The Top 10 Marketing Questions Advisors Are Asking in 2025—Answered

today is really all about answering the questions that Susan and I and our marketing team get over and over again, and we wanted to make this as easy to digest and interactive as possible. So we asked, you know, both clients and those who are not using FMG but just need help with their marketing. What are your biggest questions that, you know, you would love to get an answer to?

And there were about ten themes that came up, and so we are going to really just have a conversation and answer those live. And then we’re hoping that that will prompt all of you to share even more questions. So we will do formal introductions here in just a second, but, just a couple housekeeping. This is being recorded.

You will get the recording as well as any of the resources we share afterwards. And the q and a box is where you can ask any questions that you want only Susan and I to see or just make sure that, we we are alerted of them. And then the chat box so you can ask questions there. And also feel free to share any tips or tricks of things that have worked for you or, maybe things that didn’t work that you’ve tried, so we can all learn from each other.

But let why don’t we go ahead and get started with some introductions? Susan, would you like to introduce yourself first?

Sure. I’m Susan Theater. I’m the chief marketing officer at FMG, and I’m lucky enough to get to work with Sam every day.

Oh, that’s so sweet. Ditto. And I’m Samantha Russell, the chief evangelist at FMG. And just as my title says, my job is really to go around and talk about FMG, our product, our technology, all the great services we have to help you market more efficiently and effectively. And, also to take a lot of what we see advisors or, you know, trends, innovations happening in the field and bring that back and just keep improving our product.

So why don’t we have housekeeping question?

Oh yes, just a quick. Oh, oh, I got you right in the middle of asking a question. So but my housekeeping question is I’m sure people are going to ask questions in the chat.

Do you wanna try to get through the ten that we sort of thematically have, you know, aggregated all that we received and created and then take the questions? Or are we because you know me, I’ll, like, see something in the chat and then wanna bring it up.

Yeah. I think we should do what everybody here is most interested to learn. So I think that, you know, we want this to be most effective for all of you. So maybe what we can do is share what those questions are.

And then as we’re sharing them, you all can look at them, digest them, and then maybe tell us like these are the things that we are most interested in honing in on or learning about. But hopefully we’ll be able to do both.

Perfect.

Okay, great question. So let me go ahead and share that. Share my screen.

So there’s Susan and I.

The top questions that people are asking, I don’t know why I have it started with number two, but let me go through what these ten are. I promise this is number one. Apparently, was back in half this morning. And then you all, we would love to know in the chat if this either drums up another question for you or something specific to you, and we’ll and then we’ll decide kind of, you know, if there’s any other ones we wanna start with. But number one is about how do we clearly articulate my value proposition so prospects see how I’m different from the adviser down the street.

Number two is which social platforms actually drive client conversions and how often should I post to see results.

Three is if I only have two hours a week, what’s some yeah.

I do too. The most efficient marketing I can do.

Number four, what kind of educational content attracts real leads, and how can I repurpose it faster while staying And we don’t have fake leads?

Yeah. Five, can AI really help me save time on marketing, and what’s safe in a compliance first environment?

Six is where do I start if I want to build a marketing funnel that leads to booked meetings, not dead ends? There’s nothing worse than having someone on your calendar that is not you’re not. They’re not qualified for your business at all. And seven, what mix of events, live virtual webinars, or podcasts delivers the best ROI?

Eight is how should you present fees in a way that builds trust and converts prospects who might be fee fat sensitive?

Nine, do I really need a formal marketing plan, and what does one even look like? And then ten, how can I involve my CSA or junior team members into our marketing without taking time away from our client work? So those are the ten questions that were sent to us. I know I went them through them kinda quickly, but I would we would just love to know, is there anything can you tell us everybody who’s, listening in, tell us in the chat which one of those maybe jumped out at you the most?

Is there one particular area? If you don’t wanna list out the whole question, is it social media? Is it, you know, content strategy? Is it, you know, only having two hours a week?

Where what of those things want us to start?

Yeah. Most sounded to you like, yes. This would be something that would be most helpful for me to learn most about.

And Oh, we got two hours a week.

Okay. That that doesn’t surprise me. I think we’re always all time strapped.

I think that’s because, like, at most, that’s all they have.

Yeah. Most. Totally get it. Totally get it.

And so we can we can go through those. So John’s the only one. Everybody else is probably multitasking, doing something else because they only have two. No.

Here they come. Here they come.

Articulate claim proposition, which events bring the most ROI. Cool. Think we can bounce through.

Maybe we start with two hours, but I bet we can bounce through.

I think not answering means probably all of them.

Yeah. That’s true too. That’s true too.

Okay. So everybody has something so far. Michael saying, Yusufeh, everyone has something different. So why don’t we start with this one since we have it up on the screen?

And Susan, I’ll let you, since I’ve been talking loudly, what some tips that you would have for this question?

Okay. I love this, but I actually I’m plagiarizing from your advice. So I think you can expand on this, I think almost everybody’s been through a value proposition exercise at some point and they’ve got, you know, they filled out the blanks and they’re like, there’s my value proposition. But Sam has a formula that I think is just a little bit different than what you’ve done before. And it starts with what you probably have like, you know, we do what, for whom, I’m guessing you’ve answered those questions before but the third one is what I love which is so they can.

So write this down. We do what? Fill in the blank. For whom? Who’s the whom?

So they can. And Sam talks about this a lot, but it’s it’s benefit marketing. It’s outcome marketing. You know, if you think about, how success like the iPod, if they had started marketing by saying, oh, we’ve got a great new digital pocket media player, it would have flopped.

