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Interview – How to generate leads online

May 30, 2016 By revdigital

Phil T.:

 

 

Thanks everyone for jumping on live and for anyone watching the video. Today we have Guy Freeman with us and Guy has been a financial planner for ten years and now he is doing a lot of advertising, Facebook and Google advertising and has seen some significant growth in his business over the last four years. We’re just going to really get some good tips.

 

  Guy’s actually got a second business, as well. It’s called revdigitalmarketing.com. He actually helps other financial advisors, help market their business and get automated leads through Facebook and Google advertising. Thanks for joining us, Guy.

 

Guy F.:  

No worries at all.

 

Phil T.:  

Just give us a bit more of an idea about your financial planning business. Also, I’d really love to know how you’ve actually grown that business through advertising.

 

Guy F.:  

 

Yep, so essentially My Wealth Solutions was started just at the end of 2011. Previous to that, I had just my small book of business, I guess you could say. An old school friend of mine, Ben Budge, who some of you might know, was in a bit of a transition period with his other business and he had his financial planning qualifications so we decided to join up and start My Wealth Solutions.

 

  I guess on the outset of that, from a business planning perspective, we go, “Okay, how are we going to generate leads? How are we going to generate revenue? What’s the things we’re going to focus on?” Part of that really was just seeing some of the … There was a few dealer groups out there at that time who had set up some lead generation stuff with certain people who were delivering ten leads a week to certain advisors. Our thought was, “Well, why don’t we build that framework ourselves?” That was going to be one of our main focuses, but more of a long term sustainability sort of one, as well as your normal COIs, accountants, and those type of things.

 

  It kicked off pretty quickly, actually, the online marketing, a lot quicker than we actually thought. When I say online marketing, predominantly what we’re doing, initially, was the search engine optimization stuff. Things have changed a lot over the last four to five years from when we first started. It was a lot easier to get ranking on first pages and everything like that.

 

  Although we were doing some probably not best practice stuff at that time, we had actually went out and hired someone at that time to do our SEO.

 

Phil T.:  

Did you hire internally or you went through an agency?

 

Guy F.:  

 

Through an agency. Really, it was a one [man 04:07] consultant. Look, as I said, it probably wasn’t best practice. We started generating leads pretty quickly from ranking on the first page of Google for some key words. Then, when a few of the Google updates come through, we actually dropped off the face of the Earth for six to twelve months, so it’s something to be careful of. You want to be doing the right stuff, because you go from generating leads and generating revenue to being nothing but overnight, essentially.

 

  That led us to then start doing things ourselves internally, that being myself, and then, also, some other avenues for leads other than just what they call “search engine optimization.” That was through some of the paid advertising at that time.

 

Phil T.:  

Yeah, cool.

 

Guy F.:  

 

Just to give you an idea, when we started generating leads, within about three years, we were able to generate over seven figures just from the online stuff. I think we came in at a good time and were able to be sustainable up at those levels on first page for a lot of key words. We continue to work on it, but as I said, things have changed a fair bit since we first started, too.

 

Phil T.:  

 

You mentioned, “Up to seven figures.” I’m a super numbers geek, I love asking other advisors about … What was your growth in terms of your top line of revenue growth? Predominantly, what percentage of that growth would you attribute to either SEO marketing or paid marketing?

 

Guy F.:  

 

Each year since we started, we’ve grown by … The first couple of years, it was close to 100%, year on year. Now, we’re still sitting at 50% growth on our revenue. Initially, it was predominantly the online marketing. It did take us a little while to start building some of our COIs and, then, to start actually giving us leads. Whereas, initially, 100% of that was online, we’ve now got it to about 70% online, 30% from accounting practices now.

 

Phil T.:  

That’s massive. There wouldn’t be many advice businesses out there generating 70% of their leads from online marketing.

 

Guy F.:  

 

Yeah, I guess we probably persisted where a lot of other people wouldn’t. I think we were really lucky to receive some leads pretty early on in the process of paying someone from a consulting point of view. We saw how good it was to be able to … You literally wake up in the morning and you have inquiries in the inbox. You give them a call and, although, from a conversion perspective, it’s not as high as getting an accountant lead, because of obvious reasons, someone’s coming purely over the internet, we just love that end.

 

  The way that we split it with our accountants is a 20/20 split on revenue, whereas, now, our online leads … It’s my time, in terms of actually being able to spend it on the online marketing and generate those leads. We love that bit about it, too.

