Today Reese Harper talks with Robert Sofia, CEO and founder of Snappy Kraken, a marketing automation tool for financial advisors.
Reese and Robert explore Robert’s unique journey to starting Snappy Kraken. They also discuss the type of content that Robert has seen work with financial advisors, and they unique tips and tricks advisors can implement to make interacting with them at the top of the funnel easier for people. And finally, Reese and Robert discuss how small financial advisor firms can prioritize who their next hire should be to set them up for success in the long-run.
If you’re a financial advisor interested in making their marketing better, then this episode is for you.
Transcript
Reese Harper: Welcome to another episode of elementality everybody. i’m one of your hosts.
Reese harper and I had to Nose my way into this interview because I was so excited to see who we got to interview today a friend of mine who I met in the industry robert sofia Robert, welcome to the show.
Robert Sofia: Hey man, thanks for having me. It’s good to reconnect.
Reese Harper: Yeah, man, you were one of [00:01:00] the people that inspired me to really go after trying to start a FinTech having come out of a background that wasn’t exactly a software founder.
I had some related industry experience. I’ve seen your, your journey. I mean, from what I understand when, what was early on, not even in wealth management, And coming into that later in your career, and I just saw you transform as a leader and shift and pivot and do so many great things, and it was very inspirational.
So thanks for exposing, today we’re going to expose some of that journey and some of your insights for advisors. You’ve been a great inspiration to a lot of people and a good, a good supportive and Thoughtful friend to me and how you share and how generous you are with your time and your insights.
So I appreciate that.
Robert Sofia: Yeah. Well, I extend my condolences for getting you into wealth tech.
Reese Harper: Yeah, man. You didn’t tell me the hard stuff. She just did all the good stuff. Well, tell, so as I [00:02:00] understand it, and I might be wrong, did you start your career at Ford?
Robert Sofia: I did not, not long first four years. First four years.
And I worked in marketing. What did you
Reese Harper: learn there? Yeah. Like that’s a fascinating place we could talk about Ford motor for a long time and, but like, yeah, I do too. Tell me a little bit about what you learned there and and what made you take your next step in the journey?
Robert Sofia: Yeah, it was actually one of those rare opportunities.
It was timing, you know, cause I was just out of school. I wanted to work in marketing and this was late nineties, early two thousands. And Ford had this new idea for building brand retention with digital marketing, you know, email,
they
actually called it business business development center was the concept.
And so the idea was you start emailing people who own vehicles [00:03:00] and calling them and building a relationship with them. And then when the new models come out, you get them to come back and test drive the new models and Ford wanted to empower all the dealers in the world with this individual business development center.
And so. I started working in that department. It was a brand new concept. And what happened was it just exploded because it was, you know, a new concept and it turned out to be very successful. And so I learned a lot, you know, I ended up running a team of about 50 people four years into my career. And I had a call center.
I had email marketers. I had web designers and they all worked on my team. And we were building processes and systems that could be scaled inside of hundreds of dealerships. I, I got invited to speak at Ford’s conference to like 500 Ford dealers from around the world. And so it was this really great, big opportunity for me that I, I fell into.
I just, it was one of those fortunate things. And for me, What happened was when I shared with a good [00:04:00] friend of mine, what we were doing in the auto industry, he was. immediately, you know, he recognized this. We need this in the financial industry. He was an advisor and that’s how I got recruited into this business.
And I’ve now I’ve been in this business for almost 20 years in the advisory business.
Reese Harper: Totally, man. It’s like, it’s interesting. I mean, did you go, if I’m remembering right, like what was your undergrad in?
Robert Sofia: I’m I’m kind of a. Anomaly probably in a lot of respects because I started working. So when my friends were getting jobs at McDonald’s I didn’t want to work at McDonald’s not that there’s anything wrong with that But I wanted something better that I could like dress up and go to work and learn Professional skills because I knew I was going to go into business and I thought I would get a business degree Yeah, but what happened is I actually ended up working at a jewelry store.
Now. I know that that problem that was like i’m 16, right? I’m in i’m in high school. I was on the work release program and I was working at a jewelry store Now what happened was it was a high end jewelry store [00:05:00] and I became the number one salesperson in the nation And so when I was 18 They offered me for the first time the youngest manager in the company to run my own store They were going to make me a general manager.
