Digital Marketing 4 Financial Planners · S2 E10 | Repurposing Content
In this episode of 'The 4FP Podcast,' Dennis Yu, Chief Technology Officer at Blitz Metrics talks about what it takes to create good video content, the importance of showing gratitude to build connections and relationships, his dollar bill idea and word of mouth marketing.
To Dennis, good video content marketing doesn't require fancy and expensive equipment. You can create engaging content with good sound in a 15 second time frame. This content can include anything from advice to good tips that the audience will find valuable. These content creation methods can effectively grow your business.
Will you take his challenge to make a 15 sec social video? Share it with us on our social media channels!
Episode highlights:
- Dennis talks about his professional journey at Yahoo, mentorship and his goal to pave the way for young adults and service professionals to understand digital marketing.
- Dennis believes that the foundation of creating great content is dependent on your ability to communicate your story and expertise in a way that people find valuable.
- According to Dennis, making great content does not require fancy camera equipment, but good sound. Content that looks too commercial is often scrolled past.
- Dennis goes into detail about how important it is to fine tune your digital tracking and how it can generate leads.
- Dennis talks about how giving gratitude to your audience can impact referrals and build connections, he coins it the "thank you machine."
- According to Dennis, the most successful financial planners are the ones that are producing content.
- Jakes asks Dennis about his dollar bill ideas, where dollar bills are used as business cards to attract more clients.
Key Points
- Dennis reveals that it only takes a selfie-style or interview-style 10-15 second video to grow your business and explains what types of videos you can create (explainer videos, educational videos and product videos) in your content strategy.
- Dennis talks about what equipment goes behind making good content. Often, content that looks too commercial or professional is disregarded. He believes that good content just needs good sound. He goes on to discuss prices of microphone options for interviewing others and content creation.
- Dennis explains how generating leads can be done by maintaining your 'digital plumbing,' in other words, incorporating digital tracking that can perform sub-optimization for you.
- Dennis believes that showing gratitude to people can build connections and relationships. A simple box of mints or pair of socks with a personalized thank you note can go a long way for producing more referrals and testimonial videos organically.
Quotes
- "I have a friend of mine who sold $3 billion of real estate, top seller of real estate in Dallas. And he made stuff with a very fancy camera that shoots in 6k All the best equipment...and simply videos off of my iPhone, me holding with my hand, no gimbal, no tripod, no fancy stuff, outperforms his stuff." - Dennis Yu
- "The number one factor in video that sucks is bad sound," - Dennis Yu
- "...If you want to generate leads, then just say set up your digital plumbing, which has all your tracking, so that Facebook or Google or whatever can do the sub optimizing for you."- Dennis Yu
- "It'll take you 15 seconds to make excuses about why you can't make a 15 second video." - Dennis Yu
Resources/Links:
Jacob Wagner: LinkedIn
Dennis Yu: LinkedIn
BlitzMetrics (Content Engine visual)
Transcript
Introduction
Welcome to Digital Marketing for financial planners. The podcast where you learn which digital marketing strategies are working best for advisors, we interview financial planners who share what is working or not for their practice. Here's your host Jake Wagner.
Jacob Wagner
Hello and welcome to digital marketing for FP. This is your host, Jake Wagner. And on today's show, I have Dennis you from blitz metrics. Dennis is a part of the Digital Marketer family along with ourselves and really excited to share with you everything that he has to say today. That is how're you doing? How's your day going? Jacob? Yeah.
Dennis Yu
Good to see you again.
Jacob Wagner
Yeah, you to spend about a month since Traffic and Conversion. That was a great conference, man learned a lot. Yeah. So, could you tell the audience a little bit about you, your agency and just some of the work that you do to help get some folks get folks in contact?
Dennis Yu
Yeah, I built analytics at Yahoo. 20 some years ago. And after leaving Yahoo, my goal is to create a million jobs because mentorships important to me, and there's nothing better than helping out to be young adults or service professionals understand digital marketing so they can get more business school systems, not what it used to be. So being able to partner with folks like digital marketers, Social Media Examiner, Instagram, Tik Tok, these other guys, I think, is filling a key gap where business owners need to get to digital, which includes a lot of the social channels, they can't. But there's a huge opportunity for folks like you and the young adults, to be able to bridge that gap to be able to help certified financial planners, produce short little videos, and drive real leads and see how that impacts their SEO ranks to Google, my business, that website, all that and I would like nothing more than to partner with folks like you and help make that happen in every single vertical.
Jacob Wagner
Well, I'm excited that we're here today. And folks, I'm excited. I hope you're excited for what Dennis has to share. But then, as you mentioned, videos, something I've really enjoyed that you've shared in the DM circles is about this three-by-three video concept. Could you just share a little bit about that with the audience? And how does that work?