 

Phil T.:  

 

How much were you spending in the early days? If we’re looking at some of the newer advanced businesses or advanced businesses who are turning over a lot less, how much were you spending as a percentage of your revenue back in the early days on the actually paid advertising, not even on some of the agencies?

 

Guy F.:  

 

To give you an idea exactly, we’re paying $500/month to the consultant and then, from a paid advertising, about $1,200 we were averaging on a monthly basis. That’s the numbers there. We always found that the SEO, the search engine optimization, leads were a lot better than the paid, but we figured if we’re only spending $1,200/month on paid advertising and we got one client out of that, the numbers from our return-on-investment point of view looked awesome as well, so we continued on with that.

 

  We’ve changed a bit now. We don’t do any of the paid advertising except when we want to boost some really good content that we’re producing. The world has changed and it’s going to continue to change in the way that you can actually advertise and the best ways to build trust and be relevant going forward.

 

Phil T.:  

Okay, awesome. You said you still get around 60-70% of your new leads through online? How are you getting them now? Is it more SEO or … If you’re not paying for them, how are you getting them?

 

Guy F.:  

 

The way things have progressed is that search engine optimization is important, so the way that you structure your pages, you’ve got to have things like meta-descriptions. You want to make sure that your page titles are all relevant and all those type of things are good. People linking to your sites is still really important, however, where we’ve seen more and more growth from is being able to produce some really good content in a really quick, easy way.

 

  We love video now, because you can record your video … You don’t even have to show your face if you do a slide deck on Keynote or PowerPoint and record your screen and talk at the same time, have that transcribed, and then have a relevant opt-in at the bottom of your blog page. Things have changed in terms of relevance. Say, as an example, you’ve done a blog article about “How Do I Retire at 60 Years Old,” you don’t want an opt-in saying, “Get Your Free 7 Tips On the Best Money Management Tools.” You want something more relevant at the bottom of that.

 

  The other thing with video, you can transcribe it, so it’s good from an SEO point of view. Google picks that up as good content. What we actually do then, if we think it is going to be a winner, that’s when we boost it from a paid point of view. We’ll go on and syndicate it through all the channels, through Youtube, through Facebook, not so much Twitter, I guess, that’s not where we see a lot of stuff … Then, what you can do on Facebook is really easily just boost it to a target audience. What I mean by that, pay $20-30 and boost that piece of content to [draw 11:32] people back to your website about that article, which is really relevant to what they’re actually looking for in terms of that target.

 

Phil T.:  

 

If you’ve got any questions, guys, anyone who’s watching, feel free to write the questions, we’ll get time to ask them later, but I’d love to get into a bit more tactical details about how you do it. Who have you got writing that content, because we’re actually looking at doing similar stuff with the XY Live stuff … Clayton’s running all that, he’s the boss of all that … Doing video and writing content as well. How do you actually do that tactically in your business?

 

Guy F.:  

 

Initially, it was getting professional content writers to do that in terms of writing articles. A really simple way to actually get some good content topics is to … I used the example of someone wanting to retire at 60 years old, just start typing that into your Google bar and you’ll notice that four or five suggestions drop down underneath that. What those suggestions are are what people actually are typing into Google to find out those questions. The longer that phrase is, the more specific and more relevant you can actually be.

 

  You type in, “How do I retire at 60,” in your Google search bar. Four or five actual relevant things that people are typing into Google will pop up at that time, so there’s some really good example of ways to then use that as the title for your article. The way that I love producing content now and I think it is the easiest, is just to do short 3-7 minute videos and, as I said, it doesn’t have to be actually yourself and your face and setting up a professional studio, because that can be quite expensive. Initially, all you need is what Clayton’s got there, a pair of those little earphones and producing a PowerPoint or a slide deck that’s got, possibly, some images or even just some key words that you’re talking about. Then, going away and getting that transcribed.

 

  Rev.com is a great service, $1/minute. They’ll actually transcribe the audio and then, because you’ve got the video there, you upload that to Youtube. That’s one channel you’ve got there, is Youtube, and putting that out to your audience as well as other people searching. You’ve got the content there for your blog, so you’ll have the video, the audio, and also, the actual contents itself from transcription. Then, you’re able to push that out through your other channels, as well, whatever you’re working on.

