Tech Trends Series #3 – Transcript

Episode details

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

clients, content, people, advisors, content marketing, reviews, business, website, podcasts, articles, bit, plan, market, talk, google, speak, important, newsletters, months, linkedin

SPEAKERS

Hayley Pearse, Cara Graham, Fraser Jack, Patrick Flynn, Matt Heine, James Sutherland

 

Fraser Jack 

Welcome back to the XYAdvisor podcast. I’m Fraser Jack. And we are continuing with our technology innovation series. And in this episode, we’re really focusing in on content marketing, and content marketing has become a big, big piece of the technology and innovation stack over the last few years. And so we’re going to get stuck into all things that advisors are doing around content marketing. Welcome back. Patrick Flynn.

 

Patrick Flynn 

Great to be back. Thank you Fraser.

 

Fraser Jack 

fantastic for being here. We’re talking about content marketing, and all things around content marketing from, you know, what do you create? And how do you create it? And how do you promote it? And all those sorts of things? What, what are you saying, from an overall perspective in this content marketing space?

 

Patrick Flynn 

Well, where I see it working really nicely is when it’s really genuinely considered an end to end part of the client journey. It’s not just, I’m gonna have to go sell some articles, I’m just gonna go get some, you know, pay someone to give me some articles, and it doesn’t really build into anything else. When it does build into everything else, then when you get to the next step, which is really it’s not just about getting people to sign up to a newsletter, or getting people to schedule a meeting with you. That’s pretty crinch. Where we were works really nicely is when their content marketing, really support your advice process speaks to your advice, but process speaks to the words the key concepts and stuff like that. So that when somebody has listened to a bunch of your stuff in they’ve heard you frame things the way you want to frame them, then when you they sit down in front of you, they’re like, oh, yep, cool. This is what I’ve heard before, read before, etc. For example, I write some blogs, and I do some videos on LinkedIn. And often refer people back to those same videos or blogs. And I’ll use the language that’s in those blogs in my meetings. And then content marketing isn’t just about getting some opt ins, it’s really about building engagement genuinely, so that when people come to see you, they’re not seeing you for a first appointment. They’re really saying, when they come in the door, already get you understand what you’re doing. That’s why I’m here already trust you. Just tell me how your wisdom applies to my situation, which means that you’re getting one one new business appointment, instead of two or three, because you’ve already skipped out so much of the process by doing it at scale over time.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep, they use you spoke to the authenticity of the of the person providing the content, which is probably why it’s so important that people are creating content that resonates with them in their ideal market. But you also sort of mentioned now what from what I was gathering is that this next, you know, your content marketing or your strategies around that need to be part of a bigger process?

 

Patrick Flynn 

Yeah, absolutely. So if you, I’m a process guy, I think about everything in terms of process. So if you are talking about something, one, one content or one concept I often use is the three word slogan. So I often refer to Tony Abbott, as you know, like him, love him or hate him, whichever it is, it’s probably one of the two. But you know, whatever your opinion of him is, he was really good at getting messages out. So when he said, Stop the boats or acts the tax, you know, I can tell you these things. It’s been a number of years since he was elected, but they still resonate, because they were just repeated, so consistently. And that was done as part of a process. So if we are saying, you know what our advice process maybe consists of six things, and whatever those six things are, let’s say it’s, you know, get your cash flow sorted first, you know, so you might call that cash is key. And then we go, all right, every time we talk, we talk about cash is king. And then step number two, step number three, whatever it might be. And if you If you’re really confident your advice process, and you’re really confident about the stuff that you’re saying in your meetings, and you document that, then you can start building that all out into all of your content, so that you’re taking clients down the journey before they’ve even spoken to you. I’ve sat down with advisors who have said, Listen, every meeting, I go through this, and I do this thing, and clients love it. And I feel it really explains that concept really well. And I’ll say, excellent. Does that exist anywhere else in the universe? What do you mean? Is it on your website? Do you have materials? Do you give them a flyer that speaks to that? Do you have content marketing this space that Oh, no, no, no, no, it’s just something I say in meetings, every single one. It’s like, Well, okay, let’s just take those things and consider that’s an important part of our process. And let’s build that into everything that we do. And then it’s all self supporting, and every little bit into relates to every other little bit, when we start thinking about that as being content marketing. That’s what I think about typically, when I think of the process that underpins what the content is, then the other parts of the process is about the how, and why and when. So for example, I typically do one video a week, we typically post that on a Tuesday, it depends a little bit on, you know, how busy I’ve been, and whatnot, and sometimes I’ll record three in a day. And then sometimes I’ll won’t record anything for a couple of weeks, most weeks I get one, if you’ve got a strategy and a plan for that, then that can do wonders for helping you produce that content. If you use somebody external to be a little bit of a ghost writer, I think that can be a good strategy, because they’ll keep you honest as well. When I say ghost writer, I mean, somebody who’s collaborative with you, you might explain that same thing in every meeting. But the Ghost Rider helps put some really nice words to that a nice structure to that, even though the concept is still yours, as opposed to someone where you just buy stuff off the shelf. But if you’ve got a plan, and say, we’re going to do these things this often, these are the sorts of things we do on this channel, these things we do on that channel, it can be really good. It might be our staff member, you know, has a five year anniversary, or 10 year anniversary, or you know, whatever, we might post that on Facebook, because that’s an appropriate medium for that. It’s also nice, it shows that you’ve got some longevity, somebody put up with your grief for five years or 10 years. And you know, they’ll be around for a long time. So it’s a really nice little thing to post on social media is a bit of signaling. But it might not be the right content for LinkedIn, but you’ve got a trigger. In my business, when this happens, I do this, when I get a really good testimonial from a client. Here’s the process, ask them if I can post it, ask them for a Google review. Get the you know, whichever of those suits best to whichever medium posted to those sorts of things. new team member joins the business at week two, after they’ve settled in. We do this building all these little processes into a content plan can be very, very effective.

