What’s Actually Working in 2026: A Live Webinar with Ethan Stewart

we are thrilled to have, as always, the best events we do are when we invite other fellow advisors to join us and we let them do the talking about what is working, and then we weave in our little two cents here and there. But this is to talk about what’s working in twenty twenty six, and we have Ethan Stewart here with us today. We’ll flip to the next slide as well as my partner in crime Elise Lambert. I’m going do an icebreaker everybody so coming up is the Super Bowl so I’m curious if everybody would put in where coming from and who they are rooting for the Super Bowl.

I will start. I am in Boston so you can guess who I’m rooting for.

Go Pax. Philadelphia, Oh, look at that Pennsylvania Seahawks.

Come on, there have to be others. Denver Seattle. Oh my god, nobody likes West Hartford, Connecticut, go Seattle. They’re a big fan.

Houston rooting for chicken wings, love it.

California Pats, Denver not Pats.

I love this. Sam is from my hometown. This is awesome. I have to say the playoffs were, just saying like kind of you know there’s some messiness to the playoffs. I don’t feel great about how maybe the Patriots got in but at any rate, Ethan we have some people from your area.

I do. I was noticing it.

Yeah, so why don’t we kick it off, I’d love you to just tell us a little bit about your practice and then we’ll segue into, I’d love to start by talking about what you did prior to hiring FMG to do it for you. So let’s start with your background and your business and a little bit about what you were doing before FMG.

Yeah absolutely and thank you for asking me to be on conversation. I’m really excited, so I appreciate the time.

But so I’m not originally, so I’m in Western PA and that’s where my firm is located at. I’m not originally from the area, so when I came out here, I actually ended up buying the business from my grandfather who started the firm and been growing it since. And so when I came into the area, I didn’t know a lot of people. So how I got started was I did the usual networking prospecting, meeting people in person, but I recognized the need to kinda have a inbound marketing machine going on in the background.

And so I started developing that when I first got into the business and quickly realized that it was very time consuming and very difficult to do. So as I kept on growing in the business and taking more responsibility on in the business, buying it from my grandfather, I, you know, recognized that I needed help. And so I couldn’t do it all myself anymore. So I wanted somebody to do it for me. So that’s why I reached out to you guys.

I can imagine how much the business has changed since when your grandfather had it now, right? He wasn’t worried about, you know, when he got from our website and marketing and all of that.

Oh, yeah. Very, very much. I mean, when I first started, I redid the website from scratch myself, and it it wasn’t the prettiest thing. But when I made it from where it was, it was a lot better than where it was because, yeah, it’s it’s very outdated.

You know, we’ve done a lot of stuff in the business, transformed it quite a bit since since I took it over, and it’s been a lot of fun doing that. I I like doing that kind of stuff. I like building the business. I like the business side of things.

And I like the marketing piece, but there’s a lot of pieces and a lot of logistics to it. And so it’s very helpful to have somebody help with that.

Let’s ask the audience how many of you could relate to as you were growing the business, you felt like you were wearing two hats and you had to work on the business, but then you also felt this nagging, I’ve got to market too, but that feels like a full time job.

Anybody feel like marketing is just that thing in the back of the head that you know you need to do but feels like a lot of work? Anybody agree? Do we have any yeses?

I feel like two hats. It’s like twelve hats.

Twelve hats. I feel like that too. Oh, we got some yeses. So Ethan, have a program called, for everybody in the audience, we have a program called Do It For Me. So as Ethan’s referencing Do It For Me, sometimes we call it DIFM, so you’ll hear that acronym.

I’d love to hear, so when you describe an inbound marketing machine or a marketing machine, we’re talking about what’s working in twenty twenty six, You’re leveraging do it for me as your marketing solution. What do you just, how would you describe to the audience of what you think works in marketing? Like, what do you, you know, you like do it for me. What are we doing for you and what could some of these people, whether they use Do It For Me or if they do it themselves, what is the combination of activities that you think really works?

Yeah, so we’ve been tracking that heavily and I’ve tried a lot of things in the past as I’m sure many of the people listening to this has tried different things and you know, marketing marketing to me is the kind of artistic side of business that I really like. There’s a lot of flexibility that you’re gonna have. You can have a lot of creativity in marketing more so than other sides of business.