We know that in building relationships, getting new clients, it's often through word of mouth, your expertise, referrals, sometimes ads, sometimes a good digital marketing light through you. And if you break out those components that drive new clients, you can separate them into know like and trust. People are not going to just the first time they hear about you just sign up. So, it takes multiple touches. Just like in a relationship. When you go on a first date, and you kiss and eventually get married, you have a baby, there's different stages and building relationships. But for some reason, in digital marketing, a lot of people seem to skip those phases, even though we are aware of them in the real world. So, if we think about what those lightweight touches are, the three buckets are awareness, consideration and conversion, which when you look at LinkedIn, they say it's those same three buckets. You go to Facebook, they say those same buckets, you go to tick tock or Snapchat, or any other channel go to Twitter, they'll say it's those same three levels of building relationships. And it's not a coincidence. So, if we know that those are the three components, the three stages of a relationship, then can we make one-minute videos or even 15 second videos that honor each of those three stages. So that first stage that getting to know your awareness stage top of the funnel, is telling a story. So, people understand your values are who you're with, or your favorite coffee shop, or something that is a lightweight touch, like you'd make in small talk, the middle of the funnel, once they get to know who you are, is sharing expertise. Talking about what do you need to do for retirement? What about taxes? Because the Biden administration, what do you think about inflation? Where should you put your money, you're sharing expertise without selling, you're just demonstrating and qualifying that you are someone who is good to talk to someone who's trustworthy, someone who has a certification, someone who has been in business for a while, just like a doctor or a pilot or whatnot, you know, you have a certification, so people trust you, as the middle of the funnel sharing expertise. That's the meat of the hamburger between the two months, if you will, and then the bottom is selling. And if you've done these three phases, and people have gotten to know you at the top level, a bunch of one-minute videos there, bunch of one minute video sharing expertise, then the bottom comes naturally. It's I'd love to book a time with you click on the link below. Let's have a 15 minute, no obligation call to talk about your situation, right or, “Hey, I created a lead magnet.” And I'd love to send you the 10 ways to pay less taxes in 2022. Just put in your email, right whatever it might be, or come visit my website or buy my course or whatever the conversion item is. So, if you make three why videos three how videos and three what videos that's the three by three is the ultimate tic tac toe, if you will. And it works most effectively in lead gen, where we are selling a product based on services, that there are potentially hundreds of other people that do what appears to be the same thing. But people are making choices because of expertise, reputation, word of mouth, that kind of thing. So
Jacob Wagner
where do you how do you get these videos out there? And where are the best places for folks to find the Make sure to get the most out of their effort?
Do you make them on your phone? Do you have an iPhone, it's automatically uploading to iCloud if you pay the 999 a month or whatever it is, and when they all get uploaded to your phone, then you or a virtual assistant that you hire for $600 a month full time will then take that video that you've made and post it to Facebook Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat, LinkedIn whatever, Quora you can put your blog your Google My Business. So that one video that you make just because you're walking into your favorite restaurant saying I really like the veal Parmesan and Maggio's don't use Marciano Sara chain, but you know whatever the local just to show that you are well known in Portland like I love to go to voodoo Dona and Portland, right, I hang out in Pioneer Square and walked to the food carts. It was a ninth and Alder, right. I'm showing them a part of the neighborhood, I'm showing that I know Portland well. And that that has nothing to do with being a financial planner, or retirement investment visor or whatnot has nothing to do with having a series eight certification or whatnot. But it does build relationships. So, when you post those little snippets, when your VA or you or whatever, take that video, and post it to 678 other places all at the same time. Now you're able to cover all social media. Yeah, purists will say, oh, you can't do that. You have to create something separate for Instagram, separate for Tik Tok, separate for Snapchat, separate for Facebook. Well, yeah, people that specialize in doing social media. And that's all they do fine. But if you're a business owner, you don't have time for all that. And this works. It's an 8020, right? It's not perfect, but you get 80% of the effort, or 80% of the value for 20% of the effort.
Jacob Wagner
So, this sounds really complicated, or at least like it might be. And I also know that it's also really simple. And so just want to bring that up for the audience that basically what Dennis is talking about here is record one to three videos, and then we in keeping the focuses that he's talking about. And then as you break apart, like basically, you can use that video in total, or you can break it up into different pieces, and then share it on all these networks. And, Dennis, do you think that the networks are punishing you for using these videos? I know that's something I've heard sometimes.
