Everything financial advisors need to start with content marketing.

Diana Cabrices (0:00): This is what we are going to dive into. We've sort of sectioned out the webinar. If you've ever been on any of my webinars, you know this is how I love to run the show here is very precise kind of order, if you will. So the first section is the inside elements of a successful business development ecosystem. We'll also show you a quick formula for establishing your brand positioning, personality, and your ideal client. We've got some ideas, some really good ideas from Kristin on how to build a content engine that evolves, that looks a little bit differently, but yet ties in the same messaging throughout your prospects journey, all the way to them becoming a client and beyond. And then we're going to talk a little bit about how Wealthtender brings the business development ecosystem sort of full circle. And that's the beauty of advisor technologies to help you sort of manage all of this. Let's start with the system. Kristin, this is your beautiful brain on a graph. I don't know about that.

Kristin Harad (1:02): I think there'd be a lot more stuffed in there if it were truly that. But yeah, this is my latest rendition of trying to show a concept that I've been teaching and talking about for years. Essentially, RIA leaders will come to me and say, hey, we want to grow. And it's like, okay, great. And so when I think about growth, I started talking, I'd be like, okay, so there's four main ways that we can increase revenue, right? Because growth equals dollars, right? And ultimately profitability. And so I'll talk about, you can bring in more customers that you like. You can bring in, you can convert more of the people who are in your funnel, if you will, of leads to prospects, prospects to clients. You can increase your pricing, of course, to get more revenue, which we won't talk about that specifically today. And then you can also deepen the engagement with your clients and get more share of their wallet and or inspire referrals, which takes you back to kind of the top of bringing in a new prospect. So I would be talking through this and everyone would talk about marketing. And I was like, well, marketing really does apply in the way I've always learned it from like undergrad through all my experiences. It's not just about creating awareness and attracting people in. There is marketing that happens across from the firm level. So you really do need to take that firm level view and say, where does marketing affect each of those areas? And ultimately, it is a blend. Business development is a blend of marketing sales and the client experience, right? So that's what we're talking about. So I wanted to pull that together into a visual here to sort of bring home the point that it's not linear, right? Sure, within each section, you'll have your funnel of like bring a person in and you'll have an autoresponder and the follow-up will go through there. But we're talking about selling a service that takes a long time to be able to decide that you want. And it's around money. So there's a lot of dysfunctional associations there. So nothing's linear, right? So it's really about, okay, when we look at the ecosystem, at the center is your brand. And we're gonna get into the three elements of the brand and what that looks like. And ultimately, you can see I have create awareness and generate interest. So that's your marketing, traditional sort of marketing we're talking about where you're putting content out in the world. And if we're looking at this in a content lens, you're putting content out in the world. People are seeing it, they're getting to know it, but it's not just the people who are the potential new leads who see that content. It's all of the people, whether they're leads, prospects, clients, lifelong clients, all of them are affected by this content you're putting out in the world. And then you introduce content and bring it into different parts of the circle or the ecosystem, if you will, whether you're trying to nurture a lead, engage a prospect or deepen the relationship with a client. And they all weave together to create new business or business development, as it were. It's all coming together to create a single experience in that way. And then it's supported by the people on your team, the processes you build and the technology you leverage. So kind of all comes together with your brand at the center.

Diana Cabrices (5:00): I love that you use the word experience to kind of tie the bow around this entire thing. I could not agree more. Marketing is, yes, creating awareness and putting out content to do so, but it kind of trickles throughout this entire system here. And that's exactly why you said it's not linear, it's a circle because everything is coming together. And we're gonna kind of lean into that sort of full circle moment and through the webinar today, excuse me, with some of the other content that we have. If you're looking at the little color coordination folks on the bottom, the green is the marketing, right? The blue is where you start to have more sales conversations as you qualify leads and turn them into viable prospects. And then the orange is the client experience. But again, everything is working together. So thank you, Kristin, for so beautifully explaining that. In fact, if you're thinking about this system in your business right now, maybe you're thinking there's an area or a certain number of areas where you could maybe use some support. And that's what we'd love to find out from you. So we're actually gonna launch a couple of polls in today's session. I like to keep this interactive. And the first poll is exactly going to be this, right? Which part of your firms, whether you're an REA or you're part of an IBD or an IAR, what part of your business development ecosystem do you think could use more attention? Is it marketing, sales, client experience, or is it all of it? So I'm gonna give maybe 10 or 15 seconds and then we're gonna share with all of you what your peers have said on this webinar.

Kristin Harad (6:44): Yeah, this is great.

Diana Cabrices (6:49): All right, if you haven't answered yet, feel free to click the button. Let us know which part of your business development ecosystem could use more attention. It looks like we're evening out a bit. So I'm gonna go ahead and end this poll and share it back with all of you. Okay, all right. You should be able to see this. So most of you said marketing. What are your thoughts on that?

Kristin Harad (7:12): Yeah, I think this doesn't surprise me at all because marketing is probably one of the areas where advisors feel the least confident. And by marketing in this case, it's like getting the word out, letting people know you exist, trying to expose and create awareness to new groups of people. So this is right on. And then I do know that some advisors get caught up a little bit in how do we get the conversion or make the sale, if you will. And the good news is the better your content and the more precise and on-brand it is, the easier that sales process becomes because you're sort of predisposing everyone to your way of being and your messaging. And so you've almost essentially warmed them up to who you are and what you're about. By the time they even come in for that conversation. And then client experience, I do see often that advisors, everyone wants to work with the people and deliver the service and get that. So they get excited about it. So usually that's a very strong piece. And that's great because that's what we're in business to deliver, right, the client experience. But it's something we just don't wanna forget about. We wanna keep it on the radar. So.

Diana Cabrices (8:28): Exactly. You know, to your point about marketing too, I like to say marketing is pre-sales, right? It's priming sale. And so the more you can do there, like to give people substance so that when they're doing their own research or they're figuring out if you're the right fit for them or they're simply going to Google and asking a question, you are there as a pre-sales person to give them that content that they need at the right time. So I'm also- Yeah, I love that.