 

  Facebook is a really good example, you’ll put a little blurb on Facebook and send them back to your blog. That’s why I like it better, because you produce one thing, it’d be a video, and then you can put it out through a lot of different channels, which is, in my opinion, the best use of your time and a really smart way to do it.

 

Phil T.:  

Awesome. You said, you’re a seven-figure business. How many staff do you guys have?

 

Guy F.:  

 

Yeah, so we’re continuing to grow actually. We just employed another para planner this week, so we’ve got two power planners in the office. We’ve got four people who help us out from the admin side of things, so they’re all full-time. Then, there’s myself and Ben who are the advisors in the business. Ben’s been a predominant advisor and I’ve been advising as well, seeing new clients, and taking more focus on the online marketing side of things to generate the leads.

 

Phil T.:  

 

You got eight people, you’re turning over a million bucks a year or plus, so how much content are you actually producing every single week or every single month? Are you doing five videos a week or is it more just one video a week, one blog, and one other piece of content? Just give us a rough idea about your side of the business and what content you’re producing?

 

Guy F.:  

 

Yeah, but when we were actually really cranking, it was about one piece of content per week. We found that was enough to keep in touch with people, keep in front of people, and to keep generating leads at a fairly significant level. A really good tip, actually, is that what we’ve found that has worked really well for us and we notice when people come in from the online marketing, is to get your Google business page set up properly. I don’t know if people have seen that before, but you can claim your business on Google and when they type in something that’s specific, let’s say, ‘financial advisor Brisbane,’ the map is one of the first things that comes up on the page. The higher up on the page, the better. Google Business is actually one of the best ones to do.

 

  We’ve, then, spent the last three years getting some good reviews up there, so if people see five-star reviews on your Google business, then you’re going to be in a lot better position for people to click on your site and go through. That’s one simple tip that doesn’t cost much money, really. It’s just a matter of a bit of planning, get the business page structured rightly, and also then, find people in your list who’ve got Gmail email addresses, because they’re the only ones that can leave reviews. We simply just rewarded them, gave them a $30 gift voucher if they left a review on our Google business end.

 

  It’s hard to judge how much comes through by that, but we do notice a lot of people saying, “We saw that you got really good reviews on Google and that’s why we’ve come and seen you.” That’s one, yep.

 

Phil T.:  

I was going to say, that’s an amazing tip. How easy is that, for every advisor just to go through their client base, type in, “Who is @gmail.com?” Then, just send them a quick email and say, “I’d love you to review the business page and you pay them for it. How easy is that?

 

Guy F.:  

So easy, yeah. It just continues to build that little bit of trust all the way through, because if you’ve got somebody who’s searching for an advisor online … As I said, the trust thing is a lot different if they’re coming from an accountant, I guess. You’ve just got to be doing small little things along the way. We’ve sent up some things through … Where we have that process where they find us through Google, whether it’s SEO, paid, whatever it is, then, when they come to our website, you’ve just got little things that help the trust.

 

  We’ve got a number of video testimonials now of our clients, if you go to mywealthsolutions.com.au, you can have a look at those. Look, we paid, I think it was $1,500 or less for someone to come in and shoot them. We’re thankful of the clients who’ve had time, but we tied it in with their review, as well. It’s another way to build trust and then, even awards, we think, have helped along the way. Ben won the Rising Star of the Year Award.

 

Phil T.:  

Probably unfairly, let’s be honest. He was up against me…..

 

Guy F.:  

 

That’s right. There could have been a few gift vouchers floating around for that, as well, possibly. Then, once people actually do make contact with us, then, you’ve still got to continue building the trust. We’ve set up some automation through our online marketing software, so we use Active Campaign, so it’s an email marketing system that you can automate emails to people as soon as they make an inquiry, then we start building their trust. We start telling them about our investment beliefs, introducing them to the team, letting them know what to expect at the meeting.

 

  Once we meet with them, we make sure we’re doing everything right there. We’ve got a drinks menu. They go away from that meeting, if they want an SOA produced, then we’ve got another set of automation emails that actually happen telling them what the process is from here. Really important, it’s to build those little, tiny bits into your process to build their trust, so you increase those conversion rates.

 

  That’s the other thing that we’ve really concentrated on is getting to your Google analytics. I don’t how many people, when I talk to them, don’t even have that set up for their website. It’s a free tool by Google. It gives you every single piece of information you need to know about people who are visiting your website: how long they’re staying on there, what pages they’re liking the most. That just gives you those little clues, again, to start building some good content.

