Video Killed the Radio Star but Can Give New Life to Advisor Practices

This podcast is brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.

This is Greg Bartellis for Barron's The Way Forward. My guest today is Mike Burns, founder of Burns Consulting. His expertise involves helping advisors with business planning, marketing strategy, business development, client services, and management effectiveness. And today we're going to talk about a topic that's near and dear to most advisors: how to gain more clients in the future. Mike, welcome.

Hey, thank you for having me.

Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Before we tackle the subject at hand, tell, tell us a little bit about you and your firm, and then let's, you know, let's talk about how, how to drum up more clients.

Uh, sure. So I'll keep, I'll keep it short and sweet cuz you know, the listeners don't wanna hear about me, but, uh, we have a, a small consulting firm. Uh, really it's to help advisors grow. And, uh, I, I, I'm really passionate about it. I write a lot in the industry and speak a lot. So some people will be familiar with me and other people, it's nice to meet you virtually through a podcast.

Excellent, excellent. Okay, so now how are things gonna change in the future? What's your crystal ball showing?

Yeah, right. So for the people that are listening, you can't see, we have a crystal ball in front of us. I really think that we're gonna see this rapid pace of change like we've never had before. And people have heard of Moore's Law, and that's about Moore's Law, sorry, about transistors and circuits and how there's this compounding rate of change coming at us. I really believe that. I like to give the example of people, if they had a time machine, they went to the grocery store 10 years from now, they would get the groceries and check out and they'd be like, well, where's the teller? And when they walked out of the store, they would either on their phone or maybe the chips embedded in us by then, it computes all the different prices of everything they had more accurate than when it was a teller back in the day. And you know what, the driverless car delivered the groceries to them the back. And oh, by the way, the internet of things saw through this unbelievable compute computing that we have and how fast it is, saw you didn't get the milk. And so they told the store and the drone is dropping it off on your front step before you get back. And oh, by the way, you use cryptocurrency to pay for it all. And, and you know what, you probably got a pill there that's going to help you live to 150 years. You know, so all of this stuff I like to say is that, you know, I don't know, I can't tell you for a fact if any of that's gonna happen, but I know that's being worked on, a lot of those things right now. And so when we go back to our world, the financial services world and financial advisory firms, I just want them to be aware that this pace of change is coming and it's gonna look very different 10 years from now.

Okay, so let's accept that premise 'cause it does seem likely, if not certain, that change is gonna continue apace rapidly. What's the takeaway then? What is the practical, Advice for that? What does that mean for advisors?

Yeah, you can't get in that comfort zone anymore where you, the old quote, "Oh, I've never done anything like that. I've been successful without it," because you will get left behind. Right now, I know there's technology that is replacing some of what advisors do and they're like, "Ah, we'll never be replaced by a robot." But The reality is it will probably take away some of their day-to-day jobs. So how they differentiate themselves is no longer gonna be true. And so they're gonna have to reinvent why they're important and why they're better than the other advisors. So back to your question, just looking at things and the pace of change. So you're great because you have a series of wonderful Barron's conferences. That's a great place to learn, reading, things are happening in the industry, but really getting outta your comfort zone and going to ask people that you normally wouldn't talk to, I think is another important thing.

And how will the communication aspect of the business change and personalization, how does that play a role here?

Yeah, so I really do believe that some of the business will be commoditized. And so the way that people differentiate themselves right now, it's gonna be kind of common stakes. And so, If you look at the future, to me, the relationship part is why they won't be replaced by robots. You know, the robots can do certain things. You can ask Alexa and they'll give you a full update on what your portfolios are and how you're diversified and all that stuff. That's probably already there. So back to the relationship part, if you break that apart, what does relationship piece really mean? And part of it is personalization, and 'cause you're not talking to the masses, you make that person feel very special. And the other part is communication. And sometimes financial advisors Not all advisors are terrible at communicating. I don't want to put everybody in the, paint them all in the same color, but if you look at the way that they blast out emails and do different things, they've lost their audience. We have the benefit of looking at some of the different software that they use and see that their open rates are abysmal and the click-through rates are even worse, and that's just their email blasts. I do show of hands sometimes when I present and ask them if they have a YouTube channel, and you get 1 or 2 hands out of 100, and they kind of half raised their hand, and that is really scary in a world where Google has about 2/3 of all searches, and if you took YouTube, they own YouTube, if you took YouTube out of it, it would be the second largest search engine in the world. And just to know that one little statistic about how popular videos are, and you could communicate in a different way where people can see you, et cetera, Why is the industry so far behind on it? Some of it is compliance related, some of it is that we never did business that way, et cetera.