Kristin Harad (8:55): Oh, sorry, I don't wanna cut you off. Go ahead.

Diana Cabrices (8:58): You're fine. No, just also not surprised. This is where the bulk of most of us are saying we need help.

Kristin Harad (9:03): Yeah, and I think this is an important difference between kind of how businesses run now and then how RAs or even advisors, financial advisors overall worked say 20, 30 years ago, where a lot more pressure was put on the sales piece because it was so much individualized networking and referrals. But now the clients have access to so much more information and it's out there and they can self-educate and they can do the research and they can learn and teach themselves that the importance of marketing has just really amped up in terms of the ecosystem just because of even the nature of the consumer now versus how it was and the way that we retrieve information and seek information.

Diana Cabrices (9:51): The buying journey has totally changed. I think the latest data is like around 55% of the buying journey is done on their own. So before they even contact you, like they've already made up that much of their decision on if they like you, if they want to work with you. So exactly why we're hosting this webinar. Content marketing is what fits right there on that journey for them. So I'm super excited to dive into all of this. Okay.

Kristin Harad (10:16): I know, I'm like, I could just keep going on that to say just how important it is that you may be like, nobody sees my, like I put it out on LinkedIn, nobody sees. And I'm like, if they're at all interested in you, they're going to research you and they're going to look. They're going to look on LinkedIn. They're going to look at your website. They're going to do their research. So we'll get back to that. But I just wanted to put that out there.

Diana Cabrices (10:38): Absolutely. So let's start with our first official section. We're going to talk about establishing your brand and how to create consistent messaging and that creates a consistent brand experience. Again, going back to that really good book, your favorite book. If every chapter looked different or if things didn't succeed one after the other, you'd probably have been thrown off. You probably would have put the book down. You probably wouldn't have finished it. You probably wouldn't have raved about it. It wouldn't be your favorite book. So that's kind of what we're building onto here. We have to actually start with a foundation. That foundation is going to be your positioning, your people and your personality. So Kristin, I'd love to sort of walk through this with you here. What does this mean? And how does it all tie together?

Kristin Harad (11:23): Okay, yes. This is how I've ultimately boiled down explaining a brand and trying to convey the information when I'm working with an RIA. We'll start here. And this is a question I always have for them. I'm like, what's your position in the market? Who do you serve? And what's the personality? And just to quickly give an overview of the concept, it's like, we just want to know of all of the RIA, all of the financial advice solutions in the marketplace. The positioning is, what is your little slice of that pie? Like what part do you own? I think there's something like 300,000 financial advisors in the US right now. It's a very high number. Plus there's other solutions that people can go and get on their own. So when you look at all of that, what is the one bit of that pie that the market that you serve and where do you stand out? So I'd like to think of it, if you have a shop on a main street and someone were walking down the street, they'd be like, oh, I'm gonna go in there and to buy that thing. Cause that's what that store is for. The people, it's about your target audience. Who do you best serve? Who do you enjoy working with? That's, we can't do any kind of marketing without knowing who the people are. And then the personality is just really, how do you come across? So what is that author's voice in the book that you're talking about, Diana? Like what is the voice of the author throughout? And all of that is really based on a foundation of the firm values, right? What do you stand for and what are you about? So these three together establish the brand and we can go into a little bit of detail in each one. Positioning can be one of the hardest pieces to get because you're like, I don't know, we're not unique. We don't stand out. So what I like to do is, I know a lot of people position themselves as fee only fiduciary. And that is one set of parameter that we, two sets of parameters we get down into of like, okay, if we start looking at kind of all of the ways people can get financial advice and the way it fits, where does your brand fit? So I like to give these continuums of like, are you nationwide or you just serve local? Do you focus on the mass affluent? Are you ultra high net worth? And so, I have firms that do investment only and then ones that do comprehensive planning and get into things like offering tax services or have attorneys on staff. So there's realms here. Do you operate as teams or do you have silos within your firm? Are you solo? Are you enterprise? So you get the idea. You just start going through these criteria and going, well, we're in this realm and this realm. And you sort of piece it all together and you can find out, oh, this is where we stand out. We're the go-to resource for retirement income planning if you are retiring in the next two years. You wanna come to us and then you'd break it down and to be like, you get a full team. We give you tax planning, but not tax advice. And we get it down into that little bit.

Diana Cabrices (14:31): Mm-hmm. I think continuums are really helpful because a lot of times advisors don't know where to start. And so if you just think, all right, look at the continuum. Are you here? Are you there? Maybe you're somewhere in the middle, but it's a really good way to sort of visualize where do I stand? I love examples that you've put here. I think, again, like these are helpful ways to position your brand and yourself. I also think just to add one more note and then we'll move on to the next is that the more specific you are up front, folks, the better clients you're going to attract because they know that's what I want. And yes, this is what I'm looking for. Whereas, if you're really vague and you pull somebody in and they find out that you're not really doing the tax planning that they needed help with, you're more on the other side of the street here or the continuum, they're eventually going to just be disappointed and they're going to leave and you're going to have retention problems. So I think if you are thinking about qualifying your prospects, it starts here. It starts right up front.

Kristin Harad (15:31): Right. And I often literally get a highlight or my document will highlight as I'm talking to my clients and be like, all right, so we're highlighting the elements on the continuum. And I have more words that I put out there and we spread it out more, but then we sort of see the pieces that lay up and be like, all right, this is your mix. Let's figure out where that stands in the whole marketplace. This is my bread and butter from like the very first class I ever offered was like how to pick your niche. But this is more than that. So when I think about brand and especially firms that are already established and have been in business a while and they're really trying to get to that next level of growth, I like to look at the high value hyper target. So who benefits most from your value? Who do you like working with? Who are your favorite clients? Who are the ones that are willing to pay the price that you charge, right? And find value in that. What are their pain points? What are their aspirations? How and where do they get their information? Like this is where you really do want to try to get as ideal and tight as you can because it's going to help you when you do content, when you do your messaging to really stand out, knowing that even though you target your marketing to a very specific client, you are going to have kind of that halo effect of like people going, well, I'm not exactly that, but I'd like to still work with you because I like your content. And so will you still work with me? And then you as the advisor get to decide. Yes, I will. Or no, that's really not in my wheelhouse. I'm going to take, I'm going to refer you out somewhere else.