Now, some people will say there's a duplicate content penalty. I mean, there is an issue where if you take a YouTube video, which is typically landscape and is longer form, right, a YouTube video might be 15 minutes, it might be an hour, and you try to take that landscape video and make it vertical. That's a 15 second story or cut out snippets of that YouTube video and turn it into a tick tock, that might not work as well. But it's not because tick tock is penalizing you, it's because it might not resonate as well in that network. So, it ultimately goes back to your ability to communicate clearly and share your story to show that you have authority because of who you're working with, to give good tips and advice that people find valuable. That's really the main thing. It's not on aspect ratio, or what kind of software you're using. That's the thing that professional digital marketers would have you believe, because they have an incentive to make things look confusing. But the main tool you're using is your mouth. And it's sharing knowledge. And if you're not sure what kinds of videos to make, think about the most common advice that you give. Maybe you're reacting to the news and what's going on in the market. Maybe in your local town, it doesn't have to do anything with financial advice, because you're trying to first establish that you're a good person to work with. So literally 15 to 16 second videos about anything, you can get a whole month's worth of content done in 10 minutes.
Jacob Wagner
Exactly. And that's part of why I think this strategy is so powerful.
We've tested this 1000s of times. It's not difficult. This works for anyone. It could be insurance brokers and real estate agents, financial planners, anyone who has the professional include we've done it for hundreds of chiropractors, chiropractors are some of the worst when it comes to trying to make videos or maybe personal injury attorneys are the worst. You don't have to be a movie star. You're not trying to be Tom Cruise; you're not trying to be a TV spokesperson. The key thing is you have to make video you can't outsource that. You can't hire someone who has a $60,000 camera to be able to make videos for you, you and your cell phone is what performs the best if you'd miss on all the other stuff we're talking about. The one thing to remember is it I'll be happy if you literally just make 115 second video if you need to pause the podcast for the video to stop and do that. Make a 15 second video about saying, I'm from Portland, Oregon. And my favorite thing to do is write the light rail into Pioneer Square and hang out with all the cool people and festivals they have going on on the weekends. Right? Okay, cool. That's 15 seconds. I'm Dennis you. I'm a certified financial planner. I'd love to work with you. Right? That's it. 15 seconds.
Jacob Wagner
And do you need fancy equipment, or someone was going to be investing in fancy equipment? What's the one thing nothing,
that's just the way we've done tests, I have a friend of mine who sold $3 billion of real estate, top seller of real estate in Dallas. And he made stuff with a very fancy camera that shoots in 6k All the best equipment guys got a lot of money. So of course, he hired the very best who brought the very best equipment, and simply videos off of my iPhone, me holding with my hand, no gimbal, no tripod, no fancy stuff, outperforms his stuff. And we've done this test many, many times, because the stuff that is too professional looking, it looks like the commercial, right? You can tell Jacob when you're scrolling, and you see something that looks like a commercial right? When it looks good. You're gonna go right past it, aren't you? Are you gonna even stop and see Are you gonna go right past if it looks?
Jacob Wagner
Well, for a second to figure that out? It's pretty much instantaneous. Yeah.
So, you need to make stuff that does not look like a commercial. But that being said, because stuff on iPhones works better than professional cameras, which is weird, because I have professional equipment and I kind of want to use it. There's one thing you do need to do that most people miss. And that is you need good-- so you still you still need an external microphone, I recommend the Rode wireless go to, which allows you to interview other people. It's got two transmitters and one receiver you just clip it on. It's the world's smallest simplest wireless mics. $300 at Best Buy or Amazon. If you do that any crappy cell phone
Jacob Wagner
will work. Yeah, yes, it and I knew for sure Mike but same deal, just a Bluetooth connection. And it is the one and people are a lot less tolerant of bad sound than they are a bad video. It just starts to make us go crazy. And so, we're gonna focus on one thing, improve your sound.
The number one factor in video that sucks is bad sound. As in any professional video person, they will tell you the sound, you would have an old iPhone sits with good sound. That's great and good sound, by the way doesn't mean a fancy microphone, you can do with a $10 microphone, the number one factor in sound is how many inches away it is from your lips. If it's within 12 inches, it's normally pretty good. So cheap, $10 microphone, within 12 inches of your mouth old phone that you don't even need lighting, you don't need a tripod like that. You just need some kind of microphone within 12 inches of your mouth. And if it's outside, and it's noisy and it's in traffic, then get one that clips right here under your chin. That way you're still close to your mouth.
Jacob Wagner
And those things are cheap, too. I mean, you know the Bluetooth setup, it's a bit of an investment but a good lavalier mic in and of itself, you can get a couple off of amazon for 20 bucks. I mean, it's very easy.
