#382 Chris Dale – Transcript

Clayton Daniel
How’s it going? What do you know, strike light, Clayton here, Ensombl podcast today chatting with Chris all about financial planner, marketing, mate. Thanks for coming on.

Chris Dale
Thanks for having me. Clay.

Clayton Daniel
Look, yeah. This goes back to as most things do IQ goes back to the grammerly quite frankly.

Chris Dale
A little little tip from from a marketer to financial planning. Content.

Clayton Daniel
Absolutely. And, I mean, when I when I think about Grammarly, cuz because we’re a growing business. And so things like the written style guide was really important to me. Yeah. And, you know, because we had some people whose first language wasn’t English. Yep. And I would always see these little things that bothered me. Yeah. But now that I’ve got this ability to just permanently remove the word for example, that yeah, that just add it Yeah, man. Like, we were sort of chatting about financial planning, marketing and Grammarly was sort of one of the things that we discussed. Yeah. But there’s, there’s this huge, I would call it gap now that that exists between financial planners who are doing marketing really well, yeah. And have just super embraced where, what, what professional services can be, I will call in the modern quote, unquote, world, but then you’ve got a whole lot of financial planners who sort of are still very much of the opinion that they can just outsource everything still, and not play that I guess, important role. And so someone like you who works with a lot of financial planners, you see what works, you’ve seen what hasn’t worked? Yeah. And I thought, you know, what better opportunity than just to sit down chat with you. So yeah, man, when it comes to financial planners, let’s start high level. What do you see work? And what do you see? That doesn’t work?

Chris Dale
Yeah, well, I’m going to probably launch into a bit of brand and marketing. I’m gonna probably marketing geek out a little bit here, but what I what I see from financial planners are those that actually understand the marketing process and understand the concept of a brand. Okay, so those that do it really well understand that they are a brand, okay? And they are a brand, a personal brand, mind you like a brand that needs to be positioned in a certain marketplace. So they understand that by developing content, they are creating a brand for themselves and positioning themselves I suppose ahead of other financial planners because they are producing content, putting their viewpoints forward on financial planning, and really trying to drive a message home about them having an expertise, it may be in a certain area of financial planning, or it might be general but end of the day They’ve understood that they need to be on the front foot with creating content, creating a brand for themselves and being really putting themselves out there, if you like, and putting content out into the marketplace where some, some financial planners don’t, they kind of expect the leads to just come. Look, I’ve improved my website, I expect those leads to come, they don’t see the need to put content out there and really positioned themselves within the marketplace, which is what really marketing is and what branding is, you know, they need to really understand that in order to then generate because What many don’t see him I don’t understand. And it’s what I call the silent salesperson. Okay, so say in the financial planning game, there’s off, there’s a lot of referral business that gets put forward. So you’re referred by someone who’s happy with your work, but what does that customer? Do? they invariably search for you and try and check you out. So what is your silent salesperson look like? Yeah, you know, so they’re out there searching? They’re right. I’ve just been referred this financial planner, don’t know anything about him. What do they do? They go onto Google, they go on to everything else. Search used, you know, and what is your silent salesperson look like? If it’s crickets out there. And if there’s nothing out there, if your social footprint isn’t very good, if your LinkedIn footprints not very good, if your profile is not complete, if you’re you don’t have a profile page on your website that actually highlights your expertise, what are they going to find out there about you? And we’re like, gonna understand about you as a brand. So that’s one thing that those that are do it well have a fairly good social footprint online footprint, that people can actually see good reviews, you know, a complete profile on their website, a good photo, a nice photo, not a stock photo of the guy looks like the former Prime Minister can’t remember his name, but it’s just, there’s this fight of the keeps getting us in financial planning. And it drives me nuts.

Yeah. Malcolm Turnbull looks like Malcolm Turnbull that. Every time I say bye, guys, as the as the guy is a financial planner, but yeah, that’s how I see the people doing it.

Well, our brand, and they are really positioning themselves very well in the marketplace. So

Clayton Daniel
yeah. Would you say marketing is more important now than it was in the past?

