Ep24 - Rethink: Can you buy Marketing Success? – Featuring Megan Carpenter

FiComm Partners CEO and co-founder Megan Carpenter joins Adam and Derek to answer a deceptively simple question: can advisors buy their way to marketing success? Megan explains why marketing cannot be purchased off the shelf or replicated overnight, and instead walks through how advisors should narrow their focus, get clear on their ideal client and differentiators, and commit to one channel rather than chasing every tactic at once. The conversation is a practical wake-up call for advisors who conflate referrals with marketing and are unprepared for a future where organic growth depends on real marketing discipline.

• Why marketing success can't simply be bought
• The shift from a sales culture to an advice culture
• Why referrals aren't the same thing as marketing
• Getting clear on vision, differentiators, and target audience
• Narrowing focus instead of chasing every marketing tactic
• Preparing organic growth strategy for a flat market

Full timestamped transcript.

[00:00:00] H. Adam Holt: Welcome to Rethink the Financial Advisor Podcast. My name is Adam Holt.

[00:00:06] Derek Notman: And this is Derek Notman. We are your hosts, both veteran advisors and fintech CEOs who challenge the status quo, question everything, and have fun doing it. Hear honest commentary on the challenges facing advisors today. And be part of a community where we can all rethink the profession.

Now on to our episode.

Adam. Adam, my man, can you buy marketing success?

[00:00:37] H. Adam Holt: I, I think so. I just think it's gonna cost a lot of money, more than I wanna pay. Do you think so?

[00:00:46] Derek Notman: So actually, the way you answered that, I would say yes and no. If you have a lot of money and you're huge, yes, you can buy it. If you're like most advisors, no, I do not think you can buy marketing success.

[00:00:59] H. Adam Holt: I think most advisors haven't even been taught how to do marketing. Well, we were taught how to actually- Well, no, no, no What? Tell me. They

[00:01:05] Derek Notman: were. They were. Okay. But that was called prospecting.

[00:01:09] H. Adam Holt: Oh.

[00:01:10] Derek Notman: They were taught to cold kile- call and, uh, walk and talk, and all that kind of stuff. That is not marketing, by the way, my friend.

Network.

[00:01:17] H. Adam Holt: Don't forget networking.

[00:01:18] Derek Notman: Oh, yeah, networking- Remember networking ... and BNI meetings, right? You

[00:01:21] H. Adam Holt: know? That's right.

[00:01:22] Derek Notman: Um, that is not marketing, at least in the context of what we are talking about today. So, so Adam, no, I, I don't think you can. I think I would say that that is the general rule. However, there are some that can

[00:01:38] H. Adam Holt: I think it's an interesting question, and the question came up because, you know, both of us spend so much time in the marketing environment of how are advisors going to generate new business.

I, I had the opportunity to speak at T3 last week, and one of the slides that I put together was there's been a huge transition from the sales culture to the advice culture. We all know that, right? We've talked about that in prior podcasts. There's salespeople, there's salespeople who advise, there's advisors that sell, and then as Kitsis said, there's advicers, people who are truly fee only, non-sales based, won't sell a product, stay away from it.

But what's interesting about this, we see a lot of the advicers, a lots of advisors, those that lead with advice, really spend a lot of time on customer retention because it's an annuity style business, right? You get revenue for time, whereas the sales culture focused on customer acquisition. The interesting thing about that dichotomy is that both of them do some form of analysis, needs analysis to justify their value proposition.

But the advicers, the advise... those that lead with advice are really poor at the marketing side. Wouldn't you agree with that?

[00:02:51] Derek Notman: Yeah, they, they are. Um, including myself, um, at least initially. I was terrible at it, and I think most advisors are. Um, but doesn't have to be that way.

[00:03:03] H. Adam Holt: It doesn't have to be that way.

[00:03:04] Derek Notman: So how do, how do, how do you find success in marketing? Maybe that's the question we should, we should be asking because I, again, I do not think you can buy it, uh, the majority of the time.

[00:03:15] H. Adam Holt: Well, there's no question you have to start here. So, you know, as what, what we normally do everybody is that we, we went out and said, "Well, who's, who's the expert in this area?"

And so we wanted to introduce everybody to Megan Carpenter. Now, if you don't know Megan, you probably haven't been paying attention too much about what's going on in the media, especially social media space. Megan is the CEO and co-founder of FiCom Partners, and they've been around actually for a good number of years.