Yeah, the wireless mics cost more so the Lavell ear ones that are wired, where there's this is a wire that attaches to your, your phone, and you can get once for $10 $20. But you have to spend about $200 to get a wireless one, anything less than that and it's going to break up and be fuzzy and the connection won't be very good. So, if you really want to spend the money, you could do a Sennheiser AV X and that's going to run you $750 per set, plus all the other pieces. But if you don't want to mess around with all that just get the road wireless go to that's the best one. A lot of my friends have bought it even professional videographers, they've switched from $2,000 microphones to this one that's only two or $300.
Jacob Wagner
I like it. And actually, what I'm using right now, Dennis, I'm using my earbuds that actually I think they sound pretty great. There's you know, I'm using Samsung earbuds I think Apple as well. There's like five different sound cancellation things in this and all sorts of stuff. There's a lot of technology and it's right next to you. So usually sounds really good as well.
Your buds are great. Yeah, yeah, air pods. They sound surprisingly good.
Jacob Wagner
Mm hmm. And you might already have I mean, it's amazing exactly how much how much how many how amazing a tool a cell phone can be, or 2 million or $2 million worth of tech that's really in our pockets right now. And I mean, I even had a friend who made an entire movie walking across the country using cell phone to record the footage and it looks great. look better when we got to newer phones too. But yeah, took them a couple years. Yeah, it looks great. Yep. So, my next question for you, Dennis is I know sometimes folks, you know you're in Facebook, can you see that boost button thing? And you know now folks have this video or have these three or nine videos that we're talking about? How would you recommend rather than just clicking on the button, at least you know, these days, what do you think is the best approach?
And it's still the best approach for the last couple of years, which is hit the boost button, spend $1 a day, for seven days, Facebook has been taking away targeting options, as you've seen in the last few years. So, we used to be able to target all the way down to people's names and the most obscure interest that would show up and because of GDPR, because of protected categories related to jobs, and employment and housing and things like that, which extends in the financial services as well. Now, the only targeting that you can do, if you're a local business is just geo targeting. Because the rest of the targeting is done by the system itself. So, if you want to generate leads, then just say set up your digital plumbing, which has all your tracking, so that Facebook or Google or whatever can do the sub optimizing for you. And then say I just I need leads.
Jacob Wagner
Yeah, have your pixel in place. Yeah, no, that's important. And then…
So then if you have that tracking in place, and you optimize to that lead, or that conversion event, and you literally just boost for $1 a day, or you can boost for $5 a day, and you don't need to do all the crazy targeting five years ago, you needed to do that kind of targeting. Now the system is so smart. If you make the video, and you then boost it for $1 a day, or sometimes $5 a day, if you're driving for a conversion, the system will do everything else from there. It's incredible.
Jacob Wagner
You do have to have your events set up properly. And it's good to have someone who's making sure that the analytics are going back into the system. Right? You know, that's really important.
But yeah, money without accountability, you're just wasting it.
Jacob Wagner
Mm hmm. And also, you can't trust any of the graph that you're looking at as well and reliable data, something that we all Yep. Yeah. And one of the other things that I think really are is one of the other things that's really important to the life cycle of financial planners, marketing, really, we're talking about the stages of intimacy, and you know, when we're getting all the way to the end there and are really leading up to your thanking machine idea that the listeners of this show have clients to love them. And hopefully you're not working with them for 30 years. Yeah. And possibly even transcending someone retires and stuff like that. It's one of the most sacred roles we can have in our lives. And how do you like, show that gratitude? And how do you recommend that that way of gratitude might also help bring in referrals.
You guys already know that referrals are the best form of marketing, right? Word of mouth ROI is incredible. So, if you do this, right, what I'm about to show you, you'll never need to do marketing again. And that's this, your customers are talking about you regardless of whether you're doing any marketing or not. So, you might as well harness this, my favorite thing to do, which Jacob alluded to, it's called the ‘thank you machine’ is I will send them a pair of socks with their face on them. And I get them at video socks calm, it's $25. And you can have their pet's face or their face, grab their LinkedIn profile picture, or whatever it is. And then it comes with a handwritten note. So, I could say, “Hey, Sally, so awesome to be able to serve your family and so glad that you've been a client for the last four or five years, just wanted to tell you, I was thinking about you, Jacob Wagner, Certified Financial Planner.” And when they get that in the mail, but the handwritten note, they remember that they tell everybody about it, they show it they post on social media. And there's a lot of different things that you can do that are like that, that give that surprise thing that they get in typically in the mail, what do you get, like junk mail or random solicitations. But imagine that you get something. Let's say that, you know, you and I, Jacob, we are, we're hanging out in San Diego, having some dinner or something like that. And you mentioned that you want to have me on your podcast, right? Or whatever. We're talking about some topic. And then the next day, let's say you're home in Portland, and you get from Amazon, a box of mints and you're like, where's this box of mints coming from you open it? There's a gift note. And it said, hey, Jacob, I meant in all caps. To tell you how awesome it was to see you in San Diego and hanging out. How are you going to feel?