Talk about the video aspect and how advisors can harness it effectively.

Yeah, so when we talk about the mass video, first of all, so everyone hates the way they look and sound and it's, I think part of it is they're so afraid of the production and the cost, but they're also, want it to be perfect. And there's a good quote, I'm not sure who came up with it, but perfection's the enemy of marketing, but it's especially true with videos. So they really have to have a video strategy, but it can't be one size fits all. So you have to know your target market really well. I like to use widows as a really good example because there's this transition of wealth that's happening, excuse me, to the next generation and everyone talks about that. But what they don't realize is that there's this transfer happening to the other spouse. And many times men die younger or they married younger people. And so in most cases widows are getting that wealth. And sometimes the industry's been terrible at marketing to them and servicing them. So, wow, what a great, if that's a potential target market for you, and it almost is for everybody just because of that, made those trends, why not have a video that says, here's 5 things you need to know about your, sorry, 5 things you need to know if your spouse is about to die or 5 things you need to know if your spouse did die. It could be before thereafter. And that is a good example of taking a mass communication but personalizing it to your target market. So you've segmented basically. And that's the type of thing, if I'm a client and I'm allowed to share that, you give them permission to share videos, and they know 5 other people this year that are kinda gonna go through something similar, wow, they share that video and guess what? It becomes a referral. And so the person sees that like, wow, I really need help from this per— I like the way that they carry themselves on the video. I like their personality, they seem smart, So that's kind of step one is personalizing the YouTube type of videos that then get embedded into, you know, you can also upload on Facebook or whatever, but then they get embedded to your website, et cetera. I can keep going further if you want.

Well, what's interesting is it's, you're selling through the video, but it's hardly a traditional sales pitch. You're not coming on in any way. It's a friend recommending it. You could watch it when you want. You're not, asking for business, you're educating the consumer, and then in the spirit of the rule of reciprocity, they're learning and they're disposed to give back in a way. So it seems like very little downside, and the ROI is great. Once it's recorded, you're done, and that could live on, and it's kind of evergreen too. In general, it's gonna be just as legit 5, 6, 7, 8 months later, et cetera, right? Absent changes in the law, but in general, it'll be hold up.

And I— it was funny because I even dealt with this as a consultant and creating content. And I've been published so many times. And I questioned another person I looked up to as a marketing speaker. So he did all industries and he's wonderful. And I said, I'm giving away this stuff for free. And he goes, you know what, you'll always give away stuff for free. And the thing is, you can— they can never know everything that you know from a video, right? So they're basically— you're demonstrating that expertise and they're going to want to know more. I mean, it's actually nice that it's not a sales pitch because it's like, like you said, it's an indirect sales pitch in some way.

Tell me more about how granular can you get with these niches? I mean, there's that sweet spot, right? If you go too niche, it's gonna be a tiny amount of people. If it's too general, it'll be too watered down.

Right. And for the people that are scared to do it, I kind of recommend that they get, maybe try 3 and just see how it goes. When you're starting out, you know, if you're starving and you go up to the McDonald's drive-through, you'll eat anything on the menu, right? So same thing with your business. It's hard to be disciplined early on, but if you're established long enough, there's a whole bunch of ways to figure out what the target market would be and how to, you know, if you know your target market better than anyone else, you start to think about not just what video content to send to them, but you also start to think about what strategic alliances or centers of influence can introduce you, what different services can you provide. So the whole, it all starts to come together.

