Top 5 Advisor Marketing Themes for 2024

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s wealth management dot com webinar, FMG’s top five marketing predictions for twenty twenty four. This webinar is sponsored by FMG.

My name is David Lennick, and I’m the senior wealth planning editor for wealth management dot com, and I’ll be your host today. In a moment, I’ll be turning things over to our speakers, but first, let me explain how you can get the most out of this event.

To improve your viewing and listening experience, you can move your webcast windows around by dragging on the title bar or resize them by clicking on their lower right hand corner.

At the bottom of your screen, you’ll find multiple application widgets.

Clicking on these icons will allow you to open and close widgets on your screen, but will not remove you from the event.

A copy of today’s slide presentation as well as a link to a replay of today’s presentation will be available in a follow-up email the presenters will send out.

Please note this webinar has been accepted for one CE credit hour towards the AEP designation program.

Investments and wealth institute has accepted this program for one hour of CE credit towards the CIMA, CPWA, CIMC, and RMA certifications.

Instructions for credit submittal are available in the resource list widget.

We welcome questions about our topic, and we’ll answer as many as we can following the presentation.

But feel free to submit yours to the queue at any time. Just type it into the q and a window on the left hand side of your screen and hit the submit button.

Please be aware that today’s session is being recorded and will be available for on demand viewing following the event today.

Now let me introduce today’s speakers.

First, we have Susan Theater. She’s the chief marketing and experience offer at FMG.

And joining Susan, we have Michael Murray, president of Peabody Wealth Advisors, and Amy Galley, vice president of product marketing at FMG.

You can find out more information about our speakers by clicking on the speaker bio widget at the bottom of your screen.

With that, let’s get started. Susan, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much. And, we are right at the top of the hour. Thank you all so much for joining us. I can’t believe we’re in December, and we’re gonna blink and it’s gonna be the end of the year.

And with that, it’s a perfect time for us to talk about what are the key themes for marketing in twenty twenty four. And, you know, our our team gave us a lot of thought and, you know, we we thought about whether we would just share little tips or ideas, and we all just kind of collaborated on the idea that there’s some themes. And they’re not brand new themes that you’ve never heard before, but they are really important themes that I think should play a priority in your planning for twenty twenty four. And we thought what a great idea to bring that to you, but also to have a conversation with a very top successful adviser about how he is implementing and has already, been working on some of these themes.

I’m Susan Theater. For those of you that don’t know me, I’m the chief marketing officer, as, David said, at FMG, and I would love to connect with you. So, feel free to shoot me a connection request, a message, and, we’ll we’ll definitely keep the conversation going. I am thrilled to have Amy Galley, who is my partner in crime at FMG.

She’s gonna do some screen sharing and help us with, the FAQ or for with the questions that come in. And the star of the show, really, is Mike Murray, who is the president and founder of Peabody Wealth Advisors. And I’m gonna let him just give a quick, intro before we get started.

Susan, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

So I’m Mike Murray. I’m the president of PBD Wealth Advisors. We’re based in Danvers, Massachusetts, which is about, twenty minutes north of Boston.

I’ve been in the industry since two thousand.

We work with generally individuals, families, and business owners, helping them with financial planning needs, all the investment management.

And then most of our business either comes from our existing clients, attorneys, CPAs, or through social media marketing, which I love talking about marketing. It’s the most fun part of the job.

I love that. I’m not sure everybody on the, webinar would agree with you, which might be why they’re joining. But what I also like about Mike is, you know, we’ve had, speakers join us that have particular niches or talk about, you know, some unique strategy that’s really interesting. But I think all of you can see your businesses. Most of you, I would hope, can see yourselves in Mike’s business. He he comes from a perspective that I think is very typical, and so I think his advice will be extremely useful. So our top marketing themes for oh, there’s the dog saying hi.

Our top marketing themes for twenty twenty four sorry.

The first is words matter, and we’ll talk a little bit more about this. But this is something that I think is becoming more and more important, and twenty twenty four is the time where I I’m hoping all of you will really put this into action. Also, capturing money in motion, not a new idea, but something that I think you should be more deliberate and intentional about in twenty twenty four.

Thinking about marketing’s role in driving the value of your business. You may or may not have really thought about the connection of your marketing efforts to your ultimate valuation, and so I wanna draw some connections there. And, of course, have to talk about AI. I think it is magical, but I do not think it is a magic wand.

And then the last theme, which I think everybody can relate to, is the threat of time poverty, and this is a a phrase that was coined by Michael Kitsis. And I know everybody is nodding feeling that they have time poverty. And so we’re gonna talk a little bit about how to alleviate that while achieving, your objectives, especially as it relates to these marketing themes. So I’m gonna start with words matter.

And here’s a stat that I think is very, very telling. Hopefully, I’m getting nods from all of you. But a survey that was done by Bank of New York, Mel and Pershing, showed that over sixty percent of investors feel that financial advisers all sound the same.

And I wish I could see you all, whether you’re nodding or saying that doesn’t make sense. But to me, I think it does make sense. We see a lot of advisers’ websites. We see a lot of advisers’ sites.

