Financial Planner Life Podcast
Welcome to The Financial Planner Life Podcast. We cover an intimate and honest account of what it’s really like to work in the financial planning profession.
Our guests share their stories of success, failures and learnings, as well as what to expect from a career in the financial planning profession! We host guests at various stages in their careers, as well as multiple roles to ensure that our audience has a variety each week.
Financial planners, business owners, paraplanners and back-office staff all have their own story to share, and The Financial Planner Life podcast is a platform for them to talk about their personal and professional journey. The podcast covers a multitude of topics, from mindset and motivation, health and wellbeing all the way to diversity and inclusion.
We approach each episode with the idea that it is going to educate and spark a conversation within the industry with topics that may not be openly discussed. So, if you are thinking of becoming a financial adviser, or you’re curious about learning more about this brilliant sector, we urge you to give the podcast a listen.
The Host: Sam Oakes is the host of The Financial Planner Life Podcast. since 2008 Sam has been supporting leading national and global financial planning firms in finding the best talent, he was the director of Recruit UK, a 7 figure turnover financial planning recruitment company that he successfully exited in 2024, Sam now works as the Head of Creative for Hoxton wealth, building out podcasts, YouTube and social content for this fast growing fee based international financial planning firm.
Sam has always had a passion for financial services, starting out as a trainer for leading product provider in the UK, he has been in the industry for over 20 years.
He sees himself as a partner to the industry and wants to contribute useful resources such as this podcast to educate those further who are seeking advice and help about how to push their careers forward in this amazing profession.
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Financial Planner Life Podcast
How Financial Planners Can Win with Marketing in 2025 | Samantha Russell
This week on the Financial Planner Life podcast, I sat down with Samantha Russell, one of the most respected voices in financial adviser marketing in the US.
She shared insight after insight.
Here’s one that really stuck with me:
“Even if someone is referred to you, they’re still going to Google you. What they find next decides whether they pick up the phone – or move on.”
That’s the shift.
Referrals alone aren’t enough.
Generic messaging doesn’t cut through.
And your digital footprint? It’s your first impression – every single time.
We spoke about:
- The real reason clients leave their advisers (hint: it’s not performance)
- Why financial planners must lean into video – even if it feels uncomfortable
- How AI is changing the way people find their adviser (and what you can do about it)
- Practical ways to grow your presence on LinkedIn – without being salesy
Samantha’s coming to the UK this summer to run in-person marketing workshops for financial planners – and I’ll definitely be there.
This isn’t theory. It’s what’s working right now.
If you’re serious about growing your firm, building trust, and attracting the clients you really want to work with – this one’s worth your time.
Download Samatha's free gift here.
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Whether you are looking to become a paraplanner, administrator, mortgage and protection adviser or financial planner, the Financial Planner Life Academy is for you.
With limited entry-level job roles, giving yourself the best financial planning career education, will not only kick start your financial planning journey with relevant qualifications and skills, but it’ll also help you achieve success much faster.&nbs
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Reach out to Sam@financialplannerlife.com in regards to sponsorship, partnerships, videography or career development.
And today's guest on the Financial Planner Live podcast is Samantha Russell. She is the chief evangelist for a company called FMG, who are a platform for financial planners to improve their marketing.
Speaker 2:Our platform allows them to manage all of their marketing from one place.
Speaker 1:She is based in the USA, where there are 300,000 financial planners, and she looks to support as many as she can to help them generate new client inquiries. I love giving people. Tactics really allow you to hone in and create a process. So today we take a deep dive in some of the hints and some of the tips that she passes on to these financial planners and you can learn them as well. And the great news is she is coming across the pond to deliver workshops in the UK in a few months time so you can find out about those workshops, how to get involved and, if you stick around to the end, we'll tell you about a free gift that she's got. It's going to give you loads of marketing hints and tips to attract your financial planning business. You're going to love this episode. You're going to love Samantha. Make sure you give her a follow, right, samantha? Thanks so much for joining me today on the financial planner life podcast. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm well, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm awesome. Thank you very much. Yeah, awesome been a very busy week of strategy around the financial planner life. Um. I'm going to take financial planner life to another level, um, which I'm really, really excited about, and this week's all been about how am I going to drive a bigger audience and how am I going to look to further monetize my audience as well.