But instead they marketed by saying, we have a brand new thousand songs in your pocket. It’s so they can. So Yep. Think and using that messaging on your website, in your marketing materials is what will set you apart because so many advisers don’t put it into that outcome language.

And I always just like to think of it as the that so they can is you know, a lot of times it’s a benefit. It’s a it’s a problem solving. It’s a solution.

Whatever’s gonna help you think about it. But so they can do what? So they can have a better plan, so they can take income in retirement, and feel okay about spending down, you know, whatever it is they’ve saved. And it’s really another way to think about it too with your value proposition is on your website.

Do not write, you know, our unique value proposition and then list it out. You want to actually say things like in their language. Because when we start talking corporate speak, our values, our mission, our value proposition, everybody zones out. Right?

It does it’s so boring. So instead, you just want to make it the main text on the front page of your website. You know, I help who to do what so they can and then what those benefits are. That’s really the formula to use.

Does any and if anyone here has a website that’s a whole bunch of examples up too.

Oh, great. Can am am I sharing my screen?

Sorry. Yes. You are. Oh, look at that.

I stole it from you.

So the other thing, you know what I realized is a lot one way to kind of tell whether or not you’re you’re using outcome or so they can language is whether you’re using the word you or whether you’re using the word we in all of your marketing messaging. Because if you’re talking about what we do, then you’re talking about yourself. If you’re framing it in in the you so that you can, you’re naturally gonna talk about the benefit. And these are just some before and afters.

Like, instead of we help clients save a retirement, we help clients live a retirement where their choices aren’t dictated by money. We create financial plans. We create roadmaps to help clients rest easy knowing they’re on track. So I won’t go through all of these, and we can even share it after.

But, hopefully, that gives you an example. And I think that we you test, Sam, is is a way to see whether you’re on track.

Yes. Oh, absolutely. So what Susie means by that is if you open up your website and you can do a little audit, you can see how many times are you saying things like we’ve been in business thirty years. We believe this.

Our team does that. So we’re talking about we, I, are, versus if you say you, you statements. Right? And you’re using their language, they will feel seen and heard.

Because ultimately, the goal of any of our marketing messaging is for someone to say, yes.

This firm gets it. They work with people just like me, and so I’m gonna feel confident working with them that they’re gonna already understand me and what it is that I need.

Alright. Let’s move on to the next question, which is move that out of the way. Sorry. Which social platforms actually drive client conversions, and how should often should I post to see results? Tell us in the chat what social media platforms are you currently posting to? Is it LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, x, all of the above?

LinkedIn, LinkedIn, FB, Facebook, LinkedIn, all of the above.

I think we’ve got a range, but sort of a base of LinkedIn, and then it moves up from there.

Yeah. So LinkedIn is definitely the most popular for advisers overall.

And I think that makes sense if you look at the, the sense of what yeah. The demographics of who’s on LinkedIn and how active they are. And one of the things that really bodes well for all of us too in this business is that the average user on LinkedIn is signing in more times per week or per month than ever before and spending more time there because the type of content has drastically changed in the last five to seven years. Right?

People aren’t just going to LinkedIn when they’re looking for a job anymore. They’re going there to keep up with their colleagues, with their friends, to learn, you know, new information. I would love to know too in the chat. Have you ever gotten a lead from any of these platforms?

Maybe tell us that that you could directly correlate. And that is one thing I should mention.

You know, tracking the attribution of where leads come from and what actually converts them is become incredibly difficult in marketing in twenty twenty five than ever before because somebody can hear about you, Google your name, go to ChatGPT and look you up, and then look at your LinkedIn profile and, you know, check you out in all these different areas. Then maybe they don’t pay attention to you for a while, then they get an email from you. What is the thing that eventually triggers them? We don’t always know, but that’s often what gets the attribution. So you might think it’s because of your website or because of some newsletter, but we don’t always exactly know.

So they all I think just to add to that, I don’t think the answer is never one thing.

I’m sure you’ve heard the word customer journey or prospect journey. It’s a journey. And the fact is that they are, I think they’re probably, I know that in different businesses, there’s the number of touch points you need to convert a customer but bottom line, you have to be consistently out there in multiple channels in order to convert and it’s never going to be one thing. It might have been the last thing and that’s called last touch attribution but it’s never typically one thing that you did that converted them.

It’s the consistency of staying top of mind and being where they can see you. So I think, you know, trying to get to a point where you can say, did I you know, did this one post pay off? I mean, I don’t think you’ll ever see that. But you generally like, if people have gotten leads from LinkedIn or any social, I’m guessing the person, you know, told them, yeah.

I saw your posts on LinkedIn. But if you ask them, did you also go to my website? They’d say yes. Did you Yeah.

Research? Yes. So anyway. Sorry. Side.

I think that’s a great point. And John McNamara in the chat had said that YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn is what he uses and that all of his leads have come from social media. So that is really, really interesting. And then we’ve had the complete opposite.

John Dunham said never. He’s never got a lead from any of these, and he just uses LinkedIn. So, you know, obviously, I’ve got, like, my marketing hat on. Now I wanna look at both of all of your content.

Sam, like, I see a webinar where we have both of them on.

Yeah. That would be so great. But, I mean, there’s so many different factors that go into it. So when someone asks me this question, my first response back is gonna be two things.

