5 Marketing Strategies to Boost Your Annuity Sales | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 200

Welcome to this week's episode, talking about creative marketing strategies.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's podcast. I am Chad Owen, the owner of the Retirement Realized Financial Retirement Realized Agents Academy, Heaven's army increase you Eagle Shadow life and annuity. All of them Eagle Shadow holders.

What's funny is we're talking about marketing.

33. Three ventures.

We're talking about marketing strategies. And literally our marketing guy has told me multiple times, caleb, you gotta. You gotta get Chad to quit saying he's the owner of all the companies. Before you get into the quality of the content, he's like, you gotta get into the content. You gotta.

You know what? I am one of those horses that's hard to rein in. I mean, that's the reality. Yeah. Get what you get.

Oh, that's my. My analogy. Right. Sitting here, you know, co hosting these podcasts with you is like, imagine trying to stop the bull in the china shop from inside the china shop.

Is there anything less than co hosting? Because I don't know if it's co hosting. It would be like sub hosting. Sub hosting.

That.

That might be. Yeah, that might be. Because, I don't know, co hosting gives you way too, way too, way too much authority. No.

That's funny.

Yeah. I mean, because you're not like co founder or anything.

Not co founder, no, no.

But collabor that. There you go. Now you're going biblical on labor in Christ. We are all. Paul talks about that, how we're co laborers in Christ. So.

Okay, marketing strategies.

I just showed you how to market in strategy.

Yeah. If you're looking for any of those other things, you know where to go. It's funny because actually, next week we'll be talking about branding, so we will actually be plugging increase you.

Well, in all fairness, you guys know I own multiple companies, but I'll tell you, the branding, I. I'm like, I'm getting branding for a company called Eagle Shadow holdings, which is just a commercial real estate company. And the branding, I'm looking at going, oh, my gosh, it's incredible.

Yeah.

I couldn't do that if my life depended on it. Somebody stuck a gun in my head and said, make a brand. Okay. I'm not gonna be able to do it.

My branding. The extent of that is in. In cattle.

That's.

That's as far as mine goes. I'm helping my brother.

Yes.

Make one right now. And don't ask me to digitize it.

Yeah, well, because, you know, you got to be really good in this industry of what you do. But realize there's people way better because I hear agents try that all the time. I'm going to create my own brand. I'm going to make my own logo, I'm going to create my own website. And I'm just going.

Many things that you need to know when making that effective and.

Right.

What colors are working? Like, I wanted a certain color scheme that I love across the board is black, gray, and red. Yeah, I mean, that's my favorite. But he goes, no, you can't have all. All companies with the same color. And I'm like, why? You know, it's like, makes it fluid. And he goes, because there's no. Nothing differentiates between the companies. And I'm like, yeah, I know you're the expert. And that's so important though, when it comes to marketing, is making sure you have the right people doing that.

Well, it. So when I see and I hear of agents and Callie, we could, we could do this. Hit this again next week. Yeah, right. When I hear of agents that kind of buy into that mentality of, oh, I'm gonna do this myself, it's because they've bought into the cost benefit side, but they have not considered the time benefits.

So the day it takes me to make that brand in my website, I could have sold $500,000 in annuities.

So they, so they, they look at the cost and they think, okay, I can save this much money. But they don't consider how much more they're losing by spending the time on it. Yeah, right. So it's like, if you're producing, you are better off in the field and have the experts around you.

I mean, that's just the thing. I've never really realized that that's one of the biggest challenges I have with agents is getting them to focus on the one thing which is representing your products and meeting with clients. Right. Not all this other stuff. I have had agents that I knew would have been incredible that get sidetracked. And they're doing everything other than making calls. Right. Everything other than running appointments. And they're wondering why they're not making the business or needing doing the business they need to. When I know because of their skill set, they could easily write 10, 15 million a year. I know they could.

Right.

But because they won't focus on what they're good at and let other people do what they're better at than you, they never get that far ahead.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. I recommend this is some. Something that I've tried to implement in my Daily schedule that I think would be powerful for agents to consider doing as well. It's natural for people to want to do the fun thing first. The problem is even the fun things, yes, they fill you up, but they still take capacity, mentally, emotionally, physically, all the things. So then you get to the hard tasks and they seem that much more challenging.

And why do I wait to make calls till 4:30 at the end of the day? Right.

Well, I think that that's just. But you're hitting it on the front end of the week.

True.

You know, so if you do the hard things first, you do the daunting tasks. Well, technically, yeah, but it's still in.

The weekend because I don't work on Sunday.

I don't either.

Okay.