Chris Dale
I think it’s more accessible.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah. And I think I probably that’s the better question, I think, because it’s so accessible, in that it’s free to have a LinkedIn profile. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think the emphasis or the expectation that a professional service person or people or company has a footprint as the expectation now is pretty high, compared to even a decade ago, when all of these things existed. Yeah. But even then, I wouldn’t say that was a massive expectation that you had it, it was kind of a nice to have,

Chris Dale
but that’s dictated by the customer. Yes, the customer has driven that. So what does the customer behavior model look like? That’s, that’s the thing we need, you really need to think about in marketing, you know that it’s a customer to customer decision making process that occurs. So the customer doesn’t, you know, we don’t know, we’re not gonna go look in Yellow Pages for a financial planner, we no longer do these things. We look online, we do all these things. So the end of the day, the customer has driven the need to build that that silent salesperson and really understanding that how how important information search is as part of the decision making process, because ultimately, the customer is looking there to make a decision they’ve driven. They dictate how they dictate how you are found. And you need to be there.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, fallible, and majority of time people spending time on social media, spending time on on Google. So if you’re not, if you don’t have a Google review, for example, it’s going to not that you’re going to lose the lead. It’s just it’s a credibility factor. It probably means that the emphasis is going to be more on the sale within the within the meeting room. Yeah, then then the way that I think about marketing is just simply pre sales and that the better your the way that you’re articulating is the better and the more prevalent your silent salesperson is the less sales yes on your yes your responsibility says that once once the once the potential client comes to your office yeah,

Chris Dale
there’s there’s there’s a number of things that a customer is looking for, in terms of looking for in this obviously Mark of the financial planner, so you need to tick the boxes. So testimonials reviews, experience in the industry, whether or not you’re you have an actual photo If that isn’t a photo of you on the beach, in your LinkedIn profile, you look, do you look professional I’m entrusting you with potentially my financial future? Are you someone who I can trust? Who looks to me? Like, they know what they’re doing? Do they have the experience? Do they have the qualifications? Do they have the right accreditations, are they, you know, they all the different things that are required to to give them trust and confidence to an end more often than not, they’re checking that out before they’re even making contact with you. Someone may have actually referred you, but they’re yet to actually make any contact have yet to pick up the phone. But they will know all this stuff about you before they walk in the door to have that first that first meeting

Clayton Daniel
immediately. And if I think about the way that I do referrals to financial planners, because I obviously know quite a number of them. The questions I asked, you know, like, what are you looking for in a financial planner? Where are you in Australia? Does it matter? If you’re if, if they’re remote on? Not yet yet yet? I’ll do a somewhat of a mini fact fine. Yeah. But then I’ll offer them a few options. I’ll say, well, by the sounds of it, someone like this might be applicable. And I’ll give them a handful of options. So I’m giving someone a referral. But I’m not emailing that person and the potential advisor to introduce them. I’m saying, do your own due diligence on these on these practices? Yeah. And at the end of the day, it’s up to so even a referral goes through the process. And I do that sort of, I would call it I’ve never been told to do something like that. But I just feel that’s the normal way that I buy something. Yeah. As I like to go through a journey of researching things online. Yeah. And so all I’m doing is really just whittling down the options for them to get started. And but but still the journey between the person looking for the advice and the the practices that are putting information. So what

Chris Dale
you’ve actually articulated is the basically the customer decision making process, okay, it’s marketing 101 you learn it first year of Marketing School, okay, it’s, you know, first step, need recognition, problem recognition, there’s a problem I need solving. Okay, there’s a problem, I need some help with my finances, I need a financial planner. Then there’s the information search face. So what do we do then? And we go on search. So it might be that someone rings you and says, Clayton, do you know anyone who can help me do XYZ in financial planning? What you’ve demonstrated there is the evaluation of alternatives, which is the next phase of the decision making process? And that’s what we will do in every decision that we make. Whether it’s buying a buy, what are we buying for lunch? What are we buying a new car? Are we trying to find a new financial planner, a financial planner, get get some life insurance, do all these things. I need income protection, I need income protection? There’s your problem. Information sets? Who do I need? Who do Who should I use to get my income protection insurance? Google asked friends do go through that information. So it’s process, then you whittle it down to the alternatives, which is what you just demonstrated there, then you make a decision based on the whole all the information that you’ve gathered, and then you make a decision to either meet with that person or to to buy the insurance or to agree to go ahead with a financial plan, whatever it is, but that’s a classic model of decision making. That is just consumer behavior. That’s how

Clayton Daniel
it works, isn’t it? It’s just it feels so much that feels so normal. And I mean, before let’s call it the internet. We’re gonna go back a fair while but yeah, Yellow Pages made sense. Because you I guess it was a simplified version. But you identified a need. You opened up to the part. Yep. You looked at the options that were the biggest add

Chris Dale
20 grand for an ad in the Yellow Pages, probably I must be doing well.

Clayton Daniel
We got a phone call that I guess that was just as a hyper accelerated version of what we have now, which could take months or years. And really, the marketing process or the ability to, to market yourself is just being findable, searchable, being available when people are going through that process.

