Okay. So drum roll, please. This is the twenty twenty five FMG marketing guide. Ladies, how much blood, sweat, and tears did our team pour into this?
Oh my gosh. An enormous amount of work and Slacks at one in the morning and just, yep, a lot of work. I I am truly have never been more proud of anything a team has created in my whole career.
Oh, I love all of the clapping emojis we’re getting. Thank you all. You all know if you have a labor love on something, it is just so great to see it come to fruition. So you are all getting the very first peeks at it of anyone in the world.
Right now, we’re unveiling it for you. So when you get this, you’re gonna see the way that we’ve set it up is we have five different sections, website, social media, client and prospect communications, events, and video, and those are the five sections. We are gonna give you our some of our best tips from today, walk you through them. And, in this section, if you click on any one of these, it’s just gonna drop you down there.
So it’s interactive. You can click on it. And then also within the guide, we have a ton of links that will take you to a blog or a video or more tips, for that section. There’s tons of examples.
And then at the end of each section, I think, Susan, this is your favorite. Right? There is a check that summarizes everything from that particular section.
I’m sorry to answer all the questions.
This q and a thing works almost like chat.
Oh, the chat works. I turned on the chat. We’re back in. We’re in. Oh, awesome. Okay.
Yay. Aubrey, do I love Jacqueline? Aubrey wins this award for a job. No.
I think it’s Elise. I think Elise jumped ahead of me, so thank you.
Thank you.
We got it.
It’s a teamwork here. I’m telling you. We started talking about doing this, and I’m like, alright. What I what I think advisors really want is to be told, just do this. You know? Not read this, you know, fifty page book about best practices and figure it out. Like, I wanted it to be super actionable, so we distilled, like, all the best practices and tips, but then tried to make it so you could just print out the checklist and, you know, check them off as to dos, and you’ll be in awesome shape.
Exactly. But more detail on each one is up and up.
And then we end the section with additional linked resources, which are one hour workshops and webinars, images that you can go get. So, truly, each section is just jam packed with info. And, again, we have this for five different sections.
So with that, let’s go back up to the top, and we would love to know in the chat we’re gonna hop into each of these. Tell us between your website, your social media, your client and prospect communications, events, or video, which of those would you say what should we ask? You’re most excited, or you’re, you know, chomping at the bit to work on the most in this coming year?
Oh, I can’t wait to see these.
Yes.
So I’m so excited to see this.
Gosh. I it’s like I can’t oh, no. We we should have done a poll. Next time, we will do a poll for this question because I don’t know.
Is anybody I’m kinda seeing all of our web servers.
FMG. Linda that’s Linda said, just sign up for a website with FMG. So Linda Kapler is going to have a good good opportunity this year to make our website work.
Wanna give out our first swag. Can I give our oh my god? I have to scroll so far.
Scott Brooks. I’ve been researching all week, and I cannot find anything or any other company that compares to the FMG web and do it for you marketing. So he, Scott, you are our first winner.
You’re getting a backpack cooler. So if you wanna just message me or, you know, email us after the event, we’re kicking off our swag.
Heck, yeah. Time.
Awesome. Alright.
So So we’re gonna keep going.
So, again, we’re starting with website tips that we can give you and walk you through a little bit more outside of the guide. So number one, we were talking about this, ladies. Right? And, you know, this is something we have to check ourselves on all the time too. The I versus we. The what’s in it for the person we’re trying to target in our messaging. And this we’ll put this in the website section, but truly, right, this applies to all of your marketing no matter what you’re doing.
So here’s the audit. We would love for you all to pull up your website, to take a look at it, and to see how much of what you’ve listed in your website is talking about you, your firm, your qualifications, how long you’ve been in business versus what you can do to help create a solution for the people you serve.
Perfect.
I have to I have to, like, jump into a swag thing.
Christina says, if I tell you that you are the most fun, enthusiastic, generous, and experienced ladies I’ve ever heard of, do I get swag? And I kinda said yes.
We gotta we gotta.
But there’s so many in here. I could give all the swag away already. There’s so many compliments and, like, engagement. I’m I’m gonna this is gonna be tough.
Maybe, Aubrey, we can figure out a way to we’re gonna give everybody the guide, by the way. I’ve seen that question. But you’re all winners and winner winner chicken dinner. So, I’m gonna give the yoga bag to, I think it was Christina. Right?
Okay. And I should mention, I saw in the in the q and a, someone asked how much do we have to pay for this ebook guide. It is free for you all. We are not charging for it.
So we probably couldn’t sell a lot of copies because it’s that good. But we just ultimately want you all to know that marketing, even though it feels intimidating, when you really have a guide there to guide you through it, you can do it. You can do a great job, and that’s why we put this together. Okay.
So, again, the audit the website audit is where we would start. So let’s look at a couple examples. So, again, you’re thinking about what is the problem the clients or the customer or the prospect has and what is the solution you provide to that problem. So here, this was one of our website of the month winners that we featured, last month on LinkedIn live.
And I love this copy on your website, ladies. What do you think about it?
I love it. And I think one of the biggest things that sticks out to me is you’re not gonna see that headline on anybody else’s website. And it’s not traditional, and it’s not, you know, formal and boring. It it captures you.
I mean, guessing everybody that’s looking at this is like, oh, that’s clever. We Yeah. Like to be entertained. We like to talk to people that are talking like people, and I think that’s just really important to remember.
And the imagery is so fitting. It’s this cute little girl with her plant and with the idea of putting on the words of growing. I just it catches our attention.
Yeah.
And all of the you focus language here.
Right? Your life looks like this. You’ve turned a corner. You’re anticipating a big life change. So, hopefully, this gives you some inspiration about what we’re talking here in the instead of talking all about yourself or your qualifications, making it all about the person that you serve. Some of you might say though, well, that’s a little bit easier if you have a niche, but what if you serve a general population?