So that’s a lot of fun to me. It can really be as creative as you want.

And in fact, the more creative you are, that tends to be the more effective marketing when it gets cemented people’s memory and they think of you because of the crazy thing you did or whatever, whatever, whatever.

The crazy thing you did.

Obviously, in our industries, we have to take compliance and to keep compliance in mind, which is one of the layers of challenge of our industry. So what I found that works, it’s changed as technology and new methodologies have emerged. Actually, you guys have watched a lot of webinars with F and G talking about like video has been effective. We started doing a video series a couple years back, and that’s been interesting.

Everyone is going from shifting from finding things through other traditional means to finding things online. And I recognized that a while ago. That’s why I wanted to build this system and everything.

But the the thing about is you’ll talk with people in our industry, all traditional marketing methods still work. The question is what’s the best ROI and what’s the best investment of your time and money that would get you the best return on those.

So like, mailers still work.

I know a lot of people have a lot of success with that seminars. All those things still are effective. You just have to look at what your market is and then what are what are your personal style is, what message well with those, and then, again, what is the best ROI on your time and dollar for that matches the within those things as well. That’s what I found.

Yeah.

So what we’ve been doing that’s successful for us is video and online marketing has been successful. And, you know, I like networking and talk with people, so that that works as well for me. But I think it varies.

So let’s talk it. Let’s get tactical. So I think we talked in a prep call.

Believe that content marketing is really the foundation of your success. I mean, have multiple channels that you’re going to use the content, but the content is the asset and the content is what takes the time. Let’s talk about you know, so you’re leveraging do it for me to help you post on social, send emails to clients and prospects and centers of influence.

You’re dripping on clients, you’re dripping on prospects, dripping on centers of influence. You are updating, you’re doing a blog twice a month. You’re doing video, you’re considering a podcast, you do some events.

That sounds overwhelming. How does do it for me help you accomplish all of that?

Yeah. I probably couldn’t do it without do it for me. Actually, I definitely couldn’t. I can’t tell you that much. What it does is the marketing is a machine is like driving a car.

You when you don’t have a department to help you be the machine itself, you’re driving, you’re you’re guiding, you’re You’re directing as well as making sure the vehicle runs. What do it what you guys do for me is you’re the machine, so all I have to do is drive and direct. So I can worry about what kind of content I wanna come up with. I can worry about avenues I wanna do. I can worry about the strategy. I don’t have to worry about the, you know, the actual logistics of posting everything. So I can become more I can leverage the systems that you guys have and that you do well and the posting and actually getting the information out there and I can focus more on actually creating the information.

And I think that and also leverage what you guys already have to save me even more time. So it’s just, much more to me, that’s a good use of time and money if we can do it that way. It’s a good investment to me.

To help the audience have a takeaway, I’m thinking, so for our strategy, what we are seeing working, and this is, you know, going forward in twenty twenty six, we’re seeing and and you can talk about examples of how this pays off, Ethan, but we are seeing at least, like, we’re doing two emails a month to clients and prospects on topics that are timely. So for example, in February, Ethan, one of the emails and what we do is we’ll write two blogs. Let’s start at the highest level. We’ll start by coming up with two blog topics for every month that our customers can tweak, modify, customize, and very easily.

And then our concierge that works with each of our do it for me customers will actually post all these things and execute it. So, it’s the the content strategy that we have found working. If you want to copy this and actually at least maybe we pull up the content calendar is two blogs and then to help, you know, then, we version the blogs into emails. And those emails are versioned to work for clients and prospects as well as one that is different that works for centers of influence.

Then we go into social posts. So you’ve got blogs, emails, and then social posts. We write anywhere from fourteen to twenty social posts for customers to choose from, and we recommend a calendar of when they would be posted.

We give ideas for how to change out the thumbnails so that you can make them more personalized. And then again, the concierge will make the edits and post everything. And then there’s a marketing tip. So every month, we suggest you come up with some marketing activity. Whether it’s like for December it was having a gift wrapping event. For March it’s it’s something to do with Women’s History Month. So coming up with one of those surprise and delight activities that could be client engagement, it could be a webinar, it could be just reaching out to clients, and then video and podcast.