Diana Cabrices (17:17): Yeah. So these are some of the right questions that advisors can ask themselves. Like who's benefiting most from your value? If you think about what you have today, who are your favorite clients? Well, what makes them your favorite clients? What are the characteristics? You know, where do they fall on the revenue scale, if you will? And what kind of services or solutions are you providing to them? What questions are they asking? Oh my gosh. Kristin, I know you know this, like take those questions, turn them into content. So many things that you could do there, but I love the way that you position this. So we've done, let's back up here for a second, positioning people. And now we're going to move a little bit into personality, which I love.

Kristin Harad (17:57): Yeah, personality is fun. Yeah, I was like, this one's fun. And usually this is the one they have a good sense of who they are and what they're about. So personality is really how does your brand come alive as a person? Like I said, like, what is that voice of that author, right? What is it? How are you presenting yourself? So to come up with that, you know, a lot of solo advisors would be like, well, the personality is really just me. And that could be, but it may be that you want the brand personality to be an iteration of you or an opposite of you, or it could be whatever you want. When you have a larger firm or Azure, you want to consider who are the people in the firm? What are the personalities? What are they like? What's kind of our attributes we want to grab from that? How do you conduct business? What's your style? What are you about? Are you suit and tie people? Are you, you know, cash t-shirt only remote? Like what's your vibe? And then what's going to resonate with those people who are in the people part of your brand, right? Like what will resonate there? And so I put a few, again, I have lists of like hundreds of descriptors. I put a few here of potential personality traits, right? Quirky, friendly, conservative, generous, bold. It could be, there's literally hundreds of words, of course, that we could get to. But a lot of times, this is where your values can come into play too, right? Because they'll inform this, the personality that you want. So I think this is kind of a fun piece. And I did a little exercise here if you want to jump because everyone's fascinated by Chad GPT. So we did, I did a little experiment and essentially I was like, okay, it's a wealth management firm that that's kind of a broad positioning. But I threw that in there with a 60 year old executive. So I asked Chad GPT to come up with a blog post for this audience. And the first example I said, our personality is professional, kind and conservative. And then I compared it with a personality that's colloquial, blunt and inspiring. So we can render, this is what it came back with. And I did not nuance too much. So this one was about legacy planning, ensuring your wealth fulfills your vision. And I like that it's like focused on estate planning. It would discuss how to effectively structure your wealth to support the family's future and charitable causes. It covers essential tools tailored to the needs and complexities that come with substantial assets. Okay, yes. Very professional, conservative, straightforward.

Diana Cabrices (20:45): Yep. Let's look at the second example.

Kristin Harad (20:49): And I didn't edit this, but it's like your money, your legacy, making sure your dough does what you want. All right. That is definitely blunt. That's blunt. Yes. Let's get down to brass tacks about planning where your wealth goes after you're done running the show. I don't know if that means you retire or like you passed on. I'm not sure. This article will lay out the no BS guide to estate planning for execs with more than a few assets to their name. Think trust, wills, estate taxes, but explained in a way that makes sense and doesn't bore you to tears. I just loved the juxtaposition of the two of these because you can see personality informs the style that you convey your content. So I think this is really fun. I'm curious if people listening in have tried out chat GPT or using it actively for content or getting ideas from it. If you are, maybe you could put a little, yes, I've given it a go in the chat.

Diana Cabrices (21:52): Please, please do so. Because the thing about chat GPT is like the outputs so heavily matter on the inputs and you have two very wildly different examples here. One that is very professional and one that's a little bit more colloquial, which I like for some. The second is so much more fitting and we're going to relate more. Myself specifically, I personally relate to example number two a lot more, but for others, example one is exactly what they're looking for. So again, that's knowing your client, putting in the right inputs into a chat GPT, for example, or working with the right people like Kristin and then getting out what you need. So it looks like James said, yes, I have used it to create source documents that can then be added.

Kristin Harad (22:37): Yeah, that's what I like to do. This one I put in my test here because I had to just change the three words of the personality. I kept the entire prompt exactly the same otherwise because I wanted to see what it would render differently. But as I think. Using it as a baseline for ideas or baseline outlet outlines, you can then get into content and put your voice to it, which I like a lot so.

Diana Cabrices (23:05): So we know that messaging is really important, like this is clearly what we're all observing here. And I think we did get a question. By the way, folks, we will have a live Q&A at the end of the session. Joseph said something funny. It is funny and definitely have adding an inspiring voice like a Zig Ziglar or Gary V also creates a completely.

Kristin Harad (23:27): That's great. Yeah, I always try to think like who could because you can put it in, write it in the style of Gary V. And then it's probably, you know, then it's like more like number two there, you know, which is it's really fun. I I always struggle to think who do I want it to sound like? But those are great examples. Thanks. Thanks for sharing those.

Diana Cabrices (23:46): Absolutely. OK, so messaging matters. The words that you choose matters. The way you want your personality to play out is not just your people, but it is also how you come across with your messaging. But there are other things that affect your brand as well. And so we're going to talk a little bit more about that on this slide.

Kristin Harad (24:06): Oh, yeah. Just real quickly. I'm like, yes, brand does. And when we think about how does brand affect content? And I know we're spending a lot of time on this, but it really, truly is fundamental because it drives consistency and consists. People need to see you multiple times to make decisions. But it can also affect, let's say you have a podcast, you know, it's going to change. What is the intro music that you use? Is it sort of jazzy and upbeat? Is it a little more subdued? What's the style of the format of the of the content? It can also affect your color palette. Like, what is it that what are your brand colors? What does that look like? It can affect the stock photography choices that you make. And then it can also affect if you're doing videos, like what are you wearing in the video? What's the style? What's your vibe? You know, all of those things come into play so that you can the more consistent over all of these outlets, the the better the result ultimately, because you're building the brand equity. You're letting people know they're able to then go, oh, yeah, I really like the way they do. You know, you'll notice on podcasts, it's done, you know, a lot of them get into a formula where it's like intro. They have their their format and then close. And it's similar every time. So that's intentional.