I love this example because we hear this a lot. You know, I’m an advisor, we help businesses, families, and individuals with financial planning. So how can I take that and make it so that somebody will read it and say, yes? You work with people just like me. I love this example on the right. Retirement planning for individuals fifty and older, four zero one k solutions for businesses with fifty to two hundred employees.
So it’s a lot more Yes. The get your free assessment too.
Like, that call to action, not, you know, it it I want somebody to tell me if I’m on track.
You know? Find out if you’re on track. That’s another good one.
Yes. One hundred percent.
One other example supporting you when you may need it most. I love this, website that was just launched with our FMG premium websites. For recent widows or widowers, we help you navigate your financial picture. For special needs families. We build a plan for your own retirement and your family legacy goals. So you can see they’re they’re targeting more than one group of people, but the way it reads, it’s still very inviting. You understand it’s all under that umbrella of people who need support at a critical time.
And because Susan brought up the call to action, I just wanna put this in here, and I’d love to know in the chat, do you struggle with calls to action on your website, getting people to book a meeting or give up their email? So this example is from, retirement matters dot co. So they specifically really help, this one pharmaceutical company’s employees, Abby V. But what I love is their call to action is want some free advice, and then they talk about if you’re an employee of this company and you’re wondering about your benefits package, we can give you some information about it.
Right? This is a great secondary call to action. What we find is that a lot of people don’t realize that most of your website visitors are not gonna just book a a meeting with you. Right?
They’re gonna come there, and then this happens to us all the time.
You know what?
Actually, this is like a a a real, a real life story.
So for years and years and years on the FMG website, our public website, we just said get a demo. Get a demo. Get a demo. And then it dawned on us, like, most people don’t wanna go straight to potentially a demo.
Like, I wanna I wanna talk to somebody about my needs and whether or not I’m on track or whether there are solutions that would benefit me. So just changing that, we changed it to get a twenty minute consult, and we’ve seen a huge jump in responses. So these little word changes just can make a big difference. And I think for you, it work would work the same way.
Get a twenty minute consult because the other thing people don’t have is time. Mhmm.
One hundred percent. So, yeah, make sure you have, you know, a you have a call to action for people who are ready and then one for those who are not yet ready. Alright. So we went through the website one quick. Are we ready to talk about social media? I know when I asked on LinkedIn what topics you most all wanted help with, this was a very, very popular one.
And so the social media section, we have so many, so many great tips in here. It was hard to think about what could we start with because we don’t wanna you know, it’s it’s a broad topic. So I actually posted this the other day, and it resonated so much. So many people responded saying they would love to learn more about developing a better LinkedIn strategy when I post this, but maybe you could tell us in the chat if this resonates with you. Do you feel like when you log into social media, if you’re on LinkedIn, that your feed is just filled with other people doing the same thing with other financial advisers?
I literally just talked to an adviser earlier today who said the same thing. I’m like, you missed Sam’s post. She just talked about this.
Yes. And so this is something that people then will come to us and say, well, I’m posting, but everybody engaging with my content is just other financial advisers. Right?
And okay. So we’re seeing in the chat. Yes. A lot of this. So if that is you, here’s what you should look like what it should look like and what you should do instead.
Right? So for instance, if you’re an adviser who would help small businesses with exit planning, you wanna follow other business planners account, you wanna follow content from other people who help small businesses with maybe their technology. Right? So what what are the struggles and the issues that they’re having?
Maybe you specialize in franchisees, so you follow other accounts targeting franchise owners.
You want to go out there and find the accounts that are also sharing content relevant to those people or follow those people themselves.
Same thing if you work with physicians, you could follow local hospitals. Right? If you work with physicians in Philly, you could follow the local hospital systems. You could follow residency programs and not just follow them, but those would be the people that you would want to comment and engage with their posts.
I think, you know, one of the I’m totally guilty of this too. I think we are a bit reactive with LinkedIn. Like, most of us sit and we get requests, so we just accept, you know, most of them. So we’re kind of building our network based on who’s reaching out to us instead of controlling it and defining who do we want to build our network with. And that’s you know, it’s intentional. It takes a little time, but I think you’ll hit on a couple, you know, habits that you can start forming.
And it will make all the difference if you start engaging and and reaching out and connecting with your target audience, your target COIs, your target media. And, yes, you can still accept the, you know, the advisers in your, broker dealer or in your networks or in your study groups, but they don’t help you grow. So making sure you do the other is really important.
Yeah. Think of it as additive. Right? If you’re trying to get healthy, dietitians will tell you, don’t think about eliminating all the food you should meet. Think about adding in more fruits, more vegetables.
So true. About like, you don’t need to go back and delete everyone. You just need to start adding in the people that are gonna be your target demographic. Yep.
Oh, you know, somebody just mentioned, and many many advisers do recruit. And in that case, you know, other advisers are your target audience. So different strategy.
A hundred percent.
So let’s talk a little bit about the And I’ll just quick quick.
We’re getting a bunch of compliance. Compliance, having worked at large broker dealers, compliance should have no, problems at all with your connection strategy and and commenting on other people’s posts.
There are very, very few I still hear will are not allowed to leave comments, but I think it’s definitely in the minority. And it used to be so popular and so many have changed that. So if it you are in that minority, it’s probably gonna change in the future. Fingers crossed.
Okay.
And then people are Oh, and this is perfect timing.
It’s New Year’s almost.
So as you’re building your habits for the New Year, this comes directly from the social media section of our guide. We wanted to make it as easy as possible.
You you know, if you guys ever heard of habit stacking, James Clear, and Atomic Habits, one of my favorite books.
Yes.
Stack the habit. Right? So if you, like Susan, wake up every day and walk the dog, can you right when you get back from walking the dog, spend your fifteen minutes doing your daily engagement?
So That’s why I nobody has more has a better habit routine than Sam.
We actually just offline a little bit before now. Before we started, I learned that she makes sure the house is picked up, her bed is made, she’s made up, done her hair, probably ate other things, probably run a marathon before she comes downstairs. She’s like, you don’t do that? I’m like, oh my gosh.