So here's a question. Well, let's say I'm an advisor and I decide, okay, let's do this. In terms of the actual filming, What are your more kind of brass tacks recommendations? You know, go to a professional studio, have it done in an office, who films it, how do you film it, editing, sound, all of these things, like what would you recommend? And perhaps this is different from a 1 or 2 person office as opposed to a firm with 100 people, right? So what can you speak to about the actual creation of it?

Yeah, so I like to think that the right type of personalized video doesn't have to be perfect. You know, your welcome video, maybe you, spend more money on that to make that look snazzy and well professionally put together. But if you're doing these things on a regular basis, you can't allocate that many dollars to spend a lot. So one of the, the kind of the baby steps is maybe get an intern. They can create a long shelf life type of content over the summer, and they know the technology like the back of their hand, and they can do, you know, if you dedicate a a half day to do a bunch of videos, then you basically, if it has a long shelf life, you have 5-minute videos that you can roll out through the rest of the year. Like you don't have to do 'em all at once. The next phase, I always like the wedding videographer idea, is that you're, you know, they are paid really well, but there's a seasonality to it, or maybe even like in the week, they're terribly slow on Tuesdays or whatever, so you say, I'm not gonna pay the full rate, but I would love to have you come in in a half day when you're really slow, and they give you a discount, and then and you have a much more professional-looking video than even an intern could do. The thing that scares people a lot is that, you know, especially the bigger firms, compliance is a hurdle because they have these, I think, what are they called, lexicons or whatever. So when you send out an email, they can search for a certain word and says, oh, he mentioned guarantee, or she said something about returns, and it flags it and it gets put over and they can search and look to see what's being said. Videos, they can't do that. So they are more time-consuming, compliance hurdles are there, whatever. So the one thing that I really recommend is stick with more of the financial planning topics as opposed to investment management, because, you know, anything around education, the SEC or FINRA, they love that type of stuff. And so that's some really good content ideas to think about. And then they just naturally have a really good shelf life.

Okay. And here's a question in terms of who actually gets in front of the camera. Presumably, ideally, it would be the CEO, the head advisor, et cetera. But what if that person, for whatever reason, is just really, really uncomfortable with the idea or just doesn't want to do it? What is the next best alternative, assuming there is? I mean, what would you recommend in a situation like that? And/or how would you win over that person to say, look, I understand that, that's human, that's natural, but they really don't care how much— what you look like or if you have a tiny stutter or whatever. It's like they want to get the information and feel that you're speaking directly directly to them?

I like where you started, but I actually would say anyone can be a brand ambassador. You basically gotta have like a media training, like what you can say and what you can't do. And then there's part of it's compliance and part of it's like protecting your brand. But if you have a big enough firm or a big enough team, you might have different people working on different target markets. So you really want them to be creating the content so that they're, it's part of their own business development effort.

Gotcha. Okay. So they get to play to their respective strengths and whatnot, to the expertise. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And they get to know the lingo. So, you know, stick with widows, for example. They might say something like, we're here to help you go get through this stage of your life so you don't have to go it alone. Like, that type of stuff resonates with that target market. But an executive might be like, we're here to coach you through this, we'll teach you everything we know so you can make smarter decisions. Like, they're two totally different audiences. So it's, it's really good when one person kind of specializes in a team to, to be that brand ambassador.

Let's talk about getting even more niche with our personalized videos. You can have a video of 5 things to do ABC, which speaks to a segment, a type of— What about actual short clips personalized, like individualized advice? Like, hey Joe, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you email it and then they could read it when they want. Tell me about the pros and cons of that.

