Joe Bayliss and Roy Furr
You might already be using a marketing channel that could be getting 10X more leads from the same media spend – if you used it the right way.
There are a lot of financial advisor conferences going on this month. And I’m sure there have been a lot of conversations about marketing and growing your business.
I can hear it now…
“I use Facebook.” “I have a radio show.” “I do dinner seminars.” “I use ‘look-live’ 2-minute TV segments.” And on and on.
These conversations are sure to be about specific advertising mediums. And this is where most financial advisors get it wrong.
Here’s why…
Many advisors believe the medium (radio, TV, seminars, digital) is the solution.
If one medium isn’t working as well as they hoped, they look to the next medium, and the next, and the next. The grass is always greener, right?
But it’s not.
And so they skip from medium to medium, hoping for better results, but never getting them. Or they simply justify the bad results, by saying it’s good “branding.”
But in reality, while some mediums and formats do perform better than others… In many cases, you could be getting 10X more leads from the exact same media buy.
What’s the secret? It’s your message. This is where you have the most leverage, in any media. The same advertising space or time in any media can carry very different messages, and generate very different results.
Your message either engages your audience and motivates them to take action — or gets ignored.
This is true with every medium.
Here’s a case study to prove this point…
A financial advisor contacted us from Detroit Michigan. He had a 30-minute Television show running on the local CBS affiliate on Sunday morning.
The show was written and produced by his FMO. The show was professionally produced and it was something you would be proud to show family and friends.
But there was one big problem. The show only produced 100 leads over the past year — an average of 2 leads per week.
The advisor believed he could do much better. And that’s why he reached out to us.
After reviewing the show and the media, we knew what was wrong. The advisor had some great real estate on TV — the show aired Sunday mornings on CBS. But just as we see with other advisors — the copy (written by the FMO) was off-point.
So, we rewrote the show from start to finish. And we reproduced the show in a completely different style. (An important point we’ll address another day)
We completed the production and the show was ready to run the next Sunday.
So, here’s the result…
The new show yielded 101 leads in the first 3 weeks. That’s more than 16X as many leads per week.
The new show aired on the same TV station. It ran on the same day and the same time. It was essentially the same call to action (a face to face appointment — just presented differently).
So, the new show generated more qualified prospects in 3 weeks than the old show did in the previous 52 weeks.
That’s the power of great content.
We give a lot of credit to the financial advisor. Because a lot of advisors would have given up. They would have blamed the medium, “TV doesn’t work.” The program would have been canceled and the advisor would be spending a lot of time and money chasing some other medium.
Instead, the advisor found a way to fix the problem. The 30-minute TV show pumps out qualified leads every Sunday. The show hasn’t just generated leads — I’d argue that it’s changed his business. It’s been 3 years, and that 30-minute show is still running every Sunday.
Detroit is not just some one-off example. We could literally point to dozens and dozens of case studies where an advisor is struggling to generate the leads. And 99% of the time — the messaging is the problem.
This is why we’re constantly beating the drum…
Your copy is the most important piece of the marketing puzzle.
Are you disappointed with your marketing results?
We provide a free copy review for qualified advisors in markets where we don’t have a conflict (example: Television in Detroit). If your annual marketing budget is greater than $250,000, schedule a free, 30-Minute Copy Review by clicking HERE.