Top Advisor Marketing Podcast: 342. Our 7 Biggest Marketing Lessons From 2021 for Financial Advisors

In 2021, we re-branded to ProudMouth, surpassed 300 episodes of this podcast, started a new podcast, and built a learning platform called PodRocket Academy. 

We’ve been busy. And we’ve learned a lot about marketing during these last 12 months!

In this episode, Matt Halloran and Kirk Lowe share their seven biggest marketing lessons from 2021. They turn these lessons into strategies that you can implement in 2022 to create marketing that scales your credibility and attracts ideal clients.  

Matt and Kirk discuss:

• A quick exercise for quantifying what you’ve gotten better at in your business
• Why self buy-in and word-of-mouth marketing are keys to marketing success
• What is (and isn’t) working for the most successful advisors in the industry
• Reasons to focus on long-term momentum instead of short-term ROI
• And more

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Matt Halloran:

Welcome to the Top Advisor Marketing Podcast brought to you by ProudMouth. I'm your host, Matt Halloran. Being your own loud is not new to marketing, but the mindset, strategies, and resources to help you get there are evolving faster than this industry is keeping up. It is time to find a new perspective on what works, why, and how to move your business forward.

[00:00:24] Listen as I interview guests to help you learn from them how to be your own loud. Let’s get to the show.

[00:00:34] Hello and welcome to another Top Advisor Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Halloran. Today, Kirk and I are going to dive into the seven things that we've really learned about marketing and a little bit of life in 2021. This has been an amazing year for a lot of different reasons, not all good. But of course, not all bad, which is some of the things that we're going to talk about today.

[00:00:53] So, part of our foundation here at ProudMouth is an idea called Kaizen, [00:01:00] which is continuous gradual improvement. And we really implemented that into our philosophy and really our team's philosophy. And Kirk, you've got a couple of really cool things that you've distilled about getting better every day.

[00:01:12] Why don't we start there?

[00:01:14] Kirk Lowe:

Yeah, I think the most important thing about getting better every day is that it's something that we can control. And in business and life, there's a lot of things we can't control, but if we can control getting better every day, that's a huge win. I was thinking about this and how do we quantify what we've gotten better at.

[00:01:32] And if we think we're doing a good job at that, and what it actually means in our business. So, I've got this little exercise for everybody, if you want to. Listen if you're driving, but if you want to, you can break this down, actually write it on a piece of paper or a spreadsheet, whatever suits you.

[00:01:48] But I got it broken down into three things. And the first one is, the question is, what am I better at? Or what have I gotten better at? And you don't just want to, so you want to make a list of [00:02:00] those things, but then I have a couple of questions to quantify what that means. So the first one is that, is it actually making an impact?

[00:02:08] And if it is making an impact, can you accelerate that? That's a big thing about business marketing. Something that we're doing really well at, can we actually expedite or accelerate getting better and better at that or the result of the outcomes from it? And the other one is, if it's not making an impact, is it something that maybe we don't need to continue to think about getting better at because it's not doing it? Or why isn't it doing it?

[00:02:34] Another question to ask yourself is, what would make that even better? So if you got better at one particular skill, but you can do something else to take it to another level, that's why I made the question above, is it making an impact? If it's making an impact and you can get even better at it, that could be a huge opportunity for new business.

[00:02:54] The next one, is there anything holding you back? So if there's any obstacles in place that are keeping it from being [00:03:00] something more special, we're getting even better at it, then identify those obstacles and see if it's something that you think you can get past. So that's the what-am-I-better-at list and all the qualifiers.

[00:03:11] The next part of the exercise here is, make a list about what I need to be better at? What are the things that you didn't get better at that you know you need to get better at? And the qualifiers for this, or quantifiers, are what impact is it having with me? If I got better at that, what impact would it have? And what impact is that having on me without getting better at it?

[00:03:33] Some things you'd like to be better at, but they're not going to move the needle, so you probably want to spend more time on the things that do make a big impact. Am I making sense? Matt is nodding his head for everybody who's not watching us on video. So, the other thing, the other quantifier here for what I need to be better at is, what opportunities will being better allow you to pursue?