'Cause I knew about them, gosh, maybe five, six years ago. They're an award-winning marketing agency for RIA firms and financial advisors. Uh, they're sh- you know, top four industry disruptor in 2020 by Wealth Management Magazine, uh, or wealthmanagement.com, I should say. Investment News 40 Under 40, and she's also speaking everywhere.

If you've ever been out there in the circuit, you run into Megan. She's great. Got a great energy, personality. Derek and I both know her, and we asked her to be on the podcast So with that, let's hear our conversation with Megan Carpenter.

[00:04:17] Derek Notman: So Megan, uh, you've had an unbelievable career

[00:04:19] H. Adam Holt: and impact in financial services with touching thousands of advisors, hundreds of enterprises with over, I think, 20 people working for Vicom today.

What is your unique perspective on the advice market today?

[00:04:33] Megan Carpenter: You know, I believe that, I believe two things. One is that the future is human, and two, the future is digital. So I think when you consider those two beliefs, I'm super bullish on the advice industry because really those are two things that every financial advisor can absolutely capitalize on in their own business.

So when you think about the types of relationships that financial advisors build with the clients they serve, the reason that most advisors are super successful is because they have this innate, inherent ability to create and cultivate really meaningful relationships. So looking ahead and seeing that the future is actually much more human than we may have predicted in recent years, I think that that bodes very well for this market.

And then also with the future being digital, that just speaks to the opportunities that advisors have today to really augment their human relationships by getting their content out in front of the right people at the right time in a way that's so much more efficient and successful than in years past.

So I think that the opportunity is really huge for those advisors that are sort of willing to think new school about how they approach building a brand and connecting with people.

[00:05:40] Derek Notman: Yeah, that resonates what Adam and I have s- talked about numerous times with lots of other guests and ourselves. That's-- I love that.

I mean, it's just further validation. So for our advisors listening, please listen, please pay attention. This is what's happening. Uh, Meg, Megan- Meg. I prefer that. Meg, okay. Um, what is the missing opportunity or challenge that you think advisors are not addressing or even are aware of?

[00:06:10] Megan Carpenter: Yeah, I think the m- the challenge that most advisors are feeling today, and I believe will start to feel much more acutely in coming years, is that marketing is going to become the primary driver of organic growth for advisors.

And many advisors will lump referrals into marketing. And there's absolutely opportunities for your marketing efforts to augment your referral process, but referrals come from your client experience, and it's a very well-timed introduction from a raving fan, and that actually can't be replicated in the way that...

or I don't believe it can be replicated in the way that many people in the industry will tell you that it can. And so what advisors have really focused on for organic growth in prior years is those referrals, and organic growth has also been driven just by market. And the, you know, what we've been experiencing in the last ten-plus years in this extended bull market.

And so I think that what we're seeing and what we're sort of predicting is that with who knows what's gonna happen in the market, we don't know, um, but also with the data that's showing that the frequency of referrals is actually slowing down, what we're seeing is that advisors need to really have a proven marketing engine built within their business to drive organic growth.

And that's important for a lot of reasons, but one is when you're thinking about all of the capital investments that are coming into this business, private equity money, et cetera, that's just flooding the market, they're, they're buying a cash flow stream, right? And so in order to, to keep up with that and to sort of get to the growth models that these PE firms are building into their valuations, advisors are gonna have to be able to continue to drive growth.

And if the market's flat, and if referrals are flat, where's that gonna come from? It's gotta come from your marketing efforts. So I think that that's a challenge that some of the really forward-thinking advisors are way ahead of the game on, but the majority of the industry, just generally speaking, doesn't have an answer yet for how to have marketing be the primary driver of organic growth, and I think that that's gonna be a challenge.

It's an opportunity for those that have already figured it out, um, and an opportunity for those that wanna get ahead of it, um, but it will be a challenge.

[00:08:28] Derek Notman: It certainly will be. And would you agree that if an advisor's listening to you right now, and they're saying, "Okay, Meg, I agree, I gotta start marketing," it's not like a light switch, right?

It's not something that they just build overnight, and all of a sudden, all these leads start coming in from their digital marketing. This is some-something that takes a while, correct?

[00:08:47] Megan Carpenter: Certainly not a light switch, Derek. It's also not something you can buy, um- Right ... which is, is another misnomer or misunderstanding in this industry.

Um, you know, there's lists that are available, there are companies out there that are sort of killing the lead gen game with WiserAdvisor and SmartAsset and all the types, those types of things. But you really can't buy marketing success, and it doesn't happen overnight. And so really where you need to start is you need to understand sort of your, what is your vision for your business?

