Webinar Replay: Digital Marketing Ask Me Anything With Samantha Russell

We kicked off the new decade with a digital marketing Ask Me Anything. Thank you to everyone who came with awesome questions, and Twenty Over Ten Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer, Samantha Russell was able to cover a lot of ground. In case you missed it, read on for key takeaways and watch the replay here or below at any time!

What is the Most Important Medium Where People Should be Connected? [3:21]

What should we be spending our efforts on the most? This is a study that the bank of Pershing Mellon put out in 2018 and did in a survey different questions nd one was how do people find info about an advisor and how do people research them? They put out a great study every year. 

So, when it comes to prospects finding you online, where are people finding you? People were all across the spectrum from the middle class up to High Wealth. 41% said they go to Google to look for an advisor. Here is an example of words that investors prefer, which shows the power of words. Think about a client that you want…what would they be searching for and what would resonate the most? 

Google and Linkedin were the top-rated overall. You will get the highest ROI from these two platforms. Make sure you are blogging, your website and blog are optimized. Out of all the social platforms, you will get the most direct connection with potential investors. 

What are Your Thoughts on Email Marketing? [6:02]

Through which channels would you like your financial advisor to send you? Email marketing was the highest way that people said. There is a very real difference in how people want to communicate. We should be designing our websites for prospects that we want, not that we have. If you send them an email though, they will open it and hopefully read it. So, you should design your website for prospects. 

Most often it will be emailed for continuing to communicate once you are already a client. When emailing, make sure you, separate your list. Have one type of communication for current clients and one for prospects. For prospects, send an email that links back to blogs, your thoughts and things from the web. In your prospecting newsletter, do something that showcases your personality. You want to build that rapport with them.

For example, one advisor we work with does a “Throw Back Thursday” in his newsletter and chooses a song that was popular years ago, and he embeds it. Many of his prospects comment and it’s his most commented and engaged with piece in his newsletter.  Another advisor, every week when he sends his newsletter, he would send an update on his home renovation and that was his most commented-on piece. Do something that gives people a sense of who you are and watch your engagement skyrocket. 

Additionally, remember that if you link it out rather than embed, that will give you the best deliverability. A button that they click that will take them to the video is your best bet. 

For Video Marketing, How Polished Should It Be? [10:57]

Remember that lighting is very important when making your videos. I use a light where you can put your phone right in and toggle it however you want. You can turn the light on if the lighting isn’t that good and it’s a great investment if you are going to start shooting video. It’s very reasonably priced that is great to help you produce some videos. 

This is the structure you want to do when creating your videos, and it’s what I do. 

• I record video
• I edit the front and the end
• I make sure I create a hook, so some sort of stat. I ask some sort of question, a stat, a hook something to get people engaged. The first 5 seconds are the most crucial if they will keep watching.
• Then I saw who I am and say we are going to talk about X.
• In the end, I recap a point that I made then I tell people how to find out more. I include a link to an image, blog. Remember to say Subscribe and follow us on YouTube.

If you are creating videos to clients, you can create a private channel where only those with a link to the video can see it. You won’t have to pay for a separate one and it’s private that only your clients who have that link can get. 

Social Media-How Often Should I Be Posting? [17:05]

So, how do I actually get business from social media and how do I get more people to connect with me? 

Here is an advisor page that I think will be a great example for you all. This is Anthony R. Ruffalo, CFP® LinkedIn profile,  and we made a great connection.  He just became active on the platform in the last 6 months and he posted a recap of what he did, and here is what he found.  He wrote 307 posts in 2019, so almost one post a day. Over time, he grew his connections from 300 to 1,600, and he grew his average views from 3 views to 554 views in July to 2,026 at the end of the year. 

What is the ROI that it leads to? He said it was his largest group in 10 years. He has built over 30 plus quality local relationships, which was a huge impact. I wanted to share this because he just got started, but the thing that sticks out to me is his consistency…he is posting almost once a day.  You will notice he is starting conversations and many people commenting are in the industry. Linkedin allows you to take a PowerPoint, download it as a PDF and upload it as a presentation. 