[00:03:56] And that's really, it is another reason to, I [00:04:00] guess, gauge whether or not it's worth going after it. That's the second thing on the list. That third thing, and the final one, is, what can I be better at? Some things you can easily find time and feel like I can get better at. And it's going to make, if it's going to make a difference, you want to, but sometimes, you feel like maybe I'm not going to get better at that.

[00:04:22] It's just going to be too much work. And that's perfectly fine. I think some people avoid thinking or talking about or doing anything about things they're not good at. They just accept it. But if it's really important to your business, you need to think about outsourcing or bring in somebody.

[00:04:42] We do this a ton, probably heard us talk about this if you listen to a lot of episodes with Matt and I, especially, we talk about outsourcing to people who do things that you're not as good at doing and that you don't want to get good at doing. And quite honestly, that should be a [00:05:00] fairly decent list for you.

[00:05:02] And if it's not, then you need to look at it. You need to bring somebody in to coach with you because this should be some, absolutely should be some items on this list. Every year, there should be items on this list. The qualifiers here again are what impact is that having? What can I be better at and what impact is it having you not being as good at it? But if you were doing it and is it having a huge impact on your business if you're not doing it right now? And I'm assuming if it makes that list, it’s going to make a difference.

[00:05:32] And the other one, what opportunities will come up if you get better at this whether you're outsourcing or doing it yourself?

[00:05:40] Matt Halloran:

It sounds to me like you've done some coaching this year, Mr. Kirk.

[00:05:45] Kirk Lowe:

Well, I would say, I know and respect a lot of business coaches. And I have a business with some dude who was a coach, so that rubs off. Lisa on operations is always [00:06:00] trying to organize how we approach stuff.

[00:06:04] Matt Halloran:

Well, and that's actually really why I wanted to bring it up.

[00:06:07] Kirk Lowe:

I've got a coach.

[00:06:08] Matt Halloran:

Yeah, and you have a coach, but the reason why I brought that up is just because that really goes to the whole outsourcing thing. And I just kind of put a bow on that and then we'll move on to the lessons, which is, professionals have coaches.

[00:06:20] That's it. That's just the reality. Professional baseball players, basketball players, every athlete, every professional CEO, all of those people have coaches. And with what Kirk just said there, you know, what can I be better at? What can I outsource? Part of what you should be outsourcing are those leadership ideas, business planning, marketing, cost benefit analysis of what you're doing, client experience, all of those things are things that you guys can outsource.

[00:06:49] It means that you're going to bring in a pro to do something that you're an amateur at. And if you do end up loving it and want to become a pro, that's something totally different. Now, thank you for the preface there, Kirk, but [00:07:00] we're going to dive into the meat and potatoes of the show now, which are the seven lessons.

[00:07:04] And we categorize these, everybody, in two different ways, little things and big things. Kirk, start with the little things.

[00:07:12] Kirk Lowe:

Yeah, the little things, we've got two here. And I think they're just as important as the big things. And we've learned that. The first one is self buy-in. I can't tell you how many times I see professionals or experts who have thought leadership who don't constantly talk about it with their audience.

[00:07:35] It's almost like they're not sure they want to invest everything, put all their eggs in the basket of them being a thought leader, whether it's a feeling like imposter, I'm acting like I'm an expert on my podcast, as an example, or my blog. But the reality is that the success, we see a lot of our clients and other advisors and experts having success with really owning their [00:08:00] thought leadership and feeling a lot of pride in it.

[00:08:04] And another part of that isn't just your thought leadership, it's actually your brand, or even your marketing. If you don't really love what you're doing, how you're doing it, and don't take a lot of pride in it, talk about it all the time, it's a problem. You need to fix that. You need to start, and you should think about it.

[00:08:22] You're really building hype for what you're doing. And think about this. If you don't talk about your podcast, you think your clients are going to care about your podcast? I don't think they are. It's a really big deal.

[00:08:36] Matt Halloran:

It is a big deal. Well, I do it. I'm going to personalize this because we went through the rebrand in February.