Diana Cabrices (25:35): Absolutely. And, you know, we might have some folks on the call who maybe you've never gone this deeply with your brand. You know, maybe you had someone build a website and you threw together some quick marketing, but you might be feeling, I feel like I'm not really being myself or I'm blending in with other advisors. That's something we see a lot of is everyone looks the same, operates the same in the space, the same colors, the same language on your website. There's so much room, like a totally a blue ocean, if you will, to be yourself and to be different and unique and to also stand out in this space. There's a lot of opportunity there. So I'm hoping that some of this is inspiring you to say, I think I want to go back a little bit to the drawing board and maybe bring more of my own personality into my brand.

Kristin Harad (26:22): I think, yeah, I'm excited about that for people. And I also want people to realize, I know that can be overwhelming to be like, oh, my God, we haven't done any of this. It's like just make small changes. Like maybe you change your greeting in your email from dear so and so to hey, so and so, like if you're going more casual, make small changes. It can happen incrementally over time. It's really about weaving it together in small steps as you go.

Diana Cabrices (26:49): Totally. Everything matters. It's all marketing. It's all little bits of how people experience working with you. OK, thank you, Kristin, for going through such an awesome formula, the way you help RIAs sort of establish their brand. I want to eventually cover how content evolves. We've got so many awesome content examples. If you can just take us through the top of the hour, we're going to show you all of these different examples. Before we do, I do want to just jump quickly into this sort of middle section here on how can you amplify your brand digitally and where does technology help you bring all of this sort of full circle? So we're going to dive right into this. And this section here is what I often refer to as the financial advisor's digital footprint. So I use this to kind of help you visualize like where are all the places you can show up online? Where can that brand messaging and positioning show up online? Now, most of you on this call likely have a website. And so you've probably got your foundational brand positioning on your website, who you are, who you work with, et cetera. Many of you likely also have some form of social media, whether that's LinkedIn or Twitter or YouTube, whatever that looks like for you. Again, this is where you're pulling in some of that information. Podcast as well. We're going to talk a bit more about podcasts here ahead. But what I've found through working with advisors over the years is it usually maybe stops around here. In fact, it usually stops around website and social media. And there's not a lot of digital marketing going on beyond that. And now in this heavily digital age, there's so much opportunity to get your brand out there, to get your content out there so that people, again, as they're going on their buying journey, they have substance from you and they can find you faster. So these next three things that you see on the list, most advisors I've talked to have never even heard of what a web listing is or an online listing. If you're not familiar with the term, many of you are too afraid to start using online reviews, even though the SEC has given a green light, FINRA has given a green light. But there's a lot of nuance there. And then very few of you have actually gotten involved in getting mentioned in the media or getting featured on a blog and sort of lending your thought leadership and your expertise. So I do want to talk about Wealthtender a bit because this is exactly where we help advisors expand on that digital footprint so that the work you've done with your brand, with your content, can get found faster, can get in front of more eyeballs. If you've never heard of the term web listing or online listing, Michael Kitsie, as you all know who Michael Kitsie is. They know who he is.

Kristin Harad (29:35): If they don't, then you're under a rock, but it's OK.

Diana Cabrices (29:39): We all know he has his brand of the blue shirt. And so I put his little face on here, but he's done a lot of research on marketing. He does his surveys almost annually. And what I thought was really cool is that these paid web listings are both a standout strategy for top marketing performers as financial advisors, but they're also low risk strategies because usually they're very low cost in the case of Wealthtender. Very, very low cost. And it's just a way, again, to sort of double down on your digital presence to get found faster. So what does this really look like? I'm going to show you here in this video. This is actually the Wealthtender website. So this is an online advisor directory. That's a web listing where people can come, like teachers or nurses or high network people, everyone. And they can say, all right, I'm looking for a financial advisor, whether it's a specialist, somebody near me. I maybe have a question that I want to ask an advisor, or I'm just looking up information on finances and 401k rollovers and I need to find some content. We pretty much have all of that on the site. And so that's what sort of driving consumers to us. And then we can put you front and center. And again, your messaging, your branding, your content, so that they can also find you here. We've had about half a million people visit the site in the last 12 months. So most advisors can't say the same about their website. Another reason to kind of ride our SEO wave, people can search based on your specialization, like do you work with women or are you focused on social security based on who they are, how they identify, like we're a couple, we need couples planning or I'm a parent or I'm a widow, divorcee, whatever that looks like. And then you have a profile. And so, again, this is almost like a mini website for you. And I'm going to show you here in a moment all the different things you can add to your profile. But this is, again, where you're pulling in your messaging. So this is Caleb Paddock. He's a CFP. He's close to me. I'm in Denver. He's in Parker, Colorado. I can contact him. I can read what other clients are saying about him, see his website, his socials. I can pick up the phone and call him or just book an intro call directly on his calendar. But right away, I'm seeing his messaging. So he says a little bit about him and then he tells me my clients when retirement decisions often work at tech firms or have experienced a sudden money event. I can see what to expect in the first meeting. So this is that content. This is that sort of who we are, what we do, who we work with, right front and center. I can scroll down further and I even have a video of him.

Kristin Harad (32:20): Oh, that's great. I didn't realize you could put that in there. I love that.

Diana Cabrices (32:23): Personality, just like you said. People, just like you said, Kristin.

Kristin Harad (32:27): Yeah, that's great.

Diana Cabrices (32:28): And then scrolling down further, I can see what clients have said. So we've built out a fully blown SEC compliant testimonial marketing system, if you will. I won't get into a lot of that. We can definitely talk about that another time, but I can see what clients are saying. So to this point, Kristin, I know we talked a little bit about this when we were planning for this webinar. These reviews are bringing things full circle.

