Alright. We’re live. Well, it is great to be in front of everybody, and I hope you’re having a great day. What are we?
Wednesday. Alright. And, we’re starting to get into spring break season, so maybe I’ll ask in the chat if anybody’s going anywhere fun for spring break. I was just hearing from Beth that she is off to Florida for a work slash vacation.
But today, this is a fun one. We’re gonna keep it super informal and also quick. Hopefully, we will keep it to a half an hour so you can get back to your day job.
What we’re gonna talk about is what is this do it for me program really like? And, I’m Susan Theater. For those of you that don’t know me, I’m the chief marketing officer at FMG, and I am joined by a good friend and dear customer, Beth Blecker. And, you will hear a lot from Beth, so I’m going to skip over so that we can get into our presentation.
Two quick slides I wanted to share first before we get into our discussion is just to validate the importance of really the philosophy behind the do it for me program.
These are slides these are graphs from a wide chart study, which actually, I will just tease, is, in another couple weeks releasing their twenty twenty three version of this data. So, we’ll be doing a webinar discussing this, discussing this, but it’s all about the communications, the importance of communications as it relates to your customers and your business. Just on the left, at a high level, the blue is the important number, which basically is almost all of your customers consider your frequency and style of communication when deciding to retain you and stay with you as well as to recommend you to a friend or family member.
Shockingly, on the right side, about half of your customers, and I’ve broken it out by those that are, over five hundred and sixty just to get some cuts, but, basically, half of your customers wish you were communicating more.
And to further, I guess, reinforce this and talk about the types of communications that matter, people are looking to be educated, educated about financial planning topics, about estate planning, about tax optimization, about changing regulations.
And in a survey by Imani, sixty three percent believe that it’s the content that makes an adviser stand out.
And across the board from millennials all the way up, but, really, when you look at millennials and I should show you what, you know, those that are younger say it’s even more so, they’re very interested in being educated. So with that, I’m going to stop sharing, and I’m gonna introduce the star of the show, Beth. Beth, you are one of our, you know, dear customers. You’re on our do it for me advisory board. I would love you just to provide a introduction of you, your practice, and we’ll start with, you know, how did you come to be a different customer?
Okay. So you know my name. I’m Beth Blecker. The name of my firm is Eastern Planning Inc, and I have been in business for twenty seven years. Oh my.
And you don’t look at you could be five years. Of course. Right? And I don’t even look like graduated.
And I was an accountant prior to that. Right?
But I am very fortunate because I have a partner, a very, very talented and smart partner who happens to be my son.
So so Eastern planning is made up of doctor Matthew Blecker, and it works out perfectly.
And I am a financial advisor. My son is an investment. He’s a chartered financial analyst. He’s the investment person in our firm, but I’m also the one that’s in charge of running the firm, growing the firm, marketing the firm.
Mhmm. And for a while, I then hired a person who was going to be my marketing assistant, who moved up to be my marketing director as did her salary, which kept moving up and moving up and moving up. And I’m in New York, so that’s That’s itself.
And, I wasn’t happy with what she was doing Yeah. At all.
Did you have to provide a lot of direction?
It wasn’t even saving I had to keep providing a lot of direction.
And and and and, also, I hate writing.
Writing is not my forte.
And so I couldn’t get all that stuff you said is so important to our clients.
I couldn’t get all that stuff. So I was getting horse’s mouth, and I was part of all these other places trying to gather information so that I could use stuff. And one day, I went to a conference, and there was Susan Theater sitting in front of me, whom I knew from her past life.
And, she said, oh, this is what FMG is starting to do.
And so I said, well, you better connect me and tell me about it. And so I became part of do it for me marketing, and I also moved my website to FMG because when your website is connected to do it for me marketing, everything goes everywhere. It’s just, like, amazing. Yeah. And I have been and, of course, I then very hard for me, but I fired my marketing director.
And now I’m spending a lot less. I have somebody an outsourced person who helps me with the marketing. But with her and do it for me marketing, I now get to go to Florida more often.
That is awesome.
Tell so for those that are listening in, what do you get with do it for me marketing? How would you describe it to an adviser who said, what what exactly is it?