How does that connect to your values? And in there are your differentiators and reasons that a specific prospect would choose to do business with you. So really it's about starting with that vision. Why do you do what you do? Who do you do it for? What is the change that you're trying to create? And getting really clear on that.

That sometimes in and of itself can take time because it's just not something that advisors have done in that way. It's very different than answering the question of like, how, what's your assets under management? What types of services do you offer? Those things are table stakes. Those are not inspiring, you know, uh, statements that are gonna inspire somebody to reach out and connect with you.

So it's really about getting clear on, you know, your vision and aligning that across your business. It's also getting really clear on who your actual target audience is and focusing on the smallest addressable market. It's about going narrow instead of going wide. Um, we find that the advisors that are most successful from a marketing perspective have a really clearly defined market, and not necessarily a target market it, m- as you would think about it in the old school ways, which is like, "I only work with dentists or doctors."

That works too if you have a natural connection to that market. But we're seeing a lot of success with advisors who are getting really narrow on the psychographic of the type of client that they wanna work with and focusing all of their content around that. And then third, it's about defining how are you gonna measure success, what does success look like for you?

And it's not really always about ROI, um, which we can talk about if we've got time. And then the last thing is just start experimenting. Focus on one thing. Do that one thing really well. Listen, learn, iterate, and build. Um, and so if you're not doing it, and, and to answer your question, it's, you can't do that overnight, but you can do it.

And you can actually do a lot of it on your own if you just know the process and you stay committed to it. Um, but that's what we've seen over working with thousands of advisors for over twenty years. Like, that's the process that works to get started with organic growth, um, marketing for organic growth.

[00:11:26] H. Adam Holt: I think you did a great job kind of actually framing out the next question, which was really what, what are the next steps? Are there, are there any tactical recommendations that you would make to advisors beyond what you just shared that they can take action on now? If they were to just literally just write down a list, what, what's the next step for me to, to execute on some of the great insight you've had?

I

[00:11:47] Megan Carpenter: think that the, the, the easiest tactical next step is to really focus on, like narrow your focus, and not try to do all things from a marketing perspective. When we have conversations with advisors, it's a lot of like, you know, "Should I be doing SEO because Michael Kitces talks about how powerful SEO is?"

Or, "Should I be doing social media because I see all of these great advisors out there on social media?" And it's very easy to get distracted by all of the things that you could do. You've got talking heads in the industry, you know, might consider me one of those, that are saying all these things, and it can get really distracting.

And so I would just say like cut out the noise and get really clear on who you're trying to target and why, and pick one thing. So if you know who that end client is that's your ideal client, where are they going for information? Go there, give them information that's valuable, which doesn't have to be challenging.

You just think about like what are the questions that are keeping them up at night, answer those questions. That's where I would start. I think advisors can... There's so many of us out talking in the industry about do this and do that, and this works and this doesn't, and it can get really confusing. And so I would say just like keep it simple.

It can be far more intuitive than many people in the industry will lead you to believe

[00:13:00] Derek Notman: That's almost a reflection of just knowing yourself, right?

[00:13:02] Megan Carpenter: Right, which actually is quite hard to do. Yeah,

[00:13:05] Derek Notman: a lot easier said than done.

[00:13:07] Megan Carpenter: Yeah, yeah.

[00:13:08] Derek Notman: Well, A- Adam and I love controversy. What... You know, you're on your soapbox right now.

We've got, you know, our listeners, our audience here. Uh, what would you like to say to them? Is there anything that you think that really needs to be heard? Something that, that bugs you, that think that, that you think needs to change, that you want us all to rethink? W- you know, floor is yours.

[00:13:29] Megan Carpenter: Yeah. Well, there's two things.

I think one I already mentioned, which is you can't buy marketing success. You know? There's no technology platform out there, no content library, which I just, I've never seen those work, by the way, at all. Um, there's no consultant out there, practice management consultant, marketing consultant, that is going to solve all of your problems from a marketing perspective.

So I think advisors really need to get clearer on their involvement for success. So there are businesses like ours that will help you to get there, but you have to be fully bo- fully invested, bought into the outcomes, and you have to be a driver of that success. It's your intellectual capital and your heart that's gonna get you marketing success.