We see a lot of advisers’ marketing, and it is hard to differentiate. And I agree it’s a challenge, but it’s something that I think words, obviously, can make a big difference. This is one of my favorite slides. Anybody who has joined any of our webinars before may have seen this before, but it is worth repeating.

So look at this chart. This is Advisorpedia.

On the right, you will see a list of the services that investors expect from their financial adviser, and then you will see two bars. One is the service that they expect, the percentage that they you know, of those people that expect that from their financial adviser, and the blue is a bar indicating whether they believe they are receiving that service. What’s interesting is you’ll see all the way down to the bottom, basically, investors want this whole list. I mean, it’s it’s eighty percent, you know, when you get three quarters of the way down. They want all of these services, but they only believe that they are receiving financial planning and investment management.

And what I think that tells us is that the words you are using and communication really matters in terms of what they perceive you delivering and how they can perceive differentiation between you and the adviser, you know, down the street.

So thinking about the fact that they are looking for all of these services, these are in some ways giving you the topics that we think you should be focusing on. You are probably providing all of these services today, but perhaps you’re not doing the best job of articulating it, highlighting it. And I think also very important, and Mike and I are gonna talk about this, framing it in a way that has high EQ or leveraging behavioral science. And I’m gonna show you some examples.

So emotional intelligence is huge as it relates to differentiating yourself, articulating what you do in terms that make the greatest impact on the end client and also in generating business. So these are just some examples. So many of you talk about how you help clients save for retirement or thinking on the slide before financial planning and investment management. Those are words we use a lot.

But what if you just framed it slightly differently with a much more higher EQ? I help clients live a retirement where their choices aren’t dictated by money. Just as people, you know, reading these two sentences, there’s just a huge difference in terms of how that just viscerally impacts us. Think about we create comprehensive financial plans.

I bet many of you have this sentence somewhere on your website.

Instead, I would suggest we I create road maps to help clients rest easy knowing they’re on track.

It it is a simple difference, but instead of using the words financial planning, you’re talking about what financial planning does, the emotional outcome that a financial plan gives to the client. And the last one, we make sure clients have adequate insurance coverage. Insurance planning is something that many of you do. We help clients identify solutions that protect what they value most.

So, again, you’re still hitting on some of these key services that you provide, but you’re just flipping the words to be more about the emotional outcome that the client is seeking. So these are some suggestions.

I’m gonna end with this slide for this section.

Clients are fifty percent more likely to choose an adviser for emotional reasons versus financial, which says that they’re fifty percent. I mean, it’s equal. But I don’t know if all of you are really thinking about the fact that that emotional quotient plays such a big part in their decision.

And their surveys have been done that show that advisers with a high EQ, which I believe translates into using these behavioral finance types terms, are two times more likely to receive referrals. So I think my message is words matter and thinking about how to ensure that you’re services that you provide so that you’re looking you’re hitting on all the things that the clients are looking for, but putting them in the words that translate to what matters to them. So now I’m gonna hand it over to Mike.

What do you think about all this, and how does this translate into what you do with your business and what you’re thinking of even maybe doing more or less of in twenty twenty four?

Yeah. I mean, I I think Marquis has always been about speaking to our audience, not about us. Like, when we work with, FMG to design our website or re redesign our website, our original website was about long words, lots of paragraphs, talking about ourselves where we completely redesigned our web our, website to talk directly to the client and make it about them.

And I think a lot of times You know what? That’s where Can we pull up can we pull up your website while you’re talking?

Sure. Absolutely. Let’s do that.

Amy, I’d love to see I’d love to have Mike steer us around his website so he can show some of this in real life.

Great. Okay. Can you go to the homepage, Amy?

I am on the homepage. Are you seeing his website?

Section. Oh, here we go.

Awesome. Alright. Thank you. Yes. Back to because I love this picture.

Alright. Back to you, Mike. So talk to us about how you’ve implemented that on your website.

So it’s really about talking to our most of our clients are pre retirees and retirees.

So we’re talking to them about a lifestyle.

And it’s really about what money can do for them versus, you know, how many websites have you seen where it has, the financial advisor standing around, in a conference room with their arms crossed and the first thing you say in the website is about us.

And Yes. You know, we thought it the entire different way. Let’s make it about the reader because the reader cares about what’s in it for them, not about us. So imagery Is is important.

So good. I’m gonna pause because I actually haven’t heard maybe that phrase so succinctly put, which is and I’m gonna ask you to say it again. Hopefully, I can paraphrase. But, you said something about what the reader is hope you know, what the visitor is hoping to get from their money. Or how did you phrase that? I really liked that.

They’re just trying to create a visual what they may envision their retirement to be.

And Exactly.

What’s in it for them to work with us versus, you know, why why, we should work with them. I think we kind of flipped the script on a lot of how these websites have been designed, you know, in the past.

Yeah. I love that. So, Amy, scroll down a little bit.

So we plan that so you can dream. I mean, I think, again, coming that really has a high emotional quotient. So pause here.

I love this. So I like you know, I do think people like to feel part of a family. And here, you’ve done an interesting thing throughout your website, and we’ll see this as we go. But you’ve put words in that teal or that that blue that matches with the CTA button.