So superwoman embarrassing me. Thank you. Please tell us tell us about this habit because you’re now I’m all embarrassed. What what do you think?
No. I one, Atomic Habits, one of my favorite books because we can add on. But when we’re adding especially when we’re talking about LinkedIn, ten, fifteen minutes makes the world of difference.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I think the number one thing to think about here is if you just go if you have two hundred followers or connections and you just engage with them, you’ll never grow.
So you have to systematically go and find people you’re not yet connected with that you want to target and connect with them. Right? So if you want to sign more physicians to work with your your business, go again, find a hospital system. Look at you can go open LinkedIn, search for the hospital name, click on people who work there, and then it’ll give you a list of everybody who’s raised their hand and said, I work at this company, and you can comment on all their posts. And even if they’re not a physician themselves, probably connected to physicians, so they’ll see your comments. So that is how you would do it.
And I think, like, one little it’s a bit of a nuance from what we typically we talk about this a lot, but it kinda dawned on me because we were thinking about intentionally reaching out to people and connecting. But almost give yourself two weeks to comment on their post, two to three weeks because not everybody posts every week, and some people you wanna connect with probably don’t even post. But for those that do, maybe even give yourself a goal of commenting on two of their posts before you send a connection request because it is nobody misses any comment on their post, and they will remember your name and be like, who’s that? They’ll look you up. And then when you send a connection request with a personalized message, you’ll practically have launched from, you know, not knowing the person to them perceiving you as a friend.
It’s been scientifically proven that when you get that red notification, we’re getting that little drop of dopamine. So we want to remember that person.
Totally. But more than once. Right? And especially when you’re not asking for anything. You’re just making them feel good.
Like, I loved your post or that was insightful. People think to themselves, wait. Who is this person complimenting?
What a great person. Yeah. Yeah.
So, I just threw a couple of these in here, because people ask all of the time about tools to help them with content. So we put a few of our favorites in here. Again, this is more of this is in the guide. But because so many of you are saying you are an FMG customer already, I did wanna highlight because we’ve mentioned it in every single event.
We have a mobile app that makes posting to social media so much easier as well. And so if you’re not using that already, you absolutely want to download it, and we designed the FMG mobile app to one hundred percent reflect best practices. The number one most important with whether you’re an FMG customer or not, you should be doing this, is to write in the zero click content way. So if you’ve come to a webinar before, you’ve heard us talk about this, but it bears repeating because I still see people not doing it.
So this was the old way. Right? You would post your link to your blog, your website, your video, and then say something short about it, and people had to go click to understand it. The new way is you get the information in the visual or in the post itself without somebody needing to click to read.
And the reason this is important is we just spend all this time talking about comments and how important they are. You will get so many more comments if you give the meat of the information away in the post itself, the zero click formatting.
And so I’m giving a I’m giving a prize.
Okay. Hope Hope just called out that she didn’t know there was an app that’s so convenient, and I love that because I’m guessing you are not the only one on the webinar that did not know we have an app. I don’t know. It’s like the most under known feature that we have, I think, and everyone’s always like, oh my gosh. So, anyway, we are I’m gonna give you a blanket, one of our cozy blankets for the winner. So hope if you can just send a message to our host or email us back, you are getting a blanket.
Mary just said zero click content leveled up our LinkedIn game. So I love hearing that. And, you know, I think one of the things just, again, to keep in mind is it’s getting into a new habit. So if you’re used to just linking out to your blog or your podcast or your video, right, you’re gonna upload it natively there into LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever.
First, you’re going to again, if you can use an AI tool, if you’re like, I don’t know how to do this, you can open up one of ChatGPT, Perplexity, take your post, put it in there, and say, summarize it for for LinkedIn. However, that is what our AI tool does for you. So if you have FMG mobile app, it will you could say write the text for me, and it will summarize what the article, the blog post, whatever is all about right there in the app. So, again, this is really the way to get the most comments, which we all know comments are the currency of social media because the more you get, the more your post will be shown to more people.
Oh, Fran Weitzman is downloading it right now. I’m giving out another we’re gonna give Fran a would you prefer a Yeti wine tumbler or the coffee Yeti? Fran, you’ll have to let me know.
Fran Choi says, uh-oh.
Joyce says, oh, that’s dangerous. That’s gonna be hard. Okay. When you when you message us, let us know whether you want the coffee or the wine. I don’t wanna assume everybody well, the wine could be anything in there.
And I also I was getting there were other there was a comment I wanted to do.
Alright. We’ll come back to it. I lost my train of thought.
There’s so many good comments we can’t I’m gonna No.
Somebody asked a great someone asked a great question. They said, are you penalized for sharing a link? No. You not that you can never share a link.
I’m sorry. That’s a great question. I wanna make that clear. So for instance, if I’m posting, I’ll post something without a link, then the next day something without a link.
Maybe it’s a video I uploaded. And the day after that, like, just two days ago, I shared a promo about today’s event, and there was a link to register. So it’s not that you never wanna share a link. You just don’t wanna share one, a, every day.
And, b, when you do share the link, you still wanna summarize what it is about so the person doesn’t have to click off to read it.
I was actually just gonna say because, you know, there’s a whole a lot it’s easier to share somebody else’s article and say, great read. You know? But it’s you need to summarize it, and that can be a part of your strategy on social, just not all.
And we just got a really good question. Is the app, connected to compliance? And, yes, it is.
I’m just looking at everything about FMG is connected.
I’m gonna say compliance. Compliance. The best benefits of working with FMG. If you are a financial adviser is we are always thinking about compliance first because we know that you can’t use it if we aren’t.
So Alright. Chloe is heading over to a meeting with Nicholas Wilson on our team, so I’m gonna give Chloe a, what are we gonna do? I’m gonna give Chloe a speaker.