Number one, no matter what, you need to have a LinkedIn profile and be active on it because LinkedIn has the best optimization of any platform as of right now. So if someone does Google or go to ChatGPT or any of those tools and ask, they want they put your name or your business in, those types that platform will show up at the top. So you absolutely need to have it just for that alone. But then my second question would be, who are you targeting?

Because if you’re targeting, you know, people who are already retired, they’re not gonna be as active on LinkedIn. Now some people may still wanna keep up with their friends there. I think that platform is shifting, but traditionally, that would be my answer. Whereas retirees are more often on Facebook looking at pictures of their grandkids and their kids.

Yeah. So it really does depend who you’re targeting. But regardless, that is why LinkedIn is one we always talk about because you get this, SEO benefit from it no matter what.

Yep. I would agree. I was gonna say, you know, where are the people that you wanna be talking to? You know, which of those platforms are they on?

A q and a came in, Susan, that I think is great as a follow-up to it. And the the person asks, how do you attract leads on LinkedIn when most of your connections as an adviser are other advisers? And I’d love to hear in the comments, do you have this problem? Are a lot of your connections on LinkedIn not your target audience, but other financial advisers? Because this is something this is not the first time we’ve heard this. Right, Susan?

I I mean, we hear it all the time, and I think actually it goes back to how do you get leads on LinkedIn.

First and foremost, it’s building your network so that your followers are your target audience. And guess what? That doesn’t happen magically. It actually takes effort, which is kind of a bummer, but you have to be intentional about expanding your network not just reactively accepting the requests that come to you because that means you’re not steering your audience and that’s largely why you have advisors that saw you at a conference and just you know sent you a LinkedIn request. But Sam has some really great ideas for how to expand your network and ultimately that really is probably the critical dependency to ever getting leads.

So I think you could have the best content strategy, Sam.

But if it’s not if it’s not being seen by their target audience, they won’t get leads.

Exactly. Exactly. So I get asked about this a lot. And, Aubrey, maybe it would be great.

Aubrey, behind the scenes is helping us. If you could put in, some links to previous sessions we’ve done with trainings on how to use LinkedIn and connect with the right people, I think that would be helpful to everyone, and we’ll send it in the follow-up. But this is my number one tip. Every single Friday, either you or someone on your team, an admin or, you know, someone who’s helping you, have them go through your calendar and your inbox.

And anyone you took a meeting with, anyone you had a phone call with, anyone you emailed with, send them a LinkedIn request. So this is gonna include not just clients, but if children of those clients have been cc’d on an email. If there’s there’s an CPA or an estate planning attorney that you’ve been doing work with, if it’s another business owner in, like, the local area that came to you and asked for something, if there’s a nonprofit organization that came to you and asked you, will you donate to this local community event, Anybody that you emailed or met with. Because those are the people that you’re a, already doing business with and b, are most likely to be connected with people you want to do business with.

So that’s going to really easily build your network. And by the end of the year, most people who do this in one year have added over a thousand very highly targeted connections on LinkedIn, if not more.

So that’s gonna work.

Worth noting because I think one of the barriers to doing this is people feel like they have to write some really personal note. Sam and I do not write notes when we send LinkedIn requests generally. You can just send, you know, send the request. And I mean, that’s better.

Sometimes the messages feel salesy. So this takes no time. Like you just have to look them up, so an admin truly can do this for you and or you can do it. And I’d also make a list of centers of influence and just out of the gate connect with any of the centers of influence that you wanna possibly do work with or already do.

I was just gonna say. And then as a follow-up, you can proactively connect with people that you haven’t had meetings yet with, but you’d love for them to become aware of you and what you do. So before they start, you know, you would want them to have the opportunity to see the type of thought leadership and content you’re gonna be sharing. So you make a list or have an admin make a list of who are all the CPAs in town, all the you know, whatever those COIs are, and proactively send them connection connection requests.

And again, you don’t even need to include a note. They can just see that you’re another professional in the area, and you don’t need to send a follow-up message asking for anything. Actually, not asking for anything is really the key strategy here. But let’s say beyond that, you work with physicians in Philadelphia.

You can go into the advanced filtering, and Aubrey just put a link to this in the chat. And you can look up hospital systems in Philadelphia, filter by anyone who’s listed there a physician, and get a list of people and start connecting with those folks too. So LinkedIn makes it really, really easy to find and target that right audience.

Okay. If anyone has any follow-up questions on that, please share. And it sounds like a lot of the advisors actually on this session today are saying they’re not connected with that many other advisors, which you are in the minority, I think.

One question that could be relevant before we move on, is, should I accept requests from totally random people?

What do you say to that?

So you have thirty thousand connections that you can have on LinkedIn. So for most people, connecting with somebody if you don’t know them is not a problem. The issue is more is it gonna become like, how many of you have connected with someone and then they immediately tried to sell you something? If that happens, you can connect and then disconnect with them.

But let’s say it’s another adviser. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with connecting with other advisers. You just need be strategic in making sure you’re connecting beyond that. So I wouldn’t start going through and disconnecting with people.

I connect with people all the time that I don’t know. In fact, that’s how I’ve gotten some amazing opportunities, and that’s how you grow. Right? You’re never gonna really grow if you have to personally know every single person.

That’s not the goal here.

I totally agree. There is we’ll take one more follow-up question, which is I struggle with LinkedIn because I have two different businesses. How do you suggest I handle this? Financial planning and a health insurance.

They have different names. So I think this gets into, do you do business posts or do you do personal posts? And in this guy’s case, I think that’s a challenge because you run into how do you have a voice for two on your personal. Maybe this is a two zero one question we take offline, but maybe worth talking about the business page versus the personal really quickly.