Kristin Harad (32:53): Right, exactly. Exactly, because ultimately you're saying, you know, you're putting it out there. People are trying to find you. People have never heard of you. They're coming in. They have questions. They're seeing you in the context of other advisors and how you stand out, where your positioning fits and how it stands out there. And then ultimately we're seeing, you know, in that whole ecosystem that we talked about in the beginning, the client review is essentially coming back around to say like, you know, this is the experience. I've gone through the whole cycle and I'm a client now. I've shared my experience and it's now attracting in new people to come in. So you can see how everything is related that way. I think it actually helps a ton with the positioning and the people that you serve here, given all the searching that you do. And one of the things I, and I think you might get into in a second here, but one of the things I think is most valuable because I do look at services like you offer with sort of a critical eye because I'm like, I've seen a lot that don't deliver. So, you know, I don't just jump in and go, yes, do this. You know, there are some networks out there like fee-only network, very strong, good reputation, love it, highly encourage people to do it. This is another one, what I like about Wealthtender overall is that you not only have the way for compliant reviews and getting, being able to ride the wave of the SEO, like you said, you're putting, you're putting tons of money behind this. So you're able to get the rankings ahead of what an advisor might get on their own. But I love the opportunity for media and blog contribution for a target audience, because that's one of the hardest things to get. And I just think having that exposure and opportunity for an advisor at a low price point where you can say, hey, we're gonna sort of serve you, connect you with a journalist that if there's someone who comes in who wants to, you know, focus on something in your area, we have that connection. I think that's really extremely valuable.

Diana Cabrices (35:00): I agree. And I agree with you that it is one of the harder things to accomplish as an advisor. This is part of his profile here. So he has like a featured section. We create a lot of content on Wealthtender and then we'll feature you in those articles. But also he has gotten him, you know, himself in an article on the Wall Street Journal. We have partnerships with MSN, for example. In fact, on these next few slides, I list some of the partnerships that we have. And then you can see here what a quote request looks like. So every single week, our advisors get emails that say, hey, I have a writer or a journalist he needs to write, or she needs to write about X topic. If you want to contribute to this, please hit respond. And here's the due date for that response. And so that's exactly what you can do. And then you end up landing not only on Wealthtender, but MSN, ABC News, CNBC, whatever it looks like, wherever we can get these articles syndicated, we will push that for you as much as possible. And again, you're getting these requests every single week inside of your inbox. So you can respond as you wish. And everything again is coming full circle with the platform, with the listing, with what your clients are saying. And now when people are doing research on you and they type your name in Google, it's not just your website, it's you on Wealthtender, it's client reviews, it's you on CNBC or ABC News. And that creates so much weight and credibility and trust with that person. Right.

Kristin Harad (36:27): Ultimately, these are going to outrank whatever you could ever probably get for your own website, unless it's a very micro typing request in Google. But anyway, I love it. And like I said, I don't just carte blanche go, oh, here's someone, here's a service. I had met Brian who founded Wealthtender a number of months ago at a conference and went to hear, kind of went with the like skeptical, all right, let me hear what this guy has to say. And I was blown away. And I was like, yeah, I mean, I asked him and he'll tell you, I talked to him for about a good hour after and was just asking a lot of questions because I do know it's so hard for advisors to get noticed online and do it in a way that is economically efficient. So anyway, that's my point of view on it. And I find it really interesting. And I've had individual coaching clients and firm level clients who have used it and taken advantage of the media situation. So that's exciting. Okay. This is my favorite part. So let's get into this.

Diana Cabrices (37:36): This is like the bread and butter. Guys, if you have your notepad, take some notes. There's going to be a lot of great ideas here. Again, you're going to get a copy of these slides. Let's take about maybe 10 minutes to go through this section. How does content evolve across marketing, sales, client experience? And then guys, we're going to open it up for a live Q&A. So feel free to get your questions ready. All right. So we're starting right in the middle. Kristin, take it away.

Kristin Harad (38:01): All right. So I wanted to show a live example of how the business development ecosystem works and how through the content lens. And so we'll start, I'm using my own brand because I know it passed, right? So my brand, I came, you know, through all my conversations and years of talking, like I talked about in the beginning, I had this concept of the business development ecosystem and I would keep explaining it and explaining it. So I said, oh, I'm going to write a blog post about it, right? So I wrote a blog post and that's, you know, on my website and it's a feature post. And that was sort of like step one of this content after kind of as many advisors do, they're constantly explaining, explaining, explaining the same concept over and over again. Finally, it's like, well, let me write that down or let me talk about, let me articulate that in a video or something because I do say it so many times. So this was step one for me on this.

Diana Cabrices (38:58): Okay. So that's your brand front and center on your website. Yeah.

Kristin Harad (39:02): And so I created a blog post. Yeah. Want to create awareness. So I have a blog post. I'm like, yeah, I'll put this out there. The goal of a blog post is, you know, first and foremost, someone comes to your website, they're getting awareness to you, but then you can also use it in other ways. So you can move to the, yeah. So then I emailed, of course, email it out to my mailing list. This is just an excerpt of a longer newsletter, but essentially I'm like saying, here's the goal for the year. You have a growth goal. Here's an article that talks about the business development. There's some other content in here. And then I include a link to the, to the article. So this is moving sort of moving down the, around the circle in the ecosystem, because this is going out to leads, prospects and clients. So everyone in my, on my list, in my marketing list is receiving this article. That is also on my website for people who don't know me yet. Love it. And of course you can share it on LinkedIn as well. So here's my LinkedIn profile on, on LinkedIn. You can go, this is condensed, but you can go down and pin articles to your, to featured section in LinkedIn. That's the platform I use the most. You can use other platforms that resonate with your audience. And so then I'm featuring the article here on LinkedIn. And then I also would do posts about the article in to say, hey, I've just put out a new blog post and then drive people to the site from there. So that's another place you can put it. Love it. Then while I was at it, I said, I'm going to create a lead magnet for this. So free information that I give in exchange for a name and email address, so I can get new people on my list. And I was like, all right, this was money, many months later, right? I said, okay, I have this article. I've been talking about it a while. I'm going to create a lead magnet and put it on, put it on my website. So that was kind of the next step in the system.