 

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic. You’re absolutely right, having a structured plan in place. And it’s not easy to put together. I guess it does create some time and effort and energy. Putting those content plans together.

 

Patrick Flynn 

I’m sure you know a lot about Ben Fraser.

 

Fraser Jack 

Absolutely I do. They talk to me about the concept of weight loss, as you said, I’m thinking I’m reading between the lines that you’re suggesting we put the website should be the hub for that content. And then the distribution channels being you know, the social law, however we get them out.

 

Patrick Flynn 

Yeah, so firstly, the website is going to be the thing that you own at the end of the day, unlike any other social media platform that can change an algorithm or whatever the case may be. Or just straight up shut down, go offline, etc. And you know, you, you’re beholden to them. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use those platforms, but they shouldn’t be the center. When you get somebody to your website, you can then gradually introduce them to the calls to action that you want them to take. So one thing that I have heard from a guy, he runs a company based in Melbourne SEO company called King Kong. And I’m paraphrasing here because he uses some cruder language than I do. But asking a client to call and make an appointment is like trying to sleep with somebody on the first date. And you’re not trying to sleep with somebody on the first date, you’re just trying to get the first space. So if we think about it, those terms, the analogy can be filling the gap. Because if we’re just saying call us enquire, we’ll fill out the inquiry form book a time with us, that’s really daunting to most people. And unless they’ve already come to your website as a very warm lead, then they’re unlikely to do that. However, if you say, Hey, I’m going to give you some value today, opt in and you’re going to get aos out. Six step plan to fixing your financial situation. Then one you’re offering something of value which is always good. And secondly, you’re making that They’re really small, okay, it does take a little bit of trust to hand over my email address, and I don’t do a phone, I think it actually does require an exchange of value. But they’re giving me something in return call, and I know what I’m getting into, I know I’m probably gonna get some emails to, that’ll follow on from that. And then you can follow that on with a drip campaign or something like that. But that’s all you’re looking to do, you’re just trying to get the first base. And if you do that with your website, and then you drive everything else, back to your website paid for your ongoing content. When you have that conversation with a client about something that you’ve got reference to you sharing that that’s on your website, you’re booking appointments on your website, they’re logging into their client portal via your website, then they’re used to coming back there. They’re used to knowing what your website is, they’re used to engaging you with that, in that way, you’re controlling your brand every step, and you’re making yourself eminently referable. Because they’ve got that confidence in your website. And people will refer typically, by sending a link to your website, or elicits into your platform like they’re on Facebook, and they’re referring to you, they’ll link to your Facebook, which will then link to your website. So either buy secondhand or firsthand. It’ll be coming back to your website and then in case and that should be something that every one of your existing clients has been to since they signed up. But for most practices, once a client’s join, they don’t expect that they’ve ever visited your URL in any capacity ever.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, it’s certainly a big big thing to consider. Hey Patrick, thanks so much for coming on this episode. We look forward to catching you in the next one please. Thanks for joining me again Holly piers.

 

Hayley Pearse 

Thank you very much for having me.

 

Fraser Jack 

No problem now we’re talking about total different things regarding content marketing from both you know targeting new clients which I guess you don’t do a lot of in your practice because you you have a different way of bringing on new clients, but also around the concept of you know, you do a lot of work with personalizing. When I say personalize it I mean understanding the client base and the segmentation of your send communications to those types of people. Tell us about you know the nurturing, I guess process within your within your what you’re doing.