[00:08:43] And then launched our brand. Well, we went through the process. We launched in February. And Kirk, I can honestly tell you for the first time in my career, I am so utterly proud and excited and impressed and all [00:09:00] of that of our brand, our message, our communication, who we are, what we stand for, and it just all seems to have gelled and I don't ever feel like I'm being sales-y or braggadocious or anything along those lines.

[00:09:16] I'm just really proud of this. I love, Kirk, how you just said that if you're not proud of it, fix it. How do you get proud of who you are and what you do and what makes you unique and different? Gosh, if you're not proud of that, you're way behind. Your marketing isn't going to be great. You're very rarely going to get referrals, especially from existing clients and centers of influence.

[00:09:40] If you don't firmly believe who you are and what you do is great and fundamentally unique and different, then I think you're absolutely starting from a huge, you're starting not even on the field. You're not even on the field with other people.

[00:09:54] Kirk Lowe:

I think if you're not, it's a symbol or a sign that you need to fix it. [00:10:00]

[00:10:00] If you're not talking about your podcast all the time or your blog, or getting PR opportunities —

[00:10:07] Matt Halloran:

Video series, whatever. Yep.

[00:10:09] Kirk Lowe:

Yeah. Whatever it is, maybe it's because you don't feel like you're putting your heart and soul into it. If it's just like, if it's just a confidence thing, then you need to, you need to maybe need to get a coach to talk about it or just re-evaluate, but you need to be talking about those things.

[00:10:23] I did want to alert our audience. If you've been following us a long time, Matt makes up a lot of new words. And he just introduced me to a new one. I've never heard you say braggadocious before. No idea what it means, but I think it is beautiful. Is it actually a word?

[00:10:41] Matt Halloran:

I didn't make that one up, brother. That is a word.

[00:10:44] And it's actually a very well used word in poetry. Yeah. Look it up.

[00:10:48] Kirk Lowe:

I've never heard that. I thought I was going to have to add that to Matt's glossary of terms. Well, thank you.

[00:10:56] Matt Halloran:

You’re welcome.

[00:10:57] Kirk Lowe:

I'm guessing everybody else has learned a new [00:11:00] word there too, but anyway. So the next thing, the next little thing. And these are big things, but they're little things in how I think people think about them and talk about them.

[00:11:10] But the next one is word of mouth. I've read studies over the last couple of years that suggest that word of mouth marketing in financial services has taken a back seat to proactive digital marketing and advertising. And I did not write those surveys. I have nothing to do with the research.

[00:11:33] And I do feel like it comes from credible companies, but I really have a problem with the results suggesting the way I read them and the way they were put out into the world. I don't really, I just can't see that word of mouth marketing isn’t a way greater impact. The power of word of mouth still exists, even if marketers are telling you it doesn't.

[00:11:59] And [00:12:00] it could be that they're not telling you because it's harder to measure. And people like selling stuff. It's easier to sell stuff when they can say it's measurable. Branding companies have always had a struggle with this. I know because I ran one for 15, 16 years, and it's difficult when people want to know ROI, but I can tell you a lot of stories about branding successes that are very difficult to measure, but we're experiencing one right now.

[00:12:30] People come to us and are making decisions on working with us because they love our brand. Now, it's nice when they explicitly tell you that, but we understand some people don't even know that that was a part of the decision-making process. So they're not going to bring it up to you. So you're not going to be able to quantify it, but you can just feel it. Start is the pride.

[00:12:53] So, self buy-in. Self buy-in absolutely adds opportunities. If you're [00:13:00] not talking about your marketing, your thought leadership, with every client, prospect, center of influence, peer that you meet, then you're missing out on word of mouth opportunities. Yeah. You have to be excited so they will be. So, this is not far off from self buy-in, but word of mouth marketing is huge.

[00:13:21] I wonder how many of our listeners actually have a referral process in place at the end or the start of every meeting or communication that you have with a client, prospect, center of influence, peer, or even co-worker. Co-workers, that's a big one. I can't believe I didn't have that in my first list. If you don't have a process for building hype and keeping everybody up to date on your thought leadership and your marketing, that is actually going to be a big thing.