It's wonderful. So we went and found a service that will do it because right now you can flip over your phone and do a video and send it to any of your clients., but it might be 20 megabytes. It might not get through. So we went and found this firm. And so the capabilities there can tell you who opens the emails and who watches it different than Microsoft Outlook where it says you the read report. But the thing that is really, really amazing with that is it helps to that relationship side where you can really feel, they feel like they're in front of you. During COVID we learned that, you know, I think all advisors know they're better in person when they're sitting across from somebody, whether it's a client or a prospect or working with a strategic, strategic clients. So the video that makes them feel like they, they are seeing their clients, so they actually feel like that advisor's really paying attention to them. So it's a little bit different than a YouTube video. I was given an example of some recently. I said, how long would it take you, this financial advisor, to have a 5-minute, same 5-minute conversation with every one of your clients? He had 150 clients. He's doing the math and he said, he said 2 weeks. And I said, yeah, but what about all the missed calls and the rescheduling? And, and then when and you're talking to them, they're lonely, they wanna talk for a half an hour or hour, and like all of a sudden you've lost more than 2 weeks of time. So I said, what about this scenario where you say, hey, such and such, 'cause you're connected through social media, you see that they just were in Florida or their grandkid just got a home run in Little League or whatever it might be. And you know, how was that? And you share that part so it's personalized, but then you go into kind of the same message for most of your clients. Like here's what we see that's going on in the world with Russia and Ukraine or whatever it might be. Might be, and this is what I think, what we are kind of expecting, and this is how it's gonna impact your portfolio. Now, mind you, they don't know that that message is pretty much similar to going to every other client, but then you send that off, and that, if that person now has this level of service that most of the financial advisors aren't doing, the thing I will say too, that was an example of a client service thing, and, On the prospecting side, it is a little creepy to get a video from somebody that you've never met before, but it works. And especially if you already have the prospect in the lead funnel, but you're having a hard time to get them to conversion, it moves them there way faster. And so you can follow up with them when you can't— the hardest part is to get that face-to-face meeting to get them to conversion. Now they're gonna get to see you, they like you, you can really have a— if you use it the right way, there's this huge wow factor to them because Like I say, marketers are going to ruin this technology and you will hate getting these pretty soon, but right now most people haven't received one.

Right. The window is open because it does seem pretty rare. Given that so many people are understandably reluctant or cautious about entrusting their money with someone, right? There's so many options and there are things that can go wrong. It seems that the video has a very strong disarming aspect to it, right? Like, I can see you, I can hear you, I'm getting a sense of you. Am I comfortable with you or not?, and that just seems to go far further than some, you know, blurry black and white headshot on an About Us page.

I'll give you two examples. One's a client, one's a prospect. So one team, 4-person team, started using it, and we hadn't really had a lot of time to talk about it, so they were like, we don't know how to use it, but it just happened to be their top client's birthday that week. So 4 of them got in the room, not good singers, they sang Happy Birthday, sent the video. Well, they checked the little thing for the read reports, and they saw that he watched the video 9 times. Wow. So this advisor was, you know, you kind of don't want to tell them that like big brother's watching because then they'll never watch a video again, right? Because they know the reporting's happened. But they— he was a friend, and so they, I think, I don't know, out at a restaurant or something. They said, I just want you to know, we saw that you watched it 9 times. He's like, why? And he said, well, I thought it was the coolest thing. I watched it 3 times myself. Then I was like, called his wife in to watch it. And then every time his kids came over or whatever, and it was just This way better than the, you know, the industry. If they're good, they send a card now and they sign it. But this was, you know, one step better. Yeah. So that's the client example. Can I share a prospect one? Of course. So I spoke at TD Ameritrade's conference and I gave an example of this. And two people were sitting with me at lunch the next day. They were attendees and they were, they were talking about asking me questions. And there was a guy at this roundtable. I never even met him. And he sent me a note 2 weeks later and said, it's the best thing ever. Like, I had no idea who this guy was. He said that he went and did the trial and he had a prospect with $10 million and he tried and tried and tried to get ahold of this guy. Well, he sent one of these personalized video emails and the guy wrote back, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I'll meet with you next week. And it was, you know, I think $300 to $500 for the tool that I know a year. And the ROI was off the charts on winning that business. So, uh, There's thousands of examples, but I thought those are kind of two interesting ones.

Okay. Yeah. So this is definitely interesting. And as you said, at least for now, it seems like very few advisors are pursuing this and using this. What other trends do you think advisors should be paying attention to aside from video?