So I was standing at a crossroads. I had a choice You Was I going to go to college or was I going to take this 75, 000 a year job right out of high school in 1999? Yeah. And. I chose the latter and I said to myself, I’m going to go down the career path. If it works out great. If it doesn’t, I’ll go to college, right?
I’ll do what I got to do. But I took the job trance. They gave me a really bad store in a really bad part of town. I turned it around. It became a top performing store and that’s how I got recruited to Ford. So I had a four year career to in management. Before I started working at Ford when I was 20, and then I worked at Ford until I was, you know, 24.
And then I got into [00:06:00] the financial industry. So I went from, you know, associate to store manager, then at Ford to business development manager, and then I got a VP title. So I was 24, I had a VP title at a financial planning firm and I was making six figures and I wasn’t ready. I was like, why am I going to go back to school?
Like what, my friends are getting out of school and they’re making half of what I’m making. So. I might as well just stay on this path and that’s, that’s what happened.
I mean, you got to do what’s right for you.
I could never be a surgeon. I could never be an engineer. I didn’t want to be those things and that’s okay. I just wanted to keep growing for me. It’s about growth and where I was at each stage of my life, there was a path, a clear path to growth, and I kept taking the path that would help me grow. The direction I wanted to grow in.
Reese Harper: Dude, and I’ve had so many people give me bad advice over the years. Like I’m very hesitant to like, say this is the way, right. It’s it’s so unique to each person, what their gifts are,
Robert Sofia: exactly
Reese Harper: what they get [00:07:00] energy from where they’re inclined to focus.
You know, some people don’t get a lot of fulfillment out of money. Or earning more. They don’t. And I have, I need a new car at least every five years, man, are 40.
Yeah, man, that’s such a great insight.
I think for a lot of advisors, they struggle with that. They struggle with picking what to do next in this overwhelming, especially independent firms that are trying to build organizations, not just. Do sales and, and close deals and get new, more AUM. What coaching tips have you given your customers, your advisors who are like trying to find that right adjustment, that next adjustment.
To bring them into balance. You know, what would you generally say your first piece of advice to somebody would be?
Robert Sofia: Yeah, well, I’m not a life coach. And I never, I don’t purport to be one. I don’t play one on TV, but I I have worked with
Reese Harper: Thank you for letting me go. [00:08:00] This is the, this is the topic I think is so critical for advisors.
And you’ve done a great job of trying to focus on this. Thank you for putting yourself out there as a, an amateur expert. You know,
Robert Sofia: Man, you know, I I don’t usually. work directly with advisors anymore, but I have over the years worked with, you know, thousands of them through my companies. And I did used to do a lot of one on one consulting, and I saw a lot of that.
In fact, I used to have business partners who were very successful. We scaled a business to about 650 million in AUM. They were advisors. I ran marketing for them. And we did that in less than five years, by the way. So it’s a lot of growth. And, and both, both of them ended up. Divorced alcoholics and you know, it’s just like that kind of stuff, man.
You know, it’s you see it So I I mean one of them one of them has put their life back together I should I should just acknowledge that and we have a good relationship, but here’s here’s my point. I’ve seen enough of [00:09:00] that and It was a lesson for me. And so today when I teach advisors, although my business is marketing, a lot of the principles are, how do you build systems that drive growth for you?
So you can do the things you love and lead a balanced life. So for example, advisors can get out there and they can go after every single customer individual in every single client individually, they can be at every single mixer and event in town and every charity event, and they can be working 12 hours a day and trying to make all the decisions and build all the plans themselves.
And they can be, you know, doing seminars every week and they can be absolutely killing themselves and build a big business financially, but everything else suffers. If you really want an enterprise, you have to think differently. And it can’t be about you. You, you have to get past the hurdle of, I can do everything better.
And even if that may be true, because sometimes it is true that you can do things better than people. You have to realize that. [00:10:00] Unless you want to burn yourself out, you’ve got two options. You either invest in training people so that they can become as good as you and surpass you, which is fine. Give them the training, give them the education, let them surpass you, that’s a good thing.