Okay. So what I get well, first of all, I get a person who I speak to at the end of every month towards the end of every month because I get a a email and a chart from Susan, which lays out all this content, social media content, blog content, letter content, tons of content.
And and also this past content, which I can pull up. But I have a person who once a month, we sit down and we go over the content.
I do it with my other one other person who’s my outsourcing person, and we go over and we decide what’s good for eastern planning.
And we pick out the things that we’re going to use, and then they do it for me. Now the one thing that I do for myself, it well, other than also help pick out the content, is my my other person, my outsourced person, she personalizes all the social media. So when you look at my social media, you don’t always realize that it is all Well, not all. It is the do it for me marketing. And that gives us the ability to also take some fun things that makes us a little different and put that on because all the smart stuff we get for do it for me marketing.
That and that is about as well as I could describe it.
I’m trying to pull up our calendars so that I could share it just so people can see what that looks like.
Helpful.
So every month, what we do is that showing?
Yes. But every calendar is great, but also go down to the content page because that’s where I work from.
Exactly. So every month, we email out a calendar that maps out how we see the content cascading, and it’s two blogs.
Those blogs are then verging for emails written for clients, prospects, and centers of influence. So we modify the content so that it works for those audiences.
And then social posts that range probably, like, twenty different social posts. So we map out where we think it works on a calendar, but then we also show it in this list form. And a lot of advisers print this out. I don’t know how you do your edits, Beth, but people just print this and just, like, scratch all over it.
Like, yes. That one. Wanna customize that one. Scratch this one. I’m gonna also add this one.
So they’re taking it, but, like, Beth talked about, they’re also making it their own. And you’ll see there’s blogs, emails, social posts that we recommend, and then we also have optional. You know, say things like actually, this typical memory loss is normal, was an optional one, and that got I don’t know if you use that, Beth. People that the advisers that you use that got great engagement, basically.
We did use that one, and we did get response from that. Yes. The memory loss was was excellent. Yep.
Yeah. So talk about, like, you know, even just looking at this calendar. So you went through this, and what was your, you know tell us how you worked with your specialist to bring this to life.
So there’s so so what we do is if you open up if you open up the American Heart Awareness Month, right, and and you look at it and and Does it show?
It didn’t open.
Didn’t open.
It may have opened on another you may have to actually share a different screen.
Yeah. Okay. So you see where it says February is is American Heart Month? Yeah. Now everybody had who who’s gonna pick this gets that.
Yep.
So what I would do is we’re gonna go on Adobe stock because we that is one other thing that I pay for, and my person is gonna pick a completely different picture and or take a picture if it’s if it’s something to do with us. Take a picture in the office and put that picture on, and then we’ll click some of the emojis.
Yeah. Make it a little different. But we’ve used completely used that thing.
And that is the best way to work with the program. So, we also have an integration with Canva, and some advisers are just within the platform pulling up Canva and, you know, searching.
My person does Canva sometimes too. Yep.
The best thing is with our social posts, you you choose the ones that you wanna use, and then you we’re actually providing some suggestions too of ways you can personalize it. And when you add your own picture, that’s brilliant. So, actually, let me see. I’m gonna ask you a question. While you’re answering, I’m gonna try to pull up some examples.
Let’s see. So you’ve been I think you’ve been in the program about a year. Can you talk about feedback you’ve gotten from clients? Any you know, if an adviser’s like, how do you know it’s working? What would you answer?
So I will say, as far as social media goes, I know that my clients are looking because they’re connected to the ones that are connected to me. I see them looking and commenting.
So I see them commenting. I will say that what I have noticed is I’m getting much more views on my LinkedIn and Facebook now, and I’m sharing my Facebook up to Instagram.
So I’m getting much more views.
I’m not gonna tell you that people are falling off the hook from social media.
But what I will tell you is my clients my practice is pretty much ninety percent of my growth comes from client referrals.
But I will I will guarantee you that of the ninety percent of client referrals that call my office, ninety percent of them have been on my social media, have been on my website, and are looking at that. So just because a client says, call Beth. I love them. Sometimes that happens, but they look.
So if don’t check.