I have found what works best in terms of building up a LinkedIn presence is keeping your content on Linkedin’s platform. Do not direct people to leave but instead, you want to keep them on LinkedIn’s platform. I upload videos natively, so you are watching it on my LinkedIn profile and not going out to watch it elsewhere. Those are the best kinds of content to build up the most views, so keep people on the platform to get the most bang for your buck 

Is Advertising on Facebook Worth it? [21:24]

I am an advocate on paid social ads but the way you need to do them is you go to Facebook you upload some content organically. I wait to see how it performs, then I boost the post. Facebook will tell you this post is trending higher than your posts, this will be a good one to boost. 

Advertising on YouTube

Another area you can try is youTube, you can get really really great conversions for something like 1 cent per view. With LinkedIn, a view is anyone who looks at it for 3 seconds. With Youtube, they have to watch for at least 30 seconds. I would definitely suggest YouTube if you’re not there already.

Another thing to keep in mind is when you upload a video, you always want to add a video transcript, add hashtags and make sure you include the transcript because a search engine on Google cannot crawl a video

What Do You Suggest to Use for an Email Newsletter Tool? [24:24]

We have a new tool coming out in February, called Lead Pilot. It is a one-stop-shop for advisors where they do email marketing, social, manage contacts and leads, etc all in one place. It will be available in February to the public.

It will be email marketing, social, all in one place. So, just how right now you may use Mailchimp and Hootsuite and create your own content, this will allow you to do all of that in one area. The content library includes things like infographics, editorial, and they are all editable. 

It’s okay to curate content as well as creating your own. If you will be posting almost every other day, you will need a good stockpile of things to share, so you will want to be sharing things in advance, so having a social media scheduler that allows you to schedule things out in advance is very useful. 

If you don’t want to use Lead Pilot, you can look at Hootsuite for scheduling and Mailchimp has a great marketing platform, so those are two I always recommended before we had Lead Pilot.

How Can You Create the Transcript for the Video? [21:27]

Headliner social is a tool that we use for our videos. Headliner is the transcription tool that allows you to do that and style it a bit. 

Headliner is pretty good and free transcription tool you can use, and YouTube also will transcribe your videos as a txt file that you can then use elsewhere 

I also discovered VideoBoost: Video Maker in the Apple app store. This came highly recommended and it’s free. 

VideoBoost allows you to make templates, put text, add music, have transitioned, etc. so that makes it nice and easy to do. Also, YouTube will give you a transcript. It isn’t the best, but you can get one from there, as well.

The other one I wanted to mention is that you can sign up for an Instagram personal account and use Instagram’s editing tool if you’re used to that personally already, then download that story then upload it to another app. 

Questions about SEO and Google Trends [29:36]

One thing we have seen change is EAT, which is an acronym that Google uses that stands for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. Google has been focused on your money and your life content, so anyone claiming to give financial or healthcare advice, they scrutinize. They really pay attention if you are truly an expert who can be trusted and has authority. In order for your site to rank well, you need to be viewed as an expert in authority. You can build backlinks from reputable sites if you want your blog to rank high, then you want to get authoritative sites to link back to you. 

Anytime you can do this, you will improve in Google’s eyes. On the bottom of every blog post, you want to add a little bio about the author. This is something we have started doing. Have the person’s name, a little picture and a little bio about that. In Google’s eyes, if they don’t know who authored it, how can they know the writer is trustworthy? 

What Do You Predict for Voice Search? [32:31]

People are predicting 50% of all searches in 2020 will all be done via voice. We are all using voice more and more. There are different things you can do to optimize for voice.

1. Set up and optimize your Google My Business page. Google My Business will help your business be ranked locally a lot more. 
2. Intersperse questions throughout your site as much as possible. You can pose your blog post titles ad questions. Whatever kind of question that your client might be searching for. 
3. You want your site to be mobile-friendly. If it’s not optimized for mobile, you won’t get eyes on it anymore. All sites at Twenty Over Ten are mobile-friendly.