Diana Cabrices (41:13): And like, I can't stress enough, just to pause really quick, the value of growing your email list. So many different ways to communicate with people. Yes, there's social, there's different avenues, but email is still hands down, one of the best, if not the best performing channel to like engage with your contacts, be it prospects or clients. So love this. Let me ask a question. This is a pop-up on your website?

Kristin Harad (41:40): Right now, it is a form at the bottom of my homepage. I have a different pop-up that's promoting a different element right now, but this is a piece on there. But I would recommend if it's something you want to have to be the lead to do a pop-up.

Diana Cabrices (41:56): So beautiful.

Kristin Harad (41:58): Okay, so moving people along the system. Exactly, and this is the important thing about, to your point, getting people on the list. It truly is the most important thing you can do because we're selling a service that isn't buying shoes, right? It takes many, many, many, many times to build that trust and that relationship to get people get over their own stuff to actually get help with this and then feel comfortable with you. So you need to get them as fast as you can off the podcast episode into your lists and doing it with a lead magnet is a great way to do it. Or getting off a blog, sign up. Hey, you want more about this? Sign up for our lead magnet on the same exact topic.

Diana Cabrices (42:41): Well, I was in podcasts that are more public, right? Email is more intimate and personal. It's just moving them to get more personal. Love that, okay.

Kristin Harad (42:49): Yes, all right, we'll step it up a bit because we, all right. So then I launched a podcast, which I hope everyone will tune in and check out. But it was a natural thing for me to go, all right, well, I'm gonna talk about the business development ecosystem. It was on my early episodes here. It's early on still, I just launched this year. But so it was natural to just take the blog. I literally took the blog post and formed the outline and then did the discussion of the podcast off of that outline. Love that, okay, wonderful. And then when you do a podcast or any kind of, you can extract elements for social media posts. So we had video, there's a great photo of me here. I know, I love that. But so you can get excerpts, whether it's quotes and quote graphics or just highlights or video clips. We video the podcast, but really just to get the social media clips, that gives you a treasure trove of content that you can spread out through the whole year if you want. You can mix and match and have them be scheduled out. The amount of content you can extract is extraordinary off of just small clips from here.

Diana Cabrices (44:05): Yeah, I couldn't agree more. In fact, I think the word content marketing overwhelms a lot of advisors. But the truth is, if you can get one good video or one good blog, you can take that and chop it up into these quotes, into these graphics, so many emails, right? So many different avenues. So one piece of content can be spliced into a few hundred ways.

Kristin Harad (44:28): It's so fun. We'll show you a little fun tool in a second. This is getting now into the sales process and what I deliver. So I have a coaching program for RIA leaders, the fundamentals program. And part of this is me, this is a subset of the page on my website where I talk about what you get in the program. We're going to talk about the business ecosystem, blah, blah, blah. It's in here as part of the tools. And then I get into it more when I'm on calls with advisors and we're talking about the program. So it becomes part of the sales story as well, right? And so I'm getting into there. And then part of the delivery of the client service or the client experience, right? So I did one of the sessions I held in the program, which is a year long program. One of our sessions early on was on the business development ecosystem because it's fundamental to the growth strategies that I use. And then I taught that class and then I did a five minute loom video that was simply taking the content I taught and doing a quick training that my participants in the program could share with some of their team members so that they didn't have to re-explain the concept and they could educate their implementers or their team members who are affected or who can use the concept. And all they have to do is watch the five minute video and share that with their team. So you can see the through line here. Honestly, I'm surprised too, because I thought to myself, I've also pitched the concept as speaking opportunities. And then obviously kind of the next piece is, the next slide, I think is the one. I mean, what are we talking about here today, right? The business development ecosystem where it kind of come around the whole way again, right? Like, so I've taken the, it started with a blog post. I went through all these things. It is now a webinar, right? That we're all talking about, which I was able to email out to my list a number of times and say, hey, this is a concept I'd like to train and teach you on this. I was able to post it out on LinkedIn, which again is the social platform I use. You can use the one that's relevant to you. And then I had the double benefit of partnering. So Diana and Wealthtender are also emailing their list. They're also posting on their social. So that's one of my favorite things is when you can take your content and magnify its impact by teaming up with someone who has the same target audience you're trying to reach and you're able to share and collaborate messaging to get in front of people. So we're literally doing that today, which is what I love to share.

Diana Cabrices (47:12): And we'll be chopping up this webinar and creating so many little bits.

Kristin Harad (47:15): I know there's so much you can do. And so it's kind of never ending in that. So what I challenge you all to do, and I'm glad you're going to get a copy of this because when you look at your own thing, I want you to kind of take a look at this bingo card. That's what I'm going to call this. Like, all right, let's say you do a podcast episode and at the top it says podcast episode. It could be blog post. It could be video. It could be whatever you do. And we have that there. And then think of all the ways you can leverage that, chop it up, expand it, do whatever you want to do, you know, and try to fill your card here. You know, you can, obviously you have, let's say you have a podcast episode. Oh, you can do social media posts about it. You can take clips out and share it. You can create a blog post from the podcast. So just put the podcast, get the transcript, make that a blog post. You can pin it to your social profiles. You can share it on your Wealthtender profile. You can email it to a prospect who calls you and says, hey, I had a question about Roth conversions. I don't understand. And let's say you did a podcast episode about that. Boom, you're sending, you'd be like, great. Yes, that is something we cover. In fact, here's a podcast episode we put together because it'll really help you. I know it's not easy to understand. You can add it into your autoresponder space. You can go on forever. I love this. You could share it with a client to say, hey, we had that meeting. I know your spouse wasn't able to make it. What I'd like to do is send you, I'll send you this podcast episode we did. It was really helpful. And I found that it helps explain the basics.