But if you do the hard tasks first, you do the big things first, the daunting things first, you're on a downhill slope from there.

Yeah.

You know, get to the summit, the hard things, and then ride the. Ride it out the rest of the day.

But do you know most people die on the way down from the mountain and climbing up?

I didn't know that.

They're tired.

That kind of negatively impacts my analysis.

Which anytime I can go against what you're trying to say, I'm going to do that.

I know it's a contradictions all the time.

Yeah. It's the most people die. More people die on the way down than they do the way up. First of all, you're exhausted on the way up. Second of all, you're just more complacent because you're focused on the top part that you don't realize, I mean, how many people focus, let's say in Everest, they focus on what, what's their number one goal?

Get to the top.

Yeah. You don't say, my number one goal is to get back to the bottom. Which is interesting when you think about it.

Yeah.

And often in our industry we're so focused on the number one thing is get the sale. What about taking care of the client afterwards?

Oh, yeah.

What about the backing, making sure you're available? What about when they look you up on a website because they lost your number that they can find you?

Right.

And you know, I would say it's just as important to get back down to the bottom as is to get to the top.

Totally get back into the serve mode.

Nice try on the analogy.

Well, we took it. We took it a step further and I'd say a step better.

Yeah, I was pretty good. They call that the Hillary Step. We're going to change that to the Chad step. We're going to create my own step in the business process.

Getting back down I like is important. While we're talking about this and we've hit branding a little bit already, but it is important to remember that marketing systems are only going to be as effective as your ability to do something.

With a hundred percent.

I mean unless you have basically a drive thru restaurant where clients come up to the window and tell you what you want and all you're responsible to do is fulfill the order. What you want, what they want.

Yeah.

They tell you what they want. I'm going to tell you what you want. You're going to want to serve me this burger. Now that's what you're going to want to do. I want something that has no cockroach eggs on it.

Right. But unless we get to that point, which we won't and we can't.

You.

You'Ve got to be able to have a good system and process on the back end. You've got to be able to educate people and help find the problem and find the best solution.

Well, you think about how many industries out there, they require continuous education. Ours, you know, ours is absolutely one of them. But there's so many engineers. I mean anything in the tech world, you. I know some people that are heavy into the tech world and they talk about how you have to study every day because literally it can change all the time on them. Newest, latest, greatest thing. Our industry is the same thing. I was talking to a client recently and they said, how would you compare the products of what you had 15, 20 years ago to what you have now? I'm like, wow, they've really adapted, they've really changed. But that is hard. Absolutely. And I would say for the better. I mean there's some agents that will disagree with that, but I'll say for the better. But I think, you know, the process in the system is all about learning and getting better and making sure you're aware of every situation that's coming up within reason. But that's all about the system. Process. System and process is also about, you know, when you're. How did we even get into this? Were we talking about marketing strategies?

Yeah, and we'll get to them. These are some good trails though.

It is. Because what good is if you do all this marketing? Everything but you don't know how to market yourself. How do you market yourself? By being the expert. And that's a lot of my marketing is when they find out like this year I just, I'm over 20 million for the year. My goal is 27 million by mid June. And that's. I can say that to clients. I can say I have almost a quarter of a billion dollars I've written in annuities since 2008, which is just crazy to me. I mean, just the number alone is crazy to me. And that's accelerating more and more because there's more and more business being written because people know who I am. You know, when they get. If you Google Chado and annuities chat, I mean, you can do this. Got Shadow and annuities chat on Safe Money Chatto and retirement. You can see, you can see my name is everywhere.

Right.

And that's because we started marketing a long time ago. It is not an overnight success. You're not going to go viral writing an annuity for anybody. It's just not going to be a massive topic. But I do have clients that I work with and they. I just had it again. I helped him with 350,000, but I got referred to a guy that has over a million. And that's because they know I can be found.

Right.

They know I have a very professional website. And, and they know that all they have to do, if they forget something, you just put in Chad Owen, Retirement and they can find me anywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. And for the record, we will get into these creative marketing strategies for you today. We will hit those. But I do want to say this, this term just hit my head. It's a little. It's creative. It's that a good brand is like a primo. And what I mean by that is it's a promotion, but it precedes you ever interacting with them. Right. So if you build a brand around expertise and now you have a client that referred another client, another client to you.

Yeah.

Okay. Your brand is going to be experienced by the secondary client before you ever even talk to them or meet with them by nature of their friend, referring them, going to your website, looking for your stuff. So that is a, again, creative term, primo. It's a promo that precedes you ever interacting with them. And that's what a good, solid brand will do for you.

But as in primo the beer. We're not talking about that. Correct. Because there's nothing that has beer, the taste or the smell that should be called primo.

