’s something that you’re posting on social media, you know, once a day, a newsletter that you’re sending out once a week, every single piece of content or information that you put out has to align with match or answer one of those questions that you’ve listed out. Now, the caveat to that is, make sure that the channel you’re using is the channel that is accessed and used by your clients. Meaning if your clients aren’t on LinkedIn, don’t post on LinkedIn. If your clients aren’t on Twitter, don’t go to Twitter. If your clients are very engaged with email, and respond to you and engage with your email newsletter, great, start creating authentic content, and sending it out via email. Okay, oh, I forgot I was recording for a second there. I hope that was helpful. Remember, common sense approach. Use the information that you know about your clients, and just focus on the only channels that you have right now to get clients. Through your current clients, COIs, and the information that you put out into the universe. Okay, I hope that was helpful folks. I will see you in one week, same place, same time, take care.