I had the absolute pleasure of being on a panel with the one and only Kendra Wright from Rebel Media Agency and Greg Wilnau of Wilnau Design this month at the Advisor2x SHIFT 2024 conference.
And let me tell you, Kendra is a powerhouse.
She’s a digital marketer who partners with financial advisors, and I learn so much every time we collaborate.
In 2023, we teamed up to do an AMA webinar on all things marketing, and she had this really fantastic advice:
At Perfectly Planned Content, we give this advice, too:
Do less, but better.
This often feels counterintuitive to advisors who feel like they have to be everywhere all at once. They want to have a blog, run a podcast, record videos, run ads, do in-person conferences, schedule webinars, and take their clients to fun events – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The truth is it is so easy to burn out when you’re running a business and heading up marketing for your firm.
Today, I am going over four actionable ways you can pare down your marketing and start to get traction in your business truly.
#1: Pick One Type of “Primary” Content
That’s right—pick ONE content medium to build your marketing foundation around. It could be video, podcasting, or writing. As a Creative Writing major in college, blog writing is an easy slam dunk.
The benefits of having one “primary” type of content for your business are numerous:
- You can scale up your content creation. Writing comes naturally to me, and once I get into a good flow, I can churn out 3-4 solid, long-form pieces in a few hours. Video, on the other hand, is a completely different story. I could spend all day recording and only get a few solid snippets I felt comfortable sharing.
- You can get deeper with your content. When you’re leaning into one “primary” content type, you give yourself space to go deeper. For example, many of our blog posts are highly detailed how-to guides, because I feel comfortable creating and sharing in this way. I can build outlines that are actionable, and really get into the weeds on questions I’m hearing again and again.
- You can hammer out a process that works. When it comes to writing blog posts for PPC (or for our clients), my team is a well oiled machine. Each of our team members can go through our blog writing process blindfolded, or train new team members/writers/clients on it with ease. This also contributes to being able to scale content creation (see point one!).
#2: Delegate Content Repurposing
Let’s say that, like me, you love writing. But, realistically, you don’t have time to write two epic blog posts each month for your financial planning practice. This is where delegation comes into play. Ideally, if your blog posts are well done, you can easily pass them off to another team member or outsourced provider to:
- Turn them into infographics.
- Write social media captions based on the blog.
- Create a slide deck for a future webinar or presentation.
- Take your content and turn it into a branded ebook for your firm’s lead generation funnel.
- Boil it down to key talking points for podcasts and media interviews.
- Slice the content into short, 90-second video scripts for you or a team member to record.
- Break out sections of the blog to send in a newsletter.
- Blast the blog itself out to clients with whom it may resonate.
See? That one post you’ve dedicated time and energy to can be repurposed into many different types of content and multimedia for your firm. This helps you ensure your content won’t die on the vine and that you get the most bang for your buck.
#3: Be Choosy With Social Media
In the video above, Kendra talks about being selective about which social media platform you use, and I agree with her wholeheartedly.
Back in the day, it felt essential to be on EVERY platform. We were scheduling clients on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Recently, my view on this has changed. For PPC, I noticed the place where we got the most meaningful engagement (from clients and prospects who we actually wanted to work with – not family members/friends who just wanted to support my business) was LinkedIn. While I may post to Facebook occasionally, LinkedIn is currently the only platform we use on a dedicated basis. And I completely shut down my Twitter/X profile!
I also recently talked a client out of posting to Instagram. Why? It was stressing her out, costing her valuable hours from her marketing assistant, and wasn’t providing a high ROI. We pivoted to only using LinkedIn for her business, and she’s already feeling lighter and seeing results.
The best part? As social media evolves, many platforms prioritize the same types of things:
- Authentic, actionable content.
- Meaningful engagement and connections.
- Long-form posts with accompanying images, graphics, and/or video.
Sure, the specifics may differ from platform to platform (carousels versus a 9-grid, for example), but the core principles stay the same.
#4: Ditch Complicated Email Marketing
Do you have a hangup about segmenting your list before you start emailing them?
Yeah, in an ideal world, it would be great to have a separate newsletter for prospects, clients, COIs, and randoms on your list.
But do you know what? Writing 4-5 different emails for one campaign each month is exhausting.
If you’re hesitant to hit “send” because of segmentation, here are my recommendations:
- Write one core newsletter each month.
- Have this newsletter be focused on one core topic. This could be an upcoming event, a recap of a conference you visited, or a personal update (that shiny new designation you just earned, the new team member who was hired, etc.).
- Send it to your full list.
Full stop.
If you want to get fancy with it, add in a quarterly client-only newsletter that’s plain text (no fancy branding) that provides a brief update on your firm, answers pressing questions, or prompts an action (upload your tax returns for review, schedule your quarterly meeting, etc.).
This strategy will make your email marketing feel much more sustainable!
Have questions?
As always, I’d love to hear from you. Comment on this post, or shoot me an email at zoe (at) perfectlyplannedcontent.com.