Jacob Wagner
Yeah, put a smile on my face. But having the idea of it happening, it felt really warm and fuzzy.
And when how often do you get something like this, per year?
Jacob Wagner
Let's say probably less than once a year, although there's some times, I've tried to do it for other people. You know, like make sure to put in that little bit of extra TLC. But um, I can also do it more.
Yeah, so people almost never get it. So, it's a standout marketing channel. I'm surprised most professionals aren't doing it maybe because they're too busy or they're not aware or they think it's too difficult. How much money do you think it costs for me to send you a one-pound package of mints from Amazon that includes a gift note including shipping and all in all 10 bucks, 10 bucks. And how long does it take me to do that purchase?
Jacob Wagner
Five minutes at most. So now even less if you have it saved because it's the fifth time you've done it,
we have a list of all our favorite items that we'd like to send out, takes two minutes, why I select the item, I put in their mailing address, I write in my little gift, no, hit enter, and it's done. I don't have to go to the store. I don't have to do Christmas wrapping because I suck when it comes to trying to wrap Christmas and birthday presents. And it's already done. You can pay an extra $4.49. And Amazon will put it in a gift box or wrap it for you.
Jacob Wagner
And you know, one of the things I'm hearing you say here, as well as like we don't need an occasion. One of the good occasions we all think about is you know, birthday. Birthdays are good. But I think it's probably good to think about doing something like this for your clients’ birthdays, because it definitely will, you know, touch their hearts.
There's too much competition during birthdays and Christmases for carbohydrates, because right how many times I had my birthday two weeks ago. You know how many birthday Thank yous and whatnot. I got, like, 700 of them, right? I can't reply to all of them. It's crazy. But if out of the blue, so and plus if they do it on a birthday, and it's like, yeah, yeah, it's my birthday. But if they, do it just on some random day, and it says, “Hey, Jacob, I just want to let you know, I appreciate your friendship. Thank you.”
Jacob Wagner
It’s such a unique time, that's something I really liked about what you're sharing. Because the thing is, is it Yeah, it's exactly what you're saying. Even just like, I'll take a social media detox day on my birthday, even though I know there's all sorts of folks going over there and saying thank you, because just want to enjoy your life. Yeah, well, I don't want to spend my birthday replying. And even though I love the folks who are giving me gratitude, and I think that's great. It's also about how do you stick out? How do you get to this unique memory?
By the way, the idea of Thank you isn't necessarily physical gifts. I know in this commercialized thing with Christmas and Halloween and all that people always think like love needs to be a physical gift. Like, somehow the diamond industry was able to get people to think that if you love that woman, you need to spend two months your salary on a ring or whatever. It's the key point here is to show that micro moment that you care, and to personalize it. So, if you spend more than 10 or $20, it actually backfires. Here's the easiest thing that you can do this most powerful. Most people don't do this. Next time a client texts you or prospect texts, you instead of replying back with words, as most people do on their phones with thumbs, reply back with video, do a selfie video and say, “Hey, Jacob, I want to let you know I'm here in Cancun and the waters warm and I was just thinking about you. Thank you, my friend.” Like that's it. Yeah, and it can be for existing clients especially. But often if I'm in a cool place, like me at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or last week, I was in New York, eating some ridiculous food and then going to Central Park. I made a couple little 15 second videos, greetings to folks who were in my list of friends and list of clients. And literally just took me five minutes. Right just to make it sometimes my greetings just five seconds, saying, “Hey, Caleb, love you, man. Hope you're doing well. And Denver's thinking of you.” That's it. Just like that. Just rattling off a whole bunch of them. When was the last time someone sent you a text out of the blue Jacob that had a video greeting?
Jacob Wagner
It's been a while in a while? No. Great. And then actually no, no greetings, any videos or something that was probably some social media moment that just got texted me directly or something like I'm watching something. It's not. Hi. Good to see you. I love you. And I appreciate
it doesn't even have to be that long. It's literally just a couple seconds. Hey, Jacob. I was thinking about you hope you're well. Hey, I'm in Central Park. Thinking about you, man. Help you have a good day. That's it. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And if you're a financial planner, think about your competition. The other financial planners, how many of them are doing anything like this? This seems like a social media influencer sort of tactic. It works super well. Because you're building relationships, as you already know how to do it's not a social media thing. It's not an Instagram Tik Tok thing. You're not singing and dancing. It's like living leaving a voicemail. But you're just doing it in a five second video. That's it.