 

  Then, you think, from a conversion point of view, I think we’re all pretty good with numbers, you increase … Say you’ve got 1,000 visitors to your website a month and only 0.5% of those are actually making an inquiry, if you can do some things to your website to make that up to 1%, you’ve doubled your inquiries. Those small numbers are the things that really add up in terms of building up some good revenue.

 

Phil T.:  

We’ve got to throw it over to questions. Clay, you can run this if you’ve got any other questions that you’ve thought of throughout the thing and we’ll just run through  questions.

 

Clayton D.:  

Yeah, yeah. I’ll just start with … Guy, first, thank you. Second, you’ve got all these people coming to your websites and you mentioned something about an opt-in. I wanted to ask, are you growing emails out of it?

 

Guy F.:  

 

Yes, definitely. It’s a huge thing. Initially, this wasn’t something that we did very well at all to begin with. You’re spot on with that, because your email list is an asset to the business at the end of the day. We were going straight for the jugular, I guess you could call it. They’d come in for an appointment and that was how we were generating inquiries. Not everyone is going to be at that stage where they’re ready to do that. However, if they only visit your website once, then, you’ve really only got that once change to capture any sort of detail from them.

 

  Something we’ve got a lot better at and I think I’d mentioned this before, is to have something that’s really relevant in terms of an opt-in, dependent on what page they’re actually visiting. You can have a general one, but a really good example is, we’ve built entire blog and opt-in around people using a money-management software that we’ve hooked on the back to and starting to build a fairly significantly [inaudible 22:44] conversion. Within a couple of months, we’re up to a 150 email addresses and names. If you think about that, although we haven’t had any come across to actually come in for an appointment, you can continue the dialogue and keep communicating with them and, at the right time, put some offers out there that hopefully will turn into clients at the end of the day.

 

Clayton D.:  

You’ve got content going up, let’s call it retirees and young people to make it really simple … You’ve got two streams going out that are drawn to a landing page in which they’re offered a lead magnet applicable to their demographic and they join an email database, then, infusionsoft or something kicks in and sends them on the process and all that’s automated.

 

  Even though I can say that, I’ve never done it. That makes you phenomenal and me, just … I don’t know what I am.

 

Phil T.:  

I paid for a subscription, but haven’t done it.

 

Clayton D.:  

It’s just really good to hear that someone’s doing it. Okay, I’ve got a couple of questions from … First one’s from Jenny, “Can you tell us more about your client base and how do you make sure that the content suits who you’re talking to?” I guess you sort of mentioned that before when you said you’re Facebook advertising specifically to that demographic. Is that how you’re doing it?

 

Guy F.:  

 

That’s part of it. That’s right. When you’re producing content, our client base is very predominantly … We’ve got younger people, I guess that’s the sort of people who were initially searching on Google, but it’s amazing the types of people that you do get making inquiries from your website. They’re predominantly young people. I’d say the sweet spot is really between that 25-40 years old.

 

  However, because the client base is at each life stage, we try and produce content that is specific to one of those life stages. As you say Clayton, when we go to boost that page, we don’t want to boost it, if it’s about budgeting, to 60-year olds. We boost it to people who are in that budgeting phase. It’s the important bit. The way that we look at it, when we’re putting a newsletter out to our client base, which is some of the content that we produced, as well as just a newsletter that we’ve purchased. There’s something there for everybody. They don’t need to click on the stuff that they’re not interested in. Importantly, about that sort of stuff, when you’re pushing stuff out to your database, your clients, and everything like that, you want them coming back to your website. Don’t be giving them any full articles. You just want that little blurb and then, you want them coming back to your website.

 

  The more you can do that, the more, in Google’s eyes, that you’re an authority. Another little tip there to help that out.

 

Clayton D.:  

That’s a great one, which then sort of answers the question from [Marc 26:08], who asked, “What type of plan’s coming through?” You’d say generally the younger clientele.

 

Guy F.:  

 

We’ve got what we call our “foundation of wealth.” They’re really those people who are looking to save for a house and looking to get control of their finances and get their foundations in place, so get their supers sorted out and get a bit of personal protection put in place. Then, we’ve got our “pathway to wealth.” Those guys are looking to start accumulating wealth, so they might have a bit of equity in their home or they’re got a lump sum there that they want to invest, whether that be in shares or property, as well as obviously setting their foundations at that time.

