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Steve Wershing:

Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you be the kind of advisor that people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing of The Client Driven Practice.

Julie Littlechild:

And I’m Julie Littlechild of AbsoluteEngagement.com. Now, it’s probably fair to say that our guest today is everywhere in this industry, and today I’m just glad she’s with us. Marie Swift is the CEO and president of Impact Communications, which you can find at ImpactCommunications.org. They’re a full-service marketing communications firm with two business lines. One for highly successful independent advisors and one for the institutions that support them. You could describe Marie as a thought leader for thought leaders. In addition to her day job, she routinely brings thought leaders together to explore the future of this industry.

Steve Wershing:

Some of the things you’ll learn in today’s episode are how social media has changed marketing financial planning practices. You’ll learn the four Cs of content management, and you’ll learn the value of asking a controversial question.

Julie Littlechild:

With that, let’s turn to the conversation with Marie. Marie, welcome. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk today.

Marie Swift:

My pleasure, Julie.

Julie Littlechild:

We have a lot to talk to you about. You’ve got so much expertise. I want to get through a lot with you today, but let me just start and ask you this question. How would you say that social media has changed how advisors are marketing their practices?

Marie Swift:

One of the things that’s changed is the way we get information about our service providers and even the products that we want to purchase. We’re seeing people go online to do their primary research. If you look at some of the statistics that we’re getting from firms like Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers, they are saying that people are more and more apt to go online to check out anyone that’s been referred to them. What we want to do as service providers and advisors particularly want to have a really good strong online presence. Social media is the component of that online presence, and having a really good digital footprint is important in an age where people are sleeping with their cell phones. If they’ve got something that crosses their mind, they can look it up right then and there on their tablet or their mobile device. With the Internet almost becoming like electricity in our lives, we need to be prepared to really work on that online presence, and part of that is social, where it can become almost like a viral aspect to the sharing of that information, not just how discoverable you are.

Julie Littlechild:

Right. You mentioned the digital footprint, social being part of that. What are the other components that we need to be thinking about?

Marie Swift:

Well, video can play a big part in your digital footprint, and studies are showing that people like to watch video. It’s easily catalogued by the search engine spiders. So, if you have a lot of video on your website or even if you put it on Vimeo or YouTube, you’re going to have a stronger search engine optimization functionality happening when people are looking for you by name or by a specific keyword. Maybe they don’t even know that you exist, but they’re looking for something that they think they want that you might be providing. Visuals of any kind are shared more often than just the text and links alone. So, you want to have a nice mix of content, visuals, text, videos, all of that working together with your primary online hub, which I would call your website, and some people use a blog as their hub. Sometimes, they intermix the two, but I think having all of that content working together is really important to have a strong online footprint.

Julie Littlechild:

Right. You’ve probably heard this as well. I know I have, that when you hear all that, sometimes it can feel overwhelming for someone who’s really just starting out. Do you have any thoughts on where to start in this process?

Marie Swift:

Absolutely. Start with your website presence. Make sure that it’s mobile friendly, that it’s fresh, it’s relevant, that you speak directly to the problems before you start providing information about your solutions. Then, branch out into some of the other digital assets that would be seen as satellite entities circling around that main hub presence online. Then, point all of those additional satellites back to your website. By satellite, I mean your LinkedIn presence. Make sure that you have a strong LinkedIn profile and that you take that extra step to build your LinkedIn business page as well. That’s going to help with your online presence, your credibility. It will give people things to point towards, and you become more referable that way.

Of course, building your network and being seen with other good people. We’re all known by the company that we keep. That can help with the perception of being a credible resource. Then, maybe after LinkedIn, you want to consider a Facebook business page. That’s a way for you to show the more cultural side of the firm, the people behind the firm, working together, your values and your vision and the whole team building aspect, or maybe it’s a charitable aspect of your firm. Of course, Google Plus and Google My Business pages are very important for search engine optimization as well. Lastly, I would say Twitter and some of the more exotic things Pinterest and Instagram. Depending on who your target market it, you might want to consider adding some of those in as well.

Julie Littlechild:

There’s a couple of things I wanted to pick up on. I want to talk about credibility, because it’s an interesting question when it comes to the content we put out there. When you talk about Facebook, it sounds like you’re talking about having a much more personal profile out there than perhaps a lot of us are used to. Is that the case? Has the personality that you need to infuse in the communications changed?

Marie Swift:

It has changed. Personality is important because we all want to do business with people that we like and trust, and that’s an old maxim that’s been around since I started in the business 30 years ago as a marketing director inside of a wealth management firm. My old boss used to repeat that over and over and over again. People want to do business with people they like and trust. Today, with the mobile and digital world, we can pull back the curtain and show that more personal side of ourselves. Of course, we don’t want to go too far, but showing things like a team member’s anniversary and how you celebrate internally at the firm. Or the fact that someone has had a baby or is doing volunteer work in the community, the fact that you perhaps sit on a board. Showing that in pictures and with simple captions can go a long way to helping people feel good about calling you and doing business with you and referring to you.