Diana Cabrices (48:49): It's just a mental shift. Like you've got to get your brain used to thinking this way. Like where can I share my resources? And it's sharing these links, right?

Kristin Harad (49:01): And thanks, Kim. I think the bingo card is way more fun than a checklist too. I saw that and I'm like, yeah, we were putting this together. And I was like, it's like bingo. Let's do that.

Diana Cabrices (49:13): Guys, we're going to run one last poll. We're just curious now that you've sat through this webinar today. And hopefully you've had a lot of great takeaways. And then we're going to dive right into Q&A and give you a way that you can contact us both if you have any questions. But now that you've joined us, what do you think your focus will be ahead? Are you thinking about, hey, I really need to actually start a content base. I don't have much going on. Or maybe you want to outsource it. Repurpose my content. Are you thinking about maybe creating a Wealthtender listing? Is it all of the above? We would love, love, love to hear from you guys. I'm going to leave this open for about 10 more seconds. And while it is open, I'll go ahead and just move forward to this slide here. While you have the poll running, there's a couple of different avenues here. If you want to learn about Wealthtender, we'll actually create that entire listing for you. You don't have to do any of the work. And you can sign up in minutes. And then we'll run all the points on everything else. Wealthtender.com forward slash grow. In fact, I will drop that into the chat box now for those of you. And I'll also drop your link as well, Kristin.

Kristin Harad (50:22): But right, yeah, I just have my home page in there. And then there's a nice bright orange button that you can click. And I was going to say, we can do a 15 minute call. There's a 30, if you'd like to chat, there's a 30 minute option. But we can go through and try to sort out a piece of content and go, how can we make your bingo card full? So feel free to reach out. And we can kind of play around with that and see how we can repurpose something you've created.

Diana Cabrices (50:47): Love it. Looks like most of you are thinking about starting to create content or outsourcing it. And remember, it's not as big of a mountain that you think it is to climb. Because one piece of content can go really, really far. So we'll stop here. We have a couple of minutes to the top of the hour. I told you guys, we had a lot of content. But Kristin, are you open to stay on any longer?

Kristin Harad (51:08): Yeah, no, absolutely. If people have any questions, tactical or strategic, whatever comes up is great.

Diana Cabrices (51:16): Yeah. OK, so Brian, he says, I really need help with branding. I trust I do a great job as an advisor. But communicating my value pop has been weak at best. Ah, and you were with me in DC when I gave my keynote at National Pop Group. So nice to see you. Thanks for coming, Brian. And we'll send out a follow-up email to everybody who attended the webinar. So if you do want to move forward, and I think Kristin is an awesome resource to get help with branding with, then you can just certainly reply back to that email. And then once you have that foundation established, we can make sure we get you on Wealthtender to help you get that cool brand that you're going to build with Kristin in front of more people. James says, thank you. This was informative. Have a great day. Thank you, James. Anyone else have any last-minute questions, feel free to drop them now. This is your moment. ESI. Brian, not yet. Not yet. I actually talked to the team at Equity Services Incorporated about Wealthtender. And they have a bit of a queue right now for technology vendors. So they mentioned that I could circle back in a few months once they get through some of that. But it takes advisors to kind of raise your hand for us and say, this is a really useful tool. In case any of you are wondering, we talked a little bit about low-cost listings and directories and the media opportunities. Wealthtender is about $49 a month. That's going to give you access to a listing with great SEO because of our SEO ratings. It's going to allow you to do the online reviews feature and get the media inquiries that you can respond to. So it's very low cost. I'll keep fighting. Oh, that's great. All right. This could be a great question for you, Kristin. How do you identify the right messaging for the various age demographics?

Kristin Harad (53:01): So various age demographics. Assuming you have more, I'm assuming you have more, you're saying you have more than one target audience in this. And again, this is, it comes down to no matter what, whatever age or demographic you're targeting. And if you have more than one market that you're focused on, you still ultimately want to roll up to an overarching brand. So it can be, it has to be nuanced, but still in the style of an overarching brand, it can be a little more challenging, but that's why the foundation of who your company is, is so important. And then we bring it down to the level of, you know, all right. So for this particular niche, how do we do this? And for this particular niche, how do we convey that message? It's really important. And an important thing about messaging is to listen to your clients who fit that demographic. And so what are the words they're using? How are they asking you questions? What is the vernacular, if you will, that they're using? And try to meet them where they are within the context of a bigger brand, right? So you kind of have to know what your overlay is and then say, all of a sudden, you aren't necessarily going to have those two divergent examples I showed you under the same brand, but you would have a way of saying, all right, now we're going to talk about a topic for a younger audience in the style of our more conservative, kind, professional voice. You would just bring it down to a way that they might understand, but using the same tone and vibe. I hope that answers.

Diana Cabrices (54:58): But that also reinforced the platform that you use in the end. And Joseph, while you think on that response, I'm going to quickly answer Sarah's question. She says, what are your thoughts on sharing client testimonials across social? I think it's an amazing idea. In fact, if you are part of Wealthtender, we do it for you. We create these beautiful graphics and we make sure they're compliant because if you do share it across social, whether you use Wealthtender or not, they always have to, like whatever testimonials you are spotlighting on social, it always has to link back to where all of your other testimonials are. So we create these little short links for you and then we'll put it on a graphic with five stars with the review featured, with a photo of yourself. So get creative. Again, whether you use us or not, just make sure you have a link in that graphic that links back to all of the other testimonials so that you stay compliant.

Kristin Harad (55:50): Yes, I think absolutely. Anytime you can share them, it's so helpful in that arena. Coming back to the question Joseph asked, would that also reinforce the platform that you use in the end, referencing the age demographics? Absolutely. It'll affect whether or not you're sharing which social media you're going out on. Are you on Instagram? Are you on Facebook? Do you have some of both depending on what the audience is? And then it's how do you present that same content? So you might be, if you have a firm that has an audience that has some younger and some older because you're large enough to have multiple audiences, I'll just make that note, then the content you're putting on Instagram may be a little different, a little more youthful than that you're putting on a Facebook, but it's still going to tie up to an overall brand that works, like that knits together. It also may affect whether or not you go, I'm going to lead with a blog, I'm going to do a podcast or I'm going to do video depending on who the audience is and how do they like to receive information. That can be a determinant in how you might take your content and initially create it. Maybe your baseline is I do a podcast and then everything off of that, I build from that or maybe, oh, everything I do is video to start and then I go from there. So there is, it does, yes, in fact, reinforce the platform or platforms that you use in the end.

