00:08

This is the ultimate advisor podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful and scalable practice. Each week we'll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets, and to create the advising practice that you've dreamed of. You'll be joined by our hosts Bryan sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let's jump in to another amazing episode of the ultimate advisor podcast.

Draye Redfern  01:07

Hey there Draye Redfern here and really excited that you're here for a another episode of the ultimate advisor podcast. Before we dive into this week's episode on let you know of a couple changes that we're going to make over the next few weeks for the podcast. The first one being is that we're changing the format just a little bit. The first way that we're going to do that is every other week, you're going to get access to some of the exclusive content that other individuals have paid for to join the ultimate advisor platform. Maybe they've attended a summit. One of our challenges, maybe they're in our mastermind or our accelerator program. We're going to give you some tidbits of that content every other week for the next few months. And then a usual fashion the opposite week, every other week. On top of that, you're going to hear from Bryan Brittany and myself in the normal foundational way that we've done things. So for this week, in particular, I'm going to lead it off with a presentation that I gave not that long ago, at a Genius Network meeting this meeting, in order to be a part of this mastermind group, you have to pay $25,000 a year. And that's actually where I met Bryan and Brittany. And so this was a talk that I gave at Genius Network a year to a few years ago, in which you can learn about how we turned 50 cents into several million dollars. So it's the power of direct mail, why direct mail is not dead. And hopefully you can take some tidbits from this talk this presentation that I gave and implement some of those into your financial advising practice. So without further ado, let's jump into another awesome episode of the ultimate advisor podcast.

02:56

So my presentation is how 49 cents generated $6 million. Now there's this last art of direct mail where I'll talk about it more in a second how everything has shifted. Now I want to really take two kind of dynamic segments of this of how you can acquire new customers, and also kind of reengage, reaffirm and nurture your existing customers. Now the idea for this presentation came about in the April meeting. And during that meeting, Sean Stephenson Let it be part of a discussion where he just released this video two or three weeks prior, and he had 65 million views in a period of only a couple of weeks. I mean, that's it's impressive. It's insane by any standard. And the topic essentially came to be where millennials, people like myself, only like to be engaged with in an online environment. Now I love online like we make a ton of money from online sales. Like it's wonderful. But this door right here. He loves he loves things like periscope like Facebook Live and Meerkat. But I also love to be engaged with offline and nobody does that exact I add the 252 members, I'll show you who has. Now, over the last 10 years I actually 10 years ago, there's been a paradigm shift where everyone used to send mail out. And that's how you would generate a response. And maybe the internet made up a small portion of how you know, maybe marketed online. Now today, online marketing makes up a huge segment of that whole population and direct mail has next to nothing. And that's what I want to talk about now because it's sexy, and it's so much fun to market online because you get immediate responses right now. And direct mail isn't as sexy and it's not as fun but because everyone is now playing in that new online market. There are so many opportunities for every single person in this room to really make a lot of money using that offline environment. Now I'm going to separate this talk into two sections. Like I said, front end marketing and back end marking using that that nurture term that kind of that fun term everyone likes to use after your to have a client. Now out of the 252 members, I think was the last stat for Genius Network. There's only Been one individual who has engaged with me in front end marketing, like sales, you know, we'll talk about in a second. And there's only been one individual who's engaged with me on a back end environment, after I've already paid for the product, their service, whatever may have been. Now, what you have to do, in order to break past all of those barriers, those bills, all of that junk that you get is you have to surprise them. And you have to be different. And that's the problem is most people just mail an envelope and expect a response. And you may get a response and you may make your money back, but you like most people aren't different. And that's because their bullshit meter is through the roof. Plane instead, simple, you can't get around it. Now, the front end marketing, this is what's most typically done. You have postcards, you have sales letters, we do 1.2 million pieces of this every single year, we do probably about a million, a million sales letters, as far as envelopes, and all of these kind of things go. And then somewhere you know, 300 to 200,000 postcards, they convert wonderfully, I'm just kind of walk through that process in a second. But on the front end, the front end side of things, if you don't disarm them, I don't know you, I don't know your business. Why am I going to give any of you my hard earned money? I'm not going to pitch your stuff away because you're not disarming me, I want to engage with you I want to be engaged with because nobody is engaging with me as a millennial on an offline basis, but you have to disarm it, you have to find a way to do that. Now this guy right here, Brendon Burchard, is a Genius Network member. He is the only individual who is engaged with me on a front end marketing side and direct mail. He sent a postcard. And that postcard was for one of his 50 seminars, whatever it was offered, I don't remember what seminar it was. And I was so blown away, that that postcard sat on my desk for three weeks. I didn't pay for the seminar. I didn't show up. I didn't do any of that. But you can't quantify and you can't actually even qualify is the fact that Brendon Burchard had so many impressions on me over the course of that three weeks that he will never be able to account for. And that's kind of scary for us as business owners because we all want we want those trackable, we want trackable data. But and the reason I chose this picture is two or three weeks after I threw that postcard away, he was releasing the motivation Manifesto. And what did I do? He had so many impressions on me, I bought a ton of copies of that book, I gave them away, he can't account for that based off of him his marketing funnels, he can maybe see me as a customer and how much I spent with him over lifetime value. He can't necessarily account for that. And that's kind of what's really neat.