[00:13:53] It is. So you need to think about how to integrate all of that and have processes and protocols in [00:14:00] place to do so. That would be a huge win for you in 2022 and moving forward, if you can do that. If you're already doing that, congratulations.

[00:14:10] Matt Halloran:

It's interesting that you bring all of that up because we didn't actually plan this ahead of time, but I was just talking to Bill Cates.

[00:14:15] So, we run Bill Cates’ podcast, The Top Advisor Podcast. It's all about all of his brilliance over the many, many years that he's been involved. And that is one of the biggest deliverables that you get from utilizing his coaching program. You do learn how to put those things in place and most importantly, you learn how to say them so that it's comfortable for you.

[00:14:36] These aren't scripts that you can have somebody else write for you and then you just do them. They gotta come from your heart — and you guys can't see this, I'm pointing at my chest — because a lot of you stay in your heads so much with this stuff. And once you get out of your head and start communicating who you are, what you do, and what makes you unique and different from your heart, everything changes.

[00:14:56] But you can't make that move, Kirk Lowe, [00:15:00] unless you firmly believe in what you have and you're proud of it.

[00:15:03] Kirk Lowe:

Yeah. I just remembered that we should probably tell our audience or listeners that Bill Cates has a course inside of our PodRocket Academy. And I believe it's in the paid section.

[00:15:15] Matt Halloran:

It is in the paid section. It is in the Intermediate section.

[00:15:17] Kirk Lowe:

The intermediate section, which is $99 a month.

[00:15:20] But Bill has a course there and we were pretty excited to get him to build that for you guys. If that's something you're interested in, I think it's a really great opportunity to experience Bill's brilliance and his processes. It could actually be a good way, I don't know if we've ever talked about this with Bill because you speak to him more often than I do.

[00:15:40] That could be a great segue or a great way to touch or taste what he does and see if his program is something that you want to buy into in the future.

[00:15:51] Matt Halloran:

I'm sorry. You just said something. I am going to pause you there, dude, because I just recorded some videos on this for the academy specifically. And we have something in the free [00:16:00] section that's really applicable to what you just talked about here, which is the brand basics worksheet.

[00:16:05] If you sign up for the free version of the PodRocket Academy, you have access to the brand basics worksheet. And it asks you some of the questions that Kirk was just poking you with. Are you proud of it? What would you want to say? And it really is a great pulse on how you can check where your pulse is with your brand specifically.

[00:16:24] And you know what? I'll make sure that the team puts the link into the show notes here for not only, well, we should probably give Bill a quick shout out, which we did. We'll put his links in there too. But also for that free PodRocket brand basics worksheet. I'll make sure that the team puts it in there.

[00:16:39] Now, we need to go. So, these were the little things, which weren't very little. Let's talk about the big things. I want everybody to understand this isn't just what we've learned in the world of marketing. This is what we are putting into practice here at ProudMouth. So, we thought, really importantly. About two, three years ago, Kirk and I sat down [00:17:00] with Lisa and the executive team and our team. We wanted to make sure that we were truly going to walk the walk.

[00:17:04] What we do, we wanted to make sure it was going to be truly successful so that when we brought it to our clients, we had that pride and faith in what we had built and offered to our clients. And I really do think these five big things are huge things that we have implemented into our business.

[00:17:22] And we know that it will be successful if you implement it too. Kirk. Number one. Go.

[00:17:26] Kirk Lowe:

So, the first thing is mindset. I'm not sure enough people understand what marketing really is, what good marketing is, what it can do for their business. You know, maybe some people are rolling their eyes right now listening to this.

[00:17:40] But I can't tell you how many people think that marketing is simply how many leads you are getting. That mind, the mentality that particularly the financial services industry has had. I don't know as much about legal and accounting because those two are the ones that we're starting to get some traction. [00:18:00]

[00:18:02] The idea that if it's not filling my pipeline right now right away, it is a huge mindset detriment to pretty much most people that I've ever met in this business in my 21, 22 years in financial marketing. And I can't say it enough. So, nothing happens quickly as you want it to, and there's nothing wrong with that. I know it takes money.