Yeah. So our advice is that you always have both a business LinkedIn page as well as a personal page. Again, because of those SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, your page is going to if someone types in your name or your business, your website’s usually gonna be the one of the first things listed, and then your LinkedIn is gonna be second. So we wanna claim those pages and post to them regularly so they look up to date.

But, no, you will always get more engagement and more connections, more conversations on the personal, profile versus the business one. And that’s just because we feel a connection with other faces or other humans, not logos and brands. So you definitely want both, but you just be prepared that the personal is really where you’re gonna get oftentimes the most out of it. Yeah.

Okay. This is the question that a lot of people wanted, or we had a lot of similar questions come in, which was just, I have limited time. What should I prioritize? Or if I only have two hours a week, what’s the most efficient marketing that I could do?

I would love to know in the chat.

Can I while you’re talking, a quick question to the chat? How many hours a week do you think would you say you spend on marketing? And just have those fly in and Sam will Sam will take a stab at the answer.

But I’m kinda curious what kind of hours people what I was gonna say.

I want everybody to put in the chat. Oh, sorry.

We’re like, exactly aligned. That’s hilarious. And and obviously, some people have, you know, somebody else helping them. So you can answer it how you want. But what are what are we saying?

And Lots.

And lots, which yeah. I mean, and I think obviously, what’s a lot to you will vary depending on how much you enjoy it too. I mean, I think if somebody really does not love it, they’re gonna put it off a lot more than somebody who actually somewhat enjoys it. So, I hate to say this, but my number one thing that if again, if someone asked me this question, my first response would be, okay.

What’s your goal? And where are you in your business journey and your marketing journey? Because if you’re just starting out, my answer is gonna be very different than if you’re an established firm who’s looking for, you know, some you’re thinking about succession, you’re thinking about selling. So in that case, let’s start there.

You know, you’re a pretty established firm, and you’re thinking more about, you only have a few hours a week, and you wanna look attractive to a buyer. I would really focus on spending those hours setting up systems and processes so that if somebody else is acquiring you, it’s a plug and play. Like, they you have a platform, a system, everything set up so that it’s easy for them to take over and just keep doing what you’ve already done. Whereas if you’re maybe more in growth mode and you’re really focused on, you know, generating more business and all that, my biggest tip would be to get as many new emails as you can and then set up a regular email cadence of either once or a week or every other week to those prospects.

Where those emails come from is gonna vary depending again on who you’re targeting. That could look like the strategy we just talked about, going on LinkedIn, spending one hour on LinkedIn, looking for new contacts, new leads, because you can actually pull in emails from LinkedIn as well. People don’t always realize that, and putting them into the system.

If you have some support on your team, maybe those two hours for you personally look like you’re setting up to host a webinar. You’re gonna prep a little bit, invite a subject matter expert to join you, and then deliver it. And behind the scenes, you have somebody helping you to, you know, send out the emails to invite people and do the follow-up. So it really does depend, but I’d love to get your take on it, Susan.

Yeah. I was gonna say, you know, you know, I’m a huge fan of content marketing, and I think we end up being kind of reactive, like, oh, crap. I need to post on social. I haven’t done it.

So I I think part of the two hours, I would spend thinking about what are the best and most timely and relevant topics that I want to talk about in my marketing for the next week or two weeks, possibly even for the next three, but at two hours a week, you can kind of just think about for this week and next week, what are the things that I’m getting asked the most? What are the questions I’m getting? What’s happening in the world? Is there anything new that I think people are asking questions about?

Think, you know, big beautiful bill.

And then spend the time writing a couple posts and maybe even an email or an article that could go in your newsletter so that you’re constantly creating content and thinking proactively about it so that you can do that email drip so that you can post on social and you’re not feeling rushed or reactive in doing it.

Yeah. And I know some people are saying, Susan, there’s no way I could do that in two hours. Well, that’s where a solution like FMG comes in. That’s where FMG comes in.

True. Help you scale it. Though, truly, I mean, that is we talk about value propositions. That is our value proposition.

I mean, one of the number one things when we survey people who work with us, what is it that we help you do that you value the most? It is saving time so that I can be the most effective in the marketing. Like, what can you outsource and what can you only you do? And that is where I think people value us so much is that, you know, they’re able to outsource so much of that so that they can come in and spend those two hours so efficient and effectively.

Yeah. That’s true. And just to talk through that. So, like, there are two really models with FMG, which, you know, just sort of is applicable, I think, broadly, so I’m not doing a sales pitch.

But we have an enormous content library that is, you know, refreshed every week with new content. So a self-service model is you think about the topics that are most relevant to your audience. You think about those questions, what you wanna be talking and then you just come into our content library and you can find existing content that has been recently written and just do a couple tweaks, use it as is or make a couple tweaks. I like to say it’s sort of the ninety percent is done for you and you just, you know, only have to do ten percent.

Or we have a do it for me program where Sam and I are actually thinking about a content calendar strategy for every month with blogs and emails and social posts and podcast scripts and webinar scripts and marketing tips etc And you have a concierge who walks you through that and helps you do the personalization of any of the ones that you wanna do. But I think the the the tip I would have is get help on the content creation and leverage and just use a little bit of time to personalize it as opposed to having to be the full content creator because there are solutions out there that you can leverage like FMG.

Yes. Yes. So I was just pulling up, this is the do it for me calendar that we’re talking about. And one of the questions that we did get, which maybe this is a good segue, is is it really important to actually have a marketing plan?