And the podcast can also be a webinar outline. So yes, that sounds like a lot, but that is what we see working. And then take it one step further and mentioned Ethan, you’re getting found You all know that. But now you’re getting found more and more on chat or Claude or Perplexity or Gemini. People are going into those. We’ve actually seen, I think I’ve seen a stat where Google searches down about thirty percent for most businesses and chat is taking that. And then the conversion rates when somebody comes to your website from chat, the conversion rate is like triple.

So the other thing that you have to layer onto this strategy is ensuring that all of your content is written in a way that the AI engines are picking up on it.

Even of all those pieces of content that we are writing for you, which would be our map and recommendation for what’s working in twenty twenty six, what are you seeing the most traction with? Which of those channels do you feel like you’re hearing from customers or prospects like that one’s working?

Yeah, well a couple things, one thing I want to say is another reason I like the strategy is the content that you put out is very timely and it’s not like cookie cutter, it’s very helpful information like that. We were talking before the call, the tax strategy difference versus tax preparing is a really important differentiator.

You don’t see that very often. Having that content out that we can put out there or not, you don’t have to put the content out. That’s really nice as well.

So in terms of the the channel that I see the most success on, social media is a pretty good one. I get a good a bit of traction there, but social media is more the funnel that drives Yeah. Traffic towards the website, and then the blog and other information on there is good. We have a video series on YouTube that drives as well but that’s another funnel that goes towards website. Everything’s going towards website.

So yep. Exactly. And that’s so true. So the website really is your that has to be the most foundational element of your strategy because that is what’s capturing all the inbound, top of the funnel activity, whether it’s coming from ChatGPT because somebody looked you up or whether it’s coming because they saw your post on social, etc.

Or whether they met somebody who recommended you. They’re still going to your website. So having a website that you’re really proud of that is optimized for AEO is critical and also ensuring that you have recency of content like good content written with AI in mind that is on the topics that are on the client’s mind. So you mentioned the tax strategy versus tax prep.

Elise, do you want to put up that QR code that’s in our slides? AEO for the win, Shannon. Love If anybody’s interested, scan this QR code. We’re offering everybody a sample of our do it for me content calendar.

I’ve talked about the content strategy that we think works. This is an example of an email that we wrote for, I think is it that one or is it the one before? Oh.

Think maybe we’re sending it out afterwards.

Yeah, we’re going to send it out afterwards for sure.

We’re going just give it to you. You don’t have to scan a QR code. We can take that So moving to the calendar again, just so that’s in the backdrop as we’re talking, we will send out the tax prep tax prep versus tax strategy. And this was an idea we were talking before this webinar started.

How many of you feel like taxes are a big topic with your clients, that they are interested in optimizing their taxes and looking to you to help them find ways to do so.

Audience participation. Anybody feel like they are playing a role in their client’s tax strategy?

We keep hearing that this is becoming this and estate planning is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the conversations with clients, major, yes, and that you really are playing the role of the strategist and then, the accountant or CPA or tax prep person is brought in for the execution and sort of validating that strategy. But many times the tax prep person is more reactive, waiting to be asked, and you’re the one asking the questions.

So we wanted to this was an idea to have content that speaks to the fact that tax prep is reactive. Tax strategy is something different. So yes, we’re hearing from the audience. So this is we did a blog. We did an email, also did an email for COIs and then a social post but we’re going to give this away so everybody can see an example of the type of content that we’re seeing work and you know you’d love to say that there’s an easy button in marketing right even but you know maybe explain how do you measure success because that is one thing that we always hear and I think is difficult. So how do you measure success of this investment?

Measure so what we track is how many leads we get from this whole our whole system we brought in. And that’s how I try I mean, I know it’s a cop out, but it’s the amount of leads that we get in.

That’s not a cop out. Yeah.

Because the because marketing is is generation of leads. It’s not closing the business. And so my philosophy has always been, to me, there’s two avenues of marketing in in our world, and that’s, outbound marketing and inbound marketing. And my thought is, like, I I I can do outbound marketing, and I like outbound marketing, but that that’s networking and taking time, you know, seminars, stuff like that. Those things take my time directly versus if I have a machine working behind me doing, you know, inbound marketing, bringing leads in at the same time. Marketing.