 

Hayley Pearse 

Yeah, so we have our caboodle question ties, which is our live stream. We are also sending out regular newsletters now. We’re actually looking at reviewing this, this process a part of it so I know newsletters are hard thing for people because they don’t know what to put in there. We we were using a lot of the information that is the in the financial knowledge center provided by energy. I know you recently spoke with Rob, such such a great tool. We, for every client that came on board, we signed them up, they loved the concept of it, we shared the articles in our newsletters, great read rate, but no one logged in again, there was not a second login. And that’s because that particular portal didn’t suit how our clients were engaging via information. So when we shared that content, they engaged but they didn’t actively seek it out. So it was a really great lesson for us then to how we, how we engage with people, how we sharing our content. When we did our caboodle question times, we chopped that information up, and then we just put it in short, short sections and drip fed that out through our newsletter as well. So whoever didn’t attend was able to capture small bits of information. So we’re learning along the way. It’s one of those things where you share some information you don’t, you know, crickets, so we don’t share that sort of thing again. But then there’s stuff like the password management or the cybersecurity where it’s gangbusters. Send me more, I’d love to hear more about that. And so that’s where we really lean into that sort of thing.

 

Fraser Jack 

Now with the M caboodle question time, where are these questions come from? Well, what are you answering?

 

Hayley Pearse 

people submit them. So we’ve got some questions that people will just send in after the performance report. We had, you know, of course, phone calls. So we straight away that day, the other two advisors and myself jumped on and recorded a 10 minute breakdown of what that meant. And we got that out to clients straightaway. Naturally, people had more questions. So we put that in our caboodle question time, then we cover off on just some, some stuff that we feel is topical at the moment. So a pair of attorneys we spoke about recently, we’ll always do a money habit section, you know, something small that you can do to help with your managing your finances. We always try to do a little bit of something that’s not related to finance. And we’ve just found that you know, keeping them to 30 minutes, keeping you know, about four topics to a webinar. It was really good engagement.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, amazing. So now with this webinar, you bring them live or you pre recording them is the conversation between the you and the other advisors.

 

Hayley Pearse 

Yep, so it’s live. Peter diamond, he is the head of caboodle. She She hosts it and myself and one of the other advisors will will talk through different topics. And it’s very casual. It’s very conversational, minimal slides, minimal numbers on this It’s, it’s probably similar to these format, just general conversation. And I think people like that a bit more as opposed to slides with returns and market things like people don’t know, not all people engage with that, not our clients.

 

Fraser Jack 

And I also find, it’s interesting that, you know, if you’re staying away from market conditions and things that are completely relevant to the now then this content can be repurposed over time.

 

Hayley Pearse 

Definitely. And that’s what we’ve been doing, as I said, just chopping it up and sharing it throughout newsletters. The other benefit has been, you know, the section we did on power of attorneys. Whenever we interact with the client and identify that we need to connect with their power of attorney, we send them that snippet to their video that we that we had spoken about in the caboodle question time. And it just really sinks in why we’re why we’re asking for this information. Similarly, if someone’s not returning their risk profile questionnaire, we’ve got the section where we talked about risk and return. So it would be great to have this catalog of videos that were really clean and schmick, and professional and covered off on all the perfect things, but sometimes just the general conversation with a bit of background, you know, that’s enough to get the message through to the to the client,

 

Fraser Jack 

you let’s go into this a little bit deeper. The because a lot of people do think that videos need to be, like you said, schmick, and professionally polished. And talk to me about how just an authentic video view sitting in your house in a room makes it, you know, can be just as good as you know, something that’s that’s being professionally, professionally done.

 

Hayley Pearse 

Yeah, it’s worth its weight in gold. And honestly, it was it was a roadblock of mine. I’ve got all the bells and whistles here to do videos for clients. And I had the longest list of ideas to create them. And I felt that I had to have, you know, the the background, the animation, I had to have the color scheme, I had to have it all perfect. And that was the roadblock. I just it took me six months to get onto it. And then I realized they don’t care. They care about what I’m saying. And the fact that I’m just doing the video. And as soon as I got over that it made life so much easier. At times where I needed to connect with clients. Regarding something instead of picking up the phone, I just pop quickly did a video. So if we have a list of clients that just don’t respond to their reviews, now we encouraging them, Look, you’re paying us get your review done, we know how life happens. We started just doing a short video that says, hey, there’s some red flags here we need to talk about, I need you to schedule in a time. And we have had on percent success rate on that. Because it’s a bit like going to the principal’s office. If If our client guide or instances or you haven’t booked in your review, you really need to they don’t care if it comes from me and they can look them in the eyes. So this fake, it just has it makes a lot of difference.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, amazing. Now when you’re doing videos that you want to repurpose, and reuse what, where and how are you storing them? And then how do you be able to find them and send them to the next client?