Do I need to have, like, a set plan every month, or can that change what activities I’m doing? And so this is what we would call in marketing speak an editorial calendar, and it really just looks like a calendar. And you can see we’ve got it color coded here. So green is email.

Right?

Excuse me. Purple is social media post. Blue like, this bright blue is blogs.

But you should, just like you have a plan for other elements of your business, know, okay. What is what am I gonna be sending out? If I’m gonna send out an email every other week, what are, in general, some of the things that my clients are gonna be thinking about, whether it’s tax season, back to school season, what are emails I should be sending, but then leave some room for, like, Susan mentioned, those timely things that pop up. But if this is something, right, that you can sit down and say, okay. I know some general areas I want to focus on and whether you type it up and, you know, then are able to outsource or you work with a company like FMG where we can give this to you and then you can just go in and make little tweaks.

Having a plan really is so important because I’m sure so many of you have run into this where you plan or you have the hope to post three times a week. But when you don’t actually plan it out, it just doesn’t happen.

Yeah. I mean, we all know, like, without a plan, without goals, without accountability, it does it just tends to fall off. And I think that if somebody asked me, like, what is the biggest challenge advisers face with marketing? I would say it’s consistency. You know, they might start.

You guys, hopefully, you’ll all get off this call and be fired up and, you know, have some some suggestions that we’ve given you that you wanna implement. But three weeks from now, things get busy and you might stop doing that, you know, sending out the LinkedIn requests on Fridays. So it is really important. You don’t have to have, like, a ten page, twenty page marketing plan deck, but you do need to have goals, I think. And a content strategy is really kind of the easiest thing, I think, it’s not easy to put together, but you don’t have to have the full fledged marketing plan to come up with, like, a content strategy and goals around it. And and I would outsource partners that can help you.

And I would say if you need to start somewhere, I think starting here two times a week, two times a month. Yep. Say, I’m gonna add a piece of content to my website as a blog post. So in this case, we have what you need to know about the twenty twenty five changes to inherited IRA rules, and then two weeks later, why more families are choosing to gift wealth earlier and how to do it.

So you can see those blogs are happening here. And then the next day, a version of that blog is going out as an email to both clients on the list, prospects on the list, and then COIs on the list. And And with our do it for me program, we take care of writing these pieces for you, versioning them for you. But at a minimum, if you’re leaving here feeling like, what could I implement to get started?

I would say start with that because you just repurpose And turn it into your social post.

Yep.

So that would give you, you know, two blog posts a month, two emails a month, and then at least two social posts. And that right there would be a good plan to get started from. So at a minimum, you could start with that. Or, you know, if you’re we could always work with you through our do it for me program and actually do it for you, but that’s, I would say, a hundred percent where you could at least start.

And I think, yeah, we could weave in the question about how do you use AI. You know, for somebody that wants to do it themselves, they they don’t wanna outsource, AI can absolutely help with your efficiency if you wanted to create two blogs and version them for emails and version them for social.

What I would caution you on, and I’m sure you guys know this, is, you know, it should never be your final draft when you use AI, and then one of the biggest hurdles is compliance and sourcing. So a lot of times, a, AI can hallucinate. It can give you incorrect information. It can give you incorrect sources. It tends to use some dated information a lot of the time, and that’s not gonna get through compliance. So we embedded AI into our platform to make all those things just something you don’t have to worry about, and Sam’s gonna demo.

Yeah. So whether so this is a, FMG’s AI tool, which we just launched and we’re super, super excited about. But I think that the question that had come up that a lot of people were asking was, can AI really help me market smarter and more efficiently? How what do I need to to know about compliant?

I’m so scared to just go use ChatGPT because it does hallucinate and it’s not part of my compliance workflow. So that is why we developed this AI Muse, which we just are so excited about because it solves for all those problems. You’re not just going to chat GPT and asking questions. This this tool has been built off of our years and years, decades even, of research of working with advisers and knowing what kind of content, will get flagged by compliance, what is going to get through, and also what is What works?

Yeah. What kind of content actually works and what advisors would send. So let’s say you put in a quick prompt. This is not very specific. You would want to be more specific.

But you put in a a prompt of what it is you want. And then we actually have developed these writing styles to add more to that prompt. So if you do give just a very basic prompt, you can come in and choose one of these writing styles. Do you want it to sound like the practical optimist, the steady captain?

You can choose one, and then you can also say how long you want it to be and then generate.

One thing a little backstory I thought was funny as we were building this, you know, the whole goal was we want it to write in your voice. You know, how can we mirror your voice? And as we talk to a bunch of advisers, they’re all like, I don’t want it to sound exactly like me. I want it to sound better. You know? So that’s why we designed these personas because it actually it’s it’s your voice, but even more polished.

So that’s why they have these options.

Hundred. A hundred percent.

So you could see in real time here, it’s telling you the content was created. It was checking, you know, to see if it get a first pass for compliance. So it’s gonna give you both the title of the post as well as, you know, the body that you might wanna look at. And then it even breaks it up, right, with headers, everything that you would need, but you can a hundred percent come in here and say, wanna make it longer, make it shorter.

I want you to add in stats about this or that, or even just change the tone. Maybe you wanna do a new tone and have it do that. And then once you’ve got what you want, this is probably one of my favorite parts that I think really, really helps everyone, is that you can come in and you just paste in your post as you saw me do. And, again, it already gave me the title as well, so I’ll paste in the title.