Chris Dale
And the other thing is to be able to articulate how you can help solve their problems. So that’s where the content comes in. So how are you solving their problems? What are the case studies that you have? Yeah, where you’ve helped someone who may have you might have secured income protection insurance for them. Yeah. And, you know, something’s happened to them overseas. And then they’ve actually been very lucky that they had that involvement with your business. Yeah. And they, you know, they have income protection that is paying them until the age of 65. And they’ve they don’t have a financial worry. Yeah, it’s those those things so it’s that how have you articulate this is where we talk about content. What content are you running? What are you talking about? How you’re solving people people’s problems? And what are the major problems that are out there? And the emotions around financial finances, finances, financial planning, and finances is an incredibly emotional thing. You know, that’s the thing. It’s statistically I wrote a wrote a piece of content for a client once. That said, it’s the number one cause of divorce, I suppose. Yeah, in the country, talking about money, money, problems, talking about money, people, and people don’t know how to talk about money. You know, how do I approach this subject with my partner, you know, so there’s a lot of emotion around money, and financial planning and the decision to go ahead with a financial plan. And you need to be aware of that, and talk and talk to that when you’re looking at producing content, not just, it’s not just the decision to go with someone can be can be very much based on emotion. We know that for a fact in marketing, you know, 80% of a buying decision is emotion. Yeah, think about real estate. Yeah. Yeah, that’s so clear to me of it. Exactly. So using emotion and creating content that does hook into those emotional needs and problems is very, very powerful in terms of driving and driving your personal brand as a financial planner, and driving inquiry and making people feel comfortable that you can help solve their problems, because you’ve done it before.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, well, one of and it’s always, I always like to think about one of ensembles, co founders, and he sits on the board still is Ben Nash and the bearded advisor. And he’s done quite a quite well for himself. And I always like to sort of stay on top of what he’s doing, because he tries everything. Yeah. And he’s done a lot. He’s done a lot in this. And one of the things that he’s told me that works really well is exactly what you’re saying, in terms of a case study is simple as these people came in, this is what they look like, this is what they want to this is what we achieved. This was the outcome. Yep. And it’s really simple. It is that and he just speaks to a camera. Yeah. On his phone, right? Yeah. Hmm. You know, maybe a couple of minutes to sit down, write out those set details. But he said that, just that by itself with nothing else,

Chris Dale
because people can relate to that they see their own problems. Within that case study. They said, that’s where I’m at. Yeah. And he may be talking about, you know, their family income of x y Zed. Currently, I have kids at private school or, you know, struggling to do X Y Zed wanting to buy a home. Yeah, people can relate to those, those financial discussion points, you know, they can say, oh, yeah, that’s me. Yeah. That’s what you want. You want your marking? So yeah, that’s me. Yeah. And this guy looks like he can help me because he’s done that for someone else.

Clayton Daniel
Well, so the thing with Ben is, and look, I mean, I know maybe some of the listeners wouldn’t believe me when I when I say this, but one of the reasons why I like podcasting and not videos, because I don’t like sticking my mug out there. I’m like, Ben, so genuinely, when you work with financial planners, how much of your job is trying to get them comfortable with putting themselves out there?

Chris Dale
Yeah, there is there is that reticence to Yeah, and I think that’s a natural human human behavior. I do have some clients that are very confident as well. So more than happy to put themselves out there more than happy to be interviewed on camera and a very capable at it. But yeah, there are those that sit me on and then alpha really want to do that. I don’t know if I feel comfortable creating video or not have some that, you know, when they started, they were inclined to create a video on a quarterly basis as for a market update, and early on, it was probably a little bit clunky. But he’s very, very polished now. Very nice experience. It’s like anything you do it the more time to do it, the better. You’re going to be at it. Yeah, you know, it’s just naturally like that. It’s public speaking, when we all first started public speaking, we didn’t like it, we thought we were terrible. And then you would do it that many times and actually gonna get better at it. So I think it’s just one of those things. It’s, it is hard, but they’ve also got to understand what they do. What you do have is financial planners seeing other plant what other financial planners are doing and they can just come to the realization Okay, well, I kind of need to be doing this. Yeah, you know, I just can’t sit here and sit on my laurels and expect everything to come to me. I’ve got to be on the front foot. I’ve got to be pushing my birth personal brand out there. Creating a profile for myself. It’s like the thing that people who I think do really well are real estate agents. I tell me you don’t know any real estate agents in your area. You know, the guy they put their mobile number on billboards. I can’t imagine how many agents get the photo of themselves but you know, in their local area, then they’re visual In the present day, people know you want to sell a home. If you don’t know, like, I, I don’t know all the real estate agents in my area, it’s just the fact that they’re involved in the community. They’re out there, they faces everywhere, that sort of thing, that sort of philosophy. So it’s one industry that does it well. But yeah, there’s when people aren’t used to it, there is a reticence to Yeah, put yourself out there. And but at the end of the day, if you put yourself out there and speak with confidence and know what you’re talking about, there’s no financial planner, there’s not qualified, you know, you’re well, you’re not, it’s a pretty rigorous profession in terms of professional development, ongoing personal development. Yeah, you know, you’re doing, you should have confidence in what you’re doing and the service you’re offering. Yes, and, and put your profile out there.