Just for Yeah.

Exactly. Content marketing, getting people leads coming in. But now I’m doing both without taking more of my time.

And so more effective that way. And so how I measure is, do I get opportunities for meetings to potentially close business?

And from there, that’s up to me. But the fact that I have leads coming in from the system while I’m doing other things, that’s just passive and that’s much more effective.

You know what, let’s pause. I’m going to ask if we can put up a poll to see for anybody that is interested in learning more about the Do It For Me program of taking that hat off of your head and giving it to somebody else while you still are steering, but you have somebody else doing the strategy, the content development, and the execution, please click here. The other thing, we’ll keep talking to Ethan as we have the poll up.

The other thing I heard you say when we were prepping is that another way to measure success is you are saving, I think you said like ten plus hours, if not more a month, probably even more weekly because you used to be doing this, but you said also you weren’t even doing nearly this much. So you’re saving time from what you were doing plus adding so much more. Maybe talk to the audience about how you’ve been able to save time and maybe what you’ve been able to reallocate that time too.

Yeah. No. It’s it’s exactly that. I mean, I was able to save time, a substantial amount of time, so that I could then spend that time to more prospecting. So it’s basically magnified my outputs and, you know, marketing efficiencies quite a bit. Now from a time actual time standpoint, what you’re referring to is I used to do a fraction of what I do now because I had a systems I had in place where I had to develop the content, develop social media, then post on social media. I had to do that every week.

I had to come up with the thumbnails. I had to write the posts, find the articles. It was very time consuming. So and that was just social media.

I wanted to do blog. I didn’t have the time or capacity to do it. I wanted to do videos, didn’t have the time or capacity to do it. So this enables me to magnify my time and my creativity quite a bit full, and it saves me a ton of time.

So it does everything. And it’s a really, really good way to leverage my time and creativity in more effective ways.

Awesome. You know what, I’m going say we made this a half an hour because I know you guys are all busy. We like short segments.

We’ll keep talking, but if you guys have any questions for Ethan or for Elise and myself, put them in the chat and we can turn the end of this into a Q and A too. If you have any questions, feel free to throw them out.

Let’s look at some of the content. I think we have some examples in slides and these are the I think we have two social posts as well as showing you how your blog can look on a web page.

And again, we recommend two blogs a month and alternate, you know, obviously, every, you know, a week between and then versioning those blogs into emails and thinking about building up a center of influence, you know, a segment of your in your CRM so that you’re sending you’re dripping on because it’s all about staying top of mind. You guys know that. It just feels hard and then staying up on social. So this is just an example. This was a twenty five twenty twenty five in review, what you need to know.

And let’s show some social posts. What’s the difference? Here’s a good question. What’s the difference between content made for AEO and SEO?

So SEO, search engine optimization is primarily driven by long tail keywords. It’s keyword oriented and you’d have keyword strategy and try to be you know, Google would match you based on having those keywords and you would appear as one of many articles or or matches.

As we know with answer engine optimization oh my gosh, look at that, Aliyah. Answer engine optimization, it’s providing direct answers. I love this was like exactly what I was going say. Got it.

So it’s not giving you links, as you know, with traditional search, it’s giving you the answer And it’s literally saying like, if you say try typing it in, everybody should go when you get off this call, type in best financial advisor, and then use some of the things that you would think would describe you and see who comes up, whether it’s best financial adviser in blankety blank area that serves blankety blank types of clients. See who comes up and do that in chat. And what we’re trying to do is there are a number of things that we do to help AEO. One is consistently updating content across all channels, but also within your website, we have AEO optimization by creating FAQs and then something called schema markup, which we’ll talk about another day.

But essentially, it is a totally different game to come up on a chat engine than it is to have your link to your website just appear in a list of links. Alright. Ethan mentioning measuring success by leads.

Share how those numbers look. How do you track the leads?

And you know, I’m curious, do you think of leads as, you know, you also are getting referrals from clients, I would guess, from dripping on them, as well as share of wallet, which is a different kind of leads. So talk about your how you track leads.