[00:18:24] I think I commented on a post by one of our friends, Jack Martin, the other day. And I basically talked about how long it takes to have success. I talked about a couple of people. I'll just use one of them. The example of Joshua Brown, The Reformed Broker. He was at this for, well, now it's probably like 14 or 15 years since he started his blog The Reformed Broker. And it took him a decade to build what he built.

[00:18:51] And everybody looks at him. Now, you can accelerate that if you do things the right way, and you do enough things. It takes money to [00:19:00] build, and it takes consistency and commitment. To do the right things, you have to have a foundation. You can't just go out there and do bad marketing and throw more money at it and try to fill a pipeline quickly.

[00:19:11] You're just interrupting people. They're transactional opportunities. They don't work. I want to paint this picture for you. I don't know how many times you've done this. I spent so much time on this. I can't remember how many times I've communicated to you. We're going to do a whole show on this, but I'm going to give you a quick little look at this.

[00:19:33] Think about a straight line in your mind or you draw it on a piece of paper. On the far left, you write skeptics. In the far right, you write fans. The truth is that good marketing, you think about that as an influence continuum. That's what I like to call it. If you think about good marketing, good marketing should move you to the right all the time.

[00:19:52] It should be getting better all the time. Moving you from the left to the right is about how many good things you are doing [00:20:00] to grow your influence. If you're not doing a lot, you'll never have enough influence to get to where the person I just described, Joshua Brown. You won't be able to get there because you're not doing enough stuff to build momentum.

[00:20:16] I'm not going to get into some other concepts until I do a whole show on this because it will get really deep quickly. But just think about skeptics and fans. Every business I know wants to have a stable full of fans. That is what great marketing does. It takes time to build fans. It's about achieving credibility.

[00:20:37] What you gotta do is find a way to scale that credibility so you build enough fans that you get a supply of fans in your pipeline. A supply of skeptics in your pipeline, any marketing agency can do that for you. They're mostly a waste of time. It's a huge turn on your marketing, your sales system. [00:21:00] It is a lot of waste of time, and we know how valuable your time is because you just paid for somebody to go do some lead gen because you don't have any time for it.

[00:21:09] Figure out what kind of business you're going to grow. If you just need some quick leads right now to get some momentum, because that’s what you've told yourself, then you can figure that out. If you want to grow a business, and you want to have an opportunity in three to five years to have a systematic way of talking to more and more ideal opportunities, you gotta pay the price.

[00:21:33] And you got to stick with it.

[00:21:37] Matt Halloran:

Well, you just teed up the next one and I'm just going to take this real quick, which is time. You have to trust the process. And that's really where most of you don't do marketing well is because you don't trust the process. And I'm going to harken back to somebody.

[00:21:52] I was just talking to our good friend Matt Ackerman at Integrated Partners. We were talking about somebody who we both knew 15 years ago, [00:22:00] Michael Kitces. Michael knew that if he stayed doing what he needed to do, writing that unbelievably detailed blog every week over time, it was going to pay off. And look at the guy now.

[00:22:14] People beg him to show up at conferences when early on, he was just trying to get his thought leadership out there. He stuck to the knitting, which also means this. You all say this, I'm going to use all of your financial advisors’ words against you here. Be prepared for this. You might need to sit down. You all say to your clients all the time.

[00:22:35] It's about time in the market, not timing the market. What all of you were doing generally with your marketing is you're trying to time the market. What's the next shiny thing? What's the next stock or bond? Mutual fund, ETF, cryptocurrency, whatever you need to chase. You guys hear this from your clients all the time. And all of you just sit back and you get so frustrated.

[00:22:55] I hear about it all the time. Oh, I'm so tired of them talking about this, Matt. Why don't they just understand that [00:23:00] we have a plan in place and it's a five-year plan? We don't have to even do anything when the market's volatile. Marketing is no different. Stick with the plan. But the problem is, most of you hire companies that have no plan. They have no plan because they're going to just try to get you those leads as quickly as possible and not build long-term relationships.