Or, you have to go out and hire people who are already better at what they do than you. And for me, over the years, I’ve done both. I’ve had people I’ve trained up and they’ve left me and moved on to do things and I’m proud of them and that’s awesome and I’m happy I was part of their journey. But I also have a lot of people who work for me that are way better than me and one of the things that I found is when you invest in people that might be out of your price range, but you say, you know what?
I’m going to spend the money on this person anyway because they’re worth it and they can do this job better than me. And then you. Are basically trading money for time. You’re spending more to get these people who are [00:11:00] top performers. You’re getting your time back in exchange. Your business will actually grow faster.
So I can say that because I’ve hired, like right now I have a C suite around me, took me a long time to get this team, but I’ve got a killer chief product officer, chief marketing officer, chief revenue officer, chief financial officer, those four individuals, Are better than me at their jobs and it’s my job to do strategy and support them and remove obstacles for them That’s my job.
Let them do their job stay out of their way clear the path for them Run through the walls for them and then let them go. And as a result, I’m able to have the life I want. So to put a point on all that, I would tell advisors, if you really want quality of life and a strong business, financially good revenue, a good lifestyle, you can’t do it alone.
You’ve got to get the right people. And you either got to train them [00:12:00] up or you got to hire up either way. You’re making an investment. You’re either investing in the person or you are investing with your money and making a sacrifice now so that person can do more in the long run. And that’s what all the most successful advisors do.
Reese Harper: Dude, I, I love this. It’s going to take us into, we’re going to now leave our, our life coaching spiritual focus here. And we’re going to pivot over to secular marketing. And this is the perfect segue. Okay. Like you highlighted how there’s this, I think this crossroads that most firms go through of deciding, dude, how am I going to scale?
How am I going to get bigger? How am I going to grow? And one of the biases I carry is that advisors hire the wrong person too early in the wrong type of person, the wrong type of person. My argument is they always hire another financial planner and they [00:13:00] try to duplicate themselves. And the thing I think they should do is hire someone who’s very different than them and who leans towards marketing and demand generation, not financial planning and advice and investment management and build your sort of like, educational inventory of smart people to advise clients.
My argument generally is That if you do that right at the beginning, like duplicate yourself with another advisor, you’re still in the same problem that you had to begin with. If you’re trying to build a business. Is that you don’t have a steady flow of new customers coming in the door yet. You don’t have a process or a system that you’ve put in place to drive demand.
Your brand is off. Your position is off. Your, your, your execution around marketing automation is non existent. You don’t replicate anything. You don’t have any processes in marketing. But then, and, and when they get that first, 100, 000 a profit, you know, [00:14:00] they hire another financial advisor. And then they both sit there and wait for clients together while no one’s coming in the door.
That’s my bias, either double down with me or convince me that I’m wrong. I would like to know your point of view.
Robert Sofia: Yeah. Well, I, I think you’re right. I, I, I definitely, okay, good. I like being right. Thank you. Okay, now go . Well, and sometimes they, they think that they’re gonna hire somebody who’s gonna do what they did.
Maybe they’re, maybe they’re a rainmaker type and they think somebody else can be a rainmaker, or maybe they’re, they think they’re gonna hire an advisor who’s gonna do the job they don’t do well. Like actually go out and be a rainmaker. And, and that is a common mistake. If, if I’m building a firm, which by the way, I have done, I mean, I, when.
The first firm I was at, when I started there, there were five people. When I left, there were about 20. The second firm I was at, it started with three people. And when I left, there were about 20 and 650 million in asset center management. I ran the back office. I ran the marketing. I ran everything. [00:15:00] I know what this is like.
And here is what we did. Our first hire was somebody who is amazing at customer service. Amazing at serving clients. They got to know the industry. They got to be able to do all the stuff to serve your clients so well that your clients are okay not talking to you about every single thing. If they will take the calls and they will care for the clients and they will speak on your behalf and they will bring things to you in an organized way, you can scale service.