If my if my website was boring and old and I wasn’t changing and putting all these blogs on and all this information on, I don’t know if they would call me.
Absolutely. I I feel that that’s where it’s helping me, not the actually oh, that person called because they saw that social media post.
It’s never attributable to a I mean, I shouldn’t say never. Rarely. It is the consistency.
And I was just talking to Bob Veres. I don’t know if you guys know him. I do. Bob, Joel Breckenstein.
And he’s talked to so many advisers, and he said, you know, the common mistake is advisers try something for two months, three months, and then, like, most of us, we get distracted and then we stop. And then we’re like, it didn’t work. And if you had a client that said, I’m gonna try you for three months, and then if it hasn’t worked, if I’m not up twenty percent, I’m out. You’d say that you have to look long term.
It’s the same thing, but it’s so hard to do long term, which is why outsourcing to different is so important.
And you never know what’s gonna hit because I will tell you there was was it just this month or last month where you did the special needs?
Yeah. It was this it’s for March.
So I did just did something with special needs, and I got a client to say, oh my god. You know, I knew you you you do a lot on special needs. But I just read your letter, and I just referred it out to two of my friends because they are not doing what they need to do. Of course, this is how people talk. They’re not doing what they need to do, so I have to tell them that they have to call you. Yeah. Now they referred out an email because of an email that not in front.
That was an email, that we wrote about, we’re doing a lot of content about The Secure Act and Secure Act two point o and the sunsetting of the tax cuts and jobs acts and all the various permutations and nuances of that and special needs the special needs trust, are treated differently under Secure Act two point o, and we got just tons of good feedback.
We are getting there’s a question about if if all advisers are using the same content, doesn’t, you know, that just mean duplication, and is it really good? Now there are only about five hundred advisers across the country that are in do it for me. It is our most exclusive. But how would you answer that question?
I mean So on the social media side, I’ve already answered it.
I twist it a little.
And on the letter side Like, emails, not letters. But On the email.
Right. But there are letters in email.
Yeah. Exactly. Because most people are sending it out through email because it’s cheaper. But yeah.
On on the email side, we do tweak. We do so so I’m old. Yep. My assistant gets into AI a little, and she takes the email, and she twists up the paragraphs and twists up some of the words. And, also, we we put some of our own personal stuff in. It’s easy to put some personal stuff in Exactly. When you when you don’t have to do it all.
Far from scratch. Yeah. That is where we preach. I mean, I am such a believer in authenticity.
First of all, you know, we have heard from advisers, and I hope I think you’d say the same, but, they’ve said, like, the it’s shocking because the content is so good. It’s like they’re reading my mind and writing just the way I would. So that’s what we aim for. But, of course, you all have your unique voices and personalities.
But what we believe we’re delivering is this full, really robust content calendar that all you have to do is spend or have your assistant spend a little bit of time tweaking versus starting from scratch. Every month, you’ve get you’re given this full library of content that’s strategically chosen for that month that manage that has, you know, financial Friday posts as well as, you know, Arbor Day, as well as, you know, the whole range of types of content that people would recommend.
That’s an enormous amount of work, and then you just have to pick what you want and then edit it so that it’s your own voice. Like, let’s say, you know, Silicon Valley Bank failed. Everybody wanted to get something out right away to put their clients at ease. It’s a lot of work and most you know, and then it’s gotta go through compliance and the whole bit. It’s really the story is not it’s hard to write that ten different ways. I mean, if if you looked at every adviser who sent out something, they’re gonna read pretty similarly.
We write the draft, you tweak it, and that you know, your clients and prospects are just seeing that you’re that you’re communicating more frequently.
And as far as emails go and you said compliance, you Yes. Minded Bay, one of the best things is it goes through compliance on the site.
So is my CMO like, does everybody have something like that, or is that No.
Well, advisor group, Ozaik has, branded FMG to be my CMO, and everybody else is it just well, they’ve got some firms have branded it, but, basically, it’s FMG.
So, again But they have the compliance workflow. Put it up and it’s there and they post it, it goes through compliance and goes out as as best as I’ve ever seen compliance work. There’s never a holdup. It’s just so even when you tweak it, it’s so easy.