Diana Cabrices (57:24): Kristin, what are your thoughts on, if you use your CRM well and you segment your client base based on demographics like age, what are your thoughts on sending, I don't want to overcomplicate anything, but sending two different types of messages to these clients. Maybe you have newsletter version one and you have newsletter version two.

Kristin Harad (57:46): I think that is a sophisticated strategy for larger firms to use. I think a lot of the people who are either solo or up kind of in the, up to the 10 million revenue range, like in that arc of like zero to 10, let's get some base, let's make sure you're doing regular communication, regular content production, regular outreach. You might have the client prospect split, but to get into client prospect, then sub niches of the clients and changing the content there, it sometimes can be, can stop you from doing the things I want you to do to maintain that consistency. As you get sophisticated or have team on staff and you have enough of a differentiation that it really does make a difference, then maybe, but you have to be a pretty large, my feeling is you have to be a pretty large firm to make it pay off in that way or use a technology that can handle that for you, which there are solutions for that. But again, I know that the firm leaders have limited resource and have to really pick and choose. And so unless you've been at this a long time and you're like, now we've reached sophistication at this level, now we're ready to go into this, then there's all kinds of cool things you can do. But let's look at what the return on that investment would be.

Diana Cabrices (59:21): Yeah, you're so right on that. In fact, when I used to help the, one of the biggest RIAs in our space, Hightower, when I used to help their advisors with marketing, that's what we did. And we had like five different newsletters that went out.

Kristin Harad (59:35): Yeah, that's very cool.

Diana Cabrices (59:36): And that's a huge company.

Kristin Harad (59:39): Yes, and I love that. And I love that you could piece it together. And there's things you can do that are like mini versions of that. Like maybe a prospect gets a different promotion or if it's the, you could have a special edition. There's different things you can do, but I wouldn't make that the primary strategy unless you're really like, we are marketing geniuses. So we're moving there.

Diana Cabrices (1:00:02): Okay, Sarah has a question that I think is great for you. I'll read it out loud. She says, when having a lead capture or pop up on a website, should the item that leads would be receiving be more exclusive in the sense it isn't anywhere else on my website? Or could I use it? Could I use a blog from the past that's on my website already built, but still relevant?

Kristin Harad (1:00:24): I would say if the blog post is out there and you're not adding additional value in the lead magnet, then it's not helpful because I could have just gotten that content there. So it needs to add additional value in some way. For instance, like be an interactive workbook or worksheet on the topic that you talked about. A simple thing to do is like a fill in the blank. Like take the concept and be like, hey, here's a worksheet to work through this concept that I talked about. It does need to be different. Another thing that I like to do though that has worked well for advisors is to take if you have multiple blog posts, say on a topic or that are fit together, you can take say three or four blog posts, put them into a guidebook. And that is totally a great download because then you've bundled. So bundle content, put it in a layout that looks nice, have that as a download, whole different world. And I've seen that go really well. I had an advisor who had focused on real estate investing and investments outside of your normal portfolio. And he had three or four, I think he had four or five actually different posts on individual posts that they did. And this is a great way to do it because you're writing a post, writing a post, writing a post, then you go, I've written four posts now. I'm gonna bundle them together into a book, into a guide, a download. I will confess I've done that as well.

Diana Cabrices (1:02:01): Yeah.

Kristin Harad (1:02:01): And it's a great way to give all, because you write it with the mindset of like, oh, and then the next bit of the next chapter I wanna tell is this and the next chapter. And then you're giving a whole bundle of four. So I love doing that. Yeah.

Diana Cabrices (1:02:14): And it's all the positioning. This is a playbook. This is an ebook. This is your guidebook. When I worked at SnappyPak and we used a lot of checklists and we used a lot of worksheets and even like little quiz, like ask yourself these questions. And another idea, Sarah too, if you just wanted to focus on that blog is you could also make a small video part of that lead magnet of you explaining it to them in a little bit of a different way than them just like reading the blog that they could have read on your website. So, so many ideas there. And that is a wonderful question as kind of summarizing what Kristin said, just change it a little bit, make it a little bit more interactive.

Kristin Harad (1:02:52): Yeah. And make it more, a little more robust in some way. Yeah. And I think it's really fun to do that and a big value to people because they're able to apply that concept they might've read about and use it in a way that can help further them along in their journey.

Diana Cabrices (1:03:06): Yep. Absolutely. I think while we're 10 minutes past the hour, we still have several of you on the line with us. So that is an awesome indication that hopefully this was engaging for you and you took away some golden nuggets that you've been applying your business. Again, if you'd like to learn more about Full Advisor Coaching, head over to Kristin's website, fulladvisorcoaching.com. You can request a call, whether it's 15 minutes or 30 minutes, get sort of a quick content check, if you will. And then on the Wealthtender side, we'll build out your entire listing for you and we'll teach you how to easily get started with reviews. We give you the templates, we give you all of the different playbooks, if you will, to get started. And it takes just a few minutes to sign up at wealthtender.com forward slash grow. Kristin, thank you so much.

Kristin Harad (1:03:53): Thanks. Yeah, thank you, Diana. This is fun. You can't tell. I love talking about this stuff. So I could talk about it all day. So thank you to everyone who stuck with us. We appreciate it. We get pretty jazzed up about it. So I appreciate it very much.

Diana Cabrices (1:04:09): We do. Have a wonderful day, everyone. Whether you're going to get your workout in or you already did, whatever it is for you. Have a great day, everyone.

Kristin Harad (1:04:18): All right. Bye, everyone. Thank you.