And then I’d love to hear I’d love to hear comments in the chat as as Sam doing this.

What do guys think?

Yeah. We would love that. And then I can click check for compliance, and it’s going to, in real time, tell us if there was anything we needed to change. And this is really, really helpful. Right? So now you can send it off knowing that it’s already gotten that first pass, on that on that piece.

Oh, people got it. Got an emoji. Yay.

Yeah. And so we’ve built this out for both. This is the blog version. We have it for email, for social media.

Really, really amazing. And, of course, we still have you know, you don’t need to come in here and be prompting every single time. You can. But we still have our library of all of the pieces that are on all the topical things that we know or think that advisers wanna talk about.

I think one of the shifts that we’ve made over the last four years, say, Sam, is making sure that FMG can work with an advisor during an ascendant journey of marketing sophistication from somebody that wants somebody to just do it for me or, you know, wants to just put marketing on automation, you know, and just use automations and be done with it all the way to somebody that really wants to write their own content but really loves the fact that we’ve got the compliance workflows. We’ve got content they can leverage. We’ve got the integration with Canva just to make it easy to manage their marketing from one place. So it really is sort of an ascended journey. All of you on this call are probably at different places in it, but that has been our goal is to really be able to be a solution for somebody no matter where they are in marketing sophistication.

One hundred percent. When and I think one of the things is too, a lot of you have this idea, like, okay. I know I need to be sending out something to business owners, owners, but what? Or I know I wanna be sending out something to everybody thinking about, you know, changes to the estate planning rules, but what?

So you could come in and take any of these pieces we already have. Sorry. This is a demo account, so I just have my little banner up there. Yours would be your logo, your background.

But this is a piece about for small business owners and thinking about how to value a business. Maybe you take this and you copy it. You put it in our AI tool, and then you say, add in some stats about, you know, businesses local to San Diego, or add in some stats about, you know, businesses that are in manufacturing. So you can take any of the pieces in the library and then make them your own that way as well.

But that is how AI can one hundred percent help you and still allow you to be compliant.

Okay. Very cool. Any questions about AI or the tool?

We’d love to hear comments in the oh, looks super handy.

Can’t wait to try it.

Good. Yes. Okay. What type of long time.

I feel like we’re not doing we need longer to get through ten questions.

I’m sorry. I know.

We’ve taken too long opinions.

Should we gotta move it along. Okay. Well, let’s try to be quicker. Really quick answer. Alright. What type of educational content would you say, Susan, is really working best for advisers?

It’s the content that answers the questions that are on the mind of your target audience. So right now, like, what we just did for the do it for me calendar is we’re writing a lot of content about the big beautiful bill, big beautiful act. There’s so many questions about what that means to people, and it’s actually giving us a ton to write about because you can do a blog that summarizes or an email that summarizes, but you can also drill into each of the individual provisions, whether it’s about how salt changing or the estate tax exemption. I think those are timely. Know, Sam, you have this chart that shows what investors are interested in. I mean, it’s it’s tax tax strategies, estate strategies. It’s what mistakes have people made that I need to avoid.

Things like that would be my A hundred percent.

I would love to know in the chat. Are you all getting a lot of questions about the big beautiful bill or already sending things out about it, talking to clients about it?

That would I’m really curious to hear. Yes. Student loans. Okay. Loans. Yeah.

A hundred percent. Excuse me. Lori’s already sending out energy. Love it. Great.

Yeah. So that’s it. It’s timely and timely doesn’t mean that it has to be breaking news. It could be, as Sam said, in October, it’s a great time to think about year end planning, whether it’s tax loss harvesting whether it’s charitable giving I mean just thinking about what could be or should be on the minds of people at this time of year and don’t just go straight and narrow down financial sir you know the financial end You know, it can be like one of our most popular blogs was a June was a May blog about whether to buy or rent a second a vacation home.

You know? So it doesn’t have to be like really down the fairway of investing even. Mean, anything that really and and actually a lot of our most popular have been about identity theft and helping protect seniors against identity theft. Don’t be afraid to just talk about what’s on the minds of your clients.

Hannah just said we had a webinar in the big beautiful bill and it was our most registered one that we had.

That’s awesome. If you join, do it for me. I just wrote a webinar script.

And it’s gonna be in our September calendar. So there’s still time to join and get it. And it’s basically everything you need to know to put on an virtual or in person event talking about everything to do with the bill, including the eMite, the three drip email sequence, social post if you wanted, everything.

Even how to, like, for Zoom plus if you wanted to.

Somebody had put in the q and a, something about the do it for me program. So we should mention that you don’t just get that editorial calendar with the content that we recommend you send. You’re actually paired with the concierge that actually will implement it and send it out for you. And then every month, you get this marketing tip, a podcast, or a webinar outline. So as Susan’s saying, for September, it’s gonna be one all about how to present to folks in a webinar format the, big beautiful bill, what you would say, what you would talk about, as Susan mentioned all that. Yeah.

Everything. So maybe it’s a good time, Susan, to put the poll up and ask, Aubrey, if you wanna put the poll up if and then because we’ll move on to other questions. If you’re thinking this sounds like a program that I could really use, having, concierge work with me every month, getting all of this that you’re seeing on screen here, the webinar scripts, the podcast scripts, all of the content, and someone actually to push it all out for you, just say yes, and we will follow-up with you and share more about how that how that program works.

Okay. Somebody said thank you for answering my question. You are welcome. Awesome. Great.