Clayton Daniel
So let’s say, let’s go through, I’d be keen to sort of go through what a classic client looks like for you. So, you know, what, where do you start? What, what’s a typical engagement? So I guess what I’m really asking is, in your mind, what are top priorities that you see is common faults?

Chris Dale
Look, it’s there’s a few things. So my clients are typically don’t have internal marketing. So that’s why they use me, okay, they don’t have. And then what I will call their marketing infrastructure is quite poor. So from website to brand to messaging on their website, it’s generally very poor, it’s very, it’s very much internal looking and not customer customer doesn’t, none of it speaks to their customer. So I’ll generally have a client, they’ll have a really clunky website that’s never never updated. They might have a LinkedIn company page that never has a post doesn’t have a post on it for two years. Their own personal profiles aren’t getting updated, they’re not active, they’re not doing much. And some of the time, it’s just because they’re busy. And they’re finding it hard to like, there’s grand intentions to do all these things, client newsletters, trying to activate the marketing. But the biggest pain point, you know, for further if I look at the decision making process in my line of work, is actually activation. So that’s the biggest challenge is activation, actually getting the marketing happening regularly and getting and getting it out there. Yeah. Okay. So posting on LinkedIn, and doing all those things. That’s the biggest challenge they have. But generally, prior to activating that there is underlying infrastructure that needs fixing. So it could be could be like a client, they had a really nice brand, but it was wasn’t implemented according to brand guidelines. So to degree fonts are all over the shop, you know, things were very pet peeves of marketing, guys. Financial Planners kind of don’t really care. But, you know, it’s like you OCD kicks in as a marketer, when you sit there and say, eight different fonts on our website, and spacing all over the place. And, and they go, why is that important? Well, your customer is looking at it and thinks you’re all over the shop, and you’re stuck in the shop. Yeah. You know, and documents they say they might be their financial services guide might be a Word document, written with Times New Roman and document that’s really putting, you know that that is a document has to go to really every person that interacts with the business and it’s in Word doesn’t speak professionalism. So there’s so early on in typically an engagement with a client is getting that stuff fixed. Yeah. Okay. So that might be they might they might have eight or 10 documents that need completely to be rebranded. Yeah. Some some potentially rewritten but not necessarily always there. The legal documents that have been approved. Yeah, but they just look horrible. And I’m building trust in the marketplace. They look like something.

Clayton Daniel
Look amateur. Yeah. I remember once I sent my wife to you know, she was asking about tax returns, and she’s originally from Australia. And so I said, Oh, look, you know, you’ve got pretty simple needs. Just go to I think it was an ITP or something. Yeah. She said she walked into this building. And it was, she said, it was literally like a something out of the 80s. It was time. Yeah. And the documentation that you’re talking about. It sort of belongs in a place like that. Yeah. And first impressions. It and it is It’s peculiar, but I know for a fact she never went back there regardless of of what the tax return was like. Yeah, it’s because I think we just have an innate high level of, I think attention to detail that we expect from people that are providing anything level of professional service. Yeah. And if we don’t get those kind of basic things met, there is a hit tendency,

Chris Dale
and it’s actually what I will call because I in terms of my own experience, I’ve come from brand management in at a higher level. So in corporate from corporate world and you know, I’ve those businesses, I, what I try and do is try and educate businesses at the smaller end on how the big boys do it. So from a major telco, you know, their brand, brand management and the rigidity around the brand is really beautiful. He’s like, you just can’t, everything has to go through marketing. Everything has to look at according to brand guidelines. And there’s a very good reason that those companies are the size they are because of the structure around that, yes. And the importance of that to attracting customers. That’s the thing they don’t understand. This is not important to attracting customers, I just got referred someone the other day. And yeah, but it’s that person who walked into your shop and walk straight back out because of poor branding, poor visuals, poor, the poor environment that you’ve created for them. There’s all those things that the clients you don’t know, you’re missing out on, again, the silent salesperson, that’s part of it as well, the environment that you create your Office environment, all the things you remember, back back in my sort of those brand management days, where you know, the the office would be branded completely, you know, it was just like this, it was full on and everything was, and I was actually the brand. So my role was actually educate everyone. So I have to approve all this stuff. Well, it’s fine, because now I’ve got that full on drained mentality of everything has to be on brand. And you know, you can’t let that go out this, this isn’t this is not where we are, you can’t you can’t go into the marketplace. So, you know, trying to try to get that understanding and the challenge that you have when you have the smaller businesses getting underlying staff to know that they shouldn’t be putting anything out in the marketplace that’s not on brand. And because people just don’t know they’ve never been exposed to they’ve worked in big corporate, they will have been exposed to it. But if they’re just working in a small financial planning firm, somewhere out in the country, and they let something now understand