And talk a little bit about the words that you’re highlighting and, you know, why you used family and and how clients have reacted to that.

Because we really do consider clients as part of the PBD Wealth Advisors family, and we want a partnership with client. We want people to feel that we’re working as a team to achieve their goals.

And we we put that in everything we do, whether we meet with a client, in person, via Zoom. I mean, our clients come and they hug us at events. We have a strong relationship with our clients, and that’s what clients are willing to pay a premium for is the relationship.

Everybody on this call has that, but may not be using the words that communicate that on their website and in their marketing. So let’s click on learn more about who we help. There are parts of this page. I’d love you to talk about this, next page. If you scroll down, Amy, keep going a little bit.

Because I love a dog on your backpack.

Oh, yeah. Go oh, yeah. Go back. Show that. Let’s so talk a little bit about how we’ll start with the picture, and then we’ll go down to that next section. How did you pick you know, what was your strategy with your imagery?

So, my wife is our marketing manager. So a lot of this helped she helped kind of with the imagery, and we wanted to just create a feeling of when people go to our website, they smile, and they have they’re happy because that’s who our clients are. And something like this, people can can picture going out hiking or being active in the outdoors and maybe walking with their dog.

I love it. I love it. And here again, the word unique is in that blue font, which really makes it pop. And here’s an example of, you know, of course, clients want to feel like they are special and that you are delivering advice that is tailored specifically to them.

Right? And those are words we see a lot. But by phrasing it this way, we’ll learn what makes you unique. Just a really powerful way of conveying that message in a way you know?

So first, it’s showing that you’re gonna take the time to learn about me, and you’re going to see what’s unique about me. It’s just it’s a little, you know, a little variation on we customize our approach.

We’ll learn what makes you unique. Just two different ways of saying the same thing, but this works so well. And then, one thing I’m also gonna point out is that contact us button is always this is not really necessarily the words matter, but a best practice on websites. The contact us button is highlighted at the top, and the schedule an appointment is at the bottom.

So that’s persistent, and that really helps with conversions. So let’s go down to this next section, which I love because, again, you have framed it not about what services you know, what we do. You’ve positioned it as how will I know if I’m a good fit. I I think if I ask everybody on the webinar to look at their website and see whether they use the word I anywhere, And if not, think about it.

So how did you come up with this? And tell us about this little section.

Well, I think we really wanted to we we looked at the common characteristics across across our platinum clients, and all of them fit these five criteria.

And so we said, how do we how do we, communicate this? But it also serves as a prescreening tool Because someone may say this and say, hey. You know, I like to spend money like like wildfire. They may not be your client for us, so it it solves it it solves it it it it’s a it’s a screening tool as well.

Yeah.

And the choice are delegate to a financial professional.

No. I wanna do it all myself. Then maybe you’re not a good fit.

Exactly. I’m being open to my level like to Which one are you? I said I love this last one. I like to surround myself with good people.

You don’t see And not something that I think is totally obvious to everyone that, you know, is financial advisers building a website. But this is just a great idea for a way to articulate again what your ideal clients come to you for and their characteristics.

Great idea.

Alright. I’m gonna keep us moving along, but the last one I wanna hit on is, oh, again, this is another one. It sounds like you in the blue text. Just a lot of yous and I’s and things that put it in the voice of the what’s in it for the client and or prospect. Let’s go to contact us quickly. Tell me about this page, and then we’ll move on to our next theme. I just love this one.

So so, we found this picture on one of the, my, one of the, picture websites, and we just loved it. And there was a big debate whether we would actually use that.

And this is where I, used some executive authority and said, if someone doesn’t like a picture of a pug driving a boat, they’re not our client.

So, And have you had prospects has anybody mentioned this page to you and Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. People said, oh, I saw that and I smiled. And that’s really the point. And it kinda takes the, you know, I think up the fear of going to talk to a financial advisor out of the first time. You know, we promise we won’t bite. Because I think a lot of times, people come into the relationship with preconceived notions that they’re that are negative.

Absolutely. And let’s make finances less daunting. The word let’s is really a great word to use. It it has a casualness, but also, obviously, a collaborative, and then you’ve got your form. So I’m gonna segue off of words matter and more and more and leave you with, a lot of great ideas here that both words and actually imagery words and imagery matter.

Okay. So I’m gonna go back and, take over the slides here.

Alright. So, Amy, if you’ll stop sharing. I’m gonna move to our second theme, which is capturing money in motion. Okay. Everybody’s nodding. You’ve seen this before. There is a huge opportunity to capture the great wealth transfer, and you’ve seen this number, sixty eight trillion.

But what is the opportunity for you in twenty twenty four?

Well, also not brand new, but if you are going to appeal to anybody under the age of seventy five, you must have a very modern compelling website. Ninety eight percent of consumers say a website is an important factor in choosing an adviser.

Thirty six percent of consumers, this was an e money study, work with an adviser they follow on social media.

It is becoming not even more and more important. It’s becoming imperative to have a constant you know, an updated, fresh, constantly sort of freshened. Like, if you have a website that you don’t change from year to year, then that’s also an opportunity and also to be on social media.