I would, I would disagree on all fronts there.

But.

A good way to think of this, this is the analogy we always use, is good marketing is like fuel to the car. Right. Your process will determine the fuel Economy, but you got to have fuel to run.

Yep.

Right. So what you do with the fuel you're given, that'll. That'll determine how far you go and how much you write. But ultimately it is, it is needed. Four ideas, and we can break each one down. Idea number one, just starting. Real basic company merch. Now, this doesn't really.

So I'm gonna start selling my shirt.

No, but having it.

Yeah, right.

Wearing it, repping it. I mean, I was on a plane.

That is actually a big deal when you wear what you have. I would agree with that. Yeah.

I was on a plane for an hour from Kentucky to Atlanta earlier this week and I had a hour long conversation with a lady who was 60 years old. She ended up taking my business card. I didn't have my merch on there. I didn't have any, you know, company stuff on me. Had I, it would have been very clear to her what I do. Instead, I had a conversation. What I'm saying is there are people in your everyday world, you're walking around, they see stuff, they may ask you. It's not that you're trying to treat every person you come across like the next deal. I highly discourage that mentality that'll drive you into the ground.

Absolutely. But I know, I know a guy that, he's in a city of.

I think 70, 80,000 if I remember correctly. But he's known as the safe money guy.

That's his brand.

That's his.

He probably wears stuff out.

Money guy. They just. He's on billboards, he wears it on jackets. That's his thing. And now I would never do that. And my wife would never let me do that. I have a hard time even wearing my, what do they call them, graphic tees. She's like, can you wear something different this time?

She'd rather you wear a shirt like this.

That is true. Not exactly.

Not this pattern.

No, definitely my kind of pattern. That's your pattern.

Yeah, but it's my brand.

Sure. But that, you know, that's. I mean, even on the vehicle, you know, everywhere he goes, that's what he's known as.

Right.

And so when you're in smaller areas, that's sometimes what it takes. You know, your marketing is literally what you're driving, what you're wearing, where you're going. Absolutely.

And it's not that expensive to have it. And it's, and it conveys a very high level of professionalism if you do. I mean, it's big, big companies have that kind of stuff. So people see that it changes the perception from just, you know, individual sales rep for an insurance company to, okay, this guy's. This guy's operating a business for sure. And that is critical in this line. Okay, number two, email marketing, this is huge. This is big. It's gargantuous. If you don't have it, you need it.

You're missing out millions a year off of email marketing. And these are people that anytime, whether it's Internet, whether it's radio, whether it's anything, any lead source, I get this coming in that has an email. We capture that and we reach back out, because they reached out to us first. I do not go and buy email lists. That is not right.

It's people that reach out to me.

These are people have reached out to me saying they want information. Well, let's say I get in touch and I'm just gonna use numbers. I get in touch with half the people, and then I actually meet with that. And, I mean, I know our closing rates high this year, but if I have people I don't close, I still have the email address. So two, three years down the road, they're going, you know, what the market was doing really well. Now it's not. And then they reach back out to you. Why you're still doing an email campaign. About every two weeks, my clients get an email with something pertaining to retirement, and they reach back out to me. Millions of dollars I've written using that.

Yeah.

And it's because maybe at the first time, number one, I didn't get in touch with them, or number two, it just wasn't the time for them.

Right.

But now it is.

Yeah. Good email marketing will do a couple of things for you. There's. There's some people that swear by the idea of segmenting, and you send, you know, clients certain things and, you know, prospects. Another thing. And I actually think that a good email marketing system will do both and simplify it for you because, number one, a email marketing system is going to reinforce the purchase decision the clients already made and keep you in front of them. Number two, a good email marketing system will intrigue the prospects, especially in, you know, current market conditions, to actually reach out in the first place and rekindle that conversation.

Do we happen to have an email marketing system, Chad?

We do happen.

Wow. We do. Well, what. Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah. So you wrote a book, Stress and Raw.

And we had, I mean, just phenomenal feedback from agents, not even the authors. Okay. Bear in mind other agents that ordered your book and then started Distributing that to clients or prospects rather after the first appointment or whatever. Saying. And I can't tell you how many agents I've talked to now, individual agents that each of them multiple times have now had clients or prospects turn into clients that when they were given the book, they read it, they reached back out to the agent asking okay, how do we move forward with this? I understand what this concept is. Now let's get specific.

How do we actually written in English, not financial ease. I mean I really want people to understand how this works. And not in complicated terms. Exactly. But that's what we built the email.

Exactly.