 

Hayley Pearse 

Yeah, so we we’ve just been storing them in like uploading them to YouTube and then sharing the links. We are talking about creating a client only portal on our website where we might keep some of this information. But the jury’s out on me for client portals. I just I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s the answer. I feel like within the industry, we think we have to have one. It’s like having an app. And I think unless it solves a problem, or there’s a journey, I don’t know why we would have one. And I think because there’s so many different clients out there. How do you make one up suit so many people? You know, if I tailor these up to the person who is going to look at their balances every week, who wants to dive into the investment options, that’s going to be markedly different to the client who is going to look at it once a year, five minutes before their review call? Yeah. So I think there’s there’s some great, there’s some great tools out there. I just I think you know, having a portal where you can reference things using is helpful. But I don’t know how far it’s going to go in encouraging clients to regularly log in and see what your sum insured is like I don’t know that people care.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, that’s interesting is that the the, with the content, it all comes back down. As you said before, you know that regular is somebody actually really going to log into something just because you’ve created it. Heidi, thanks so much for coming and chatting to us on this episode. We look forward to catching you in the next one. Thanks, Fraser. Welcome back, James.

 

James Sutherland 

Hey, hey, going very well. Thank

 

Fraser Jack 

you for joining us now we’re talking about content marketing. In this particular episode, we’re talking about all things to do with having a content marketing’s beliefs. Let’s start with the plan idea. Let’s start with having a content marketing plan. How are you working with with groups that have a good plan?

 

James Sutherland 

Yeah. I’ve seen several firms now who actually have a 12 month plan where they and Brett broken it up into quarters this quarter is around superannuation, particularly leading through that April May June period, and then lead into Christmas they may have more areas around a plan around budgeting. So as they lead into Christmas is more budget. Getting the topics?

 

Fraser Jack 

And is it something that’s come from somewhere? Just an idea? Or is it some is it where there’s some Google Analytics behind any of it?

 

James Sutherland 

No Google Analytics that I know of now, it’s more just, this is what we want to concentrate on. It’s more just keep getting the focus to having that focus of like, let’s work on this area for that period of time. If so that there’s a there’s a theme for one of a better word during that time.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. And so quarterly quarterly type themes. Is that what you’re saying? Yes,

 

James Sutherland 

yeah. I’ve seen sometimes do monthly, you know, so there may, it really depends how much a social or media you’re trying to create.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. And, and with, with content that obviously there’s content marketing, as in with, you know, we’re trying to get that word out to new people. But there’s also the branding content as well, and looking after your existing clients and nurturing your existing clients. This going back to the plan, idea, having a plan in place, sitting out a plan, how do you suggest people sort of go about that? And then look at then what distribution channels you use?

 

James Sutherland 

Yeah, well, I think it’s number one at the top of firm that you that you are you working in the retiree market, or the retirement market? Are you working in the millennial work, it just really depends on what, what your practice or firm is concentrating on. So if you’re if you work in a retirement market, more than likely, you get to pretty much use Facebook versus LinkedIn, purely because there’s more people on Facebook than there are in that market, then there are LinkedIn. If obviously, if you work in the professional market, definitely look at something like LinkedIn. If you’re looking at the labor market, you could look at the Instagrams, as well as the Facebook even dare I say, tick tock.

 

Fraser Jack 

You said tick there a couple of times, come on. Are you on Tick Tock?

 

James Sutherland 

I am on Tick Tock. I posted one yet no. I find it usually entertaining. Yes.

 

Fraser Jack 

So you were looking at your advice practices on Tick Tock? Talk to me about so marketing schedules and plans? What are the sort of things that you see working when it comes to content because obviously, sometimes it’s just rubbish being published. But what works for content?

 

James Sutherland 

Well, I think firms are now employing looking to employ either contract people to do this or actually in house. And they are then able to either guide the practice or focus the practice on what needs to happen, because everyone gets in the in the business of being busy. And I’ll leave that for another week, leave that for another week happens quite often. And before you know it, six weeks, two months have passed or even more, and there’s not been no updated posts on their on their blog page, or on their Facebook page, or any other area that may be using.

 

Fraser Jack 

It feels to me like this is a specialist area that find somebody who’s really either loves doing it, or or outsource it. Absolutely. Yeah. And had something in place put some, some funding some time some resources in place to say right, that is that is what we’re going to do create a proper plan and then work out your distribution channels. And since

 

James Sutherland 

I know very few business owners that actually either I have a giant love for obey have the time to be able to do it.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, one of the one of the things I think I see businesses doing well, the content marketing is also the reviews getting good Google reviews back in.