Yeah. So we do it a couple ways. I really the we get phone calls and inbound leads is the easiest way to put it. FMG, we I have a system that I use that is really good. It’s called a marketing central. It’s really it it it very clearly and smoothly tells me what leads come from where.

So when a lead comes through my website and asks for some information or wants more information through contact me page, we have that set up on the website.

Marketing Central is a Satera offering. So just because people will be asking how can I get that?

So Yeah.

Yeah. So, unfortunately, it’s a central platform that we use. But, anyway, so through there, they then tell me where the leads are, what the names are, and then add it to my CRM. And so it’s a really smooth way to get the leads information in our CRM, and then I follow-up with that. But then when people call in, I simply just one of the first questions I ask when I am vetting the prospect to see if it as we’re a good fit is I ask, where did you hear about us? So that’s a simple solution. If you want to do that, just start tracking by asking where did you hear about us and just track that.

And over time, you’ll see a pattern emerge. If it’s through the web, usually, they say online. So I know that somewhere online, and I attribute that to the efforts that we’re doing here. So that’s how I determine it.

I love that. All right, I’ve got two more questions I think I can squeeze in. One is a quick one.

Alex is asking, do you recommend starting with a website assessment revamp prior to do it for me? And I’m just for sake of quickness, I’m just gonna say yes. It really is the foundational element because as Ethan just described, almost all of your efforts are really going to result in having somebody visit your website and you want to convert them and with the chat, know, the rise of chat traffic, you do want to address almost everybody’s website probably could use at least a refresh on am I optimized for AEO? The second question is how do you drive traffic to your blog and increase audience engagement on social media? I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna give that one to Elise.

So driving traffic to your blog, it’s important that one, that content is relevant, it’s timely, but making sure that we have lots of tentacles. So Ethan mentioned that he has YouTube. He has different social media pages. And so all of those are driving traffic to the blog where they’re getting those important questions answered. Right? People are going they want your clients and prospects. They want answers, and they want them now.

I think a really quick tip that we we always share is you are going to increase traffic to your website and your social media engagement by engaging on social media. It is social. You can’t grow your network unless you are sending out connection requests And be intentional about sending out connection requests, not just sending out, you know, waiting you know, you go to a a broker dealer conference or an industry conference and every adviser that you know sends you a meeting sends you a request and now your entire network is advisors. That’s not who you’re trying to meet.

So being intentional, I actually told Ethan when he meets with his do it for me concierge every month, I suggested that they add to the agenda collect together so that she can be his accountability partner, sending out ten connection requests at least and getting in the habit of doing that. That will broaden your audience and then ideally, you are on social when you post, making sure that you are commenting on other people’s posts. It’s not just a one way where you’re throwing out your thoughts. You have to be showing the LinkedIn algorithm that you care about other people’s thoughts.

So with that, does DIFM include SEO and AEO? Yes, that is part of our strategy and we are seeing it work. I actually just saw a Slack yesterday about an advisor who got his first lead from ChatGPT. Was like, it worked, it worked.

Ethan, parting words for everybody. What is your advice to everybody on this call who said, I do not have time to do marketing?

Yeah. So I think the thing about marketing is it’s easy to have ideas. It’s easy to love the idea, but it’s the action that actually matters. And you guys help actually execute. So have finding the right path, the right team to actually execute your ideas is super helpful.

So anybody who’s thinking about it, you just gotta start somewhere, even if it’s that website or if it’s social posting, whatever it may be. And you guys and your program do a great job in helping getting that going. And the second thing I’ll throw out there is be patient as well.

I it’s taken time to like, don’t expect an instant first day post in ROI. You what I tell people is you should be prepared to invest at least a year and see how it goes. It could take faster. It could take longer, but be ready to be patient. But once it starts catching and starts going, it really goes. So the sooner you start, the better as well.

Amazing. I don’t think we could end on a better note. And it is one thirty Eastern Time, so right on dot. Thank you guys so much. It’s so great when we get engagement and I feel like we’re not just talking to a Zoom camera.

All the best to all of you. I hope your Super Bowl team wins and for anybody that’s on the East Coast or sort of Midwest, it’s cold, so stay warm and we will see you again soon, I hope.

Thank you.

Thanks, Ethan.