When you can scale service, you get time free to work on strategy. The second hire has got to be business development. It’s got to be marketing. It’s got to be somebody who will listen to you on the strategic piece and then go and execute on your behalf, doing things like what, you know, depending on how you’re going to grow, setting up events or sourcing and prequalifying leads and booking meetings, those are your first two hires.
And if you, and you could flip the order if you wanted to, if you want to do all [00:16:00] the service yourself. But here’s what I find. As soon as you get to any level of scale, you start to struggle immediately with. Onboarding new clients and doing all the client service for your existing clients. And that’s why Sometimes what can happen is you’ve got this marketing person doing all this for you And then you’re trying to actually respond to that and get somebody else up to speed to manage clients and it’s a little backwards
Reese Harper: So, okay, so you’re saying like you’re so I think maybe one thing i’m in my point of view that I missed I missed maybe that I should have emphasized in my own thinking was You I think in a principle, it’s like, I feel like you should emphasize marketing before service, but that was because I think I already had one wingman, one, one person there.
And I had already scaled up service potentially to the point where at least I wasn’t the only service provider. And if you don’t have anyone, if [00:17:00] you’re alone, or if you’re like literally alone, then it probably, and you’re busy already and you’re busy already. What if you’re not busy? What if you like literally don’t have any clients?
And no one’s coming to the door and you’re like, I got to get clients. Then I think it’s a different question, right?
Robert Sofia: Yeah, exactly. And you know, really, should you even be hiring at that point anyway? Yeah, I
Reese Harper: should be looking at a different industry, maybe. I don’t know.
Robert Sofia: You better be out there getting your first clients.
And
Reese Harper: if you can’t, that’s a good sign that maybe like you’re, you’re going to have a hard time. If people can’t get clients, Robert, can they retain them still?
Robert Sofia: You know, that’s a good question, but, you know, most, most advisors don’t have a retention problem. I know a lot of people talk about retention in this industry, but most advisors, if you can get a client, you can keep them.
That’s at least early on too.
Reese Harper: It’s a sales problem, not a, it’s not a service. It’s not a retention thing. Because, I mean, there’s thousands of advisors working at Fidelity that [00:18:00] clients get handed to and the clients stick around. So what’s the first pain point that has to be solved in building a financial services business from scratch?
Is it the finding of a person who can convert clients at point of sale? Is that the first?
Robert Sofia: I mean, 70 percent. That’s what the data shows. 70 percent of advisors who are new to our industry fail. Why do they fail? Because they starve.
Reese Harper: Yeah, they starve. Because they
Robert Sofia: can’t get new clients, they can’t make any money, and they either quit or get fired.
Reese Harper: But is that because they don’t have opportunities in front of them? Or is it because they can’t convert the ones that they’re talking They can’t convert friends and family. They can’t convert anyone. Like, what do you think it is? If 70 percent are failing, are they failing because they don’t have enough at bats, or are they failing because they can’t convert the ones that they do have in their warm market?
Because everyone’s got a warm market, right?
Robert Sofia: It’s a good point. I don’t have any data on that. [00:19:00] And I can tell you at Snappy Crack, and we, over the last seven years anyway, you know, we’ve only worked with advisors who are growing and investing in their business. Yeah, because alternatively
Reese Harper: they don’t call you, right?
Robert Sofia: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s really not my space, but I do know, I mean, having started a firm from scratch with a couple of advisors and building it, you know, I know it’s really hard in the early days and there’s a lot of things you have to do that don’t scale before you can do things that scale and, and you’re right, you said it, friends and family.
Like, you may not be able to hire anybody, but you gotta go out and find your first few clients and get some revenue coming in so you can even afford to hire somebody. And that’s the work a lot of people just aren’t willing to do. And I think we live in a society, if you just look at the trend of where things have evolved to you know, people used to be willing to get out there and absolutely kill it.
Beat down doors literally to find clients cold call pick up the phone and dial all day long to find clients This is 25 years ago. This is how it was and today you’ve got advisors doing it. There’s a lot of them [00:20:00] online I think they they set a pretty good example. I think of like, Thomas koppelman over at all street wealth.
You know, these guys they’re they’re young. They’re hungry They’re building a business on social media, but they’re aggressive. They’re persistent. They’re consistent and so You know, I think people who are successful, they, they are successful for a reason. And usually that reason is they do the work. They, and so you got to do the work and then you got to start making smart decisions.