You just can't buy that. So that's one thing. Um, and then the second thing I think I would say is there are so many advisors that we have conversations with that will come into one of our first calls and say, "You know, we're doing something really unique, and I want to let other advisors in my market know so that maybe they might wanna sell me their business if they're close to retirement."

And so many advisors believe, and I love this about advisors because it speaks to their passion, they believe that they're the only ones that are doing it or that what they're doing is really unique. And I don't mean to say that what they're doing is not unique because it always is. It's just there often what's missing is sort of the broader context of what a competitive market it is to recruit or acquire or merge with other advisors.

And so I think when we're hearing from advisors this question of, like, "How do I market to other advisors?" We would say don't market to other advisors at all. If you're recruiting or if you're in the M&A space or you wanna be in the M&A game, you don't need to market to advisors to market to advisors. What you need to do is build a really incredible brand that another advisor can see and inspire to be and then wanna be a part of.

And if you can do that really well, then you'll get the phone calls of somebody in your market that says, "Hey, I see your brand. I'm really drawn to it." Have you ever thought about partnering or merging or, you know, those types of things? So I feel like that is frustrating to me because I know how much time advisors can burn on building sales collateral and, like, marketing to local advisors, and they're competing against all of the global financial institutions and all of the leading national and regional RIA platforms that are spending millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to do the same thing.

So I would just say if, if recruiting advisors or M&A are part of your business plan, don't market to that. Just build a really great brand that you're proud of that's attracting ideal clients, and in that, the ideal potential advisors will come too.

[00:16:12] Derek Notman: That's great. I mean, it sound... it's almost like your same advice you're giving to advisors to bring on clients.

[00:16:17] Megan Carpenter: It's the exact same.

[00:16:18] Derek Notman: Yeah.

[00:16:19] Megan Carpenter: Yeah. You don't have to have a specialized message- Yeah ... I really don't think. Now, when they come in to the conversation, do you need to be able to demonstrate your process? Do you need to be able to demonstrate? Absolutely. Most advisors today are not trying to bring on more than one, maybe two advisors a year, and so you don't need to spend a ton on that.

Like, just maybe have a deck that walks through, like, "Here are our tech partners, here's the custodians that we work with, here's our service model, here's our service team." Like, put together a deck, but you can do that yourself. You don't need to spend a ton of money building that out. I think all of the marketing investment, um, and time that's also going in from a sweat equity perspective should really be focused on building a brand for the consumer and knowing that the advisors will be able to come because they see it, and they wanna be a part of it.

[00:17:08] H. Adam Holt: That's an interesting hook. I wonder, 'cause w- if you pro- you notice, sometimes we, we cr- we try to create a title hook for this, um, webinar or this whatever it's called, podcast, where we tend to go a little bit edgy, somewhat controversial, and then we tie back in our interview that we're doing. I'm kind...

We're off-air now. Like, we're- Yeah ... we've got way enough content here.

[00:17:29] Announcer: Yeah.

[00:17:30] H. Adam Holt: Mm-hmm. What do you think from your marketing perspective is a good hook where we tend to say rethink something versus something, or a challenging question like, like we just had Aaron Klein recently who said something, uh, is your, um, are you the risk of being complacent w- featuring Aaron Klein, 'cause he's so obviously big on risk, right?

So is there something that you would like or think that we could use, think about it, that is a fundamental question that we always open every podcast with, with, "Derek, what's this? What's the answer to this question?" Like, and then well, we ask Megan, or we ask Meg, right? And, and so is there something that kind of sticks out to you as a, as a core question that you think your audience needs to address or answer?

Maybe we've already touched on it probably.

[00:18:21] Megan Carpenter: Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I mean, I obviously would love to your perspective, whatever. It's your podcast, so whatever you guys want to run with I'll totally support. I- Mm-hmm ... I do think that there is a big misunderstanding in the market, w- especially with all of the talking heads out there, that you can buy your way to marketing success.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. And we get a lot of the advisors, and I'm not actually speaking to like the national and regional RAs. I don't know who your audience is. Mm. But my assumption is that like they've got it figured out or they have a department. And if they don't, they'll come and work with a company like FICOM, but they have way bigger budgets.

So like I always speak to the end advisor, and I get frustrated when there's the like tech platforms out there that say, you know, they'll talk about like increasing web traffic and email open rates and conversion ratios and all the things, and advisors get really misled. They're like, "Okay, if I sign up with- XYZ tech platform-

[00:19:16] Announcer: Yeah

[00:19:17] Megan Carpenter: everything's gonna be fixed. Mm-hmm. And none of those tech platforms, by the way, have, because it's not their business model, but they don't really have robust consulting offerings to help advisors figure it out. And so in my experience, advisors will spend some money, and there might be some im- like immediate success because they've never done email marketing and now they're doing it, or they've never done social and now they're doing it.