 

James Sutherland 

Yep. And asking clients on a regular basis, having a thank you gifts, whatever it might be to be able to Google reviews, LinkedIn reviews, even advisor ratings reviews,

 

Fraser Jack 

if you work with anyone that’s doing paid advertising with regards to the content plant?

 

James Sutherland 

No, I haven’t actually at the moment.

 

Fraser Jack 

It seems to be seems to be a little worked on subject for most practices.

 

James Sutherland 

Would be nice if Google was nice and transparent about how they, how they’re pricing some keywords these days,

 

Fraser Jack 

you know, they’re keeping, they’re keeping the industry going by keeping everyone on their toes when it comes to those search engines. Talk to us about, you know, creating or content and then promoting it and repurposing it and what are you seeing in that space advisors doing? Well, a good job. mentioned videos earlier, I’m sort of thinking around, you know what the video or podcast market are doing?

 

James Sutherland 

Not many people have not working with any firms at the moment that are using video. I think that’s a long way to go. There’s been but you can remember the discussion around video started probably around 2012. We’re now nine years later and was nowhere near the opportunity with regards to video. What about podcasts and podcasting? Yes. Subject to close to your heart and mind. Yeah, I subscribe to a range do even Other advice times podcasts there. And I think anything you do to give the opportunity for class to be there to share it or listen to it, I think we think very much around the listen. But we don’t think a lot around the sharing, hey, listen to this, it’s worthwhile, you know, it’s a sharing of those of those numbers. And I think somebody put it interestingly, to me the other day where I said, you know, you may only get 50 or 100 downloads on a particular podcast, but a lot of people would love to be able to get into a room and talk to that many people on a regular basis for the cost of a podcast. Yep.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. You know, it’s not necessarily about the numbers, it’s about the quality over the quantity, we’re not not there to be Joe Rogan. We are there to you know, run. Generally, most most advisors are in the advice business. So that’s their job. And and getting in front of 50 people a week is a pretty good thing. Yeah. James, thanks so much for coming on to this particular episode, we look forward to catching you in the next one. My pleasure, Simon. Welcome back, Kara grave.

 

Cara Graham 

Hi, thanks for having me.

 

Fraser Jack 

wonderful to have you here. And then we’re talking about content marketing and, and doing all the things around producing content. And I know you got some special comments to make around reviews. So let’s get let’s jump into it, what I know you’re not specifically doing in your business, but tell us about what your business is doing in the way of sort of its outbound marketing.

 

Cara Graham 

And generally speaking, we we are a word of mouth business, you know, that is generally how we get most of our clients, from other clients from our referral partners. But obviously, we want to make sure that anything that the client say, before they meet up or after they meet her is ever really high quality and positioning in the right way, you know, professional, you know, capable, confident, and, you know, adding value to their circumstances. So, you know, we’ve always focused quite a lot on having, you know, uniform and easy website or five different divisions to our business. We have had a project over the last 12 months around Google reviews. So if you’d looked at our Google reviews, 12 months ago, at WD, I think, had one or two reviews on there, we just never really made that much of a focus. And then we started the project just before Christmas last year, and we just started asking client for reviews and said, Hey, you know, you’ve always said such lovely things to us in our meeting, do you mind just spending a moment going online and writing it as a review, and we had an amazing response from clients? You know, it’s actually really heartwarming, sometimes as well, when you when you read those things, because not everybody says how grateful they are. But sometimes when they given that opportunity to sort of put it into words, it’s just amazing. And it’s a really good reminder of why you do you do what you do. So we know we’ve got, I don’t know the number. On my head, we’ve got a lot of Google reviews, now mostly five stars. And you know, lots of beautiful comments. And even I was chatting to somebody that was referred to me the other day, and I, you know, gave them a little spiel about TBD, and our process, and what would come next? And I said, Do you have any other questions? And they said, Oh, no, I don’t have any questions. You know, I had come to diligence before the call. And you know, TVD, looks great, you’ve obviously got lots of happy, happy clients that you work with at the moment. So feeling really comfortable about moving ahead. And I think it was just a great project to go through it. Because you know, if somebody gets given two names, three different advisors, and they look them up, and, you know, what’s the first thing you do your Google everything these days? And if one has 65 star reviews, and the other one has none, then I think it’s just much easier to gravitate towards the one where people are saying good things in a public forum. That’s Michelle.