[00:23:21] And finally, my last thing, the last time I was at a broker dealer conference, there were big people on stage. And the big people on stage, they're all sitting there. And I remember somebody asking them a question and the question was, how did you become so successful? And there were three things that they always have in common.

[00:23:40] Number one, they have a niche. Every time, every one of them. Niche. Number two, they have a very, very specific thing that they do outside of their niche that is fundamentally unique and different that they are, like Kirk said, proud of. And then number three is they have a long term marketing plan. They have a business plan [00:24:00] for 15 years out.

[00:24:02] And if you're looking at those people on the main stage, you want to be one of those someday. You need to start doing that, which leads us to the next thing, Kirk, which you're going to jump into. Budget. I can't wait to hear you talk about this because I talk about this all the time too. So I want to hear your thoughts.

[00:24:17] Kirk Lowe:

I was listening to a podcast the other day and they talked about the problem with humanity. It's the same problem here that we don't want to put the work into something that we can't see the results from much sooner. And it's a problem. Every human has that problem. The trick is, how do we get outside of their heads?

[00:24:32] How do we get outside of what holds us back as humans from being a better species? And building a better tomorrow, building a better business, building a better relationship, everything in our lives that that humanness comes out. It kind of wrecks it, and the people who find their ways around that seem to have a lot of success.

[00:24:55] Yeah. Maybe even more happiness. Different things here, but I won't get too [00:25:00] deep here. But absolutely. Our five big things here, you've already kind of alluded to a whole bunch of them. So I'm just going to rhyme off the list here. We'll go back to them. Mindset is the big one. Time, which Matt just talked a lot about.

[00:25:14] He talked about niche and one of the cool things about Michael Kitces that I don't think people realize when they think about, yeah, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. It is that Michael puts everything he has into his thought leadership. Yeah. And that's how you become as famous. Now, I will say this.

[00:25:39] I don't think you need to be as much of an authority or seen as much. Actually, Michael Kitces is more of a celebrity in financial services.

[00:25:44] Matt Halloran:

Really, he is. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:25:47] Kirk Lowe:

And I'll talk to you about all the stages of influence on another podcast. It's going to be really cool. I hope you join that. When you see that come out, please listen to it. Yeah.

[00:25:53] I spent four to six months building this. A lot of it's actually been learned [00:26:00] just in our business and our podcast. Yeah. One of the cool benefits of podcasts is you develop your thought leadership as you talk. Matt says things. I say things. Guests say things. Actually, our clients say things. Scale your credibility, you know, that's one of our favorite things to talk about because people get it.

[00:26:16] That was one of our clients who said that. Scale your credibility. Grateful for that.

[00:26:23] Matt Halloran:

Yeah, we did touch on a niche real quick. Yeah, Go ahead.

[00:26:25] Kirk Lowe:

Niche. And then, budget. All right. This is a big one. Budget is really, are you actually putting the money and the resources into, not just money, because sometimes it's your time, your team's time.

[00:26:40] Are you putting the resources into making this a reality? Three to five years down the road, you see this. Or 15 years, whatever it is. I want to be like this. Are you actually committed to putting the time and putting the resources into making that happen? And the last thing, when you get this thing humming along, first, you got to build your foundation, right?

[00:26:59] You got to [00:27:00] have a great story. You gotta have good content marketing. It's gotta be you. Authentic. You gotta have a good website. You gotta have good social media. You have all these foundational things set up and then you start tweaking. You start adding little things when you get some momentum. Can you add email marketing?

[00:27:13] Can you start retargeting ads? Can you start boosting awareness of your content? Hey, this podcast did really well. Can we boost it? You start thinking about little things like that. When you can find these synergies, that's what I'm talking about here. Synergies. Those can take it to a whole other level. I guarantee you, Michael Kitces, Joshua Brown, years ago, got to this place where they're having enough success where they could start investing more and more. And that just takes it off to a whole other level.

[00:27:42] And that's how you get to celebrity status when you can start finding all these synergies in your content marketing. For example, one of the things that we do is, in our business, we take a podcast where you can do for yourself, but we turn the table there. You can do for yourself as take your content marketing, turn to all kinds of little [00:28:00] pieces, and push it out.