Brittany Anderson  07:32

Hey, Brittany here, stopping and pausing for a moment to talk about something that we've had so many of you inquire about and that is our ultimate advisor, mastermind. Now, I'm going to start by saying if you are not a growth minded individual, if you are not somebody who is focused on taking your business to the next level, if you're not focused on engaging your team, and helping them to help you in turn, level up the business, the service model, how you provide that wow experience to clients. If those things are not your focus, just fast forward right now, because the ultimate advisor mastermind would not then be for you. However, if you are looking to take your business to the next level, if you want to experience exponential growth and feel supported along the way, if you want to start working smarter and not harder, if you want to help your team members to work within the God given talents that they were provided, and use those skill sets in a way they haven't yet to help support you in your business to help them realize their biggest goals, their biggest dreams. If you want creative approaches to marketing, I know that can be an intimidating word. But we're not talking here about the fancy Facebook stuff or you know the latest and greatest but rather looking at how you can market what you do, how you can express how you're different and how you can truly differentiate yourself in a crowded market space. If those are problems you're looking to solve, then you absolutely want to go check out ultimate advisor mastermind.com to learn more about how we can help you on your path and journey to grow.

09:31

Now, this postcard right here has been our biggest hit because it disarms them. If you pull that up, if you open your mailbox and you see a postcard says Wish you were here, you think it's from a friend, you think it's from somebody you know, and you're gonna flip it over. And then my job's done. Because at that point in time, I already have my brand and my logos or there are basically he offerings, and the back of this postcard we split tested this every two weeks for a period of eight months and was actually on the back The postcard didn't even really matter that much. We had small variations. But the fact that they disarm them now we when we kind of layered this with a postcard out front, and one week later with a sales letter that basically really entice them to move to that next level, the response rate. Now we write business in 38 states, and the response rate in certain geographic regions was as high as 10%, which is absolutely unheard of. Because most of the time in this industry, it's like 1%, maybe 2%, if you're doing pretty decent, now, wish you were here is disarming. And this was our hit. We toyed around with actually that idea for another postcard, same language, different graphic, but I didn't think it was going to be a fit for our market.

10:59

So now I want to talk about the backend marketing. This is, this is where so much of where many people in this room like fail. And it's not necessarily it's really easy to kind of follow back up. But me as an individual, I give you money, I give you 10s of 1000s of dollars, like out of the 252 members in this group, I'm roughly a customer, 40 different businesses, one person has engaged with me after I purchase something. One, we're supposed to be excellent marketers who understand this and who get this one person. And so I will talk about the back end nurture for a second. Now, it's probably a statistic that many people know here is that it's four times to 12 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one. But we're not doing this. And it's so easy to do in an offline environment. Now, the back end marketing, what I like to do, and basically my method is, is adding value in two ways through books. And through randomness, and randomness. I'll give you a perfect example in just a second. So this is a book that I send out all the time, I've written things, I've read ebooks producing a book right now, I don't send any of my stuff out, after we already have them as a customer, they already know me, they already trust me, they already like me, if they want to engage, they can engage on the email list, they can purchase something, then I add value on the back end. This is a book that has added a ton of value to my life, I give it away I button, so many copies of this book, I can't even tell you. And so the second Basically, there was this Chinese wall like most of us have in our business where they buy it, we typed them in, they purchased our product, we deliver it, and then have a nice day and no one continues over here. Now what I've done is to basically just knock that whole wall apart and say, I don't care. I thank you so much. I really appreciate the fact that you've purchased this for me, let me add value to you. What can I do to help you. Now what that ends up doing is it creates raving fans, because I'm not pimping my own stuff onto you. I'm not trying to push more of my stuff on you. So you buy my products or anything that I have to offer. I don't generally care about you. And I want to help you, and so creates raving fans. And what that does on the back end psychologically is it creates more and more reoccurring revenue. So 90% of our customers come back year, after year after year, we have fluctuation of 1% annually. That's impressive, I mean by any standard. And that's what you have to build in it. Because you're breaking down that wall, I'm not selling you anything more if I legitimately care about each one of you, and I'm giving you something that will add value to improve your own life. I care about you. Now the only individual who has ever engaged with me in an offline environment, whether I've given them you know, $50 for a little mini course, or $25,000 for you know this this event is this woman right here.

13:50

So Joe is a perfect example, whether it's books, sending out words, things like this, this little stupid little charger pack, I travel 100 days a year. I love this thing, because it's just it has my backup battery charger, charge my iPhone, everything that I need. But how many impressions is Joe getting when I'm carrying this little thing around? And he can't account for that. It's exactly what it is. I've gone I was at a Jay Abraham event in March, at least five or six people came up to me, what is the Genius Network? What do you what can talk to me about it. And then all of a sudden, I become Joe's biggest proponent, his biggest fan on an offline environment that he can never track unless I tell him. And that's because my whole message and what Joe is does it for this example, is saying I care about you. So what can you do, to engage in an offline environment, show your clients that you legitimately care about them?

Brittany Anderson  14:44

Hey there, Brittany Anderson here. If you are loving what you're hearing on our ultimate advisor podcast, don't keep us a secret. Share us with other advisors that you think would benefit from the messages that you Our hearing, the easiest way to do that is to simply send them to ultimate advisor podcast.com. And if you want to learn a few other ways that we could potentially serve you, as an advisor, go check out ultimate advisor mastermind.com. As always, we are so happy to have you here with us as part of the ultimate advisor community and we look forward to a continued relationship.