 

Fraser Jack 

Now, I love I love this concept for so many reasons. One, what one is, one is it’s great SEO right? That you’re going to get the Google’s going to say, Well, that sounds like a great business without knowing and then push your you know, your search engine optimization will pop up, you know, when your business will pop up, you know, if somebody’s looking locally, or somebody is looking for, you know, typing in the keyword. But what the other thing is reviews from, from a consumer point of view, there is this element that it could be a bad review. Like if you write testimonials on your website, you’re only gonna put the good ones on there, right? Google, you know, here’s a one star testimonial No, doesn’t work either. But with Google reviews, there is that possibility that they could be unhappy and we’re all craving that one or that you know, is there is somebody unhappy. We’re kind of looking at the good ones going, Oh, that’s nice. That’s nice, but I don’t care about noise. I’m looking for the one stars and there’s no one stars, then that’s brilliant, obviously. But there’s from the consumer point of view, I think that’s what we tend to do when we when we focus in on Google reviews. We’re looking for the next Comments?

 

Cara Graham 

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I know, you know, when I go to a restaurant and booking a hotel or something, I normally look at the last few, and then I find a bad one. And then I says to myself, okay, if this person reasonable, or you know where they were, they may be just getting a little bit worked up over something that that wasn’t wasn’t so bad. And, you know, I mean, we do a couple of one star reviews on there. And I think there were actually, from people that weren’t clients, you know, the names, the names weren’t even familiar to us. But you know, I think, I think it’s an impossible target to have 100% happy clients in a business where you just really can’t always control the outcomes. But certainly, you want to make sure the vast majority of people are having a great experience. And likewise, as well, if anybody doesn’t have a great experience, or some of these people that pass the review that aren’t even clients, then you do have the ability to respond and react, you know, what they comment reasonable, or unreasonable? Or did they not even know us and just, you know, are acting like a bit of a troll? You know, unfortunately, they’re trolls.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yes. And I think Google know that, too. They, they tend to, they tend to favor that I think they tend to favor from what I’ve heard more around that four and a half star are being a great number, not obviously, just, you know, 10, five star reviews, which probably anybody can, can create, if they if they feel like now obviously, you mentioned that word of mouth is a huge part of what you’re doing. But you know, you’re absolutely right, that clients will even if they’ve been referred, or there is some sort of form relationship there. They, they definitely want to, they definitely want to go and see some of your content online, or I understand some articles you’ve written or have a look at your website. When you get clients coming in, even if they’re referred they have they’ve been looking at some of your content. Yeah,

 

Cara Graham 

I’ve been certainly some of them. Yes. You know, from there in the past, you know, we’ve prepared some some white papers on different niche areas. So sometimes they might have seen some of the, you know, printed or digital content about some of the white papers, we’ve got some around divorce, mining executives, small business owners and things along those lines. And, you know, if they articles for example, you know, certainly I’ve written some articles and put them on LinkedIn, and been a major focus of mine. But Troy, who’s the founding partner within Tw de, he does sort of regularly, you know, write some articles for the West Australian and the like, from there. But it, I guess, it’s one of those things that we’ve found it a little bit difficult to track, say where introductions have come from come from those articles. Whereas they when it comes from, say, you know, a Google review or referral partner, again, it’s just a little bit easier to track from there. But I think it’s just, you know, all of that content. It’s around credibility, you know, when people are, you know, often given a name, or they coming across a name, and they’re trying to make a decision, do I go and speak to this person? Or do I go and speak to that person, it’s about making sure that we’ve gotten the right credibility, and we’re going to have a connection with them, you know, different advisors are going to suit different people. So somebody that say is coming to me might want, you know, somebody who’s got experience dealing with a type of situation, or that they feel that we’ve got, you know, a connection, and we’re going to get along, and they’re going to trust my advice and things along those lines, and there’ll be other people that will be much better suited to other advisors. And that’s fine. You know, from there, you know, we just want our, our content online and our presence online to represent us and who we are as a business and also as individuals, because it’s a pretty personal relationship. When you’re engaging an advisor, you know, you need to make sure that obviously, you’re working with with the right person.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep. Yeah, fantasy. No, I like that way. credibility. And I think you mentioned earlier that, you know, professional, capable and confident. Is it been part of your branding guide since the beginning?

 

Cara Graham 

Yeah. I mean, you know, I think, you know, our sort of branding has evolved a little bit over the years, I’ll sort of put it that way. You know, I think one of the branding lessons we’ve probably learned over the last few years is that we want to make, you know, our brand, because we’ve got a few different areas of the business right from the, you know, the ultra high net worth, you know, and a mom and dad sort of type type business, we just want to make sure that we, you know, are professional and come across as very capable, but we’re also accessible. We don’t want to make, make people feel excluded. We don’t want our brand to necessarily be elitist, because we do have quite a broad market that we work with, and that we market towards.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yep, yep. Fantastic. Karen, thanks for coming on. And joining us today, we’re getting this particular topic of content marketing and marketing in general. We look forward to catching you very soon. Hey, thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us again, Matt Heiner. Thanks for a fantastic week talking about content marketing in this in this particular episode, you sort of make In the first one that’s such an important part of an advisors process, talk to us about what you’re seeing in the content marketing space.