Speaker 2:So we can talk about that for sure.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, because I think it's a hot topic and I think financial planning. I don't know what it's like in America, okay, and we're getting to you, introduce yourself in a minute, but I don't know what it's like in America okay, and we'll get into, you'll introduce yourself in a minute, but I don't know what it's like in America, but in the UK, financial planners are quite a bit behind when it comes to marketing and how best to use it to generate clients or retain clients. What's it like in the USA?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we definitely have. So I think there's over 300,000 financial advisors, so it definitely runs the gamut. I'm really lucky that I get to work alongside some firms that are really ahead of the curve and doing great things, but I would say probably about 80% they went into this business to help people with their finances, not to be a marketer and maybe sometimes not even to be a business owner. They wanted to be an investment manager or a financial planner and then they kind of become an accidental entrepreneur and they have to think about how do we grow this thing? So I love giving people tactics and strategies that simplify and really allow you to hone in and create a process so that you can just get back to what you want to be doing, what you're good at doing, and know it's going to work. But I think if there's maybe one thing to remember is that if you want good marketing and you want good organic growth beyond just your clients referring people to you, then you do have to put in some work.
Speaker 1:Huge yeah, massive amounts of work. Marketing is a lot of work, in whatever way that you do it, and there are so many different intricate areas of marketing and you don't quite know where to start and what's going to give you the biggest return on investment. It's very, very shiny object syndrome and I think when you don't have a good understanding of it, you can spend a lot of time wasted in areas where it's probably not best needed. So it is worthwhile speaking to experts. So you're an expert, obviously, in marketing, which is why we've got you on the podcast today. For those that don't know you, samantha, can you give us a bit of an insight into who you are, what you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm Samantha Russell. My official title one of many titles is Chief Evangelist at FMG. Fmg is a digital marketing all-in-one platform built specifically for financial advisors. We don't currently serve advisors in the UK, but it's something that we're exploring. We primarily work with advisors in the US and some in Canada, and our platform allows them to manage all of their marketing from one place. So it's like bringing in your email marketing campaigns, your social media scheduler tool, your website management system. It integrates with CRM, you can launch events and collect registrations, and we give you timely content. So obviously, in the US, there's basically something every day happening in the market. Based on what's going on and when there's breaking news overnight and everybody's freaking out about it, we'll create pieces of content for advisors that they can use as is or edit and make their own.
Speaker 2:And the way I really got into this was my late husband and I started a business back in 2014, where we saw a real need for advisors to have better marketing. We were both in I was in PR, he was in design and we had one client that was a financial institution and they were a really, really big institution here in the US, and when we started working with them. We saw that all the advisors underneath them had pretty terrible marketing and we thought there has to be a better way to help these folks. So we built a tool called 20 over 10 that was then acquired by FMG in 2020. And so now a big part of my job is just, you know, really staying ahead of what's working, what isn't working, what's changing, because it's always changing in marketing. You know, pretty much monthly at this point the algorithms change. What consumers pay attention to changes, and so I get out there and I talk with people on the ground and I look at the intersection of marketing, technology and finance.
Speaker 1:So you're in the UK soon, aren't you? This is how we're connecting, because you're. We've obviously messaged each other back and forth. And then Paul Bradley, great guy, tag me on your post as well, just because he recognized it. Yeah, great guy. So he's coming. Um, you're coming to the UK. What? Why are you coming to the UK? Is it to promote FMG or is it just for your own personal sort of experience?
Speaker 2:it's. You know, you really put things out in the world and manifest it and it sort of then comes into existence. You have to pay attention to it.