Clayton Daniel
as well, a lot of people don’t get it set to get my head around it. Yeah, I, when I first launched my company, I was with your OS and heroes had all these brand guidelines. And they’d say, it has to look like this. And I literally say, okay, yeah, cool. Then go design something that couldn’t be further away, because I just asked someone online to do it for me. And then someone from heroes would say, hey, oh, this is super different to what? And I’m like, What do you mean? They’re like, look at the font. And I was like, are you You mean, you want me to use the same font? They’re like, Oh, God at the bare minimum. Yeah. And so it would take guts, if it’s not something you’re paying attention to. It does take a little bit to get your head around. But I think the moment that you do get your head around it, all of a sudden, you notice the internal let’s call it the feeling that let’s say I have when I went when my engagement with a particular company is uniform? Yep. I’m even if I can’t express why that is. Yeah, it’s unconscious, various a, there’s a sense of calm and things of you knowing what you know, that are there. And part of me feels like I was watching Ricky Gervais talking about something I think just the other day when he said, you know, he gives ridiculous requests when he performs occasionally because what’s called a rider. Yeah. And he said, but but you want to know, it’s more the can these people pay attention? Because if they can pay attention to the, the ultra small, yeah, you just innately feel like they can take that paying attention to the ultra big three. And that’s sort of just a natural extrapolation of logic. Yeah. And so as you go through, and the feeling and the experience is uniform, it’s not that it has to be the most beautiful, but just it’s uniform. Yeah. All of a sudden, I feel just more confident that people know what’s going on

Chris Dale
barriers to the decision to the purchase decision. Slowly removed. Yeah. You know, it’s part of the process of as soon as I liken it to like, if you take it out of financial planning in the corporate world, if you look at going to the supermarket and your favorite brand of mayonnaise changes, its packaging. Yes. Rosa from absolute lupus. I don’t know. Is it the same one? It looks like the same one, but I don’t know. Like, there’s a lot more of what they call the Law of just noticeable difference. So 10% as law related to pricing as well. So what will people notice? So if you change the packaging on something over 10% size or greater than 10%? Change? Yes, then that does impact the decision to purchase. So packaging is obviously a big, big important in FMCG. And going to the supermarket, that’s a big part of the marketing. Same with pricing, if you put your prices up lower than 10% better guys fine. Put it up higher than 10%. And they start to notice and then they start to so there’s there’s these laws that you’ve and that that’s one of those things, you know, in that environment, you go Yeah, actually right. It does impact my decision to buy something when something’s one thing one day, and then looks completely different than next. Yeah, it’s the same product, same packaging, same cheese, packaging. Yeah. But you’ve changed that much that now I’ve lost a bit of confidence in that I’m actually buying the thing that I’m used to. Yeah, so I will look at something else. Yeah, look at another type of cheese that I might then become brand loyal to and so forth. So it’s just, you know, that’s that’s obviously trying to try and bring an example together where it’s Oh, yeah. You know, because I know the common thing with brands, financial plans, they are so important. Yeah. But it really is important. Yeah, it really is.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, I agree. And if I think back to when I first started, goodness, my financial planning company, this would have been 2013. So a decade ago, I’m, I really knew nothing about marketing. And I remember I went to some sort of marketing event for financial planners, and someone was at the front talking about how important social media marketing was. And I was 30 years old at the time. So I was probably the youngest Principal Advisor in the room. But I was setting up the back with a couple of old boys. And they looked at me and they said, Are you convinced and I went, No, I wasn’t convinced that I needed to do anything in that space. Yeah. Because you you’re achieving a certain level of success without it. But I just think that these this day and age, it’s so hard to not do it that if I can go back to myself 10 years ago, I’d say um, you might want to re think that no,

Chris Dale
yes. Yeah. I think from a social media point, it just helps that people know what you do as well and I don’t mean that from a necessarily a pitching business point of view. You have a network of people that know you if you’re a financial planner, and they don’t know you’re a financial planner. Yeah. Then that’s a bit ridiculous. They should know you do know what I mean like it’s the easiest referral ever yet but they know you they like you they trust you they just don’t know what you do been a bit you know just put on your socials that you’ve just attended the the the the ensemble yeah day you know, just put that on there already know is a financial planner. Actually. You know what, I might have a chat to him and give him give him a ring. I didn’t didn’t realize he was that’s that’s what he did. UBC incredibly surprised how many opportunities get missed, because people don’t know what you do. You go and go to a barbecue. I didn’t know you did that. I actually just invested x y money. X amount of money with someone I didn’t if I would have known that. You did that. Yeah. That could have been your business. You know, I just I just insured my whole family with with someone. Yeah. Should have told me you did this.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, it is. It’s a it’s a weird sort of classic. We did some research when we were just constantly doing research around financial planners. And the classic financial planner is a confident but introverted person, which I thought was a super interesting yeah, combination of, of characteristics. And so, yeah, it does sound like a financial planner, who you do get along well with Yeah, like, but you don’t know what they do. There