So there's that early success, but it doesn't stick because there's no heart-centered human content that comes out of it. And so it ne- it doesn't... What ends up happening is whatever the advisor's putting out there isn't resonating with their end client. So that's to me, like, where I wish more people in the industry would be honest about how hard marketing is, and how much it really takes, like, a committed effort from the advisor to do it.

And, like, Tina Powell, I love. She and I are always, I feel like, banging the same drum. Like, she'll get up and say how hard social media is, where other people will be like, "You know, just get on Twitter and post a few times a week, and, like, you'll see it happen," and it doesn't happen that way. No. And so I think advisors get super frustrated because they're like, "Wait, I thought because I signed up for Snappy or FMG or Broadridge or Hearsay that, like, my business is gonna be, like, all over the place."

It just doesn't work that way.

[00:20:37] Derek Notman: I, I think you're hitting that one- I'm on it. I, I think you're spot on there, Meg. I- that's been a frustration of mine even, too, is that those firms you just mentioned and others like them do a lot of marketing, right? To get advisors in. And, uh, let's just face it, a lot of advisors want done-for-you services.

I,

[00:20:54] Megan Carpenter: I know, yeah.

[00:20:55] Derek Notman: Right? And that's a frustration, but at the end of the day, I think your point earlier was, like, y- you gotta do it yourself. You gotta do some of this yourself, and these done for you sound really great for a month or two I don't, I don't re- honestly, I don't, I haven't heard of any really good success stories with any of those platforms, like long-term.

[00:21:15] Megan Carpenter: Long-term. Yeah. Like near-term- Yeah ... absolutely, and also, I don't wanna speak poorly about the tech platforms, because the tech platforms are like killer. Like what Snappy does today, killer, and it's in a, it's like the n- it's the HubSpot for advisors that advisors never knew they needed, but like now they have, and they can do video- Mm-hmm

and audio and all the things. I think FMG is doing some really cool things. That's cool. It's just, it's, it's part of the equation. It's not the full equation, and I don't think that they represent that very well in their marketing.

[00:21:42] H. Adam Holt: Mm.

[00:21:42] Megan Carpenter: Mm. Um, and so like people always ask like, "Why are you doing advisor education?

Like that seems so weird." And I'm like, "It's not weird to us, because we know what it takes." Even for clients that are paying us a lot of money, their executives are all still very involved, because we can't replicate their intellectual capital and their passion for their business. And so we do advisor education because we're like, "The only way it's gonna work is if we teach you how to be great in your own business, being a great marketer in your own right.

That's the only way it'll work."

[00:22:10] H. Adam Holt: Hmm. So I wrote down a couple things just 'cause I think we have a couple minutes, but- Yeah ... I, I wrote, I wrote here, can you buy marketing success? That's one question. Or to even go bolder, you don't have enough money to buy marketing success. Or stop trying to buy marketing success.

Or I'm trying to look for something that's gonna get an advisor to be like, "What does that mean?" Or, "Oh yeah, I wanna know that answer." Right? Is I'm looking for a hook.

[00:22:35] Derek Notman: I kinda like the one, the one stop, you know, stop buying. I kinda like that. Last

[00:22:40] H. Adam Holt: one, stop buying marketing

[00:22:41] Derek Notman: success. Well, I mean, that's just my two cents.

Meg, you can chime in, but I like it 'cause it's gonna actually make them to rethink it. 'Cause how many of these advisors are paying for these done-for-you services, and they may not want to admit it, but they're like, "Man, this kinda sucks."

[00:22:54] Megan Carpenter: Check. Yeah.

[00:22:55] H. Adam Holt: Right. Well, no, they ch- they're, they're happy if they get one that covers the cost, right?

Right. They're like, "Okay, I paid it back. It's an ROI decision." Right? Yeah. And then they think that's good enough, it's net positive.

[00:23:04] Megan Carpenter: Yeah, but it's not giving them, like, sustainable growth- Right ... which is my concern. That is is, like if they can't just main- in this day and age, they can't just maintain status quo 'cause they're just gonna get eaten alive.

So like we wanna help them get to a place where they've got sustainable growth that's gonna drive them to whatever their end business goal is. So yeah, I mean, I think that that's great.