So Chloe, either tell her this or send us a message and let us know your address will be Nicholas we said hello.
Yes. Tell Nicholas we should start. Next to three.
And remember, everyone, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the guide. There’s so much more good stuff in every section. We’re just highlighting a few of the best of the best. So client and prospect communications.
This is, you know, kind of I feel like sometimes the the least sexy that people get excited about. However, it has the highest conversion rate, so this should be the sexiest.
This comes from our friends at YChart. They found through actually, the last couple of years surveys, if the numbers stays about the same, seventy five percent of clients either left or considered leaving their adviser due to infrequent communications. In twenty twenty three, they found that. They also found that the year before, and I’m not surprised.
I mean, if you think about, you know, why someone chooses to work with somebody, a lot of it is coming down to the relationship. And if the person stops communicating with you just like in a dating relationship, you don’t have a relationship anymore. You never hear from them. So communication is really, really key.
Quick question to Elise. Hi, Tim Burrows. I know Tim. We’re getting a couple questions on the app. People are going on and downloading it right now. But when they when they are with a broker dealer that has an enterprise relationship, Elise, can you tell them how they log in?
Yeah. They so they can use their single sign on with their broker dealer that they normally have, but they use if you’re logging into the mobile app for the fir first time or the hundredth time, you use your username and password that you would for the desktop. So the same username and password that you use to sign in usually is to FMG. That’s the exact same one that you would use. Or if you are, you know, with Hosea and you have my CMO or anything like that, you just use your same username and log in.
And I think what might happen is they’re so used to single sign on that they don’t they don’t remember it. We also are getting some like, I’m getting a call customer service. I will say we do work with some enterprises that, have not approved the app, so it’s inevitable that we talk about things that may not be available in every single situation. So you can message us, you know, after the meeting, and we’ll we’ll certainly address your individual situations.
Absolutely.
Awesome. But I’m so excited so many people want it because I know.
Okay. So we know that this is important. We wanted to dive right into a tip that we’ve talked about before, but we still find so many people are not doing, but it makes the world difference. And we have found this ourselves.
Right? So if you are trying to move the needle with email marketing or client communications, right, this goes for both clients and prospects, the more you group, segment your list further into smaller bite sized chunks, the more you will be able to send targeted messages and the higher your conversion and or, you know, open click through rates will be. So what do we mean by this? The example I just gave recently was, let’s say you have a list of prospects and they announced the new cost of living adjustments for people on Social Security.
And you’re like, people who are on, you know, good about to retire would really wanna know this, but you don’t wanna send it out to every single person on your list. But if you have a list of prospects that are, you know, nearing retirement or, you know, about to retire the next year or just retired, that would be an audience where an extra email with this news, they would happily want to know how much more money are you gonna get in your Social Security check next year. So this is why having these segments makes such a difference, and it also is really gonna help your open and click through rate numbers when you’re, you know, doing your, email communication.
So, Susan, Elise, what do you think are some of the more popular ways to segment that maybe people aren’t or not even popular, but interesting ways somebody might wanna consider?
Well, like, I always you know, for the do it for me, we’re writing a center of influence version for every email that we’re doing because that can be just such a huge opportunity, and it takes time to nurture. It’s not like you call somebody up and say, have lunch. I wanna get your clients. It really is sort of proving that you’re a thought leader and you’re, you know, altruistic and all the rest. So I think creating a center of influence, which takes time I mean, you have to build it manually.
It’s not like they’re coming to you, but I would add that to it.
And I would say thinking about either specific demographics, age is a really good one. So, hey. These are my millennials. These are my pre retirees.
And we have automations that happen to align perfectly with some of those. We also, like lifestyle. Hey. These are my wine drinkers, and these are my golfers.
So you you have a charity golf tournament coming up. You can send the right message to the right audience. So depending on your niche audience or maybe work with, like, white coat professionals, and I would specify, hey. These are or maybe I work with dentists, but it’s these are my endodontists.
These are my periodontists. These are my pediatric.
You know? So how do you have special content for the perio versus the word letters?
You can. If you’re getting granular, we’d love to see it. The right message to the right audience.
I have to read this comment from William Abram. He just said when we started with FMG earlier this year, it took a few days, but we segmented our email list in our CRM and then connected it to FMG.
But now we have it done. It’s so nice to have in place to send custom emails out. We even used one to send a geographic list of clients an invitation to a client barbecue. We had fifty people attend all without any paper invitations and very few phone calls.
Oh, you start them tool that we’re gonna share. That is totally worth a backpack cooler.
That was William Abraham. So thank you.
Please send us your address. And congratulations. It takes time, but it is so worth it.
And, Kelly just said I’m slightly overwhelmed by the amount of information you’re sharing, but it’s so incredibly useful. Always room for improvement. And we totally one hundred percent get that. We’re gonna talk a little bit more about our do it for me program in a minute, but we built that with people exactly like you in mind. We don’t want you to feel overwhelmed because we can help you get it done. Totally.
Alright. So I wanna make sure that we have time to keep going through everything, but, just a quick shout out. I know we are lovers of AI tools that help us with content creation, and we think you all are too. So if you’re thinking about your subject line, remember your subject line is really the gate that’s gonna determine whether somebody clicks to open it and keep reading or not. You can use a free AI tool called subject line dot com, and it will help you determine whether the subject line you wrote is really clickable and you’re gonna get a good click through rate. So we love that tool, and we want you to check it out.
Yeah. I love that one. And and, also, I run my subject lines through, like, a chat gbt a lot too just to come up with options. Sometimes I don’t feel that it’s better, but sometimes it just gives you an idea. Like, you don’t it never has, like, the perfect one, but you’re like, oh, I’ll take the end of that and maybe add it to the first part of that one, and then the middle I like with my own or something like that.
And, Susan, didn’t you just use subject line dot com as another?
That’s what Sam was just sharing. Yeah. I used it. I started using that, and I think I’m just so used to going into, like, chat or bar to clock.