Something else that is relevant to capturing this great wealth transfer is educational content. And, of course, where would you share educational content? On your website, in social, and also through email, sharing it with clients and prospects.

Sixty three percent of consumers, again, the eMoney survey, believe that informative educational content would make you stand out. Back to that, how are you going to differentiate? Words matter and educational content matters.

And I really thought this was compelling on the left. If you look at this graph, how interested are you in financial education and building your knowledge?

Look at the silent generation. Not very. I mean, sixty percent, but forty four percent are somewhat interested. It moves up to eighty percent for the boomers. And then when you get to Gen x and millennials, it’s ninety six percent.

And that is where the great wealth transfer is going. So thinking about how you can use educational content both on your website, in social, and in email is going to be a huge lever in helping you generate both referrals and also be seen and and show yourself apart from other advisers.

The last way to differentiate yourself and attract money in motion because money in motion is, of course, yes, when, you know, parents, grandparents have passed away, but also there is money in motion in divorce. There’s money in motion in the sale of a business. We all know that. And what is the one professional who is involved in all of those things? It’s attorneys.

So this was a GIF, but I wasn’t able to get the GIF in there, but it’s very funny. I would like an attorney. So with this, I’m gonna trans I’m gonna segue to Mike again. When you think about, you know, money in motion, I’ve mentioned educational content, websites, social, and attorneys. Talk to us about how all this plays a role in your business and anything that you’ve learned and or thinking about for twenty twenty four.

Yeah. I mean, you hit it right on the head with the attorneys. I mean, they are a primary professional center of influence for our for our firm.

Building relationships like any other relationships, I mean, they take time. That is definitely the longer game. But, providing, educational content to them, You know? I think I use LinkedIn as a primary tool. If I see an article in The Wall Street Journal that is specific to changes in divorce law or changes to estate law, I’ll I’ll put it on LinkedIn, or I may tag it to the estate planning group in in, LinkedIn.

Or we do we do a lot of blogs as well where we’ll bring a professional in. Like, I have one attorney that specializes in AI, which we’re gonna get to soon, and have a chance for them to showcase their knowledge. And we’ll share it on our blog. We’ll cross promote it with their firm. That gives them exposure to our clients and our followers. It gives us exposure to their clients and followers who may not be the same. So it’s just a way to kinda cross pollinate the relationships.

That and what have been some you know, what’s worked best, you know, lessons learned over the years if you as you’ve tried to create these relationships? We all know it takes time. But any tips that you’d give to the audience?

They want attorneys are busy people just like we are. They want to make their life easier, and they wanna know if they refer you business that it’s going to be executed fairly, and the client’s never gonna come back to them and have have an issue. So building that level of trust with them is paramount to getting the referrals from them. I mean, there’s and that and that is often doing things that may not make you a whole lot of money, but it shows that you are an advocate for them and for their clients. So really putting time back in their life.

It’s less about being a referral source to them, or does that motivate as well?

Some of them. Some some would like mutual referrals, of course. You know, it’s good for business. But a lot of them just wanna make sure that their clients are taken care of. As long as they’re taken care of, that makes them look good because, they don’t have to worry when they’re referring that. It’s they’re gonna come back a year later saying, why’d you refer me to this person?

Yeah. That is a great point. I actually I’ve re I just wrote, I was our team was writing, emails that advisers could use to kinda open doors with centers of influence, including attorneys and all these different types of attorneys. And the angle is really just, you know, I I tend to come across people with complex situations that are looking, you know and many of them are looking for, you know, a reference to an estate attorneys.

I I don’t have, really a a go to referral source. I wondered if you were accepting clients. And I I think that could work, but I think adding in language that, you know, relates to just the level of care and you know, because you’re right. It’s especially like CPAs, they’re just very concerned that you just don’t mess it up.

You know? Don’t make them look bad. But when it comes to educational content, is that something you want to prioritize? And do you you know, what’s your what’s your thought?

I mean, have you always been like, I’m gonna do educational content because I know the next gen really likes it and it’s good for social. Or that could have been by mistake and now you’re thinking about it more intentionally?

Yeah. I think it would be more that I would put your information out, but if I found over the years, especially on LinkedIn, that certain articles drive a ton more traffic to you.

And it’s a lot of times, it’s kinda hit or miss. Sometimes I’ll put an article out that I think it’s a fantastic article, and I get, you know, a hundred views. And another one, I put one out about a car, leasing versus buy or the average car payment was over, a thousand dollars over forty five thou you you just don’t know what you’re putting out there, but I think the whole mindset is always putting stuff out there that’s helpful to your audience.

Yes. I love that. And, you know, if if you don’t get hits, you you don’t take it personally and and say, oh, I tried this tactic. I’m out. You know, it’s just it’s consistency, and I think that’s something that you’ve really demonstrated.

Alright, shall we go on to number three?

Let marketing drive up the value of your business. So this is interesting.

I I did some research and I don’t think anybody’s gonna be terribly surprised, but just if you had to put together the top drivers of the value of your business, I believe this captures them. I you know, I’m not a business valuation specialist, but it’s your reputation and market position, the client based characteristics, growth prospects, retention, processes, systematized processes, recurring revenue, obviously, clean risk, and scale and diversification of services. Mike, would you agree with these? Anything I’m missing?