And one comes before the other. You can’t, you can get out there and pontificate about ideas and investments all day long. But before that even comes, you better do the work.
Reese Harper: Yeah, it’s probably allowed. I would be my intuition is the to get at bats. It’s still a grind, no matter how you’re going to have to put in the hours, the work, the time to have those conversations and improve.
I think there is some magic to why this 90 plus percent can retention rate [00:21:00] exists in the industry. And I think the people that are left Must just really like the like people and they must really like serving them. It’s not just because it’s complicated to move your investment accounts to someone else.
I mean, people could move investment accounts, but I do think it’s, some of it is like, if you’ve lasted this long and you’ve provided this much value and you care this much about people and you’re growing fast, it’s cause you’re putting in the work and you care about your people and you care about your clients.
And that’s, apparently a small percentage of the people that tried to start because 70 percent die, you know, and 30 percent are remaining after the first, we’ll say year or so. And then fewer and fewer and fewer are left over time. And that’s maybe, I think it’s a good way of thinking about it is that this, like you said, the effort, the grind, the hours it’s a factor.
It’s a factor. And it, I do think though, the point of emphasis I was making [00:22:00] earlier that marketing is. A huge barrier. Let’s hit that last question to wrap up today. What programs do you think are, what marketing programs, what marketing standards, generic campaigns we should be running as an industry, like plain, like just a simple, simple, simple marketing program.
What’s that look like? Yeah, most people are probably not executing, you know, and pick up market just a bit, go up market just a little bit where we got multiple advisors. We’re not like starting from scratch anymore, but we’ve got to grow and we’re. We’ve got a little bit of a reputation.
Robert Sofia: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is one area where I don’t have to guess because we, we have a lot of data.
So we, we’ve got 10, 000 advisors ran 600, 000 campaigns last year. 250 million data points. We look at everything. I mean, where, [00:23:00] where does an image perform best on a landing page? What color should your calls to action be? What headlines work, what topics work. And so. When you asked me a question about what marketing should people be running with?
I, I think back to the data that we have and, and I’ll just highlight a few things from our 2024 report, but one of those things is you got to lead with the topics that get responses and there are niche. Responses niche topics that I want to dress here because I don’t know that all your listeners have niches But I can tell you broadly
the number one Highest and best performing subject matter for lead generation bar.
None is to talk about taxes Tax planning, tax saving opportunities is the number one highest converting topic for anything. Second is estate planning. So just right off the bat, I would say if you’re a new advisor or you’re an advisor period, [00:24:00] and you’re not leading by talking about how to save money on taxes and estate planning strategies, you are going to underperform those who are.
It’s that simple. So knowing what content to lead with, either for your unique niche audience or broadly, like I’ve just shared is really critical.
Reese Harper: And then would you assume that in some cases, niche topics might be higher converting than these general ones? Or do you have a bias towards these general ones still maybe potentially being the topics even for the niches?
Are you on that? Yeah.
Robert Sofia: Well, niche stuff will always convert at a higher rate. Always. If there’s a high, the higher the degree of relevance, the higher the conversion rate. So what’s gonna resonate with your audience? Is it possible that these would also work well inside of a niche when they’re specific to individuals in that group?
Yes, absolutely. But a lot of times, you know, we see advisors that work with somebody at a specific factory. Or company and they help them with their [00:25:00] retirement plans. And so they’re marketing everything about how to maximize the Amazon employee retirement program that, you know, what should you do with your Amazon RSUs?
And that’s all their content is about all the angles on that. And that’s, that drives all their performance. Now what I tell everybody to go out there and talk about RSUs, absolutely not. But if you’re working with employees that get RSUs, It’s a great topic. So it’s, it is definitely situational, but that is principle number one.
You have to know your audience and you have to lead with topics that they will respond to.
Reese Harper: Okay. So principle number one is we have to know our audience and we have to respond. At the top, you’re talking top of funnel here for those of the audience who might not be familiar. We’re talking about Ways to get people who are not clients to take action, but I’m imagining it’s still effective for people who are clients But [00:26:00] this is you’re talking about more like new client generation, right?