 

Matt Heine 

Absolutely. And I love talking about content on a podcast, which is becoming a prolific point of difference for advisors. Now we’re seeing new podcasts that are popping up on Apple Store every day. So good to be back on the show. And content marketing is is really important. It’s becoming a key focus, and has been a key focus for our business for a long time. And it’s really important for a range of reasons. Not only does it help you with prospects, so it helps you really define yourself as the expert in a particular field on a particular topic. But in this day and age, when there’s so much content available, people are getting bombarded with content from everywhere, or real estate not that long ago that before we even got to work back in the day when we used to go to work, people on average would say about 5000 different messages. And so they’re having to work through all of this, this noise to work out who they trust and who they’re going to listen to. So there’s a real opportunity for financial advisors, when it comes to obviously all things financial, to cut through that noise and to become the trusted expert where your clients and potentially prospects will come to you first to curate the noise that’s happening around them. So contents really important to really distinguish yourself as an expert in the field. But I think one of the other interesting things is that content often gets confused for social media or social media gets confused for content. And I just want to really highlight that social media is a distribution platform, or a way to amplify your content. So if you’re going to go into content marketing, and I highly recommend it, and there’s lots of different ways in which you can do it, it’s all about making sure that you speak to your clients, you understand from your audience, what’s important to them, what is it they’re going to be interested in, because they don’t have time to read stuff that’s not. So once you’ve actually understood what the content is that your clients want, and the format that they want to absorb it in. So whether it’s a podcast or webinar or an article, a very short video, then you can start to think about social media as a distribution platform that the content pieces is critical to get right first,

 

Fraser Jack 

exactly right, you sort of start start with the I always like to start with the you know, they’re helping How does this help my particular you know, listener or with your client or with you know, your avatar? What do you want to call it? How do you produce helpful content? And then the distribution you write the distribution is an afterthought? How important is it to have a plan around this tone to spend some time actually planning this out and working out what you want to say how you want to say it, what the problems are, what you’re solving, all those sorts of things.

 

Matt Heine 

Clearly, like, like many things, planning is important. It’s a, it is hard to create regular good content. And I don’t think we should shy away from that fact that there are shortcuts, and there are ways to make it easier. So as we just touched on really important, the first of all, you understand what your audience wants. But then as a business, you also need to understand, you know, what is the tone? What was the sort of the message that I’m wanting to portray about my brand? Is it fun and lively? Is it very serious? Is it going to be micro related or lifestyle related, so need to really sort of understand, you know, how, what, how and what the time is going to be? Once you’ve done that, it actually comes down to the content creation part. So again, understanding how your clients want to absorb that. We’ve talked about podcasts a little bit, and we’re seeing a lot of people adopting podcasts. But one of the things that I love about podcasts and and part of the reason that I do one myself is that you can find fantastic guests that have got lots of really interesting things to say. So they actually become the content. And what we do at net wealth, and I highly recommend this to anyone that I’m thinking about a content plan is start to interview bdms clients, or other business people on topics that are of interest to your audience, do a 45 minute interview or an hour interview, have that transcripted and then find someone that can actually turn that transcript into a whole range of articles. And that means that from what is effectively a 45 minute, one hour discussion, which is easy to do, you can create three, four or five months worth of content. And it’s a really good way and we know that it works. So that’s one way to do it. But you do need to come out with what we call one big idea. And that one big idea can then break off into lots of little sub content areas and and make sure that you’re planning at least three to six months ahead.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, it’s really interesting. I love the content conversation about evergreen content and repurposing it. You know, when I think of when I think of content, always trying to make stuff that’s going to be listened to in three or four months from now or like you said, if somebody turns into an article, somebody turns that into a, you know, and then they finally makes a post somewhere along the line, people can still get some some relevance out of it. And I, I sort of talked to people around, you know, doing market updates, those sorts of things that they’re great, but they they’re relevant for a very short space of time.

 

Matt Heine 

Yeah, and making content. evergreen is actually quite challenging. And it’s important that if the plan is to make it evergreen that you brief your guests, so we often see particularly in With fund managers, there is a risk that they’ll start talking about, you know, what’s happening in the market this week or this month and what the greatest stock is, I’m trying to avoid that try. And if you are going to do a market or an investment update, talk about the style, the value, the philosophy behind the investment, not actually what’s happening in the market yet.