Absolutely.

Early in my career early in my career talking to, practice management specialists, they always said if you don’t have systems in place, it could take up to fifteen percent of the value of your business off when you try to sell it. So marketing is part of those systems just as a CRM is, just as, you know, financial planning software. If you’re gonna sell your practice, someone wants to be able to walk in turnkey and take it over day one. And they’re gonna discount what they pay you if your stuff’s a mess. You have no shredding.

Exactly.

So as I looked at all of these, and I add a hypothesis. I, you know, I believe marketing is a key value of business driving of business valuation. But when I put these down and I thought, okay. Which ones of these are really driven by marketing?

It’s more than half of them. I mean, the about sixty percent of these are all or very, you know, heavily dominated by marketing. Obviously, systematized processes goes way beyond marketing, but it does play a key role and it is processes goes way beyond marketing, but it does play a key role and is increasingly something that I think buyers are looking at. But focusing your marketing you know, having a marketing plan, and, ultimately, I think everybody is looking to grow the enterprise value of their business, thinking about and being intentional about focusing your marketing plan to achieve objectives marketing plan.

And this is a a a slide that I got from a study done by Schwab of their top comparing their top REAs to their average, and they broke it out also by AUM.

And you’ll see that top marketing firms with marketing plans top performing firms with marketing plans grew new client assets nearly twice their peers. And you’ll see the breakdown of both its referrals is still the dominating driver.

COI referrals, it gets you almost all the way there, but other marketing is starting to play in, like social media converting from the website.

It is a difference maker. So if driving enterprise value is something that’s important to you, in twenty twenty four, I highly suggest that you build a marketing plan, that you think about the drivers of enterprise value as it relates to marketing. You establish key tactics to accomplish each of these and work towards. You can’t change your client client based characteristics overnight, but you can work towards it as you implement some of the ideas we had as it relates to money in motion.

Alright. Let’s see.

So are you doing anything differently in twenty twenty four, Mike, as it relates to, you know, intentionally thinking about driving business valuation? Are you gonna do anything different than you did in twenty twenty three?

I think we’re just gonna continue on the effort that we’re doing. It it’s all about consistency, and it’s about getting your message out. And, really, you know, you just mentioned it earlier.

Whatever message you wanna portray, just start saying it. If you go to, you know, networking events or go to the Chamber of Commerce, start saying your message. Here’s who we work with. And maybe in the beginning, people aren’t going to take to it right away, but maybe six months a year, they will start to identify that this is the person to refer you to. And I did that years ago, and just that’s who they they think of when, you know, attorneys or CPAs think of referrals.

I’ve set that message in their mind. This is who we help.

What was your what was the how have you honed? Tell us your elevator pitch.

So we say we work with clients from five to five. Five hundred thousand to five million dollars in invest investable assets. So when referrals come, even if they’re slightly below that, they’ll say, oh my god. I’m so sorry. You probably won’t take this person, but they have a little less than five hundred thousand. But they have that built in their mind that someone in that slot is going to be a fit for our practice.

And how do you differentiate? How do you help them understand how you’re different? What makes you different?

Because we approach it like we are the four seasons.

Our job is to make our clients’ lives easier, and we talk to them about money comes into the conversation, but it’s more about their lifestyle. It’s more about, helping people with, outcomes versus the the mechanics of it. Because much like if you go to a doctor, you don’t expect you don’t care how your doctor knows how to do a surgery. You care that he he knows how to do it correctly. Much like people don’t hire financial advisors or planners because they wanna know the nuts and bolts about what we do.

Totally. That is so true. It’s that I love the analogy of the doctor. We just wanna be cured, have the surgery go well. The outcome is, you know, if I have a broken leg and I’m getting a surgery, I just wanna be I wanna walk as fast as possible. So that I think that helps people frame that.

And I was gonna ask one other question on the oh, sis tell us about how you have systematized your marketing processes. Any suggestions for people? Do you have a, you know, a monthly marketing content calendar?

How do you how have you systematized it?

So, as I mentioned earlier, my wife’s our marketing manager. So we have scheduled posts, and then I will post I make I make an effort to post at least two to three articles a week, whether it be through it’s usually through LinkedIn, and then we’ll try to do at least a blog a month with other, professionals in our network.

And I would I would suggest that you consider doing blogs, make sure that the person you’re blogging with has some followers. Because if they have one follower, it’s not gonna do you a whole lot of good blogging with them because it’s only gonna go out to your your folks. So, I would I would look when considering someone on social media that they have at least, you know, few hundred followers.

Awesome. Alright. Let’s move to the next very hot, interesting, debated topic. AI is magical, but it is not a magic wand. So I did a couple things. I wanted to first do just an overview of the three platforms I use, and, obviously, this is not all encompassing. There are new ones sprouting up daily.

And, also, every time I update this, the next day it feels out of date. So this may be a couple weeks old.

Yeah. I think it already is old. So don’t it’s not perfect, but it’s directional. So, ChatGPT actually just recently, you know, announced that its data, its its responses were trained on much more recent information. One of the knocks used to be that it was, like, two years old, like, through twenty twenty one, but it’s now up through April twenty twenty three. And I I think it’s probably gonna soon be real time.