Chris Dale
wouldn’t be the same if you’re, you know, a real estate agent, you know, if one of your mates is a real estate agent that Yeah. You know, exactly what they do.

Clayton Daniel
And when it when it comes to So even for, let’s say, our company ensemble itself, which in a way, I guess you could call social media, but, you know, with most community engagement, yeah, it’s much more of a professional networking platform. If you even with a company like us, like I was going through with someone in the team earlier today, around what, what we should be posting about Yeah, and so it’s, it’s a little bit different with us because where we’re constantly releasing education, you know, whether it’s podcasts or, you know, documentaries and everyone in between But I’ve sort of started saying, hey, we need to start saying things about our company, not just promoting content, like I’m writing content. And education is great. It’s what we do. But we need to actually start talking about who we are as a company, what we do, because I would say, even though we’ve got a third of the market is still two thirds, yeah, that aren’t on our platform. Right? So. So there’s, there’s a massive gap for us to fill in. And we were kind of, you know, I’d go back and forth with a couple of people in the team. And they’d say, what about this, and I was like, not quite, so I actually had to sit down and, and sort of go through a couple of like Twitter and LinkedIn ads that are that I follow, and say, Okay, well, these companies are doing these type of things well, and then I was able to kind of break it down into different categories. And then from there, you can kind of mind map out some solutions. But my, my point is, for a company that owns a social media platform, even we struggle with how on earth we should talk about ourselves and write about ourselves. And I think to the to the average advisor out there who’s super, you know, busy and, and looking to add value to their clients. When it comes to this social media and the marketing there’s often a huge, I would say reluctance to, because because the of the thought process that they need to go through to get it up and running. So I got some questions for you. What have you seen that? And you don’t have to mention any names? Yeah, what are some of the funniest, like, either lack of attention to detail, or just like super missing the mark? Your career, it doesn’t even have to be budget planners. And it could have could have pre warned me I don’t really have or even when you used to do when you used to do the big branding sort of stuff. Yeah. Did you ever see something come out that was just super far? Off

Chris Dale
course, constantly. It’s a constant. It’s always a constant battle with documented documents going out. That’s just

Clayton Daniel
someone’s just in the corner. Yeah,

Chris Dale
yeah, literally just mocked up I’ve had, you know, even more recently, a, we don’t, I don’t use Canva isn’t in Canva is a great tool. It’s actually a tool that you’d probably recommend a financial planner, I don’t use it I use Adobe Creative Suite because design stuff. But it’s just you know, we’ve put together this on Canva you know, I might be an employer I have a client that is decided to put a document together this to go out in the marketplace and completely off brand. Created in Canva looks, you know, like a template. And you know, has has little character tools in it and all sorts of stuff. And I’m like, oh my god, I could buy clipart girl clipart girl, Malcolm Turnbull probably turned up in there as well. Are all made from Shutterstock and iStockphoto. Wyatt, yeah. But when I actually I’m gonna go back to the point he talked about what to post about, about your business. So there’s, you would have potentially done work on mission, mission, vision values, and all those different things so articulating to people what your what your vision is for ensemble, even. Yeah, you’ve got a group of people that are part of part of the journey, you know, what is your vision for the business? It’s, you know, there’s a great point sort of stuff, you know, what’s, what’s our mission? What what are we here to do? What’s our, a lot of these things are your brand so your brand’s story? Wherever you come from, where are you going to? Yeah, why have you gone from x y advisor to Ensembl? Why What was that decision? What is what you’re hoping to gain from that all those different things and take people on the journey your brand, take take people with you on your brand journey, and and have them because they’re part of a community, they’re part of a collective group of people that are obviously like minded, wanting to see the industry grow, and want to be part of ensemble? Yeah. And they need to buy into that as well. But if they don’t know what it is,

Clayton Daniel
it’s a good point. Yeah, it’s a really good point. Yeah. And from a financial planning point of view, I can imagine that would be identical for them as well. Like yeah,