And we here, I found some examples I can share of customization of content and what we’re talking about here. So here’s a post that we wrote on the Secure Act. Here’s one we wrote on, as I just mentioned, the aging and memory loss, and here’s one on Medicare.
So these are just examples of what different customers have done with it. So for the Secure Act, that was talked about oh, I talked we wrote about the fact that you can that employers can now match for student loans. So this is one adviser just changed the photo out and put a picture of his daughter’s graduation and got tons of engagement.
This is one that was on that article that we just mentioned. Beth talked about how she found a different picture.
This person found this picture, and it went it had great engagement, and then just, you know, somebody put in a my to do list.
Another example is women’s history month. You can see different ways people have just changed the photo or use the photo as is.
Another one We we use women’s history month to give the history of me.
Oh, I love it. I love it. And then we also do these, you know, optional posts. Like, one that was really popular is we wrote a post on pickleball.
So, one of the advisers, you know, customized the picture and put a picture of herself with her with I think this is her husband, and actually had the idea to do a pickleball event based on this post.
So that just kinda took it one more step.
And then this was dog appreciation day. Dogs always perform well on social. So, generally, you know, we wrote the post. People tweak it slightly and then added pictures of their dogs. So just, you know, some examples of how that works.
Let’s go to let’s see. Realistically, how much is a little bit of time? So what would you say you and your the freelancer who’s editing the content?
How much is a little bit of time to tweak?
So when when you have the phone call, the first phone call when when you first look at that calendar, I would say I spend about an hour, an hour and a half just making sure I like what’s on the calendar and take off what I don’t like. Then they have the phone call. That’s I’m not on the phone calls anymore. But they have the phone call. That’s about a half an hour.
And then and then my marketing person will now take and she works fifteen days and fifteen days. So she’ll now take and and do all the tweaking to the first half of the month, and then I’ll go up on and I use my CMO, FMG, whatever you call it. I’ll go up and look at what she’s done. So maybe it’ll take me an hour more, and then the second half of the the month another hour more.
It it probably takes she probably spends about ten to twelve hours a month, but she’s also doing some additional stuff. Because what she’s doing is like, today, she came in to take a picture of me lying on a file because she thought she looked in one day a month. It’s called National Map Day. Yeah. So she put she’s gonna put a picture of me falling asleep on a file. So she does other step stuff in that time is what I’m trying to say. For me, if I spend four hours a month, that’s a lot.
That’s amazing. Okay.
I’m reading some of the have you done an event? Have you leveraged the marketing specialist to help you execute an event?
So the answer for that is no, because we’ve already had all of our events planned out. We have been looking at all of the options and choices you have for events.
Yes.
And right now, I think that two of your choices are on schedule to be considered for our next event. So the the probability will be that you we will work with you on our next event.
Awesome. Because we are getting we’re getting really good feedback about that. Why don’t you describe what you do in your monthly meeting with your marketing specialist?
What do I do in my monthly meeting?
Yeah. So you have this dedicated marketing specialist. How do you use them? What’s their value?
Okay. So twofold, and I don’t do it anymore. I told you. I now leave it to my staff. I have two people who stay on on the call with them. But what they do first and as I said, I look at the calendar first.
So I’ve already said I like everything or I don’t or I’ve already told them that. So Yep. I’ve spent about an hour, looked at the calendar, told my marketing person what I liked or didn’t like. Then when they go on the call, they relay my opinions, but the marketing person then says things like, oh, well, if you like that, maybe we can add this. Or So we can did you look at and and and they and they work with basically the conversation of, oh, also, we have this. Maybe you wanna use this, and we put up a different blog because I liked the letter. And I told her I liked this letter, and she says, oh, I also have this in a blog, and so she brought in the blog.
So so what’s happening you have other content that might have written Because of what we say to them Yeah.
They then pull other things out.
Cool. I did get somebody was asking. This is sort of a little off topic, but I I have a little I’m gonna try to squeeze it in, and they asked, you know, how do you use Canva on the platform? So I’m gonna show you really quickly.
So this is the Don’t ask me, though.
Yeah. Because you you’re you got to do it for me. They the do it for me person could do this for you.