Robert Sofia: I mean, what’s the first thing you have to do? They just principally if you want to grow a business the very first thing you have to do is build an audience That’s where it all starts if you don’t have an audience There’s nobody to respond to your content. So it’s like the advisors that are out there running some auto posting tool that’s just blasting stuff on social media and they have five followers.
What’s the point? You got to build an audience. The only way to build an audience, people’s time and attention is valuable to them. They will not give it to you unless It is assured that they are going to get value from what you say and do. And that means you have to know that audience and you have to deliver value.
So advisors who post generic content without knowing that their audience wants that type of content are wasting their time. And that’s why most [00:27:00] marketing platforms don’t even work. Like, it’s a funny thing. You know, people, a lot of times they’ll come and join snappy Kraken. And they’ll want us to be like FMG suite or like Broadridge or something like that.
And they’re like, why can’t you just post stuff for me? Like they don’t, they just don’t want to do the work. They just want to check the box and say, I did marketing. And we say, no, we, because that doesn’t work. Were you getting results over there? Well, no. Okay. Well then why would you want us to do the same thing for you?
We have to be intentional here. So do you have to segment your list? Yes. Do you have to select the audience with specific campaigns built for that audience? Okay. Yes. Do you have to launch campaigns every single week? Yes. Do you have to look at that content before it goes out? Yes. Because you have to make sure that it’s actually right for you and that your client, that it will resonate with your audience.
We asked them to do a little work and sometimes they don’t want to, but that’s the whole point. You’ve, you’ve got to be intentional about this. There’s no easy button.
Reese Harper: And if there, and if this, if this is starting to overwhelm [00:28:00] you, your reference reference, our past principle, we discussed about hiring someone that’s better than you at this, right?
This is where I think advisors get stuck. They’re like, well, I just want you to do it for me. It’s like, it sounds like you want to hire someone. That’s what it sounds like to me. And if you’re ready for that, you’ll be on the roller coaster ride of your life, but dig deep because these people come at a price and it’s not free.
And so I just think advisors are not very accustomed to paying for marketing, Robert, and, and the budgets in the P& Ls and the benchmarking reports that I see they, they confirm that advisors are, you know, probably similar to other small business owners and their willingness to pay for marketing services.
But you look up market firms that are growing firms that are at high organic growth rates, high top line revenue, you know, growth rates. They’re spending a lots on marketing, like lots of money on marketing. I’ll just say for. The [00:29:00] listeners, my the p and l that I helped shepherd at my R-I-A-I-I we are, we have a double digit of our revenue marketing budget,
Okay. Like, not single digit percentage of our revenue, but double digits, and it pays off in spades. I mean, it’s it’s. The, the thing I would never stop doing as long as I possibly was a shareholder on a cap table of an advisory firm. I would never stop spending money on marketing ever. So I just want to advocate for that.
And I know it was so, it’s so awkward. It’s so scary. And I think the reason is man, when you’re like barely get to profitability and you’re like trying to have your first dividend check and you want to like, Have some, you know, a trip to Mexico with your kids and your family. It’s like, well, what about that marketing budget?
You know, it’s always at conflict with lifestyle creep. It’s in conflict with, [00:30:00] you know. So I’m just putting that out there as like a a point of tension to feel okay about, I think, when people struggle. Either way, there are ways to solve this problem that do not involve breaking the bank. And you can, I just think it has to be a concerted effort to and I’m just advocating, I, we know you know this because this is your industry, but I’m just, as someone who’s not in the marketing space, I’m just, but who has marketed through his own RA, I can’t think of anything I would rather continue to spend money on.
And what I’m scared of screwing up the most is marketing because that is what creates enterprise value.
Robert Sofia: Absolutely. Yeah. You got the right idea. You know, I actually, I’ll get, I’ll tell you a story. There’s an advisor. He’s out in Dayton, Ohio, and crushing it, picking up tens of millions a year in new assets, dozens of households, And I was looking at his marketing activity and I see he’s doing all these wellness events, like all these like total [00:31:00] health and wellness events where they’re bringing in people to talk about fitness and diet and lifestyle and psychology and guest speakers and just really creative marketing stuff.