[00:28:01] There's so much synergy in that. Take one thing, like this podcast, for instance, cut it up into some pieces, push out on social media numerous times, and then, you're flooding the market with all your brilliance and your ideas and your relevance to their world. And that value, they're seeing it all the time. That starts to scale your credibility.

[00:28:24] So, that's a very synergistic way to look at this. Take one thing, turn it into a whole bunch of little things that you didn't have to do. You paid somebody else to do it and make it work. So, another thing, and maybe you can talk about this because I know you love talking about it, which is, how much should you actually be spending or investing?

[00:28:43] That's going to be a big thing for everybody. It's like, okay, well what's actually realistic or practical for me to do?

[00:28:50] Matt Halloran:

Well, I can. We were just talking about this guy earlier today. We've got a client right now who, when he was going through our onboarding process, I asked him, how much of [00:29:00] your budget do you spend on marketing?

[00:29:01] And he said, 25%. And I was like, okay, dude.

[00:29:08] Kirk Lowe:

I didn't know that.

[00:29:09] Matt Halloran:

Oh yeah. He spends 25. The guy we were talking about earlier today. 25%. And I was like, okay, dude, I'm never going to convince anybody to spend 25. He's like, no, Matt, you do need to convince everybody to spend 25% because we grow so fast and we are continuing because we're reinvesting into one part of financial services that very few other businesses do, which is marketing. But he is an outlier.

[00:29:31] Now, mind you, he's bringing in about a hundred million in new assets a year, which is insane. That's really his business model, but I want everybody to take a much easier mathematical number, which is 10%. It's really seven to 14%, but 10%. If you're making $500,000 a year, you should be spending $50,000 on marketing.

[00:29:54] That's 10% of gross, not net. Those people who I was talking about sitting on the main stage, Kirk. [00:30:00] All of those people are easily spending 10, if not more, percent, because they are reinvesting in their business. And the more you put in at the beginning, the less you have to spend later because of everything Kirk had said earlier. It's all about momentum, right?

 [00:30:16] Kirk Lowe:

We're over 15% here at ProudMouth on marketing spend. And I suspect that's going to go up.

[00:30:24] Matt Halloran:

Well, it's because we're also in a massive growth phase here. But if you're a financial advisor and you're trying to get to that perfect practice of a hundred to 150 clients, each of them who have a million dollars with you at 1%, and you're do kind of living the life, you might want to load on the front end so that you can do maintenance.

[00:30:41] By the way, and this is a total side tangent, you get mad at me if you want to cause I'm totally going to chase a rabbit here. One of the huge benefits of what we believe in from a marketing perspective isn't just filling your pipeline with leads. It's maintaining relationships with existing clients and client retention.

[00:30:58] A lot of [00:31:00] are looking at marketing, as Kirk had said right at the top of the show, is A plus B equals leads. But what you're not understanding is, great marketing gets you a greater share of wallet, makes you more referable, deepens relationships with existing clients, client retention, and most importantly, the opportunity to really get referrals from CPAs.

[00:31:18] And I have to go back one thing and then we'll wrap this up cause it's the time thing. I was just talking to a really good friend of ours who runs a coaching program that helps financial advisors build relationships with CPAs. One of the best out there. In fact, he's one of the biggest producers in his specific broker dealer, whatever, that's neither here nor there.

[00:31:37] But one of the things that we were talking about yesterday is how long it takes, because advisers will join this coaching program and they will specifically say, gosh, I need to see results in six months. And they're like, oh, it's not going to happen because here's what you guys don't know. All of you who want estate planning attorneys and CPAs, they go to conferences too.

[00:31:56] And what happens at those conferences is those huge CPAs are onstage. [00:32:00] And they're like, yeah, we get referrals from financial advisors all the time. And they're like, well, what do you do? Well, because they'll say, do you give referrals to those financial advisors? And they will say, no. The only advisors that we give referral to are the ones who have built a relationship with us and proven their worth over time.

