Well, actually, they raised the bar to accomplish something many advisors are struggling with as of late: Reversing the trend of nominal organic growth. Remember the days when average organic growth for an advisory firm teetered around 9%, only to plummet to 3-4% in recent years? What did these three highly successful advisors do to beat the trend and who are they?

We explain the “who” and “what” in the article below, along with …

Key Takeaways:

• Highly successful advisors tend to be strategic visionaries.
• Why a growth mindset trumps a transactional mindset. 
• Key traits highly successful advisors share in common.
• The data doesn’t lie: Do these three impactful things to do to grow your digital footprint.
• Doing those three things can collectively boost performance by over 200%!

On to the who and the what …

Who are they? They are the $3 million advisors InsurMark Virtual CMO Jack Martin, CFP® and Snappy Kraken CEO Robert Sofia referenced during a recent episode of The Breakthrough Advisor Podcast, “How 6000 Advisors Solved the Growth Puzzle.” A week prior, the three advisors joined Sofia for a Snappy Kraken webinar, where they shared the secrets behind their firms’ rapid growth and success.

What IS the secret to their success? Sofia shared this insight during his conversation with Martin: “Those advisors are perfect examples of having a strategic vision. As an example, all three actually did seminars, online advertising and television ads as part of their strategy. They got leads coming in from all these sources. What happens with those leads? They put them into marketing funnels. Why? Because they know either now or later, they’ll eventually want to talk to the advisor.”

Of course, those are just a handful of ingredients in the $3 million advisors’ recipe for success. Managing those leads in an efficient and meaningful manner is where a comprehensive digital marketing platform comes in. Founded in 2016, Snappy Kraken is an advertising firm that offers a “complete digital marketing system for financial advisors who care about meaningful conversations.” 

Million-dollar advisors share several common traits

After decades in the financial services business, Martin and Sofia have found that the highly successful advisors they know tend to share the following traits.

They have a growth-oriented mindset.

In general, the financial services industry has a high client retention rate and consistent market growth, even though it’s lingering at 3-4% for many. This results in a lackadaisical attitude for some advisors, which doesn’t foster growth. Alternatively, you have firms that won’t settle for the status quo, and instead, they invest in growth. They’re also hungry.

According to Sofia, “Those are the firms that are growing, and they’re doing a lot of things. They’re active, they have a strategy, they have a process. They’re committed. They invest in people, they invest in marketing, they invest in resources. And that’s why they’re growing.”

They think of their business as an asset that is growing.

Some advisors are more focused on the transactional aspects of the business. They have the mindset that they’ll do XX seminars, get an average of XX buying units at each seminar, and then go and write tickets. Uber successful advisors don’t think that way.

“Advisors who think about their business as an asset that’s growing and are trying to add value all the time by reinforcing it with strategy and tactics that drive growth—they have outsized results. And when I say that, what I mean is they’re trying to build a growth engine. They’re trying to have an asset that’s more valuable. They’re also trying to be able to reach and help and serve more people,” remarked Sofia.

They think BIG.

Highly successful advisors have a very different mentality than those who look at business from a transactional perspective. As Sofia explained, “They’re saying, I’m going to build a brand, I’m going to build exposure. I’m going to grow my profile. I’m going to build a bigger audience. I’m going to nurture that audience. I’m going to deliver value to that audience. And that’s a totally different outcome. The advisors who are thinking bigger, as I just described, they also know that that’s not enough. They also recognize that they have to figure out how to bring that audience into meaningful conversations.”

They pinpoint the specific problems they want to solve.

We’ve talked a lot about the importance of finding your niche on the podcast and in this blog because it’s been a turning point for many advisors focused on growth. You can’t market to everyone. To get through to people at the awareness stage you need to figure out what it is you want people to find when they come to your website. Then you need to create content that answers questions they have about the pain points that matter to them.

As Jack explained, “Do you have nightmares about living on cat food because you ran out of money? Are you afraid you’ll have to move in with your son-in-law because you can’t afford a nursing home? Whatever that pain point is. We know what consumers are losing sleep over. If you’re aligned with that, and they Google where do I find solutions to my cat food nightmares , and you’ve got the content there, there’s a much higher possibility of converting them right from leads to prospects.”

Added Sofia, “If you don’t know who your clients are and what your ideal clients like and what’s keeping them up at night and you’re not speaking to that, you’re already losing. And the advisors who do that and do it well, they have endless referrals.”

Advisors focused on growth also invest in building a robust online presence

The three most impactful things YOU can do to grow a digital footprint

Snappy Kraken is very data driven, as Sofia explained during The Breakthrough Advisor Podcast. “We’re really data focused. We looked at about a quarter of a billion data points last year to figure out what’s working for advisors, and we make decisions based on data to help our advisors be better marketers and drive better growth.”

By culling through the millions of data points related to their 6,000 advisor clients, Snappy Kraken uncovered some very compelling statistics, including what Sofia believes are the three most impactful things advisors can do to improve their online presence. 

Collectively these three things improve performance by well over 200 percent! They include:

No. 1: Invest in a local search and SEO strategy to get twice as many monthly website visitors. According to Sofia, “Your goal is to build an audience and build traffic. If you want to double your traffic, use a focused SEO strategy. Average website visitors for advisors who have websites with no SEO strategy is about 3,000 per month. For advisors who have an SEO strategy, it doubles to over 6,000.” 

No. 2: Use the right tools to capture leads on your website or landing page for a 400% increase in opt-ins. “The second thing we found driving outsized conversion rates on websites was with a beta group of about 200 advisors, who are all running text message opt-ins on their website. They’re getting a 400% increase in opt-ins,” Sofia explained. Do you want a 400% increase in opt-ins? Add a texting chat widget to your website, then ask prospects to “Text me your financial questions,” or “Ask me about your investments,” or “Request a free risk profile.” Just let them do it by text message.

No. 3: Build trust over time, so prospects want to ask you questions for an increased conversion rate of 120%. Snappy Kraken analyzed millions of emails to figure out what people were opening and clicking on, after which they either asked for a meeting or asked a question of the advisor. Said Sofia, “You need to get them engaged to ask a question of the advisor. The number one way to do that is by sending them a message with a link to a video that lives on a page where they can submit a question. What happens when you send that out? Your conversion rate goes from 17% on average for a plain text email to 37% on average. That’s a 120% improvement increase.”

There’s so much more that million-dollar advisors do to achieve outsized success

Martin and Sofia covered much more ground during the podcast, including strategies for building trust and why it’s important, how marketing isn’t a one and done proposition, how to build an event strategy around your audience and more. Check out the full episode out here.

Want to learn more about Snappy Kraken and how they’ve helped 6,000 advisors solve the growth puzzle, visit their website here. Wondering how InsurMark helps advisors transform their businesses with our proven Value Engineering Process? Contact us at (800) 752-0207 or connect with us online.

As an ADO – Advisor Development Organization™, InsurMark provides solutions to meet the ever-evolving needs of financial professionals with a mission to protect and enhance the financial security of every home in America.