Bard, which is the Google product, is real time, and Claude, right now, Anthropic’s solution is, December twenty twenty two. So that’s a difference.

Uploading attachments. So, again, this is changing real time, but, you know, three months ago, five months ago, ChatGPT would cut you off really early. It had very few words, and clause differentiator was that you could, you know, attach documents and they could be, you know you know, a small book. And Bard, also was like ChatGPT. It would not take tremendous amounts of data. I I have to say now they seem to I think CHAD TPT has upped the number of words, and I think they all now I haven’t really been kicked out for the number of words I’ve used recently, but Claude would say that they differentiate on the, you know, the amount of data. They it’s not they don’t do it by words, but that’s essentially what it is.

And then recent enhancements, ChatGPT. If anybody goes into ChatGPT, it actually shows, wonder if I could share my screen. I’ll share my screen really fast. Let’s see if I can do this well.

Let’s see.

Go back here. Sorry for the chair, Chrome, chat g p t. Alright. Let me know if you guys can see this.

Oh, so actually so go here, and if you go on explore can you guys see my screen?

Can everybody see my screen? Mike, can you see it?

Yes.

I can see it. Okay. Mhmm. Alright. So I thought this was pretty cool. So I went to, you know, chat g p t.

I go to that’s that’s where you land if anybody’s used this and you type in your message. But here, this little four dots explore, it now has data analysis drop in any files, and I can help annualize or visualize your data. So I’ve tried this, and I put in, you know, responses, you know, email open rates, click through rates to something, and it created a nice chart for me, which was lovely. A creative writing coach, turned imagination into imagery.

Then these get kind of fun. You’ve got oh, this is a new one. Santa. I’m Santa spreading cheer and helping with festive gift ideas.

Game time, I can quickly explain board games, creative writing. There’s oh, gosh. They’ve added more and more every time I go in here. Coloring book, Laundry Buddy, ask me anything about stains.

Sous chef, I’ll give you recipes based on the food you love. Blah blah blah blah blah. Math, I help parents with, math, need a nine PM refresher on geometry. You get you get the picture.

But at any rate, it is I find this fun and interesting, and it’s everything these are changing constantly. I keep all three open at all times in my browser, and, I tend to use them all. So I wanted to show you a couple examples. And what I did is I I typed in what provisions of the Secure Act two point o, that primarily impact high net worth individuals and families are going into effect in twenty twenty four.

And I wanted to show you the answers and the difference.

And my point here is it is magic, but you can’t trust any of them exclusively. They are just a start. They generally need to be proofed. They need to be fact checked.

They don’t always have sources, and they answer differently. So this one, I specifically said what’s going into effect in twenty twenty four. This is CHAT GBT. Its first answer is starting in twenty twenty five.

And then it talks about the IRA ketchup, contributions, so that’s good.

Then if you look at Bard, Bard talks about the Roth ketchup contributions. I kinda liked it. This was easy to read. I thought this was well written.

This was helpful.

And And then Claude talked about something totally different, and it talked about something that started in twenty twenty three. So the point is great source of information, but this is not going to write your blogs for you. You just would not wanna trust it, and you certainly can’t trust one of them. You need you know, you’re gonna have to do a lot of extra work. Sometimes it doesn’t I mean, it saves time, but it also can create more work because you gotta prove everything that it’s writing.

What it’s great at, though, and everybody should use it for this, is idea generation.

So here’s a prompt. I said, I’m a financial adviser. Give me three ideas for webinar topics that would likely generate a lot of interest for my clients and prospects in q one. So we’ll send this deck out afterwards so everybody can use these.

So chat g p t. And so these are similar. You’ll see some similarities, but some differences. Navigating market volatility, estate planning for the modern age, advanced tax strategies for high earners.

Love that.

Then you go to Bard, navigating the economic landscape strategies for growth and preservation, estate planning for the digital age, protecting your legacy. This went into data, data security, which I think is very important and inter of interest, and retirement planning, ensuring a secure future. And then you have Claude, mark making sense of market volatility, tax changes, your bottom line recession proof your retirement. So, basically, you got nine ideas. They were all different, but they’re all good.

It’s fantastic. It is a magic wand for ideas, but, again, that first prompt is never gonna be everything. You should ask it a second question. Try the other platforms until you get what you’re looking for. So, Mike, I know you use AI. Tell us, what do you use AI for? What do you what do you think about all this?

I had a great example last week. I had a friend ask me to write them a recommendation for a job, and I totally had a writer’s block. And I put in I copied and pasted the paragraph she sent me, and within seconds, it had a a really good story that needed to be customized.

And I sent it over. She goes, oh my god. This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever written. I said, what?

You’re welcome.

No. It but it it was pretty amazing. So, you know, I think you’re right on with, it’s the trust but verify. This is the ultimate example of not just using AI and sending something out blindly because, it could come back and haunt you.

Yep. But it continues to get better.

The the It does.

You know, as the machines are learning, it it gets easier and easier. But marketing and, correspondence, it works pretty well for.

Yeah. And I got a couple questions.