Julie Littlechild:

Right, right. I also wanted to pick up, you mentioned credibility. Is it fair that what we’re talking about is content to some extent? Because I can imagine I could have myself on LinkedIn and Facebook, but what am I putting out there to the world?

Marie Swift:

Yes, content is essential. Once you’ve got that strong online presence, what are you going to do to keep your presence alive? One of the mistakes that advisory firms make is setting up a social media presence and then just letting it sit there so it becomes dormant. That’s not a good thing. You need to feed content into each of these different accounts. There’s a little bit of a nuance into what type of content that I would recommend you put on each of these accounts, but if we were to drill down on types of content, I would say that really, there’s four. The first one would be canned content, for instance the things that you could buy from a prepared provider, something that might already be compliance approved. That might be something that used to feel like a newsletter but has now been boiled down so that it’s Tweetable or postable on one of these other accounts like Facebook or LinkedIn. There are many, many service providers who are providing that type of content right now, and that’s the very easiest thing to do, but it is not necessarily the most robust thing to do. If we go to the next step, something more in the area of content that might be useful is called curated content.

By the way, I call these four Cs. The second C would be curated content, and that would be looking for content that you think is highly relevant for your people in your sphere, the type of clients that you want to impress and draw closer to you. Then, curating that almost like a librarian, endorsing, basically, the other expert’s content. That shows your character and your values, much like the canned content or the prepared content that you would select. The third C would be what I consider a more potent form. It would be custom content that you create yourself or that you have created specifically for you, and that’s going to demonstrate not just your character and your values, but your expertise. Then, the last C is what I call credibility, or celebrity content, and that’s where you’re seen as someone who’s sought out by the media or other credible interview sources, and much like this interview today, I hope to be seen as a credible expert because of that halo effect that I get by being chosen for what you’re doing here with this podcast series. Advisors also want to continue to pursue media opportunities to generate that celebrity credibility piece, that content, that they can put on their website and push onto social media and that people can share.

Julie Littlechild:

How would an advisor think about the nature of the content? We’ve got some options from canned to customized. How do they think about what kind of topics to cover? Are they trying to be thought leaders in a particular area? Or is this just general commentary that they’re trying to get out there?

Marie Swift:

As I said before, it depends on where they’re placing the content, and they want to show some authenticity, the type of professional they are, their expertise as well as a little bit more of their personality than ever before. But it really all boils back to the marketing basics. I call them the three Ms. You want to think first about your market before you develop your message, and then how do you push that message out to the right market? That would be the third M, your methods or your mediums. Thinking about what your clients value, do they value market commentary? Or do they value more of a lifestyle financial planning type of content? Maybe a little bit of both, coming up with a mix that’s going to appeal to the people that you’re trying to attract to you or that you hope that they’ll start sharing your content.

You asked a question about thought leadership. I think it’s really hard for most professionals to become a thought leader, because it gets collapsed down into this feeling, well of, I’m a subject matter expert, and if I’m an expert and I know my subject matter, therefore I’m a thought leader. To me, being a thought leader is not just saying what everybody else is saying, but it’s actually advancing the thought. It’s being additive to the conversation. Sometimes, you need a little bit of proprietary research to do that or some kind of an unusual theory to posit and to push forward to be in that thought leader category. The last thing I would say about the difference between subject matter experts and thought leaders is, most subject matter experts can say I’m a subject matter expert, but I would discourage people from calling themselves a thought leader. Let other people say that about you first.

Steve Wershing:

Marie, let me ask you a question as well about that thought leadership thing, because I see a lot of articles, a lot of content, that advisors want to place. It’s general and it’s evergreen and it’s not at that leading edge. Could you draw a distinction between that and what you’re thinking about in terms of thought leadership?

Marie Swift:

Absolutely. I think a thought leader is going to ask a controversial question and then have some good, meaningful answers that they think would make a difference to advance that problem solving or that thought around that problem or that area of interest. It really does take some thought to be a thought leader. It’s not just the basic financial planning principles or the basic market commentary principles that we see. That’s subject matter expertise. But how can a service professional or an advisor think more deeply about the underlying problems and present something that really is thought leading?

Julie Littlechild:

That makes a lot of sense. You must hear from advisors. We talked about this sense of overwhelm and where they can start. Let’s assume they’ve taken your wise advice and they’ve started small and mapped out a plan. How do they sustain that? How do they continue to create content that people want to share and that’s relevant, knowing that there is always a shortage of time?