Chris Dale
absolutely. Look that’s gonna get into when we do Yeah, when we do when we engage with with a client, you know, we go through a branding workshop, you know, even if they’ve may have gone through something like that before, you know, what are your brand foundations? You know, what, what’s your brand personality? What’s your vision for the brand? What, why do you exist as a business? Yeah. What’s your ultimate goal? What what are the, you know, and articulating all of that really gives clarity, and allows you to create that that story and that messaging to talk about your business and take it into that emotive space as opposed to rational oh, we’re just a financial advisory firm, where we’re helping people live the life that they’ve always wanted where, you know, we’re helping people to, you know, fulfill their dreams. Yeah, from owning their own home to wanting to travel all the time. What is it? What is? What does your future look like? What do you want for your future is that you may not be that you don’t might necessarily want 5 million bucks in the bank. Yeah, you might, you might be just happy living in here and just being able to not rely on government pension and have enough ensue food in order to live or live a life post retirement. So not everyone’s financial goals are the same. And being able to share how you can help people through your vision, your mission, your marketing, messaging, that is a motive as opposed to, we can provide financial advice. And you’re gonna hook in.

Clayton Daniel
And what’s interesting about that is if I look at a company, like the wealth designers, originally over in WA, Troy Macmillan, expanded around Australia, a lot of the early I guess, inspiration, that ensemble of back then x y had in terms of what it meant to produce good financial planning a little bit actually came out of and I’ve had the chance to tell Troy, this, his sort of messaging back in the day, it was some of the only stuff that was out there that was very lifestyle driven, was very sort of approachable. And he he, you know, is bit of an OG when it comes to putting forward financial planning as a as a as an aspiration that people should have. Yeah. Now, interesting. Even he just went through a massive rebrand. Yep. Massive rebrand. I sort of just thought of that when you said even if they even if someone had done this a while ago, yeah. Because although he was, and and myself included, were was very impressed with what he had done previously. Yeah. The nature, the nature of business is such that he’s sort of grown in a particular way, him as an individual, his staff that worked with him now and probably co owners. And the clients that that company has attracted over time, it’s now gone from this concept of this is what we think this is the line in the sand that we’re drawing in terms of this is the company that we are to know now we’ve actualized, that original sort of thesis, and we’re extremely confident and accurate now and so things changed a lot. You know, when he first started the pitches were black and white. Yep. Right. And there was a sort of a class or class C Yep, sort of element to it. That’s now being sort of replaced with a lot of greenery. So when now there’s pictures of his office, and it’s, there’s lots of lots of plants around lots of light. Lots of open. Yep. And it’s not so much the suit and tie, which it was previously it’s it’s you know, loafers. Yeah. And what really struck me about that is, look, he probably did it better than anyone. Yeah. And even his company, yeah. approached differently after a decade. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Dale
Well, businesses evolve. Yeah, you know, and in other day, you you, it’s not always going to be the brand new credit 10 years ago, isn’t this your business isn’t gonna be the same business 10 years from now, it’s gonna be a different business, you know, all of our businesses are different. And it’s going to require potentially can potentially be a name change can be a identity, changing an identity refresh, you know, if you’ve still got a website that you built 10 years ago, then you who, which, I’m actually reviewing one at the moment, which is about 10 years old, and we well know the world is world has moved on from some of the design features. Yeah, anyway, but that’s, that’s all around user experience, what users expect what customers expect, they expect to see when they, when they hop on a website, what they’re seeing from competition, if they’re seeing an outdated 10 year old website, and the next person they’re evaluating, has strong calls to action, has emotive messaging, talk to them, talk to their pain talks to their problems, talks to their needs, gives them a capability or even to a point of being easy to get in touch with the amount of websites I see with a contact form hidden in the back. Like be upfront, ask for the sale as for the contact those things so

Clayton Daniel
yeah. And what are you finding is working well with a call to action? So our contact form or requesting callbacks and so forth?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, requesting callback. So putting it on you like people don’t like be calling a phone. Yeah. That’s in marketing folklore. People don’t like picking up the phone. Some do most don’t. So making that easy for them to articulate what their inquiry is. So dropdowns in contact forms, what’s your inquiry about? Or actually to make a comment? And when when’s a good time to get in contact with you? Yeah. That’s probably the best.