Jacob Wagner
And none of this is also involving like, “Hey, do you want that hot prospect meeting?” You know, we're not getting there. That's, that's at the bottom of the funnel that Dennis is talking about here.
This is, hey, I'm thinking of you. Like, here's a nice little sweet text. Like if we're thinking back to romance. This is when you just like the sweet nothings to each other that are going back and forth. And there's just little things and it's the moment that means the most.
Well, the best way to think about it is an hourglass, right? Most people think that when you're trying to drive sales down a funnel, it's this triangle that ends at a point in the bottom right, instead of like a sieve right, the bottom is this narrow thing, and they think that's the bottom of the funnel. It's not the bottom of the funnel. That point where it intersects is actually the pinch point in the hourglass it's in the middle. So, if you think about when someone becomes a customer and then it widens out and an hourglass that's when you're creating content for your existing customers, that's you're featuring your existing customers, you're putting them on podcasts, you're honoring them, you're interviewing them, you're not trying to ask for testimonials, because that's obviously a slanted kind of thing. But it ends up being a testimonial, but more powerful, you take the content that they've created, and you turn that into your marketing. So, you never have to do marketing again because your customers do it for you. So, you know, when I send out these socks, I've probably sent out 2000 3000 Sock orders. Because when someone buys one of our programs, we'll send them a pair of socks, which is not something we tell them we're going to do so that way, it's a nice surprise. And guess what happens when they when they do that, they share it, and that generates more sales for us. So, our highest ROI marketing channels is when we interview customers or say thank you to customers, because then it's featuring them, it's not talking about us. Because think about the marketing that all the other financial planners are putting out there, it looks all the same, it carries no trust, it doesn't have them on video, might as well be like these crappy real estate agent business cards, the stuff that people just hand out, right? Man, it was someone in your town, making a video is with someone that you know, or at a restaurant that you know, and they're like, oh, you see them at that Italian restaurant, like I've eaten there before, too, I just drove by there yesterday. So, it builds that sort of connection. And what you're trying to do is build that kind of connection. So then when it is time or they're searching about, they have a question about their IRA, or IRA or stock markets or taxes or whatever, they're, they're going to contact you because they feel more familiar. And people make decisions on who they hire, based on similarity not based on who got the highest rating and GPA or something like that.
Jacob Wagner
Absolutely, I've had the opportunity to see a few people select their financial planner. And it's, it's a really, it's this magical moment where something clicks in their heart more than their head. And when it has to do, it's an emotional decision. It's deciding who you're going to trust and the what's in the mechanics, like, you guys are probably all good professionals, the off your fee only certified financial planner, especially if you love life planning like that's, that's a bunch of great bases to be attracting the right kind of clients. And then but that one person's gonna select because you're you and you sharing yourself on social media is and in these and all the different ways using these digital channels, there's really something I'm hearing from Dennis, that there's, we don't want to be limited to just sticking this in the face, or doing you know, DMS on Instagram, there's all sorts of ways we can use this technology to create a better touch experience with our clients and prospects.
It's all different ways of being seen. You choose the thing that you like, if you like Instagram, and that's working for you great. If you talk longer, and you want to do it in a course podcasting, use YouTube or whatever, great, but whatever it is, the most successful financial planners are the ones that are getting out there and videos. So, look at Caleb Williams, who's a financial planner out of Denver, the guy is absolutely killing it, even though he does have stuff about what to do for retirement or how not to pay inheritance taxes, and what is the living will or you know, all the different things. He's got stuff on that. But more importantly, he's interviewing other people. He's got some really cool clients. So, his most of his clients are super high net worth. And he's hanging out with them and honoring them. And he put together a podcast. I told him, you need to just do a podcast, we started a podcast. And that's what's generating more clients for him. To literally just you can--you don't have to have all the fancy equipment, literally just say that you have a podcast, and just interview people on Zoom for 15 minutes, friends of yours. And that will give you visibility that carries way more authority than cold calling or buying lists of people to email or things like that.
Jacob Wagner
Yeah. And if you can find a couple separate pieces in there, that could be separate videos. That's going to be great relating back but I was talking about beginning and then got uploaded to LinkedIn. For our group of people. This is an untapped resource there’s-- LinkedIn is really trying to take over some of that Facebook energy for b2b for the professional world. And so, they want to start having your events over there. They want to help you promote your video and also since it’s new, same as like Facebook reels or something like that, they give you a little bit extra push as you're doing it too. And that's pretty cool.