The ChatGPT version that I showed you is twenty dollars a month, so just, like, you know, two trips to Starbucks.

And Claude and Bart, I’m in the free versions. So, you know, they’re basically free. And I think I’ll summarize this section by saying there’s absolutely no downside to using these platforms for idea generation for I just used them today to think about blog topics, and I was trying to come up with ideas around, what are the, change you know, what are the sunsetting of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act? What are the implications to small business owners? And I I had to ask it, like, three or four times to get it what I really wanted, and then it just really gave me enough that I then googled a bunch of things and netted with some ideas. But it’s a great idea generator, ideas for topics, ideas for gifts, ideas for anything.

If you’re gonna use it to write something that has any technical information, it is going to require a lot of fact checking. That is probably not where it’s going to be best. If you’re asking it to write a, letter of recommendation, pretty awesome first draft. So there you go on Yeah. Very good. AI.

And we’re gonna talk a little bit about AI as it relates to the threat of time poverty, which I know gets nods for everybody, including me.

So all of you wanna own your business, but I think some of you probably feel like at times your business owns you, and that is not what you want. We did a survey, actually with wealth management, and, the top activities or marketing tactics to outsource, were website, content creation, and social media.

And then from there, you know, advertising, SEO, and PR. So I’m gonna focus on website content and social as things that if you are not currently outsourcing, these can give you tremendous scale in your business.

We have a program called do it for me marketing that I’m gonna talk about, and advisers who are in that program say that it has freed up thirty percent of their time. And ninety five percent of advisers from our survey say they have a better work life balance, balance, which we all want, when they outsource. It’s not, you know, rocket science, but sometimes it feels hard.

This is a time saving idea. So when we think about outsourcing, this is just a a specific idea, and I know Mike uses it, so I’m gonna ask him to talk through it. But on FMG’s platform, Mike talked about using you know, sharing interesting articles as a great social media strategy. It doesn’t he’s not writing the articles.

He’s just finding interesting ones, and then he’s writing a caption. We have a we have a tool called Curator that’s on our mobile app, and you can, you know, just go in there and look for, you know, the latest articles, and it will use AI to write you a caption. And if you don’t like it, I’ll switch back. We tried to have a video here, but you can see here, write your text write text for me or write your own.

And if you clicked that write text for me, then it summarizes the article. It starts with a a hook. It ends with a question. It includes hashtags, and it includes the right number of emojis based on LinkedIn’s algorithm.

So we have tried to influence this. Mike, how has tell me how you use this and also just in your opinion of outsourcing, what what you’ve outsourced and and how that’s helped.

Yeah. I mean, I love this because it you know, not only does the writing, it does the emojis, which are great for breaking up a paragraph, making it easier for the reader.

I just the the system is fantastic. I’ve been using this significantly because it saves time. I mean, even if you save three to five minutes writing a paragraph, extrapolate that over a year or or whatever time, it just puts more time back into your life.

As far as I’m concerned writing the caption writing the caption is I dread it.

I really like, it’s just I I know I should post. I’m in the same boat as all of you. I don’t love I don’t wake up and be like, oh my god. I wanna share what I had for breakfast.

I really feel like it’s part of my job to be on social and to do it probably like all of you. And when it got like, I might have a good article to share, but then I’m like, ugh. How do I write a great caption? And it is there’s a skill to it.

So we have taught our AI. We have our own proprietary version.

And I’m curious, how often do you like, if you how often are you asking it to rewrite it versus taking its first draft? And then what percentage of it do you keep versus edit? Like, would you say it’s, like, ninety percent good? Your edit, twenty percent?

It’s probably ninety five percent because it scans the article very well, but I’ll just go through just to make sure there’s nothing that’s egregiously wrong. But the writing style is good.

Yeah.

What’s that? Yeah. You may get it in your voice. Yes. Absolutely.

So I I you were about to talk about general outsourcing.

Tell us, yeah, what’s your I mean What is the most difference for you, and and do you agree with website social content?

Absolutely. I mean, we’re we’re financial planners. We’re not writers. We’re not content creators. We’re not web developers, most of us.

So, you know, early in my career, when people talked about practice management, they basically said design you know, figure out what your hourly rate is, and if you’re not earning your hourly rate doing an activity, why are you doing it? And Yeah. That has really been my mindset for not just work, but life. You know?

I always use the oil change analogy.

I could change my own oil, buy my oil, buy ramps, drain the oil, and then dispose it, or I could pay someone fifty dollars to change my oil and be done with it. So Yeah. You know, and I have to maintain the equipment.

So I think outsourcing, you know, you make an analysis, and if it’s a good use of your time, you do it yourself. If it’s not, then there’s professionals that do this. You have, you know, FMG, I’ll give you a shout out. You have writers on staff.

You have developers on staff. That that’s not what we do for a living. So why Yeah. When when advisors tell me they’re gonna design their own website and they don’t have the background, I cringe because I know what a project it is.

Yeah. Totally. It is a big project, but we do try to make it easier. I do have one question.

Writing content when you do the work, it’s is a lot.

It it totally is.