Clayton Daniel
Okay, cool. So yeah, so it’s basically because I know a few years ago, there was a bit of a trend around downloading a doc camp. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker
Guided content. Yeah. Gotta contents fine. But that’s not a sales qualified lead. That’s a marketing qualified leads. So sales, qualified lead is someone who wants to speak to you now. So your end goal is a sales qualified lead.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I’ve never heard that terminology. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker
So marketing, qualified lead is really someone who’s downloading content. So if you look, if you if you take it to the extreme, you’ve actually got there are actually marketing tools out there, we can help you track what people are doing on on your website, from a point of view of tracking their IP address, and knowing who they are, what they’re doing, what they’ve looked at, what they’ve downloaded, what content they’ve looked at, if they’ve looked at an ebook download or an ebook. Actually, you get if someone’s provided your email, you know, if they’re doing that, but what you really want. So when you have a website, and you have content on there, articles, blog posts, podcasts, if you use certain tools that are available in marketing, you can track what people are doing. And they go from someone who’s potentially what you what we do call that marketing, qualified a marketing qualified leads are people who aren’t ready to talk yet. Interesting. Okay, so that’s your silent salesperson, the qualified leads. So I’ve downloaded a fact sheet on financial advice, or whatever it is, your Financial Services Guide, or whatever it is, then looked at a blog post or watched watch the video on your website, gone through all of all this? And then potentially, the ideal scenario is that they then obviously, request a callback. So you’ll have calls to action on every page on your website, because I’ve seen enough about you. Yeah. And then they’ll request a callback, and then that’s it.

Clayton Daniel
That’s it. But it’s good to know, I guess, what, what sort of call to action works, because I remember, even still going back in the day, you know, sign up for my weekly newsletter and things.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so you’ve really got to, you’ve got to have a pretty smashing newsletter for someone who wants to sign up on it in your footer. On your website. I’ll be frank with you. This list this thing’s famous and been on the front of Forbes, you’re going to probably struggle. Yeah, it’s it needs a hook, it needs a download our tips, download our guide to buying a new home Download Now. Whatever it is, you know, you need to have a you need to give something to receive you, someone giving your their email address to you as a transaction. That’s the value exchange, what value are you providing? If you’re providing a monthly newsletter? It’s probably not value. It’s not not of great value. But if that is a education series on how to do something and find out if it’s financial services, or whatever it is, if it’s an education series, I don’t get get our 10 weekly emails, educating you on something, yes, that type of thing will then encourage because there’s some value in there. Yeah. And your if you’ve done it, right, you’ve hit a pain point as well. So you’ve hit a you found a problem. And you’ve you’ve created an education series that helps people to understand and you can articulate how you can help them solve the problem. Yes. And then at the end of that series of emails that you send them, which can all be automated. Yes. There’s a call to action that says that, that what you’ve tried to do there is taken from that marketing, qualified lead through to a sales qualified lead, because they become educated on how you can help solve their problem. Yes. And then they have a call to action on that last email that says, you know, don’t you want to talk? Let’s chat. Let’s talk.

Clayton Daniel
Let’s see, that’s a tidy call to action as well. Yeah, we’ll do the work. You just let us know. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. So action.

Chris Dale
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s in it’s in your I’ll tell you when I’m available. Yeah. Because they don’t want to ring and have the worst thing is knowing that you can never get anyone on the phone totally. These days. Yeah. Never.

Clayton Daniel
I was at lunch the other day with a client. And they said whenever someone calls, I think there’s something wrong. Yeah. And I was like, That’s yeah, that’s the epitome of Yeah. People had to get on the phone.

Chris Dale
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you just need to make that easy to just need to remove that barrier. Yeah. And say, hey, when when’s a good time to call? People are busy people have got families They’re, you know, call me this time. Yes, no problem and then they’re ready for the call. Yeah, they’ll pick up the phone and on your on your way.

Clayton Daniel
Speaking of calling and speaking of people getting contact, how do people find you?

Unknown Speaker
Ah marketing hq.com Today you Google Chris Dale Marketing HQ should be out of find that really confusing when I actually do Isn’t it my business thing? Yeah. Really, really hard to articulate. Yeah, what we actually do

Clayton Daniel
that yeah, it’s not exactly lost in translation.

Chris Dale
Yeah. And then our tagline being put your marketing wheels in motion. So it’s about activation, getting good in making the rubber hit the road and so forth. So, yes, yeah, I’m on. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m, you know, not this. My, I don’t actually drive a lot of leads through social media like Facebook, and so forth. Like you’ll, you’ll find me on Twitter, but it’s not really an active platform for me. But yeah, I’m on. I’m on LinkedIn, or managing LinkedIn accounts of many clients. Yeah, posting on people’s behalf. But so yeah, that’s, that’s mainly marketing. hq.com. Are you so

Clayton Daniel
Mate, thank you for coming in. I, as someone who shares an office with you, and I was saying the other day, it doesn’t surprise me at all that the marketing guy already owns the address. So whenever I whenever I invite somebody with marketing hate you. Yeah, that was

Chris Dale
the first thing I did. Because I knew you wouldn’t be clever enough to figure out you do your Google, Google business platform, so forth. So I could probably claim all of your businesses on Google. Scrub your competition.

Clayton Daniel
Thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it.

Chris Dale
Thanks. Yeah, it was good. It was a low one. Dropped right.