But yep.
So a quick example, we just wanted to shout out. If you’re not doing timely email communication, so, obviously, in the FMG dashboard, we have every time there’s something timely going on with the the government, with the markets, we add something as fast as we can. But, Susan, why don’t you tell us a little bit about this, when to spec expect your ten ninety nine email, and how, you know, this was so popular and as an example of our do it for me program.
Yeah. So last year, I had not I hadn’t thought of this. So, you know, shame on me, but we were talking to a bunch of I was talking to a bunch of advisers, and one of them was like, god. I keep getting calls from my clients.
They’re saying, like, when do I get my ten ninety nine for this or that or the other time? My ten ninety nine did blah blah blah. And they were getting a lot of client calls. And they’re just like, can you write something that preempts them from calling and just outlines all the different types of ten ninety nines when people generally send them out, when to expect them, not to submit anything with the word draft on it, you know, all that stuff.
And so I wrote something. Advisors sent it out, and it was they got tons of thank yous and also prevented a bunch of calls. So we did it again this year and dusted it off, and that’s something that our do it for me customers have access to and that kind of content. Like, just thinking ahead about timely stuff that just, a, is a benefit to you because they don’t call, but also a huge benefit to them.
So I’m getting questions. I keep seeing questions while you’re talking in the question box about, well, what is the do it for me program? Is it different than the other part of FMG? So, Susan, I pulled this up. Why don’t you walk us through since your beautiful face is right there?
I was like, Yeah. So our do it for me program in a nutshell is it really came about because of things like this that we’re just you know, there’s so so much information and so much good advice, but advisers are overwhelmed, and they don’t have time to think about it all. So they you know, we talk about, you know, best practices and things, and people would just say, that’s lovely, but can you just do it for me? And I’ve always wanted to build a program called do it for me, and we did a couple years ago at FMG, and we just keep making it better.
And, essentially, it’s all based on the premise that content marketing is what’s really gonna drive your growth. Consistent content marketing, positioning you as a thought leader across all of your different channels and dripping on all of the people that are most important to you for growing your business, centers of influence, clients, and prospects. So I write two blogs. I version them for emails that can go to clients, prospects, and centers of influence, and I really do version them.
And then we write social posts both, you know, on really interesting timely financial information. I’m digging. I read all the time. I have my husband read and find me stuff on Wall Street Journal and bears, and then I’m just paraphrasing again, the zero click content.
And then also observances, and then we do timely optional emails. Like, one of the most popular is an invitation to a family meeting. That’s gotten tons of people intros to the next generation.
And then they have a most importantly, probably, they have a concierge, a dedicated concierge who reviews the calendar with them, knows their business, points out the pieces that they think are most relevant, maybe should be personalized, an opportunity to personalize. And then once the calendar is approved every month, they execute the whole thing for them. So, yes, so this on?
You no. This is color coded. So you would get the calendar. It would say, on this day, we’re gonna send out this blog.
On this day, we’re gonna send out this email. And the person might say, oh, hey. Well, can we do something specific for business owners? We’ll say, yep.
We’ve got content for that.
We even give you a podcast script and a video script of the month and a specific marketing tip, and then it’s all linked. Right? So we we were just talking about that ten ninety nine. You can see the email itself in a, Google Doc, and it shows you the image. It shows you any any anything that would be in the actual email itself.
So this And if you’re do it for me customer, you have access to a separate content collection called exclusive content.
So somebody’s asking, can you just tell me where to find this? It only shows up, in the FMG dashboard when you have the do it for me program, and we’re happy we’ll do a poll later in case anybody’s interested in learning more. I also got a really good question. Is it realistic to expect inbound leads from content marketing?
And, absolutely, like, just yesterday, Sam, in our do it for me wins Slack channel, I think was it the guy just, got a email back from a prospect and he had, you know, like, a million dollars and wanted to you know, he’s like, I’ve been I’ve been getting your emails. I, you know, read them, and they’ve been really good. And you know what?
I just I don’t know if it was changed jobs and had to roll over, but it is about being top of mind when that trigger event happens, which you will never be able to know when it’s gonna happen.
So you have to just prove that you aren’t hung you know, you’re not pushing them for something. You’re just altruistically sharing information, and that builds trust with people over time, whether it’s centers of influence or whether it’s clients and prospects.
And when that moment happens, they immediately respond, and they give you the business. We truly believe it is the way to grow your business.
Yeah. And remember with funnel, you know, people get really excited about social media all the time. It’s like the sexy thing. And I always say that’s top of the funnel.
You’re not converting people there. But where the conversion happens is in email marketing. Right? So you get them get you get them from somewhere.
You get them from events, which we’re about to talk about, which we the best lead gen tool. But then the email marketing is where the conversion happens.
You know, we get a we’re getting a couple questions. One is how much is too much communication?
What do you guys think?
I say no. I with the email strategy, no more than once a week. Yep. And I would agree again, if you segment your clients, you are able to send more personalized information and have more emails technically going out from yourself, but it’s not to the same person.
Yeah. Not more than once a week. There’s a stat I don’t know if we already blew through this, but, you know, something like seventy five percent of clients considered changing bro changing their adviser because of lack of communication. So I think one of the biggest myths to debunk is that you are afraid to send too much.
If you are sending information that as you read it you know what?
The chairman of Lightyear, which is a private equity firm that owned Cetera, an advisor group who I had the privilege of working with, he once said to me, does it pass the wife he was in another generation. It could have been the husband. Does it pass the wife husband friend test, which is if you receive it, do you wanna talk do you wanna tell somebody about it? Like, do if you get this, would I actually go like, hey, Rick. Did you realize, like, the ten ninety nine from blank blank, you should probably get that?
If it passes the I would wanna tell somebody about a test, there’s no that’s Exactly.