[00:23:24] Derek Notman: How about stop buying marketing for sustainable growth or whatever, you know, something like that. Stop buying these done-for-you services for sustainable growth.

I don't know.

[00:23:34] H. Adam Holt: I think we can add that flavor also- Yeah ... in between us, like the debate of whether the tools work. 'Cause w- you know, we always, we gotta worry about our relationships and so forth, and we- And those tools- We only call our people ...

[00:23:44] Megan Carpenter: those do work. Yes, I wanna be clear on that. Yeah. They do work.

They're just, they're a tool.

[00:23:50] H. Adam Holt: That's

[00:23:50] Megan Carpenter: right. They're not the answer.

[00:23:52] H. Adam Holt: I bought a Peloton. I'm not any healthier, though.

[00:23:55] Megan Carpenter: Right?

[00:23:56] H. Adam Holt: What good did it do? That's what, I take that's what you're saying. Right? Like, it's, you're saying it's the what are you willing to do with it, what's the activity you're gonna take on a consistent basis.

Right. Are you gonna get training on how to, like,

[00:24:05] Megan Carpenter: actually use it? Um, yeah. You're gonna get coaching. That kind of thing. Are you gonna share with, your ex- success with peers? Like, are you gonna be committed to continuous improvement? Are you gonna dedicate the time to creating content? Like, and I don't wanna overwhelm advisors and let them think that it's impossible and that no one can help.

'Cause obviously, like, we can, and, and a lot of people do. But it's just like, it's reorienting how they get to the help that they need, and making sure that they're clear on what they're seeking, and that they're finding the right partner that aligns with what they're seeking.

[00:24:34] H. Adam Holt: So you need a market, you need accountability of a marketing coach.

[00:24:38] Megan Carpenter: Yeah, you need five co-

[00:24:40] H. Adam Holt: So that was really interesting, right? I heard a lot of stuff in there. Derek, what was the first takeaways you had from Megan's conversation?

[00:24:47] Derek Notman: I, I love this stuff. Um, marketing, digital marketing especially, has really become a, a fascination of mine, um, as I started dabbling in this almost 10 years ago.

And she's got a lot of really great points. I think some of the overarching things that I hear is that you actually have to do a lot more of the work yourself, um, in, in that it's, it's not an easy light switch moment that this stuff is just gonna start working. You know, I think advisors that were taught prospecting methods like, "Hey, if I knock on enough doors, someone's gonna say yes right away, and I get, you know, here we go," or, "If I make enough cold phone calls, I'll get the next meeting."

So those things worked barely, and they, they sucked to do. I hated doing those things. So when you, when you flip over to this, as she puts it, you know, human but digital human, right? She's talking about, like, there's still a human advice, but it's all through this digital medium now that we're, we're marketing.

We have to remember that, uh, these things take time, that, you know, especially now with how consumers have really opened up to knowing when they're getting spammed, they're not gonna pick up that cold phone call or open the cold door knock-

[00:25:58] H. Adam Holt: Hmm ...

[00:25:58] Derek Notman: digitally anymore, right? So I mean, I've got a couple takeaways, but tell me your thoughts.

How, what was your overall impression of what she had to say?

[00:26:05] H. Adam Holt: Well, there were some things that really stuck out for me. I, I thought it was really cool that she affirmed what many of us had, had thought, which is that, that a lot of the tools are really not the solution. We, we tend to want those quick fixes, as you said, and then, you know, w- we abandon them when they didn't solve the problem on their own, right?

It's, it's that, uh- ... it's that commentary of, uh, I, I, I don't understand. I, I bought the Peloton. Why, why am I not healthier? And I, and I, I think that's... It's really, it's a challenge because most advisors really just don't feel confident in what the marketing is. They're told they need to do it. Maybe they're supplied it by their firms.

But they don't really know how to execute and use it, and I really love the fact that she, she commented on something almost every marketing expert we've talked to on this podcast has said: authenticity matters. She said a heart-centered content consistently generated with the commitment of effort from the advisor.

Oh, wait a minute. That's effort again? Yeah, still gotta, still gotta do the ... the work. You gotta do the

[00:27:01] Derek Notman: work.

[00:27:02] H. Adam Holt: Yeah. Darn it. You know

[00:27:06] Derek Notman: what? Well, so that's... Yeah. To your point there and to her point, like, if, if I have a choice, Adam, between cold calling for two hours-

[00:27:12] H. Adam Holt: Mm-hmm ...