Marie Swift:

Absolutely. I don’t know that it takes a lot of time to curate content, because all of us are reading in between the scenes, when we’re waiting at the doctor’s office or maybe while we’re drinking our morning coffee. As we’re reading things that we think would add value to our networks, it’s very easy to share right from your mobile device or to tee that up so that you can put it into some kind of a scheduling software. I happen to like Hootsuite, but other people will use different platforms such as TweetDeck. You could give that to an assistant or just put the notes and the links into a Word document or a note form of some type and then tee that up when you have a few minutes so that you have a steady stream of good content that you like and you think is valuable for people to read. You can also use that in between time waiting for the airplane to arrive or take off or whatever you’re doing, waiting for your kids’ soccer game to begin, to interact with people online. It becomes a rhythm, a dance of sorts, where you’re just a part of the conversation connected with your own mobile device.

The other thing I would say is that as you look for more meaty content, you want to think about why will people share it? Does this add value for my audience? Will it help them in some way? Will it entertain them? Those are the essential questions about why people share and then, as we talked about before, making sure that you have some visuals and some video, maybe some infographics or some other kind of interesting imagery that’s going to help people feel that they care about what you’re saying. Because what we found out from looking at some of the New York Times insights group studies is that people share when they feel that they can define themselves to others, they can grow and flourish their relationships, and they actually want to help get the word out about causes, brands, or information that they care about. It’s not rocket science, but it does take a little bit of a knack to get used to and have that mindset.

Julie Littlechild:

Right. I see what you’re saying, and I agree. You talk about how you do this. I remember speaking with someone who was trying to tell me, this is just a different way of thinking. He said, you know Julie, you have thoughts all the time. You read articles. You’re at a conference. You’re thinking about it, but it was just a very different way of thinking to say, how can I then take what I’m thinking about and communicate? Once that becomes a bit of a habit, it seems to get a lot easier.

Marie Swift:

Absolutely. As I said, we’re all carrying our mobile devices, well most of us are. I resisted getting my email on my iPhone for many, many years, but now I’m so glad I finally did it. It’s actually empowering, and I thought it was going to be a burden. I think once you get used to the new mindset and just that how can you use your time to blend your work activities and your professional objectives with what you’re already doing in your life, it becomes effortless.

Julie Littlechild:

Right, right. You mentioned sharing. Maybe this is a good point to ask you how all of this ties into generating referrals for advisors? What’s the specific connection in your mind?

Marie Swift:

Well, we all want to be more referable, and if we’re seen as a credible source, then people want to talk about us. If we’re seen as an authentic human being, then they feel better about talking about us and sharing information. With the viral aspects of online and social circles, you start to see that really social media is that shared component, that new way of earning shared mind with certain circles. It could be very important circles, if you do this right. One of the ways that we like to build marketing plans at Impact is through a framework that we call PESO, and the P stands for the things that you pay for. That might be some simple advertising. The E stands for earned. That would be your traditional earned media attention, for instance, being in the New York Times. The S in PESO is the shared component, and that’s where social media comes in.

If you think about it, you’re really earning the vote of confidence with what you’re sharing in your own social sphere if other people start sharing it, too. Social is really like a kissing cousin to earned now. Then, the last thing would be the owned component. P-E-S-O. The O stands for owned, and that would be things like your own website where you control the content, you control all the messaging. If you have all of those elements working together, you start to create this sweet spot in the middle that I call authority. That’s really what you want with the PESO model, and all of those elements working in a digital and also in the analog world. What are you doing to get face-to-face with people? Because it’s not just all about digital. That’s just one component of being referable.

Julie Littlechild:

When you talk about it that way, it’s clear there’s some clear strategy and structure behind this. When we think about social, sometimes, we’re almost tempted to think it’s a bit ad hoc. We find a good article, we share it. But you’re putting this squarely in a more formalized process. Do you have a sense of the percentage of advisors that actually have clear marketing plans in place?

Marie Swift:

Not very many. We’ve been fielding a lot of phone calls, more than ever before in my 23 years in business, from advisors who are now seeing that they want to formalize a market plan. We’ll work them through a series of conversations using the PESO model as the framework in order to give them a roadmap that keeps them on track, that stops them from wasting time. They know what their budget is. They know what they’re doing from month to month, week to week, and social media just becomes one of those components where it’s a part of the strategy. It’s no longer ad hoc. I would say in my experience working with advisors, not too many have formalized their marketing plan or really thought through all of the elements that they need to have working together to create that authority that they need.

Julie Littlechild:

I know you’ve talked about, as have others, about the importance of having a platform. Can you talk about that concept? Does that fit into this marketing plan that you’re talking about?

Marie Swift:

Yes. In fact, I know that you have read this book, as have I, and I think it’s a great one. It’s by Michael Hyatt, and it’s actually called Platform.