Somebody just asked what the name of this tool is. This is f m this is on the FMG platform. It’s on the mobile app as well as the desktop, platform, and it’s called we call it Curator because it’s a whole list of news articles that you can easily, with a swipe of a button, create the caption, and then share on social or share through email to your, you know, contact list.

So we are getting short on time. I’m gonna, segue into should you be interested in outsourcing.

You know, we believe that our expertise is showing off yours.

Your expertise is serving your clients, and this is how we can help. And I’m just gonna fly through these slides pretty quickly. So I do think that for twenty twenty four, if you do not have a systematic process for going about addressing these themes, which included words matter, communications really matters, educational content makes a big difference for all of your marketing objectives, but specifically, of course, attracting money in motion and the next generation.

Also, using AI to develop content in and ideas in the right ways, but not, you know, not leverage it, not thinking it’s gonna solve everything. And then the valuation of your business, making sure that you are thinking about the things that are gonna drive value. So system systematizing marketing is huge. And what I would recommend is that you have a monthly set of goals that include blog, email, social media, and surprise and delight wows because I think those random acts of kindness are the things that may actually drive the most referrals out of all of this, but you do need the blog, email, and social for prospect conversion for sure.

So this is a calendar that we put together for our do it for me clients. So for those that wanna outsource, it is something that we do. And I’m just gonna flip through an example of of what you get when you’re do it for me clients. So we send out a marketing calendar every month.

We send it out two weeks before the beginning of the month. And in it, we map out our email, social, blogs, and automations, and I we do a video that highlights the strategy. And then we’re also doing timely emails and timely social posts within the month.

Some of the content I’ll just show you some of the things, but we like Mike said, we’re trying to think about what are clients thinking about, what are high net worth clients thinking about. The content is really geared towards high net worth. Senior care, the cost of senior care and long term care is the state strategy mistakes.

Also thinking about things that are just of interest and also relate to finances like the September effect, a year end financial checklist. We start with a blog, and then we version it for email and social. You’ll see here one that was on human interest, AI’s role in shaping our tomorrow.

We use good imagery.

The whole concept is to have it read like you have written it. Those that are writing this have been advisers, no advisers, no people like Mike, and we’ve got as close as possible to your voice. But then we give you two weeks before that month starts to give us edits, give your own you know, we encourage you to edit it, customize it, add add your own pictures and images, especially in social. Because on social, it is good to be social.

We will share motivational quotes, recognition, or recognition is up to you, and good deeds. We try to find good deeds. But this is also just a recipe for you, whether you use FMG or, you know, any outsource solution or you’re doing it yourself. Having this systematized process with a calendar and content across all of those categories is really going to pay off. And then, of course, all of that content, especially the blogs, becomes food for your website to keep that fresh.

So, again, the do it for me program could help for those of you that are interested. If you’re interested in booking a demo as we get to the end of this webinar, and I love to end a little bit early, please, you know, scan this QR code if you’re interested in learning more about anything that we’ve talked about here today, or you can email me at marketing at FMG suite.

Amy and I man that email and are happy to answer questions that we weren’t able to get to.

And I’m also going to go one more slide.

I don’t know if any of you have received our emails with our advent calendar. Mike, have you gotten our advent calendar?

I have not.

Oh my gosh. Alright. You scan the QR code.

We did I think it’s so fun. We have an advent calendar, and every day you’ll get an email, and you can also opt out at any time. We have very prominent opt outs. We do not wanna spam.

But it’s fun, and it’s giveaways. You we’re giving away free swag. We’re giving away free websites. We’re giving away free consults with me.

That’s probably, like, the, you know, the bummer prize. We’re giving away, six months of the do it for me program, and we’re just giving away interesting, you know, valuable tips. So we’ll we’ll I’ve given we’ve given some some of our do it for me content. We’ve done Elf on the Shelf ideas.

So it’s just, you know, it’s fun. You open it up, you check the day, and, there’s something for you. So with that, I am going to bring it to a close. I will leave it on the, QR code for booking a demo.

And, Mike, any closing words for the audience as they head into twenty twenty four, and you’re gonna inspire them to be better marketers?

I I don’t know if I’ve ever been called an inspirational speaker, but, the, I think it’s the key marketing is just to really have a strategy and be consistent about it. You know, I I I think the number one thing that always turned me off in people some people will have really good content, and then they’ll just let it slide for months and then you people lose interest. So just coming up with a plan, you know, if if you don’t have the time or the wherewithal for working with FMG, I mean, we’ve been doing it for years, and we’ve been very happy with, the service that helps us free up our time to do more of what we’re of our financial planning and, have lives outside of work.

So Well, I think that’s a great way to wrap it up. Thank you so much for joining too, Steven.

Oh, and your website is just one of my favorites. It is on the homepage of FMP.

I think all of you, you know, can get some ideas from that, and we will send the replay, as well as the deck. And we’ll think about some value value add, things that we can slide in. Like, maybe I’ll maybe I’ll include the center of influence emails that I’ve written that people could use to open the door with some attorneys because I think that would be a great, great step for the beginning of twenty twenty four. So I wish everybody a wonderful remainder of the holiday season and a fantastic twenty twenty four, and we will be in touch then. Thank you so much.