[00:27:13] Derek Notman: or coming up with some heart-centered content that I can put out digitally- Both are work, but I think one's gonna feel a hell of a lot better and is gonna work longer term especially.

I don't know. That's just, I mean, that's just me.

[00:27:26] H. Adam Holt: Well, by... Look, by the way, cold calling doesn't work unless you do it over long periods of time either. Exactly. So you're committing to that. I mean

[00:27:32] Derek Notman: Exactly,

[00:27:33] H. Adam Holt: right? Either way, it's effort. You're not getting around it. You, th- you know, we started this conversation with can you buy, can you buy enough marketing, right?

And I, in a sense, yes, you could completely outsource the whole thing, but you really need it to be authentic and consistent. And I, and I think one of the interesting things I've found from hiring consultants over the years is we tend to get into this major pain point, "Oh, I gotta fix it. I'm gonna hire a consultant.

I'll buy the tech tools. I'll do everything they tell me to do," and that was it, right? That's it. So you spend significant number of dollars every month, right? You're buying leads. You're doing all kinds of fun stuff, and then you find that maybe I don't need the consultants anymore, and what happens? If you haven't built the habit patterns, it's the same thing as any other fitness coaching.

Guess what happens? You revert. And so the key is to come up with a consistent, sustainable strategy. Sorry, that's not always easy, um, but that's why I really think it's, it's important. Let's do our takeaways, 'cause we have a question that we have to get to as well.

[00:28:31] Derek Notman: Awesome. Right on. All right, I'm, I'm gonna jump in.

I'll just start right here 'cause I love this stuff. As much as you want done-for-you services to work, they don't. So please stop thinking of that as the magic pill, okay? Please, 'cause they don't. There's a reason that Meg even said that we focus on education. It's so, so important. You know, it's just like our clients coming to us and saying, "Hey, I want the magic pill so I can retire next week," you know, or in 20 years, whatever.

Like, no, we don't have the magic pill. I can give you an awesome asset map to show you what you have to do, but you still gotta go do it, right? So we have to educate. That's right. All right, so done-for-you services don't work like you want them to. Uh, no matter how much you pay for a tool, it could be any of the tech tools she mentioned and a ton of other ones, it's not gonna do you any good if you don't learn the skills to actually use the tool.

You could buy the nicest hammer in the hardware store, but if you don't know how to swing a hammer, it isn't gonna do you any good, okay? Nope. Also, you have to have critical mass, and this is something I learned early on from my mentor. We talked about mentoring in another episode. We talked about this thing of critical mass, and if I wanna pick a certain ideal client that I wanna go work with, right?

Well, if there's only four of them in the country, I don't have critical mass. Mm-hmm. I have to know that there are enough people that fit my ideal client profile where I can market to them. And what, the, what, the numbers I always worked with, Adam, was that- Mm ... you had to have an addressable market of somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people-

[00:30:09] Announcer: Mm-hmm

[00:30:10] Derek Notman: that you were actively marketing to, and having warmer conversations or interactions with about 100 of them at any given moment, 'cause you knew you were gonna convert a smaller percentage of those into actual paying clients. Mm-hmm. So you all have... It's just a numbers thing, and then your marketing efforts, they used to be cold calling, door knocking, all the things we've talked about.

Now we've just flipped them. You still have to do all those things, but it's email marketing, it's website, it's blogging, it's social media, it's podcasting, right? All of these things to keep that funnel of critical mass warm and marketed to. Sorry, that was a run-on. I just really get passionate about this stuff.

[00:30:45] H. Adam Holt: You're allowed to be. This is, this is what we're rethinking about, man. This is what

[00:30:48] Derek Notman: we're here for, right? Yeah.

[00:30:49] H. Adam Holt: Yeah, the passion. Passion is authenticity, and hey, we know that's attractive. 100%. The... I think one of the things that keeps coming up as a theme is, you know, we... Marketing is getting thrown around so much in our space.

Uh, just to, just to let you know, marketing these days is about attracting people, right? It's about attracting ideally the right people to you. Um, and that does require an authenticity and a, and a, and a human realism that we all, you know, seek, uh, when we want to build a relationship with somebody, right?

I, I thought it was interesting that she said content libraries don't work on their own. It's, it's very similar to the comment you make about the tool. It's, uh, it's a tool, it's not a solution. Uh, we just have to recognize that, that, that's not a... It's not a... It's, it's a piece, right? Um, I... Again, I thought that heart-centered approach really worked.