How Do I Add a Bio to My Twenty Over Ten Website? [32:02]

1. Navigate to your blog page and choose the blog you’d like to add a bio to
2. Scroll to the bottom of your post and click “insert image” in the toolbar
3. Upload the headshot photo of your choosing from your local computer
4. Once uploaded, click the image and click the star icon in the secondary toolbar to set your text inline with the image and align your image to the left or right of your choosing
5. Start typing your bio next to your image
6. Save post

What is the Recommended Size for the Bio Picture in the Blog? [34:44]

It’s a thumbnail size, think similar to the profile picture on your social media profiles so around 180 x 180 pixels or 160 x 160 pixels.

When Posting Blogs Does Compliance Need to Approve It? [35:22]

That depends on your organization. The SEC made a proposal to update the rules around ads and reviews for advisors. The rules have not really been updated since they started. Compliance departments still require pre-approval but most just want you to archive your post, most just need to be archived and pulled for records. That does bring me to a good point about Google reviews. You will notice the Google Local 3 pack. It’s where you want your business to be. 

What Google has found is that they trust other people way more than they trust business advertisements. So, Google takes reviews into high consideration when they decide how high to rank the site. What most people don’t realize is that if you have a business that it’s available to be found on a map. Anybody can write a review is this is the case. There is nothing anyone can do to prevent this, so reviews cannot be stopped by anyone, Google is the publisher. You don’t control the review. Businesses that have Google reviews perform better in search. So, having reviews does benefit your business. Some things to remember are:

1. Never ever in writing ask for a review.
2. Never respond to the review positively or negatively
3. Never republish any of those reviews anywhere else you can take these things and post them to your social, website, etc.

How Important is NAP Data? [40:15]

NAP data stand for NAME, ADDRESS and PHONE NUMBER. What a lot of people don’t realize is that Google has a hard time sometimes is the same as the business that your website is. What you want to do is on every page of your website, you want your address on the bottom in a global footer. Every time you set it up, that footer is at the bottom and is replicated for you. With Twenty Over Ten, once you set it up, you don’t have to think about it again. 

We spell out suite, you don’t want ste. You want them to be spelled the exact same. So, make sure your address is formatted exactly the same across all listings. The name and phone number are incredibly important. 

If We Pay For the SEO Package Do You Take Care of the NAP Data? [42:20]

We look to make sure it’s on your footer and is styled appropriately. If we set up Google My Business, we make sure it’s consistent. You would need to go in and check your social media pages that we aren’t aware of that is it is consistent

How do you Handle if You Have a Home Office? [42:53]

If you have a home office and you are Okay with the public knowing about it, you can keep it that way. If you use a PO box, you can’t really format it the same way. Having a home office it can be a negative that you could miss out on search business. 

We are an LLC, Should We Include That in All of Our Listings? [43:48]

I don’t know from a legality standpoint if you have to keep it on things. From a marketing perspective, the shorter names are always better, so if you can remove it without legal issues, I would suggest it.  

How do I Get People to Look at my Blog Who Are Not on My Email List or a Social Follower? [44:30]

One tip that I have is to comment on other people’s posts on social media that are talking about a similar topic and then link to your blog, but your blog does need to provide value. You need to be proactive, but you can look at what other people are talking about, provide valuable comments and link to your post.

Another way is to do exchanges with people is if there are other people in your industry who do a complimentary service, you could tap into a whole new audience that you haven’t already connected with. 

I was working with an advisor, and they wanted to be seen in their small community as a go-to resource, not just a finance person but we wanted everyone to be aware of their name. We did where every month they did an event, like what’s going on in X” it’s like an event calendar. They post it on their website, then on social media, they tag the accounts of the local organization that is putting on the event. All those organizations ended up sharing their posts and tagging them, so try to think outside the box.