By Intense Life Desires 
Marketing for new clients through education has long been a popular approach for financial advisors. Whether it’s conducting seminars or speaking at networking events, podcasting or creating educational videos, advisors get an opportunity to demonstrate their expertise, show that they’re approachable, and help a broad swath of consumers. As a result, Kitces Research on Advisor Marketing finds that education-based marketing is amongst the most popular marketing tactics that advisors pursue, behind only referrals from clients and centers of influence, and networking (in-person or online). Yet the reality is that nearly half of advisors fail to get a single new client in a full year of trying their education-based marketing approach.
In this guest post, advisor marketing expert Kendra Wright of Rebel Media Agency conducts a detailed “marketing funnel breakdown” of the changes that one financial advisor made to turn his multi-year podcast that had generated virtually no new client results into one that generated more than $100,000 of new revenue in just the past 12 months, and the specific changes that he – and any advisor – can make to whatever their marketing funnel happens to be, in order to drive better business outcomes.
The starting point is to recognize that education-based marketing is really a three-stage “funnel” process, where the actual educational content itself – the seminar or the podcast – is just the middle of the funnel. It’s a crucial stage – where advisors demonstrate their competency and build trust – but a great educational podcast unto itself does not create new clients.
Improved results also require paying attention to the top of the funnel, where you earn the attention to attract attendees, viewers, or in the case of a podcast, listeners who will become regular consumers of your content in order to build trust with them. This means getting clarity on who your ideal prospects are (and what kind of content they would be interested in), aligning the title of the podcast and the titles of each episode to that ideal target audience, and then further expanding awareness to others who might be interested (which in the case of a podcast, means appearing as a guest on other podcasts that might have listeners who would cross over).
In addition, advisors also have to pay attention to the bottom of the funnel, where prospects are invited to actually reach out and learn more about how to become a client. Because especially in the age of “finfluencers”, it’s not automatic for video viewers or podcast listeners to even realize that you are a financial advisor who actually works with and accepts clients! That has to be said – more than once, with a clear statement of what you do (as a financial advisor), who you work with (e.g., retirees nationwide), that you’re accepting clients (as they may not realize you have capacity!), and how to take the next action step to reach out and schedule an introductory call.
Ultimately, the key point is that marketing by educating is an incredibly effective way to build trust with prospects, but putting out great educational content alone doesn’t drive results. Turning educational content into qualified prospects means paying attention to the top of the funnel to expand your audience, and the bottom of the funnel to help them understand that you’re a financial advisor who is accepting new clients, and how they can begin to work with you. The good news, though, is that when it works well, you can quickly reach the point where there are more prospects than you can handle – such that ironically, for the most successful advisor podcasters, their scheduling form is built to introduce more friction to slow down how often prospects reach out (and ensure only the most qualified do so). A nice problem to have!