And one of the things that we took out of this, I had asked Megan separately at the end of the recording if PR still outperforms, uh, or is still relevant, and she said, "Yes." She said, "PR still outperforms every other marketing tool." She said, "It's just not for everybody the way it used to be." And I think the, the reason is because the channels have changed, right?

There's a lot of... Everyone is choosing the channel they wanna hear about, right? So it's not just like there's, there's f- five major channels, right? That there's... Either in our space or publicly. Think about that this way. Is, is The New York Times, the purveyor of the news for now, 40% of the population like at one point it might have been?

Not really, because there's 15 million other channels that are opt-in, you know, fake or otherwise, that are basically dominating the space. And so the key is you have to be recognized. The irony behind PR is that PR is establishing your authentic credibility in the space for solving a specific niche problem.

The difference with what we're talking about today is that we're saying, "Go out there and put that message out there so," guess what, "other, uh, credible media sources will pick you up as well." That does require an effort. That probably is gonna require you to, to pay on retainer a firm, uh, like Viacom as an example, to execute a strategy like that.

I wouldn't go at that myself. Um, we've done that before. Bottom line is, is that it can still work, but it's, it's a significant spend to get public credibility. You can e- you can more easily do this these days, I think, by establishing a base, uh, in social media as well as being consistent with creating, uh, the kind of content that your customer wants.

All right. Thoughtful stuff. All right, let's, let's get into, uh, let's get into our community question. As you guys all know, we do accept community questions, so we get these emails and LinkedIns from, uh, our listeners that say, "Will you touch on a topic?" And this one recently came in just, uh, after our Ask Us Any program.

Uh, it was to Derek. So Derek, do you mind if I read it and ask you this question?

[00:33:34] Derek Notman: Yeah,

[00:33:34] H. Adam Holt: go for it. Fantastic. "Derek, I'm really wondering how you manage your podcast and if it has been worth the time. I'm an advisor who's looking for more ways to connect with my community, and radio was always intriguing, but I didn't know how to start a radio show.

Any feedback would be helpful. Randy in Chicago."

[00:33:50] Derek Notman: Love it. Chi-Town. Thank you, Randy. I appreciate the question. This podcasting thing has been a really interesting journey for Adam and I. You know, it's something that he and I talked about a lot and then def- you know, eventually committed to. So I, I, I really, Adam, I think we should probably do a full episode on this and maybe even bring in the folks at Proud Mouth to chime in a little bit.

Hmm. And then we can tear them apart After the fact there. Yeah, that'll be good. Um, there, there's a lot more to it, Randy, than just showing up and, and recording. It is work, and just to all the other points in this podcast episode today, like, we have to put effort in. We have to know who we're talking to.

We have to know all of these things and then consistently put in the effort. So should you look at podcasting? I think so, but there's a lot more to it than just saying, "Hey, I wanna start a podcast tomorrow. Let's go." Yeah, so it's a, it's a longer answer, but we'll totally dig into that when we have one of our next episodes here, Adam.

[00:34:52] H. Adam Holt: Fantastic. I think it's great. I, um, we're gonna hold our fire for the rest of that one. There's lots to talk about there. Uh, in general, I think it's very exciting, so, uh, podcasting is not going away. We're still at the early stages of this as a media. Uh, that's amazing to me. There's still so much more, uh, runway to go here.

What's the reminder again? Listen, if you like this episode, please be sure to subscribe. Uh, of course, check us out on LinkedIn. We have a dedicated LinkedIn channel now. You can see some of the newest media stuff that we're putting out there, uh, in addition to live presentations that we've started doing for fun just to get more best practices out there and create more community.

Uh, send us a voice message with your question. If you have that, you want us to actually... We'll play it on the podcast if we select it, and so you'll get your voice. Be fun. That'll be fun. That'll be a lot

[00:35:34] Derek Notman: of fun.

[00:35:35] H. Adam Holt: As is. Be sure to subscribe and, of course, tell all your friends about it that wanna hear about, uh, opportunities in, in financial services and how they can do better.

With that, my friend, Derek, it is a pleasure working with you.

[00:35:52] Announcer: Thank you for listening to Rethink, the Financial Advisor Podcast with Holt and Notman. Be sure to subscribe now and join the ongoing conversation. The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Asset-Map or Connectir.

The content has been made available to you by Asset-Map for informational and educational purposes only.