Julie Littlechild:

Yeah, I love that.

Marie Swift:

He has a lot of great ideas, both on his website and in this book about how creating a platform for who you are, what you’re up to in life, your mission and your vision, and building that personification around everything you do can really catapult you as a professional. I think it all boils down to being seen online as an expert, being seen in the real world as an expert, being seen both online and in the real world as a person of character. Then, if you can, take that next step to be a thought leader, and that’s a discipline to get into, to really dig deep and advance the thought around a particular topic. I think that’s what builds the platform.

Julie Littlechild:

You mentioned character. What do you mean by that in this context?

Marie Swift:

Character would be showing that you’re interested in a particular type of charity or a particular aspect of life. For instance, we have a client who happens to live and work in New Jersey and New York, but he travels a lot to the Caribbean and he likes to race sailboats in regattas. He shows his character and his grit, if you will, because he’s out there on the high seas, racing, having fun. That’s the most fertile prospecting ground for him. I guess that’s kind of a pun, since they’re out on the ocean, but they do get on land, and they drink a lot of beer and rum and cola, and they have a blast. Over the conversation and seeing him online, they’ll feel like he’s a credible person for them. He’s showing his character and he appeals to the kind of people that have those similar values. Maybe that’s a little bit of an extreme example, but other firms are a little bit more conservative. They might show their character through embracing volunteer work in the community or sponsoring some kind of a charitable event.

Julie Littlechild:

It kind of goes back where you started about working with people you like and trust, and that’s another way of showing that. When you talked about the marketing plan, do you think about referrals as a distinct part of that marketing plan, or see it more as a natural outcome of the other activities?

Marie Swift:

Funny you should mention that. We have another chart that we use with our clients, and we call it the three funnels. The way we see businesses getting the amount of new business that they need is to focus on all of these in tandem. One would be your referral marketing funnel, and that would be how you’re working with people to create a client experience so that they become not just satisfied, but I think you coined this term, Julie. They become more engaged, and they’re not just fans, but they’re actually engaged with your business. You could probably say that better than I, but I think we get the point, that there’s a referral funnel that can feed the business growth.

Then, there’s another funnel that we like to include with our client work, and that’s event marketing. We think having events where there’s a reason to reach out and invite people to do something, it might not be necessarily an educational event. It might be an affinity event based around common interest. Event marketing can create more of an engaged community. Then, that last funnel would be credibility marketing, and that would be working with the media and having all of that content go out to be visible in the world so that you’re more credible. So, it’s referral marketing, event marketing, and credibility marketing in my mind.

Julie Littlechild:

Okay. It’s so helpful to have those category, just to get your head around all of this. So, thank you. I want to ask you more about what you’re working on, but one of the questions that we’ve been asking everyone that we’ve talked to so far is this, and that’s what two or three things do you think that advisors can do to get more people talking about them?

Marie Swift:

I would say to get more people talking about you, you need to talk about things that are important to you and you need to talk about other people. Be promoting other people more than you promote yourself, and you’ll start to see that they appreciate that generosity, and there’s something like the law of reciprocity that comes in. So, quick example. An advisor that we were working with in Atlanta became known as the unofficial mayor of his little town just outside of Atlanta because he was such a booster for other small businesses. As he talked more about other businesses and what they were doing and put them up on a pedestal and helped them get new business, they began to talk more about him. It just became a wonderful reciprocity. Not that he was expecting it, but it just works.

Julie Littlechild:

Okay, that’s great. Before I let you go, what are you working on now? What’s new in your world?

Marie Swift:

What am I working on now? Well, we’re doing a lot of marketing plans, as I said. I’m doing some speaking and traveling for different organizations and talking with a lot of advisors about the PESO model. We do a lot of public relations. We’re always in the trenches doing media training and working with our clients on how to articulate their value better. For me, it’s just an evolution of my business, same as it always was. Still the three Ms, your market, your message, your medium. Still the three funnels, event marketing, referral marketing, credibility marketing. But it’s all taken on a wonderful new aspect where because of the digital world, we can be seen more, we can be in more places than ever before, at least create that perception. It’s just an ever-evolving dance for me, and also an ever-evolving education.

Julie Littlechild:

No doubt. Where can people find you, if they want to connect?

Marie Swift:

Well, you can find me at various conference, but of course, go to my digital hub, ImpactCommunications.org. Or you can follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus. I have a blog. I like to walk my talk.

Julie Littlechild:

I was going to say, you are the message. Marie, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

Marie Swift:

Thanks for having me.

Steve Wershing:

Hey, folks. Steve again. Thanks for joining us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It really helps. You can get all the links, show notes, and other tidbits from these episodes at BecomingReferable.com. You can also get our free report, Three Referral Myths that Limit your Growth, and connect with our blogs and other resources. Until next time, so long.