They’re having events every single week. And I was doing a, a program for our advisors and I wanted them to get this education from like advisors who are performing really well at a high level. And I reached out to him and I said, Hey, I see you’re using Snappy Kraken to nurture all these prospects that are coming out of your programs.
What you’re doing looks really innovative. I’d love to talk to you about it. You know what his response was? Thanks, Robert. I’ve copied Jennifer. She runs all that stuff for us. She’ll talk to you. That’s it. That’s it. This guy is crushing it because he’s delegating it because he’s investing. And you know, when I talked to Jennifer, I was like, dang, she is good.
She knows her stuff. She is on top of it. We actually, what it was is we did a webinar called 50 50 lead a [00:32:00] month club advisors who were getting at least 50 qualified leads a month. How are they doing it? And I interviewed three firms. She, she represented that firm. Now I guarantee you that’s an employee who’s not cheap.
But how much time did he save now? He didn’t have to respond to my email But he did but one sentence and then he never had to talk to me again The out the prep time jennifer did the webinar time jennifer did I asked her to come back for a second time now Here we go. She’s spending hours Not him. Yeah, that’s that’s how it works man.
That’s how it works. It’s
Reese Harper: a great tip And again, going back to that principle, like you do, you cannot be all things, you need to focus and marketing is one of those areas where for most financial advisors are going to need to partner, they’re going to need a hire. And I think it’s just, it’s great insight.
All right, man, look, last question before we wrap would be. Give any final mark, [00:33:00] we, we harken back to that last question of the, the programs that work, things that are happening, you gave a top of funnel tip, what would your second principle be? That you’re like, this has to be happening. Relevance. I would say that first one’s like relevance to the, the audience.
Right.
Robert Sofia: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let’s assume that you are getting some type of. Visibility for your brand. You’re building an audience. You’re doing events. You’ve got a website. Maybe you’ve got an SEO strategy. You’re advertising anything. You’re out there, right? Your brand is out there. So we’re going to make that assumption.
It’s out there on some level. If you’re going to convert all those views into real opportunities, your best way to do that is to get their contact information, right? You’ve got to get somewhere. There’s that digital handshake, right? You got to be able to reach them. They got to say, I’m willing to engage with you.
All right. So this is my tip. I’m just, that’s [00:34:00] my preface. Here’s the tip. When we looked at data from 600, 000 campaigns, the number one way to drive an opt in or a conversion is to use text messaging. So if you say, I’m gonna give you the data in a second. If you say, do you have a question about how to save money on taxes?
Text it to me. You will get 400 percent better response rate, a 400 percent higher conversion rate. In other words, of all your visitors, if you used to get one, now you’re going to get five. Okay. 400 percent response rate improvement just by using text messaging. So consumers today, they lean into text.
They’ve all got phones in their pocket. They don’t have to type in their email [00:35:00] address, which is something people do reluctantly because they don’t want to get spammed. They can just text their question and they don’t even think about the fact that just gave you their phone number and you respond with, Hey, great question, Reese, or actually I wouldn’t have your name.
Hey, great question. By the way, who am I speaking with? What’s your first name? You respond, Reese. Now I’ve got your name and your phone number, text messaging, lean into it. Got to do it compliantly, but it drives outsized performance.
Reese Harper: Beautiful man. All right. Those are two great tips guys. I hope you have enjoyed this we’ve got life lessons, from robert and great marketing strategy.
I think snappy kraken is Definitely shown to be a forward, leaning inventive Platform that is moving advisors marketing forward and as you can hear from robert a very Thoughtful response to a lot of great questions. Thanks so much brother I’ll let you have the last word and I just I appreciate you being here Anything you’d like to leave with everybody and we’ll wrap.
Robert Sofia: I love what you’re doing at elements. [00:36:00] I think it’s awesome I I think people need bite sized accessible more approachable ways to be introduced to our profession. And I think you guys are doing that. And I love it. I’m a fan. That’s my last word.
Reese Harper: Thanks, man. We’ll look forward to catching up again soon and enjoy, enjoy that wonderful family and have a beautiful day, ma’am.