We still have we have, like, almost not quite twenty minutes, so we can we’ll fly through.

Okay. We already did the AI one. That’s good. Come back to this.

Okay.

So how about where you can go if you want to build a marketing funnel that leads to booked meetings, not dead ends?

And I think what this is really talking about is well, two things. I see it also as how do you make sure that the leads that are coming in are qualified and not taking meetings of just everyone that they’re not actually, you know, a good fit for your firm. So maybe let’s talk start with that.

I would quickly say, a, you need to have an awesome website that has lead magnets, we call them, but some assets, white papers, quizzes, you know, fact sheets that people can download by filling out a form. And then don’t expect that to be a qualified lead. As we said, it’s a journey.

Typically, does somebody doesn’t do one thing and wanna give you all their money.

Put them into a prospect drip sequence, and they will reach out to you when they’re ready. So that’s an easy way.

I agree. I agree. Another thing I would say is that when you think about, you know, funneling people, once you get someone on your email list, it could be a long time before they’re ready to convert. But one of the highest touch points and the things we see really work well are events, both in person events and webinars. So but yet when we ask advisors how many of you are doing that, the answer is pretty abysmal. Not many people are hosting educational style webinars or workshops. And as you just saw from Hannah, they just hosted one and it was their most registered one they’ve ever had.

And Now this is like a golden opportunity. This topic, I think, like, everybody on this call should do a webinar on this topic.

A hundred percent. And, you know, if you are doing one, one of the great things about it too is that you record it and then it becomes a piece of content that just keeps working for you. You can turn it into clips that you post to social media. You can, you know, post it to, YouTube.

You can put it on a landing page and gate it for people to have to watch it, however it is that you wanna use it. But also just keep in mind, I really want everyone to remember this. Let’s say you only get four or five people signed up. If you could get four or five meetings with people, that would be a huge win.

Right? So even if you have a really small number of registrants, record it as if you’re talking to a room full of people, no one else is gonna know the difference, number one. And number two, you’re still gonna have that piece of content. And number three, let’s say four or five people join and three of them end up taking action, that’s an amazing conversion rate.

And I think we’d all be happy with three new leads. So don’t get down on yourself if the numbers seem low.

Alright. Follow good segue question. It is. What do we think about virtual versus in person events or podcast?

I’d love to know in the chat, tell us how many of you are hosting events in person this year and or virtual? Which ones are you doing? And are you doing them as a prospecting tool or more just like client appreciation events? But Susan, what’s your take on this question?

You go first.

Okay. So I really think that a combination of both virtual and webinars is an amazing combination because the virtual can be recorded just like Susan and I are doing now, and it can keep working for you. But we all know nothing really does replace in person events in the sense of building community and having time to just shoot the breeze. Right?

There’s a lot of you that if you were here in person with me and Susan, before and after the presentation, you’d come up to us and say, hey, Sam. How’s living in London? And you’ve gotta go to this restaurant. Or Susan would start talking about, you know, living in Boston, and you would share stories.

So all of that that can happen in person just isn’t it’s hard to replicate it online. So I definitely think doing both, but I think I would really push people to add the webinars because we see that they’re not a big lift. They you don’t have to run out of space. They don’t cost really anything.

They’re free.

They’re free. And then you can repurpose. And when it comes to podcasts, I would just say you don’t need to have a podcast. You can go be on other people’s podcast and that can be just as powerful.

Totally.

Love that. Yes. And I I think on the in person events, you know, inviting people to, know, a sports game or something and doing sort of those client appreciations or wine teas, and that’s all great.

But if if you’re thinking about ways to do in person events that have the greatest yield, I would look for events where you can invite different generations within a family and use it as a nice way to meet the rest of the family.

So we have a lot of ideas in our event kit I think and ongoing from in our DIFM program where the event is really geared at not just inviting you know the senior most potentially that’s your client, but also would appeal to their children and possibly their children.

Because we all know it’s very critical to make sure that you’ve got relationships with those next gens.

We’re talking about repurposing events. So I’m gonna take a quick picture of us because what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna post on LinkedIn about this and how we answered all these questions. And if you missed it, you can comment top ten and we’ll send it to you. So there’s another tip also that you can do. Okay.

So okay. How about presenting fees? This is an interesting one. I felt like there was a lot of discussion about fees for a while, and then it kinda fell off.

I’d love to know in the chat. Tell us, do you put your fees on your website currently, and how much do you feel like the fees is something that maybe is a sticky point or something you’re worried about? But just are you putting it in your marketing? Are you is that something that you’re putting right out there on your website, or are you waiting until someone’s in person to go through what your fees are?

And what what do you want me to go first on this one, Susan, or do you want to Yeah.

I yeah. This is one I think you’ve got you’ve got down. And I do feel like it was really hot for, a couple years, and I don’t hear it that often now, but I still think it’s the best practice.

Yeah. So when you look at questions through AI or Google search that people are asking about finding a financial adviser and even the like, the CFA has a list of what are the if somebody goes to the CFA’s website and they’re get trying to get guidance on finding the right adviser, one of the things they ask is how are you compensated?

And so I think what a lot of people get worried about is if we put our fees on there and what our minimum asset of under management is, we’re gonna alienate people.

And what I would instead say is that I think it’s perfectly fine to have a range and to just talk about it in general because everybody wants to know when they’re buying anything or going to any service, what is it gonna So, yes, you can wait until they’re in the room to talk about it. But what if you don’t even get the chance to have that conversation because they’ve looked at two or three other people and it’s really transparent? So I like to see, you know, you can have a range. And then also maybe if you are making exceptions sometimes, you can have a little note in there saying something like, we also have a program for people that don’t yet meet our assets under management.