Well, really interesting outside of my expertise is, is that AI aspect and what can, what can advisors not do they can leverage technology to make them one, more operationally efficient, but to then two, wow their prospects and their clients. And that could be something that it's scary to let go of. I think from a technology standpoint, we should be past the, oh, you don't wanna have paper in your office anymore, or you wanna make sure all your different technology outputs talk well together so you don't have to manually enter things twice. Like if you're still using Excel spreadsheets, you're way, way behind now, right? You need to catch up and have I would say that Moore's Law thing too, you're, they're gonna find they're really at a disadvantage. The other learning I would say just from a marketing aspect, and I was saying this before COVID but now advisors' eyes are open to it, is they had to work well in the virtual world, right? They had to start to use Zoom-like technologies. They then started to do webinars 'cause they couldn't do their bring-a-friend in-person events. And so what's really interesting to that is now a lot of 'em were limited limited geographically, and now they're finding, you know, at least within the United States, they have this huge reach that they never had before. So the ones that are really good at it are getting business from sources that they never had before, at least geographical sources. They don't have to— it's not Main Street USA anymore where you had to be on the corner and people drove by your sign and that's how you got business. Now your sign is on the internet and people can find it anywhere.

And how are some effective ways advisors can market themselves online? I mean, in terms of which platforms might be best for ROI, drumming up new clients, et cetera?

Like social networks or website? Yeah, whatever. I'll start with the website really quickly. It really has to be the hub. You have to have really great content, and I think you want to drive people back there, because then there's a thing called bounce rate. So if you use a tool like Google Analytics or something, a bounce rate is if you threw a ball at a wall, it bounces off, right? So you don't want your website to have that effect. You don't want them to come right there and then bounce right out. So what you want them to do is get in and get this experience, cross-selling other pages, they're seeing your bio, they're seeing your expertise and hopefully going to your Contact Us page. But you also wanna have a website that has a freemium, that's marketing lingo for a giveaway that there's one trade-off. It's free, but like, you know, nothing's free in this world. The free thing is they're gonna trade their contact information, whether it's their email or phone number. And that has to be something that speaks to that target market. Like I have to have it. A freemium could be, a book, an ebook, access to videos that no one else can get. And it could just be a two-sided flyer. Like here's, like back to that, the widows example, 5 things you need to know if you're gonna lose a spouse. It could just be like a little article, right? And that if you do it in the right way, you drive traffic to your website, you're gonna capture those leads. So, 'cause it's not a real lead until you actually know who they are and you capture them. So then the second, the first part of your question really about social networks is it depends on your target market. But I would say all of those, those opportunities out there could potentially, depending on your target market, drive traffic into that lead funnel. One thing I will share is we do research and we will, we're working with our clients' clients, we'll ask the question if it's part of the research, what social network do you use? The number one answer across the board every single time is Facebook. And so Facebook, Whether it's 80% or it depends on the age really of the demographic, but whatever it is, most advisors do not have a really good Facebook strategy. And if they do have a strategy, sometimes they just are all business and it's the, they call it the social network for a reason. They're missing how to use it. But the one thing that doesn't come through in that research when you ask what's your favorite social network or which ones do you use, most people don't think of YouTube as a social network. And so if you ask the question, do you watch videos?

95 to 100% of clients say yes. Exactly, it's a perception disconnect. And the thing that's what I find amazing, it's almost like just how some real random pieces of videos just get, can get enormous traffic. I mean, there is such a groundswell of demand there that you're right, it's a very, easy opportunity. I mean, at least for branding, I don't know about conversion, but yeah.

Yeah, well, I'll give you one that no consultant talks about in our industry. It's called comment marketing. And so you can, like we said, you can have all these sources going to your website, but if you only can get 400, I like to say like fish in your pond, and then you're trying to capture them. What if you went to the ocean? So if you went to a major publication and there's some discussion on an article and you say, I really like this point of view, but here's mine, and you link to your article, that backlinking and exchanging links and such can create this flow of traffic that's off the charts. And nobody talks about it. There's a little bit of a compliance loophole and what you can do and what you can't do, but wow, just to feed off some other really, really popular site or even personality, I think in different industries they have things like celebrity marketing and all that. Touch and go, you know, you can't use— I'm sure the SEC would crack that down with testimonial rules and all that. But, but, uh, but that— just to think about where you could get those fish into your little pond is something that most people aren't, aren't considering.

And what are some of the most common mistakes that you see in this area?