Yeah, they do. Yeah, LinkedIn is great for professional advice. It is the only real business social network. If you look at my LinkedIn, you'll see I get a ton of engagement. I've got 30,000 followers, and my content works well. So, look at what's working on my content versus other people's content. And you'll see it's just simple, lightweight stuff. I'm not trying to write a whole essay in a LinkedIn post, just literally a couple sentences or I take a screenshot of a tweet that I made. And just a simple thought that's it like one thought not trying to have something that takes more than 10 or 15 seconds to digest.
Jacob Wagner
So, can you tell me a little bit about what you mentioned this like dollar bill ideas? Well, I think that Something that the financial planners will just think is cool. But, you know, basically you're like, almost paying your prospects. I mean, I guess it's like something like, tell us more about this.
Do you remember in the mail, getting dollar bills from like Arbitron and saying, “Hey, fill out this survey? We'll give you $1.” And they already just attached $1 to the thing. Have you gotten that before? Right? Maybe you have to be older people who are older, like anyone older than 40. Like, I’m 47--
Jacob Wagner
I'm 42, I think I'm just writing like, I might have been in middle school. And that was more popular something.
Yeah. Anyone who's 50 will know what I'm talking about. I mean, they would send stuff in the mail. And why would they do that? Because all the other stuff is junk mail. So, if you got a thing that had real money in it, you're like, Oh, well, I'm gonna throw this away. There's actually $1 Bill attached to it. And they've done tests, the survey companies where they'll put $1 bill on it, versus they'll put $5 or $10. And you would, you would think like, well, if you want someone to fill out a survey, don't you think that if you put a five or $10 Bill, they'd be more likely to complete the survey than $1 Bill?
Jacob Wagner
It's still one piece of paper.
But the higher the dollar amount is, the more they feel like they're getting bought, right? So, it actually works in decreasing. So, when you send them something like money, people naturally you're not going to throw away money. So, what we've done, and this is just this kind of happened by accident 12 years ago, I thought, well, would it be fun? If we could take my friend Julian Musik, who's the co-founder of SEO Moz. So, she's well known in the World of Internet Marketing. And we printed her face as if it's been the green and white of George Washington, and printed out on sticker paper, cut it cut out the little circle, and stick that stick her face over the circle of George Washington on a real dollar bill. And now all of a sudden, we have these Jillian dollars, wouldn't that be awesome. And then she could hand out Jillian dollars as her business card. So instead of you know, cuz you go to a conference, you know, you people give you a business card. And by the end of the show, you got like the stack of business cards, you don't remember which ones what and you throw them away in the hotel room, right? That's what happens because there's no face to them you like when you see like so and so as their— on their business card, it doesn't have their face. So, you don't know you don't remember what you talked about. And then just the end of the conference, you just you don't really remember. I mean, maybe you do, but most people don't remember, right, they talked to so many people. So, the way to stand out, we found, and I did this at several conferences was I would take 10 or 15 people that I wanted to meet. And I would get my team of VAs to be able to print out these dollar bills with their face on them. I get crisp $1 bills from the bank. I tried it before with just like regular dollar bills from the bank, but they were crumpled and dirty. And just like you want the ones that are like completely crisp, mint never used before. And you hand out just three or four to each person that you have. Your cost of production is about $3 per bill. So, it's $9 for each person to hand them three bills with their face on it. But it's absolutely incredible because they see their face on it. And instead of it’s saying In God We Trust that'll say and Jacob Morgan we trust and on the back instead of the eyeball with the thing in the back it'll just say your company name, and then some kind of logo or the website, and people absolutely love it. I did it a few times. I think we did, yeah, one time I was in San Diego and I did it. I think it was Traffic and Conversion summit or Social Media Examiner one of those ones. And somebody tried to use their dollar bills at the Cheesecake Factory for like part of the tip to the waiter. And then the waiter like called it in to the FBI saying somebody's trying to create counterfeit money it's this dentist you guy making these dollar bills and then the restaurant called me saying Hey, why are you trying to circulate these fake dollar bills? And I said, Okay, I called the Treasury on this right the US Department of Treasury and they said it was totally okay because defacing currency is if you take currency and you draw on it, or you rip it or you do some kind of permanent damage to it. That is illegal. That is a federal crime. However, our dollar—but you take these dollar bills, and you just peel off the sticker. It's back to a regular dollar bill again, it's fine you just peel off the sticker, right? So, it is not defacing it, so you know I checked with the government totally okay. But every now and then like the faces we put on these dollar bills blend in so well that people think the entire bill is fake. It's just a little circle part over the George Washington
Jacob Wagner
It sounds like you've turned up the CPI really high to make it so the tone mask or something I guess this is a note to a graphic designer but—
Yeah, we we take their LinkedIn profile we have a template that automatically matches the size and the color and also the the fonts we put their name in the circle you know, above and below and on the back, we have it in in also the dollar bill font as well their company name and logo and things like that. It looks like it's on the dollar bill, but you can tell from holding it that there's a sticker on it cuz it's thicker in the middle. Plus, if you hold it up to the light, you can clearly tell that it's a sticker, right? But if you just look at it real quick, you can't tell.