A bad thing to send. Exactly. And that also you know, the timely part too. So you might have already sent your email out for the week, but some breaking news happens, like Silicon Valley Bank is collapsing and everybody’s worried about the bank collapse, you can send another email. Don’t stress. Like, people would rather hear from you about something very timely.
Oh my gosh. We’re good. Like, Taylor is, like, leading us into how should we use video in email and social. We’ll get to that. That’s what our last pillar, I think, is video.
So we I was just gonna say we gotta move quicker, I guess, because we’re we’re we got twenty minutes left. Oh. Okay. So let’s just quickly, a lot of you may not realize that FMG acquired MyRepChat.
And so if you’re thinking about compliant texting or how to combine email and texting together, this is something we can now help you with, which we’re very excited about. So we just put a couple, tips in here. In the marketing guide, there’s a whole section on texting and how to combine email and texting. One of the stats that was really mind blowing for us when we looked at our own internal data was that when you send someone a text that they need to return you a document, you know, hey. Complete that DocuSign. The average turnaround time was just five minutes to get the documents completed versus, you know, how many times have we sent emails and no one ever responds. So, again, with texting, just thinking about how can you pair it with your other e email, email communications.
Erin Trost just said in all caps, so excited about this acquisition.
We are too.
We are too. And we have a you know, just full disclosure, like, there’s no end to the enhancements that we can make to this platform, and we are putting a ton of money and time and investment into it. So it’s just gonna get better and better.
Yeah. Down the road, we have so many great things on our road map, like being able to have live chat on your website. People are so used to talking to AI now. So when someone will come to your website, you can add a bot, and they’ll be chatting with you, and it’ll go directly to the tech. So, let’s put up a poll, Aubrey. If you are interested in hearing more about MyRepChat, and how you can combine it with your other communications, let us know, and then we will send you more information. But, again, there’s a lot of really cool things planned for this tool of how you’ll be able to pair it with marketing communications and, not just send it for, you know, appointment reminders or things like that.
There is a quest a couple questions about can I get into my rep chat from FMG?
Not yet, but it is coming.
And, yeah. Perfect.
Okay. Let’s talk about events. We did mention that we believe that events really are one of your best lead gen opportunities. They are for us at FMG.
They are for a ton of businesses. And just think about right now, the feeling you all have. You’re seeing what each other are writing in the comments. You’re interacting with each other.
You’re interacting with us real human beings. I think the more I don’t know about you ladies. I personally believe the more that AI dominates content marketing, the more people are gonna crave experiences. Right?
Whether it’s in person or virtual, events are gonna become bigger and bigger and bigger.
Absolutely.
I did just I just put a little I I just couldn’t help because I just see so many compliments, and I can’t get to them all. And I can’t thank everybody, and I can’t give enough swag away. But I like you, you know, we grow through testimonials and and positive comments. If any of you have shared positive comment here and and don’t mind just copying and pasting it and giving us a Google review, I put the link in, just FYI.
Yes. We would love it. We’ll and we’ll shout you out on the next webinar.
And, somebody asked if Zoom is different than my rep chat, and I think the biggest difference is my rep chat has compliance workflows. So compliance teams approve it. It archives. It reviews, and it just makes it a compliant it’s an an app. It is not using your SMS app, you know, the the one that we all use all day long. It is within an app, and it it just makes your, communications through text compliant.
Okay. Awesome.
So when we think about, again, an event, we’ve been talking a lot about how do we create something that people wanna talk about, a remarkable moment. The word remarkable literally means something so good someone wants to remark about it to someone else. So when we think about events, events can help you do just that. Right?
If you host an event, which we’re gonna give you some ideas here in a second, and people go and have a great experience and someone says, what did you do on Saturday? That’s something people might wanna talk about. Or if you host a FBI agent, a subject matter expert to come in and you host a webinar and you talk all about scams that seniors should avoid and somebody learns crazy information about a scam targeting, you know, the elderly right now, they might go tell all their friends, hey, watch this out for your parents. So it really helps you create these remarkable moments, which we know we just know that it works.
It helps you generate really high quality leads, but only twenty three percent of advisory firms, according to our research, are actually using webinars. So maybe tell us in the chat, do you use webinars at all? Have you tried those kinds of events?
Maybe add to that.
I actually am what kinda wondering why you don’t.
Yes. That would be good. That would be good.
What is the barrier? Okay.
We hold quarterly webinars. We tried one, it was not successful.
Tracy, can I just tell you? We I host webinars all the time now. We get thousands of attendees. My very first webinar I ever hosted, I had four people sign up.
And guess what I did? I were I went up live. I dressed all up. I put the whole thing together and presented it, and I interacted with everybody as if there was a bunch of people there because they couldn’t tell.
And then at the end, it was recorded, and I put it on our website.
And Alan Fisher said he was on that webinar.
Oh, yes.
Alright, Alan.
You get a backpack cooler.
Yeah. And so even fan. You can still present it because even if you only have four people or two people Yep. Those are two really high quality leads. Right? Would you be happy to get two people book a time on your calendar?
So what we’re gonna talk about because I think, my hypothesis and what we’ve talked about before, Sam, was I think the reason people don’t do it is, you know, I’m nervous to do it. I I’ve done them, but they’re not successful, meaning I don’t get people there.
We’ve got the tip to help you get people there and make it successful. So let’s go. Okay.
So we have the answers.
Yes. Why don’t you talk about this one, Susan? Because I I know you’ve walked people through it before, and I’m gonna take a sip of that.
I mean, the don’t put all the pressure on yourself. Like, I think there’s this perception that you’ve gotta create this massive deck with fabulous stats and information and everything. You don’t. You actually just need to pick a topic that people are interested in, and it doesn’t have to be about the market.
It It doesn’t even have to be about a planning topic. You know, a great one right now is about identity theft. It is on the minds of everybody. It is tangentially completely related to financial services, and you can partner with a local law official, law enforcement person.