Uh, can you narrow it down a little bit more?

Yeah, I guess, um, in terms of maybe money poorly spent, not, uh, or energy, time, where people are just just, yes, squandering their efforts.

One of the things that I see is that they try to swing the bat and hit the home run the first time, and they're not experts. So it's nice— I like to— I'm not tooting my own horn, but I'm a consultant. I do this all day long, so I can kind of tell them what will work and what won't. But a lot of them will try something. I'll give you, like, a real specific example, something I gave at— I did a panel with a client at the Barron's Conference, like, 5 years ago, and it still holds true. We found out that this company was gonna let go all their executives. So I talked to the marketing director, who was pretty junior but a really great guy and could carry out all the stuff. I said, go do a targeted ad campaign that says there's two giveaways: a free consultation or a, or like a free lunch, and we'll do a little seminar on it. Here's what to think about if you're gonna lose your job and what to do with your executive comp and all that stuff. They spent like 400 hours and they got Got $4 million clients out of it. And it was the way that people think about advertising, it's so scary, so much money, I can't see the ROI. Well, that was such a great case study of really knowing your target market, really knowing what would work from a messaging standpoint, not spending a lot of money. And guess what? They now, they are more experimental in different target markets and how to bring in that lead. Most people I don't give digital marketing advice to around advertising until the end because they're not doing the free stuff first. So getting publicity and sharing the right types of content.

What are some other ways that they can get PR, let's say, without an agency to be really resourceful?

I think that knowing your authentic audience, I'll give you one example 'cause we could talk about it for a whole hour, but going to, the media needs sources, right? And there's more demand on them to push out content than ever before, right? And so, But you need to cut through and build that relationship. One real great way to pitch an idea is to say, hey, I believe my clients or prospects are very similar to your readers or your viewers or listeners, and I really think that this topic would resonate because of what I see in surveys or whatever it might be. Would you be interested? And it's a little bit less of a sales pitch because it's more like you're trying to help them on the other side of the phone call or email or table. And then pitch it with the reader in mind from the person that digests the content, not from like that marketing throw-up, basically. Like no media person wants your brochure, right? They wanna know what's the kind of the hot topic of the day.

Yeah, no, and that's a good idea because most news organizations don't want to rely on the same sources over and over, right? You wanna expand your source pool. Importantly, that person has to be authoritative, credible, right? But you're right, that's a very good approach 'cause you're saying, I can help you the reader can learn and everyone wins in that scenario.

Yeah. One interesting idea is, I think that our clients, but advisors should survey their clients at least every other year, but hopefully once a year. And one question you can ask, like, what keeps you up at night? And you might get some responses, oh, my husband's snoring or whatever. But a lot of them will say, like, I'm really nervous about X, Y, and Z. And that is not, it's great to help them, service them and work with them. There is so much meat for, for, um, published content right there. Um, so that's a, a good— if you're, if you need a good idea, that's a good one to start with.

Well, we're just about out of time, and we're actually at the Barron's Advisor Teams Conference. And, uh, what was a key piece of advice that you, um, took from the attendees, what you saw today?

Yeah, you know what, it is really amazing, uh, how people are a little bit numb to how things are changing. Have you ever heard the analogy of the frog in the boiling water? Certainly, yeah. You're right. So I think that's— in case someone doesn't know it, I'll say it's, you know, if you put a frog in boiling water, they jump out instantly. But if they— if you put them in the water and you slowly raise the heat, they don't jump out. I don't know if this is true, but it's a good analogy. And I think there's a little bit out in the industry that the advisors— not to say that they're frogs, but they're a little numb to the rate of change that's happening. And the ones that are ahead of the curve, this— there's really going to be a competitive advantage there. And the last part of that, just from a marketing and growth standpoint, is we're now this like the most interconnected we've ever been with a tool like LinkedIn or whatever. So now in a client referral driven industry or through strategic alliances, you can really know who other people know and how you use that information can vastly increase your growth efforts. Excellent.

Well, that's all really, really great advice. My guest was Mike Burns. For more advisor specific podcasts, please check out barons.com/podcast. For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Bartalus.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.