[00:32:18] And that takes 24 months. So, if you look at that, some of these, winning with CPAs or all of these other programs that are out there, Quantum Growth Consulting, which is the organization I'm talking about there. They are experts at helping you build relationships with CPAs, and they say it's 12 to 24 months, if you do everything that you say.

[00:32:35] But could you imagine, Kirk, if you were a financial advisor and you never had to try to get referrals again? And we're getting to this stage, everybody, here at ProudMouth that we have so much buzz and we have deposited so much thought leadership into the karmic pool of financial services professional wisdom that people [00:33:00] now just call us.

[00:33:02] And that feels pretty damn good.

[00:33:05] Kirk Lowe:

Yeah, they call you.

[00:33:06] Matt Halloran:

Well, they call me, I'll call you. But they connect with you on LinkedIn. And dude, look at the interactions you get on your posts, but yes, they definitely call me

[00:33:14] Kirk Lowe:

The value of having a good brand, offering up your expertise, wisdom, whatever you want to call it as generous as I'd like to think we do.

[00:33:22] We created an academy with free courses there. Yes, there are some paid courses, but I think it's still pretty generous. So, what we charge for what you get. We just started mastermind groups for podcasters. So, for those, we have more seasoned podcasters or people who've already started, but hopefully down the road, we can offer that to, you know, want to start a podcast.

[00:33:45] But right now, we're trying to give back to you guys. And we're trying to create as much value as we can. And I'll be honest, there's more value coming. We've got a really cool influence scoring assessment coming. It's [00:34:00] really neat. It's very useful. It's really going to give you a lot of insight to some of the things that we're talking about.

[00:34:06] Mindset. Are you actually doing the things that you think you're doing? Are you doing enough? We have a long form version of that. That is probably going to take four to six months to build a system around, but we're really excited about stuff we're doing. And we're not doing this to make more money. We're doing this to add more value. Obviously, adding more value makes us more money.

[00:34:27] That's the way it goes. But starting with helping everybody out here, helping them get to where you want to go in your business. And hopefully, you found this helpful. And if you did, please let us know. On iTunes, if you listen to us on iTunes, write a review. If you love this episode, please let everybody know.

[00:34:46] Heck, even tell them in that review. If you want to just reach out to Matt or I through LinkedIn, please do. We're pretty easy to find. Kirk Lowe. Matt Halloran. Type in LinkedIn, you'll find us. [00:35:00] We're connected to so many people in the industry that we should easily come up as a first or second connection for you.

[00:35:06] Yeah, I hope we're a first connection with you, but if we're not, please do that. We're also on Twitter. If you want to go check out our PodRocket Academy, PodRocketAcademy.com. If you want to check out our company,ProudMouth.com. Any feedback, if you want us to talk about things that you haven't heard us talk about, please do.

[00:35:25] If you are looking for help building your stuff and you don't have anybody to talk to, if you join the PodRocket academy and you just sign up for the intermediate, which is $99 a month, or if you pay for a year, it’s 79 a month. We have office hours every week. And Julia on our team, we call her the librarian of our academy, really our intellectual property, all of our resources.

[00:35:47] She knows what every course is. Every resource. She also takes requests for new courses. So, if there's something that we're not doing that you want to learn more about, we do [00:36:00] have probably 15 to 20 courses in there right now. Our plan is to have 50 or 60 within the next year or two. Do not use that as an excuse not to go in there and wait a year. Get in there, get started.

[00:36:14] There's some really wonderful, our foundational stuff there. So, get in there and do that. Give us feedback on it. We're in this together. I hope you have a great 2022. I don't know when this podcast is coming out, but probably in December or January. Wishing you guys all the best. Thanks so much for being listeners. We appreciate it.

[00:36:34] Matt Halloran:

Thanks for listening to the Top Advisor Marketing Podcast brought to you by ProudMouth. If you want to know more about how you can be your own loud, visit us at ProudMouth.com and sign up for the PodRocket Academy. Through courses and office hours led by professional podcast producers and digital marketers, you will learn everything you need to know to become the trusted subject matter expert you were meant to be.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.