But you see, you know, design an image, it just pulls up Canva within our platform.
And if I do let’s say let’s say it’s dog appreciation. So I click dog. I like this one. I double click and say, happy dog appreciation day. Oopsie. Spelling.
And then I hit publish over here. It, prepares it, creates it in, our platform, and then you can just write your caption. So, happy dog appreciation. And you can see I type over here, and then I’m seeing what it will look like on the platform.
I can schedule it, or I could, send it right out, and it routes through compliance. I could also browse our social post library, or I could use an article from Curator, which is basically and if I wanted to send out an article from Forbes or something like that, I could pull from there. So sorry. Just shared because that was one of our questions.
And inside of the Canva, I know that what my staff is doing is they’re using it for the picture, but they’re using your wording. So they’re not putting their own wording in.
It’s the wording that’s, like, takes so much work. I mean, trust me. I spend so much time. Oh, I was gonna say so how do we come up with this calendars? Somebody asked.
Well, here’s a a big stack of content ideas. The first one, this one, actually, was an email from Beth, and advisers are encouraged. Every month, I send out a video that goes over our strategy for that particular month. So you get the content calendar, two weeks before the prior before the next month. So, you know, for April, I think the calendar just went I don’t know. For for March, the calendar went out mid February.
And we always encourage advisers to send us their suggestions. So I get suggestions, and I’d say, I I welcome more to the point that I wouldn’t be able to address it, but I think I’ve written everything you’ve asked for. So I’m almost you know, we’re almost like a an order taker for content. It might not fit into the calendar for the next month, but we add it to the next month.
And what what how would you describe the content? Is it, geared towards high net worth? If you had to describe the content, what would you what would you say?
So, basically, what I’m gonna say is there is some things that have high net worth, and there’s some things that don’t. And and so being in New York, and my New York people think they’re very sophisticated, I have to be careful of what I’m thinking. So I just say no to things. Yes.
Exactly. So so it depends on where you are and who you deal with and, you know, what you’re looking for. So I will and then, again, with my marketing person, the monthly one, if I said no to three of the articles and now there’s nothing left, she’s gonna find me more stuff Yeah. Based on what I might want or need for that month.
And we I will say for the do it for me program, the goal is writing for a high net worth customer.
I I want to avoid writing about anything that your existing clients or prospects already know. I don’t want the, I knew this. I want the, oh, that’s really interesting, which is why we focus on, you know, for example, the tax cuts and jobs act and the changes that are likely as it relates to estate tax exemption and gifting.
We aim to go for things that make you look smart and are never going to be something that they either already knew or you’ve already talked about. So things that are either changing, evolving, regulatory planning topics, biggest mistakes you can make in a, you know, in an estate plan, things like that.
But it’s also the fact that you have so much ability to pick and choose. So it’s like I just said to you, I I probably have a a higher net worth clientele, but I also don’t have very many, business owners. Most of my people are corporate employees, corporate executives.
So there is a lot of stuff that’s there for for businesses.
I just don’t use it.
Exactly. Yep. And that’s where we do niche content. Like, we’ve got a, you know, small business owner drip campaign or a prospect drip campaign or a new client onboarding drip campaign that we remind you every month to try to to add your new clients. So Right. Super flexible.
In the last two minutes, I’ve been trying to keep up with all the questions. And if I’ve missed you, please just reply to the email when we send out the replay, and I will get back to each and every one of you. But, Beth, if you were to wrap it up and just tell the audience, you know, if you are an adviser who, then this program is great for you.
Well, if you’re adviser like me who doesn’t like to write, then then you this this program is for you. If you’re an adviser who can’t stand compliance, then this program is for you because it just it just makes it all the stuff is in front of me, and I pick what I like. Tweaking is easy.
Yeah. Writing and ideas, the ideas are there too. So it’s it’s getting the idea, it’s getting the the substance, and being able to use it.
Thank you so much. Well, I wanna be cognizant of keeping my promise to, keep this to half an hour. Thank you so much, Beth, for taking time out of your busy day, and thank you all for joining us and taking time out of your day. And, we’ll be in touch, and have a great rest of your week. Thank you. Thank you.