Jacob Wagner
One of the details that I really like that you're sharing, Dennis is actually new money smells different. And so like, I think that's one of the really great parts about this example is there's nothing like the smell of money that just make you want to thank your financial planner and that’s really cool.
Subconsciously, that's what a great, what a great way to let clients know that you care about their money with a crisp, $1. Bill, if you had some, like crumpled up, one where the edge was torn off, and you gave that to a client, people think this guy doesn't know how to manage money.
Jacob Wagner
But with something nice and crisp, and you're showing the presentation, and you're showing that it's an individualized thing, you know, that this is really, that you thought you actually put in some time to prepare this gift for them. And they get to use it, and whatever that turns into. But in the realm of Finology, that's definitely putting— adding into the favor bank right there. Yeah, very, cool.
Yeah, it works super well. It's a little arts and crafts, you can get it done on Fiverr, someone else has to cut out the different pieces and put the bill on it. And then you can mail it to them, or you can meet them in person. It is a little extra effort. It's more effort than Amazon Prime for the socks. But I've done this 1000s of times as well. It works super well. Clients have hired us over just that.
Jacob Wagner
I bet. Exactly. That’s important.
I mean, check out whether we're competent or not right. Don't hire us just because you got a clever gift from us. Right?
Jacob Wagner
No, do your due diligence. And everyone who's interviewing a financial planner? Yeah, like I mean, one, you want to make sure your fiduciary, you want to ask how they're getting paid in or even asking how big their firm is, and looking them up on the end advisor search with the SEC. So that way, you can just verify that there's nothing on their background, all that stuff has to be updated constantly. And it's there for us to be able to use. So, you know, make sure that yeah, and encourage your clients to do and your prospects to do that background check in that footwork. It just continues to reinforce that authority. Yep. Yeah. So, Dennis, I want to thank you for being on the show today. This has been a wonderful conversation. Is there anything else that you would like to share with the audience,
I just have one thing, I want to see you make a 15 second video, I don't want to see excuses on why you can't do on right now or how tomorrow you're going to do it because your hair is better, or the lighting is not good or you're busy right now. It'll take you 15 seconds to make excuses about why you can't make a 15 second video. And the difference between you succeeding in digital marketing and not is your ability to communicate in short video sound bites. Same thing, if you're interviewed on TV, you got to be able to provide that soundbite in 15 seconds. I was on CNN the first time a few years ago and I flubbed it national TV in front of three and a half million people because I talked too long, I couldn't get to the point in 15 seconds. So, I've learned to get to the point and 15 seconds, and your ability to do selfie style videos or have someone else interview you on video and you talk to the camera is going to be so key in this digital, new world, whatever pandemic things going on, it's even more important to be able to communicate digitally through your phone. And I'm gonna see you implement this. I've tried this several 1000 times, I've been on tons of podcasts. And I'm not here to make myself look good or sell products or services. I want to see you guys make short little videos. Because when you do, your business is going to grow, you're going to get more clients, it might not happen overnight. But this is a this is the fastest, most effective marketing, you can do all the things that you could do. I want to highlight your stories. So, if you do a Google search on me, or a YouTube search on me or go to your favorite network, LinkedIn, whatever do a search on me. Look at how many hundreds and 1000s of videos there are a people that have made their videos and have talked about what the result is of making their videos. Most of them have never paid us a dime and that's fine with me. But that's my one request. You can connect with me if you want to LinkedIn or send me an email, or whatever. But to leverage word of mouth and trust and the things that are working already for you is to make that video and go ahead and post it on Facebook, post on LinkedIn, post it on your website, post it on your Google My Business listing that probably has not had any posts in months. Or maybe you've not even claimed your GMB profile, right? But just get that out there and you're gonna beat all the other financial planners out there.
Jacob Wagner
Just do that one thing that folks, thank you so much for being on the show, folks. Thank you for listening to this episode of the four FP podcast and make sure that share like and subscribe and I'll see you on the next episode of digital marketing RFD take care and have a great day.
All righty.
