This is a transcript from the Marketing for Advisors Podcast. To listen, please visit mfapodcast.com and every episode is easily available and free to listen.
Hello, this is Don Anders and welcome to marketing for financial advisors. Today we're going to be talking about specifically keeping your digital lawn kept. And that might sound ridiculous to some of you, but think about why you mow your lawn or hire a lawn service. Think about why you wash your car and why you iron your clothes. Does mowing your front lawn have anything to do with you living there?
No, it's so you feel good about yourself, but also, so you're presentable when people come by, as they say, "Oh, that's somebody who has it together." Same reason you iron your clothes. Same reason you wash your car. These are all so when somebody sees us, they say, "Oh, well, they have it together."
The exact same thing goes for online. Because when people are researching you and people are trying to figure out whether or not they want to use you, what they're looking for are, are you active? Are you keeping... Do you have a Facebook page? Do you have a LinkedIn page? And that might sound ridiculous because what does that have to do with financial advising? What does that have to do with the advice that you give them? Well, what does washing your car have to do with how your car runs? It doesn't.
The one thing that you're competing with, if you're an independent financial advisor, if you're competing with Edward Jones or Raymond James, or whoever else, the main thing that you're competing with is size. Think about it. Is your advice as good as your typical Edward Jones or Raymond James or wire house place? You probably say better. How about your products? Is it just as good? Is it better? How about service? How about reputation? The community? All those things are probably better, but what you don't have as an independent financial advisor, you don't have that feeling of this company is going to be around for two or 300 years. Or maybe not even 10 or 20 years, like a Raymond James or an Edward Jones would. So when people are thinking about investing with you and they decide against it, it's not because your advice is bad or something along those lines. It's because they don't know if your company is going to be around for the next 10, 20, 30 years, the way a Raymond James or an Edward Jones would.
One of the ways that you can make yourself look established and bigger and presentable and fight that is by having a really good online presence. So keeping your Facebook up-to-date, keeping your LinkedIn up-to-date, keeping Instagram, whatever else. And that might sound crazy to you, but that's the state of the internet in 2020. If you're in business in 2020 and want to be in business in 2030 and 2040, you should have these established and you should have them set up. Is really easy way.
So I actually talked to an advisor out of Arizona, and I talked to her and she said, "Yeah, we really need to get this going. We just lost a $1.3 million client." I was like, "Wow, that's bad. What happened?" She said, "Well, she came in, did the proposal, everything was great. She said she loved us. But when she called in and she said, “Listen, I have looked at your Facebook page. I looked at you online. And it just really doesn't look established to me. It doesn't look like you have it together when I researched you. And when I go into your office and hear you, it does. But when I do my research, it just doesn't look like everything's active." We're in 2020. That's the way people research. And think about the way you buy things. Think about the way you purchase things. If you're going to purchase a TV, you probably do research on it and look at other TVs, and look at reviews and look at the other options or whatever else. Well, choosing a financial advisor next to getting surgery is probably the biggest decision that somebody is ever going to make in their life. So you don't think they want somebody who's established, and up with the times, and has a presentable company? Of course, they do.
Just something to think about, my recommendation is keep your Facebook at least up-to-date. LinkedIn is a great place. We get clients pretty regularly off of LinkedIn. And the other nice thing that you're not going to see for a while, but if you keep your pages up-to-date, and you keep posting consistently, eventually, and it's going to take a while a year, maybe year and a half, you'll start getting some clients who they've just followed you for the last year, year and a half, see you every day. And then when their accounts aren't doing well, they think, "Oh, well, our accounts aren't doing too hot. I see these people everyday. Let me reach out and give them a call." It happens every single month for us consistently now, something to think about. Now, a few things, there are some resources out there, there are companies that will keep your pages active for you. So most of you listening to this, if you're an advisor, you should be focused on running appointments, closing business, working with clients, managing portfolios. That's what you should focus on. You shouldn't be creating content. You shouldn't be worrying about your social media.
There's a few different ways you can do it. The one thing I would be cautious of is linking away. If all you're doing, if you're hiring a company and all they're doing is linking to other websites or landing pages, or even your website, that does not look good. That actually can hurt you from an algorithm standpoint, from the social media sites. And it doesn't look great for the consumers either. So my recommendation is whatever you do, put the content directly on there. There's good resources.
We have a product where we can post it to your Facebook, your Instagram, Twitter, all that charge 275 a month. And we put your logo on it and customize it. They're very easily compliance approves. And as some people listen, this might be with AE Wealth Management. They're already pre-compliance reviewed from AE Wealth Management. But those of you who are not really easy, very simple, we're not doing any kind of extreme calls to action or anything like that. There are other resources too. So there's plenty of people out there that you can go and hire to keep your page updated and active. But it's important. So my recommendation is either do it yourself, hire somebody. You can use ours, something else, but make sure you're keeping your pages up-to-date because you don't know who you're losing. You don't know why people aren't coming in for that second appointment, or aren't showing up after a seminar.
So if somebody comes to the seminar and signs up for an appointment, I guarantee you, the first thing that they do when they get home is they're going to look you up. They're going to research you. And they're going to try to figure out whether or not they actually want to go to that appointment. Because it felt great in the room. You were awesome. They had a connection, but are you really legit? If you can just get your stick rate up for most of you, five or 10% for first appointments, or from first to second. Or just keeping your existing AUM book happy and content with who they have, it's well worth investing a few $100 a month.