 

  Predominantly, it’s the “pathway to wealth” clients that we’re seeing come through and then, probably about 20% in “foundations,” and around 10% with what we call “wealth management” clients. Those guys that are on the way to start looking for how to fund their retirement. That’s how it’s split.

 

Clayton D.:  

Okay, is it just higher percentages between …

 

Guy F.:  

I’ll take roughly around 70% for the pathway to wealth, 20% for the foundations, and 10% for the wealth management. Just on that, again, it’s what we’re focused on.

 

Clayton D.:  

Final question … I’m sorry.

 

Guy F.:  

 

It’s amazing … It’s probably something we’ll begin focusing on soon. If you really want to focus on wealth management clients, we’ll produce some really good content and then go find ways to syndicate it and put it in front of those people. Facebook is now probably our preferred platform, I guess, even other than Google ad, because just the amount of people that are using it and the platform’s actually really, really easy to use and really easy to boost up the content that you like, as well.

 

Clayton D.:  

Great. Final question with three minutes to go and then, I’ll let Phil wrap up here, is from James, “Are you using a social media publishing tool such [inaudible 28:18], Hootsuite, something like that?”

 

Guy F.:  

 

Yep, we are using Hootsuite. The important thing around that, as well, is to have a message for each one of those platforms that’s a little bit different, because you’ve got different people using them predominantly. If you can change your message just slightly and, again, always be driving them back to your blog, your own thing that you own, you don’t … That’s exactly the same for any other publishing contenting out there. Don’t publish your whole article on Facebook or have a video that’s fully on there. You want them always coming back to your blog, because Facebook, you can easily press play for a video and keep scrolling through your feed or read an article, for example, when what you’re really wanting them to do is come back to your website and then start engaging with some of your other stuff there. As we were talking about before, opt-in in some way, so you start building that list and then, you can start offering them different things throughout the process, too.

 

Phil T.:  

Great, sounds really good. I know your point on making sure that you’ve got a different message for different platforms. I know Jenny Brown is a stickler for that. She gets annoyed at any advisor who just pumps out the same stuff on all of the different platforms, so just a shout out to you, Jenny. I remember getting told off by her once.

 

  Thanks again for coming, Guy. As with anything that we do, we could give unlimited information to people, but they’re just not [actioning 29:57] it. Me and Clayton confessed, too, that we’re not doing it at all well and I know you’ve got a business, so in the last minute, give us a plug why we should just Rev Digital Marketing or … What do we do? How do we use you?

 

Guy F.:  

 

What we’ve actually done is … That strategy of publishing content quickly and easily and then being able to boost it, and the other thing I didn’t mention was the remarketing stuff that’s available now where you can follow people around different websites, that’s become really popular and actually increases your conversions, usually. What I’ve done is put together a small cheat sheet for everyone that’s actually come on today. So, I think I can … If I just stick the URL there and then say … You might have to enter your email address in that one and you’ll get sent the cheat sheet of each stage and what it looks like and the best ways to do that and the platforms that we use to make it easier and as simple as possible.

 

Phil T.:  

 

Awesome. That’s so good, super helpful. We can hear about marketing stuff all day long and I know I’ve dropped many of hours trying to learn about this stuff and actually not doing anything, so what you’re doing is really great and really helpful. Thanks everyone for coming. We are right on-time and we want to be really respectful of everyone’s time and make sure that we finish exactly on the dot. Thanks, Clayton, for coming and filling in for Ben Nash, and thanks to Guy for coming in and teaching us all that you’ve learnt to get your business over seven figures.

 

Guy F.:  

No worries at all.

 

Phil T.:  

Awesome. Thanks, guys. We’re going to be posting a video on Youtube and we promise, I know I said it last fortnight, but I promise we’ll do it this fortnight. Finally, Clayton’s gotten around to doing the stuff that we needed to do. Look out for that in the coming days. Thanks every for jumping in and we’ll see you next fortnight.

 

  Actually, Clayton, who are we getting the next fortnight?

 

Clayton D.:  

Oh, yeah, really good. We’ve got Brenton who has started … He’s a financial advisor, has been for about 15 years and he’s built a financial services company that’s about to be listed and he’s quite a fantastic entrepreneur. There’s going to be some really cool stuff next week, next fortnight, as well.

 

Phil T.:  

Make sure you look out for that guys and we’ll put up a [live 32:37] session that you can join in over the next few days. Thanks guys! Bye!

 

 

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