Not what we built. That's what they built because I wrote the book, they did the rest. Yeah. But I think it would be good. And that's not it. That's not a plug like trying to get you to do something. I do believe it'll bring value. Oh absolutely do.

Absolutely.

So once again reach out to Caleb if you're interested in that. I love to talk with you but yeah. The email marketing I think is really important in general because out of sight, out of mind. Right. I mean you don't remember things. But if you're getting an email about every two weeks. And it's very rare that I get unsubscribed.

Right.

I mean I probably pull in for every one unsubscribe. I have 25 or 30 that one want to keep going. I mean it's, it's a, it's a list. Right. I think I'm over five, 200 names.

Now and I just adding value to keep.

Long ago.

Right.

I mean it's probably halfway through my career. I'd say about halfway. I started capturing emails. Yeah. So it's not that long ago.

The key, the key with good email marketing is that you've got good content.

Yep.

And good calls to action. If all it is is good format layout. Of course.

Don't do the traditional newsletter with the most recent recipe that grandma's cooking.

Yeah. It needs to look good, it needs to flow well. It content needs to be there because if all it is is a sales piece, you're going to, you're going to have a way higher drop off rate. But if you're actually providing them value things they can.

Information.

Exactly. All right. Number three, video marketing. Commute, recording and communicating. Sending these videos out to clients and prospects via email.

I need to get better at that.

Yeah. We highlighted this one for you because I think it could be.

I appreciate that.

You're welcome.

Thanks for bringing the flaw in my armor but there's.

I gotta think.

I mean, we're doing that now. What do you mean, the video marketing?

Well, it's just something that agents would do within their own email sequence or systems or whatever. We are doing email marketing. Video marketing is something where, even if it was an iPhone, you know, if you're. I mean, I recommend getting a tripod or something, set it up so it's stable at least. IPhone cameras nowadays take great video.

They do, really?

You can record a video, you can embed that in an email, and you can send that out.

We maybe need to figure out a way to do video marketing because it always motivates me when we're doing it for someone else, that I can do it to where I'm like going, okay, I'll. I'll lead that.

Right.

Because I always test all lead systems first before we ever promote them. But maybe we'll. We'll revisit that one.

Yeah, we absolutely will. But that's a good one for you to consider. And then the last one was actually good branding, which I think, you know, gets lumped into company merch because you need to have branding beforehand. But. But this one works a little bit differently for me. We live in a. In a time and day where most. Well, it can be really hard to get leads on the phone. Prospects on the phone nowadays, especially with the robocalls.

All the stupid robocalls, I'm telling me, nuts.

So you leave a voicemail and then they hear it's you. And then get a name now or a company, and now they go to look for you before they call you back. So they're going to websites, they're going to social media.

That happens all the time now where I call someone back and they go, oh, yeah, I answered because I saw your website. I went. I already looked and saw who you were. It happens. I think they guesstimate about 80%. I've seen multiple studies done this, but 80% of people that will actually look at your online presence, your branding, your marketing, whatever you're doing before they meet with you, right?

Yes.

And I do it totally. I mean, I'm constantly looking at websites. We're looking at buying some chocolate lab puppies and I'm going in a puppy, not puppies.

I love this.

But, you know, I'm looking on there, I'm seeing what the reviews are. I'm like, does the website look like, you know, you're someone generic? Did it right? You know, or was it. Or does it look really sharp or the picture's good.

Right.

That's really important.

So what you're telling me, Chad, is you're not. You're not hunting Craigslist to find the dog from the backyard breeder that you want to have for the next 10 to 12 years?

No.

Okay, so you want quality.

Yes.

And you're determining quality in a large way by their Internet presence.

100. Because there's some that are on there that I wanted to meet with because I looked at their website. I'm going, no, no.

And just practically, how much less important? I mean, not that a dog's not important, but how much less important is a dog than somebody's retirement? So if you're doing that for dogs.

Yeah.

How much more are clients doing that with their.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

If their website doesn't look good, I'm not going to eat there unless I feel like, I don't know. There's some real dives that it might eat at. But that's because we're driving and we ask someone, hey, where's the best place to eat around here?

Right.

But it's not because I found them on the Internet. Yeah. It's. Yeah.

We're going to deep dive branding a little bit more and hit next week. Very specific pieces that are needed. Exactly what branding is, how it works, and why it benefits you. Obviously in much more detail in the next week's episode. But those are the four strategies I'd recommend you at least look into to get creative for the rest of 2022.

Awesome. I know we went a little long, but, hey, we're not into trying to punch the clock. We want to make sure we get all the information to you, so I hope this helps. You have a great day. And, of course, happy selling.