In certain cases, we’ll work with these types of clients, the children of current clients, or, you know, however you wanna word it, contact us to to learn more. And we have a a web blog post, Aubrey, that we can put in the chat or send in a follow-up of example fees pages just to give you guys some ideas of what that can look like.

This just prompted an idea, Sam. So because a lot of people feel a little bit uncomfortable, a lot feel uncomfortable about it, we have also with the onset of, chat and answer engines, more and more people are not going to Google. They’re going to the answer engines. And one of the best ways to show up in the answer engine when somebody says best financial advisor near me is to have FAQs on your website. So we have been preaching to add an FAQ page to your website possibly throughout your website and FMG actually just put a widget together that makes it super easy just to click a box, add it, and then we also have sort of the code behind it that helps the engines find it. But you could just make your fees one of the questions in a potentially long list of questions, which I think might be more comfortable for you and even maybe appear in a better way for the client or potential client.

Yeah. You don’t need to have a whole page about pricing. You can just be, how are you compensated and have a little blurb about it. I love that idea.

Okay. We’re getting faster. I like it.

Do I really need a formal marketing plan? Did we answer this one, I think?

Or we sure did. Yeah.

But I think we beat this one. Yay.

Alright. With ten minutes left, we got one question until unless anybody has any other burning questions.

And really, truly, as we are doing this last one, maybe think if you had a moment and you had me and Susan alone and you could ask us anything you want, what would you ask? Because we’d love hearing your very specific questions. Even something as simple as, you know, how do I increase my view rate on my YouTube videos? It could be very, very specific, and we’ll do our best to answer as many as we can. Okay. Yeah. How can I involve my junior team member in marketing without taking time away from client work?

You wanna go first?

Or you want me to go first?

I mean, one easy one is just have them do that LinkedIn assignment. I’m not sure there’s a way like, if you’re having them do marketing work and they were doing client work, I’m not sure there’s any way that it doesn’t take away from something unless they’re working overtime. But there are ways to have them work on things that are super efficient that don’t require them to be a marketing expert. I think I’d start with expanding your LinkedIn network.

Yeah. A hundred percent. And another thing that I would say is the folks that are directly communicating with clients. So if they’re on the phone with them or they’re getting emails back and forth, I would make it a rule in your team and in your staff for any time that someone has a question that you know more than one client has.

Have the the the the junior team member, the CSA write it down and just keep a running list of the questions clients are asking in the exact words they’re asking them. And that becomes great future content for you to address. It could be the e you could take, you know, one of the pieces in the FMG library, but use the client’s question as the subject line or use the client’s question as the blog post title. Because we all really pay attention to content that’s in a voice that sounds like us or ask the question in a way we would ask it. And so that is something that people that are doing this type of work and really boots on the ground can really, really help you with.

Awesome. Look at us, Susan. Got to get one here.

John, I think was maybe our first person that put a comment in and our maybe our last. So how do you get prospects off of my YouTube channel to book a prospect meeting?

So one idea that comes to mind for me is if you’re teaching, and I’m I’m sure you are, John, you know, leading with really educational content, teaching something relevant to a specific audience.

At the end of the video, I would say something very specific and targeted, like and I know this might sound, you know, complicated, but if you’d like more specific help with this, this is something that I actually help clients with.

Go ahead and sign up to schedule a call with me in the link below. And you can put your calendar link in the description of the YouTube video.

Perfect. Yeah. I think it’s embedding it. It’s like they call it, you know, reducing friction, just, you know, making it as easy as possible for them to do it as opposed to having to remember to go to your website.

And I think just always having a call to action. We forget sometimes we wanna be helpful. I mean, I know I struggle with this sometimes even. I wanna give away every to help to everyone. I forget sometimes to say, hey. And if you want to also work with FMG so that we can help you, here’s how to get in touch or you know, you just have to be very specific in what you want them to do next. And so just saying it is really the key.

Yeah. And and sometimes, you know, giving them a what’s in it for me. So it could be, you know, if you’re talking about the big beautiful bill, it could be, you know, make an appointment to see how this could impact your situation, you know, being a little bit more specific to something they may be thinking about since they were on that video.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Good point.

How many times should a piece of content be repurposed?

And as much as you can squeeze out of it, Mallory, you should. I mean, I like to say if you’re spending so much time creating, let’s say, a video, like we are or webinar, you know, like today’s session, we could split up and each one of these ten questions could be a clip that we share on social media. And then we can go and ask our team, hey. Can you take the transcript? Or or we could download the transcript and turn it into a blog post on our, you know, website. We could turn it into an email.

What the CSA could do. I mean, just the repurposing of content is something that you could ask a CSA to do.

A hundred percent.

Awesome. Well, thank you all so much. You have been amazing with your questions and your interaction, and hopefully this was helpful to all of you. We don’t often do formats like this where it’s kinda all over the place, but we wanted to get answers to these questions that so many of you are asking all the time.

So oh, Lori said thank you. We learn something every time. Oh, thank you, John. Thank you all for the feedback.

We really again, we only wanna do these if they’re helpful to you. So I appreciate any feedback or if you’re like, Nope, I like your normal format. That’s totally fine and you can tell us that too.

We appreciate all of you so much.

Yes, likewise. Thank you so much, Susan, everybody enjoy the rest of your week.