You can the banks typically have somebody that can speak to this, and you do a joint webinar where they do the speaking and you’re just asking them questions. Most of us feel much more comfortable in the asking questions part, and it can just be you two on a Zoom without any slides. And if there’s some good takeaways, then you might put that on a slide, but it just it’s easy. And then you have if you do it something like let’s say you do something with a we’re entering tax time.
There could be, I mean, literally endless numbers of topics that you could do with a CPA. If you have and a great opportunity to open the door with a CPA, but, ideally, if you work with one, do a joint webinar, and then you’re both inviting your respective clients. This is where you start getting success and getting new names. That’s when you when you’re getting people that you’re not already in front of.
If you just do a webinar and invite your clients, you’re not gonna get a ton of new names, but they might invite somebody. But if you partner, you’re getting all of their audience as well. Then you can use the replay for, you know, clips, for social, for your email. But most importantly, it’s just it’s easier to do it with somebody else.
And then our event tool makes it really, really easy to promote so you are successful at getting people there.
And I wanna just also mention if a lot of people are saying, well, I already have an email list. I’m trying to get new people to sign up. Put it on LinkedIn as a LinkedIn event, and then you can use the advanced, filtering techniques on LinkedIn to find your ideal people to invite. So there’s an adviser I know. He works with a lot of, tech workers in Silicon Valley, and he’ll host webinars on, like, RSUs, things like that. He’ll filter Google, Amazon, different employees, and then through LinkedIn and send them the invite to the event that he set up on LinkedIn. I did a whole walk through on how to do this, by the way, in our last LinkedIn advanced strategies workshop, which is on FMG Suite dot com under, the webinars page.
So if you Emma, I’ll send it real quick.
I have it right here.
We’ll see how to do that. It’s there. But that’s a great way to get new fresh people in the door.
So do we want to do we want I don’t know if we have time. Susan, should we show off the event tool a little bit real quick?
Show off the event tool, and we can go quickly through the video. As I’ve I’m, like, trying to message people, everything we say, because we do talk fast, and there’s so much content, and we get excited.
Everything is in the guide.
And I think that’s one of the best parts of the best part.
We’re just highlighting.
You won’t you won’t miss anything. We will send out a replay of the slides, the webinar, but the guide has everything. But I think it’s good to show just how easy we make it to promote an event Because if we had one thing that I’d love you all to start doing in twenty twenty five, it is events because I think it is the way to start getting those new emails that you can then do the email dripping on that will have the greatest impact on your growth.
Yes.
The guide is coming to everybody in the, follow-up email, by the way.
Okay. So I’ve ventured into our dashboard, into our our events section, and I built it out. So I added all the pertinent details. I even customized a header and added how to register and all of that.
I won’t get into the nitty gritty details. Let’s look at how beautiful the landing page is and how easy it is for people to sign up. So I created this landing page that you can see share your screen. Oh, I have to share my screen.
It’s not a hurry. Here I am showing off all this great stuff.
Well, I love that ticket. I mean, that’s good inspiration. I think that’s a super cute invite.
And as you’re as you’re about to share, Susan, I I think we have to give, some swag to the person who just said they use our event tool all the time. Marilyn Ruggles said she used our event functionality constantly, and it couldn’t be easier to use.
Alright. We’re giving her a blanket and a speaker. Oh, yay.
I don’t know. I just felt like it.
We’re getting towards the end. We gotta give it all away. Yeah.
So this week ahead and share.
Page and how easy it is to register.
And so, we can add your name. They can add additional guests. We wanna encourage them to send this to their friends and family because we want to build on that that network. And so let’s go back to editing event, and let’s take a look at promotion of this event.
So as we look to promote, I think that’s one of the things we shy away from when we’re doing events.
Right? Oh my gosh. Do I need a fancy light and a fancy microphone? No. We we have our computers, and they do everything we need.
And sometimes we shy away from the promotion of it because it’s so much work. But with our tool, it makes it so stinking easy. So I can easily share via email, an email that goes out, and easily share the social media. So let’s take a look at all it creates these social media posts for you to share.
So this is an example of one. I can use this as is, or I can come in and edit and add all my own features to it, add my own imagery, add my own voice. And so this is a social sequence that will go out. So the first post will go out.
It’ll wait seven days, the second post, and so on, and we have the exact same thing with email. So send the emails, dedicate it to the exact audience. We talked about segmentation to your right segmented audience, and then hit send, and you’re done. That’s it.
We promoted our holiday event or whatever event you wanna do.
And I should how does it tie into your website?
Can you promote it can you promote this on your website?
Absolutely. So this landing page lives on your website. You can share on social. You can you can even create a blog post about your event coming up. You could even, add it as a LinkedIn event. So create it once and then use it in multiple ways.
And I wanted to point out in case somebody’s confused about this because I’ve gotten this question before. You yes. You would still you could if it’s a virtual event, right, you would still have a Zoom link. Like, host it via Zoom. You’d be on here like we all are. But the the link for them to join the Zoom or to register for the Zoom would be in the landing page.
Yep. So right when it says register, it would take you instead of ours. It would take you to a Zoom registration link. So we support third party or maybe you’re collecting RCPs via Eventbrite or Zoom or GoToWebinar. Whatever it might be, we support them.
Alright.
So I’m adding the, link to the advanced LinkedIn webinar because we got some comments that people couldn’t see it, and I just had a typo in webinar, so excuse me.
And it’s one more thing with events just because there’s and because we have to keep going, but we also have pre event themes.
Yeah.
So if you want to think about a state of the markets webinar or the Secure Act two point o or the ever so popular tax strategies. We have premade events with premade promotions.
So you just have to type in your time and your date and, you know, just parking included, and you’re ready to send.
Yes. Okay. So let’s move on to the very last section, video. This was one of the ones that people asked for a ton of intel and insight on.
We’re not gonna have time to go into too much today. A ton is in the guide. We have been thinking about maybe hosting a whole video dedicated workshop in the new year, so let us know if that’s something you’d be interested in. We’ll gauge interest.