 

Fraser Jack 

You mentioned one big idea talked a little bit more into that what sort of what’s, what’s a couple of examples of big ideas,

 

Matt Heine 

big ideas? Okay, well, if we look at our content marketing strategy, and my colleague, Andrew Braun, is, you know, absolutely religious around this particular area. So we do a couple of big content themes every year. So there’s typically four to five, a great example would be the advice tech report. So we go to market, we do the research, we collect a lot of data. And off the back of that we write a couple of white papers, those white papers get turned into webinar series, I get turned into podcasts, such as this one, and they get turned into presentations for clients and licensees. So that’s a great example where we can do it is a really a very big bit of research. But it gives us content for three to four months, we then do another bit of research, which is around the advisable Australian, which helps advisors and also us as a business to understand you know what the trends are, we’ll then turn that into, again, webinars, podcasts and information. And we do that three or four times a year, but we’re not have to constantly struggling to think of the next best idea, or what are we going to talk about this week or this this month side, I think that’s a great example,

 

Fraser Jack 

it’s well thought out and a lot of preparation put into it. And consequently, the content becomes very helpful. Talk to us about the idea of once you’ve got some great content targeting or finding, you know, just the right ears and eyes. And you know, those sort of things to get in front of

 

Matt Heine 

this. I mean, there’s obviously multiple ways you can do this, some people have got a great client base, and their whole content strategy is just around engagement, they’re not necessarily looking to grow or bring on new clients. And so that content is going to be quite different to the type of content that they might be generating, if they are out there on Facebook and advertising and trying to attract new clients that might be webinars or seminars, or some of those sorts of things. So, again, it really comes down to, you know, within, I think you touched on it before, what’s in it for me, what is it that your clients are wanting to get out of this content? And why are they going to dedicate their valuable minutes to actually interacting or absorbing it?

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I like to, I like to say to advisors that just just choose your one best client that your favorite client that you really love and do do content for that helpful content for that person. And, and you never know, you might attract a whole lot of other clients just like that.

 

Matt Heine 

Yeah, and this is probably pretty obvious. But there’s no point sending a retiree, an article that was written for millennials. Because once they might accept it, but if they keep receiving articles about millennials that are of no relevance to them, they’ll simply delete it, unsubscribe or delete it when it comes in. Yep.

 

Fraser Jack 

And what about it, we still haven’t touched on this, but the idea of, you know, putting budget around the sort of stuff as well,

 

Matt Heine 

yeah, but budget, again, you could spend a lot of money, or you could do it very cheaply, as we mentioned. So putting aside an hour a month to do an interview with a fund manager, or client, as we’ve talked about, isn’t gonna cost you a lot. But to get a professional writer to turn that into four or five articles, you know, there is gonna be a cost to that. But it’s not actually as expensive as you might think, once you’ve actually got the content in place, clearly, email is a really cheap way to distribute content on social media, if you’re just looking for organic interactions. But we’re seeing an increase in the number of advisors. And I think we touched on this in one of the earlier episodes. And we’re starting to actually experiment with advertising. The most common is social media platform to advertise on at the moment is Facebook. So hopefully, they’ve sold out their stability issues. But following that, LinkedIn is the second most frequently used platform from an advertising perspective, followed by Instagram, and then to a lesser extent, Twitter. So it’s a really around testing, seeing what’s working, if you’re getting the results, spending a little bit more, but you’ve really got to be very focused on that return of investments, because you could easily just start throwing money at some of these social media platforms and getting actually nothing back in return.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, I would always suggest, as you just said before, that way that that’s the last sort of pile of the process, throwing money as a platform. But I think I think what the the idea around some budget is are also around the other like budgeting some time budgeting some money every every month, like you said, but that consistency, you mentioned consistency before and then that trust factor, I think that the idea of starting something, having a plan and following it through for the year, the two years, those sorts of things, that consistency of content actually helps develop trust.

 

Matt Heine 

Yeah. And it’s important to understand that it doesn’t have to be the practice principle that’s responsible for your content marketing. If it’s not a passion of yours, if it’s not something you want to do, find someone in your practice that does. So you’ll probably find that somewhere in the business. There’s someone that loves doing videos, particularly the younger ones tend to they’ve grown up on Whatsapp, Facebook, and they’re happy to do the social media side. They’re probably very happy to talk talk to a camera once a week, but find someone that is interested in and then commit some budget both from time to perspective and also from a monetary perspective.

 

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic man. Thanks for coming on this particular episode and sharing and talking about content marketing. We look forward to catching you in the next episode we’re talking about business strategy catlike