But the number one thing we wanted to just talk about here, well, there’s two things really. One, we’re gonna tell you how FMG can help you with video and some of the tools. But then the other thing is one of the biggest kind of blunders we see, which is so many people start their video and they forget that the first five seconds are the most important. So when you go to play hit play, you don’t want someone to say, hi.
I’m Samantha Russell from FMG, or today, I’m gonna talk to you about this. You wanna give them the a hook right away to get them to keep watching. So you don’t introduce yourself first. You wanna start with either a bold statement or a fact or a story or get give away what someone will get from watching.
So I just put a couple hook ideas here that will hopefully get the creative juices flowing for you. Right? I’ve helped a hundred people retire. Here’s what most of them said they wish they’d known or done before retirement.
Or before you apply for Social Security, watch this. Or what whatever the case may be. If you’re trying to use video as a way to, you know, capture people’s attention, that hook is so, so important.
If you’re looking for a really easy way to record, we love v dot I o. We all use it. It’s on your desktop, and it will you can both edit the video and record the video there, both your face and your screen. They should be pinging us at this point, ladies, to talk about Alright.
So William in Canvas. He’s helping us so much. He just mentioned that he’s he’s in he’s shared a link about all of our video ideas on, our FMG website. So, William, thank you for your time.
Audience. Thanks. Amazing.
What have you call a post next time?
So email communications is a really easy way to start if you’re not doing this already. Right? You can go back to VEED, record yourself, and maybe it’s just something you send to clients. Maybe you’re not really ready to go.
You don’t wanna start a YouTube channel. You don’t wanna post it to social media, but you wanna just start doing some video emails with clients. So an easy way would be to record it again using something like Veed. And then when you go to share it, you can upload it to your email.
So we have an amazing, amazing widget in FMG where instead of having to first upload it to Vimeo or Wistia, you can just upload the video directly in your email. We’ll even make a little thumbnail for you. There’s a little, time stamp drag where you can drag to what section of the video you want to be the still shot, and then you can email it out. And you can email it to just one segment or to everyone on your list.
So if you’re kind of shy about video and you just wanna get started, start by just incorporating it into your client communications. That’s a really great way to dip your toe in, and people like to watch video more than they like to read. We found this to be true.
Yes. Actually, what was that cool? There’s a cool set. So if you read text, you retain ten percent. If you see a video, you retain ninety five percent.
So, Susan, tell us about this because some people are gonna say, I still don’t wanna put my face on camera.
Yeah. I’m so I’m so with you, actually, which is why I, like, ick every time I see that. But, so you can do video with motion graphic and animation, and that’s one of the ways that FMG helps. So if you don’t wanna do your own videos, it still counts if you’re sending out a video that talks about the markets, let’s say.
And this is one of our probably our most popular automation is our monthly market insights. We call it MMI, and it’s animated graphics, you know, with with, you know, just it doesn’t have voice it doesn’t have voice. Right? Or is it voice, Luis?
Or is it just writing?
Yeah. It’s just writing. And I writing.
I’m gonna double check. You know, fast forward a year, our vision is that you can record your voice and through AI, we’ll put it on there. But don’t tell our product people I just said that. But I think that’s the future of this.
But for now, you can check the box and send video out by just using a video newsletter, which also includes the text. And I think that’s also one of the things to think about. It doesn’t have to be just a video or just a text. Sometimes doing both is the best, whether it’s you recording, like, a quick synopsis of what you’re sending in text or if you wanna just check the box and incorporate video by using our monthly market insights.
Somebody just said Mikaela Klopp said our clients love the MMI, and we get the most email engagement, with that, and all the feedback is always about how much the clients love them. So thank you for sharing.
You’ve got a a hat and a Yeti wine tumbler.
Please, text our host and let us know your address. I’m so glad it’s working well for you. And Yes. It’s been a hot day. Oh, I have definitely given you swag on other on on other events. Very amazing.
Love it. Her monthly market insight can be shared on social too. So, again, utilizing it.
And where can they find it? You can find it if you have a premium subscription. I hate to say, like, some of these are not in all the packages. We have an essential package, a premium package, and a do it for me. The MMI is part of the premium package. So, it is potentially an upgrade if you are in the essential, and worth it really would be worth exploring your options to understand what are the benefits of premium over essential, and and the main one really is all these automations. And this is just one of a zillion.
Yeah. Literally.
Somebody asked they said they heard a rumor that LinkedIn penalizes you for sharing video.
Is that true?
Oh my gosh.
Absolutely not. Oh. Every social media platform at this point prioritizes video content for the most part. So, yes, you still need to have an engaging video and all that.
The main thing is you wanna upload it natively to the platform. So, like, if you have a YouTube video, you don’t wanna share the link to YouTube. You wanna upload the video itself. That’s the key.
Okay. So we know marketing can feel hard. Aubrey, can we put the pull up about the do it for me program? We’ve shared so many tips.
We’re giving you all the marketing guide. I know this is just the tip of the iceberg, and people are saying it’s like drinking from a fire hose. We would love to help you make it feel easier. We don’t want it to be hard.
So if you would just love someone to do it for you, you’re interested in having, our team help you with your marketing in twenty twenty five or get started right away, just say yes. I’m interested, and, we’ll reach out to you. We cannot thank you all enough though for spending this afternoon with us. We’re so excited to get this guide in your hands, and we wanna keep hearing from you.
So tell us, what would you most love us to teach you more about when it comes to marketing in twenty twenty five? What should we have our next workshop on? I don’t know, ladies.
Absolutely. I saw a video, but, you know, we’ll send out the replay. If you wanna just reply to that email and share your ideas on topics for twenty twenty five, we would love to hear from you. We truly love what we do, and engaging with you on these webinars just makes our year. So we wish you all amazing holidays, healthy, happy, and we will see you in the new year. Yes. One.
Bye, everybody. Bye.