Speaker 2:So I, um, had always wanted to study abroad when I was growing up. Never was able to, and my husband, he, was a professor at penn state in addition to his other jobs, um serial entrepreneur, and we had always said, oh, we're gonna go, and after we sell our business we'll go work um in the UK, just because it would be the easiest of all of the countries to start with English speaking lots of similarities. And then he unfortunately got really sick and so we were never able to make that happen. And so I got asked to speak at a few conferences in the UK and do a few events as well as FMGs exploring, coming over and working in the uk and bringing our technology there for advisors, and so it was just this kind of perfect storm and I thought, rather than travel back and forth, um, you know, once every few weeks this summer I have little kids. They can miss a few weeks of school. So we're headed over on the 29th of april and we'll be um through the end of july, based in London.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, I'll definitely catch up with you because I'm in London in June, so that'd be great to meet up.
Speaker 2:I should mention I'm going to be hosting some marketing workshops too, live in-person events, so I'll give you the link you can put it show me, Give me the link.
Speaker 1:Yeah, give me the link and I'll put it in the show notes and we can put it on the LinkedIn share which we put out next week for this episode. So that'd be great to draw up some. And what are you covering in those workshops?
Speaker 2:So really the idea is there's just so many firms that they don't really understand this fundamental shift in how people find and vet financial advisors today. So we're really going to start by laying out what does the buyer's journey look like when somebody's looking for an advisor, because it always is starting right from. They know they need to do it, they know they need to do it or they want to change, and then there's some sort of trigger that causes them to do it. And when they're making their decision, there's a couple ways it can happen. The older generation typically ask a few friends who you work with and then they go and they look them up online and they're looking to see. Initially, maybe they get three names Of those three people who do I feel the strongest connection with.
Speaker 2:I read what they write on their website and I think, yes, this firm works with people just like me. You know, maybe I'm a business owner and I feel like I am just not taking advantage of different tax strategies and I'm really thinking about succession planning. And I land on a website and it just says getting you to financial freedom Well, they came highly recommended, but it doesn't say anything to me. But then the next website I go to says we work with business owners, you know, throughout this area, helping them to do this, this and this, and if you're thinking about selling in the next 10 years. These are the common questions we will help you work through.
Speaker 2:You're going to go, I'm going to make an appointment with them first, right, and so even if someone is coming through a referral, the idea of how they find and vet an advisor it's really fundamentally changed. And now we have all these AI tools as well, right? People? They're not even asking just their friends. They're going into ChatGPT and asking hey, give me a list of the 10 best advisors in London that work with young families who've acquired X amount of wealth. And ChatGPT is giving them a list. So it's just really, really changed. So we're going to be talking about that. And then how do you then capitalize on that? And everyone will walk away with a one month plan that they can then replicate for the next 12 months.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So it gets them up and going in respect of how to generate clients from a marketing perspective. So they didn't have a clue. They'll walk away with a plan for 12 months and at least know what they need to do, what they need to think about to start implementing, to be found by those clients that are out there looking around. That's the key thing. In the uk a lot of them rely on um vouched for, which is where they kind of amalgamate all different financial planners. They put them on there and they and people clients will rate them and they'll they'll go further up the rating and then further up the rating they are and reviews they've got, hopefully the more trustworthy they are and the more leads that they'll get for people that are searching, and then that's part of a newspaper and it's all pushed out that way. It's a very kind of typical way that they do it. In in the uk some firms will do things like paid for advertising as well and hyper focus on a problem and then hopefully, uh, convert that person. We do a lot here at hoxton well for an international firm and we'll look at 401ks. So if someone's leaving america to go abroad and they've got a 401k, then we'll look at those people that are leaving america with their 401ks who can no longer maybe be serviced by their existing advisor, and talk to them about what they can do with the 401k. So you know, there's lots of kind of different ways, ways to do.
Speaker 1:It's interesting you said earlier as well about the platform that um fmg have, where when there's some hot news that's come out and people want to react really quickly, they give a couple of selections of how to do that, how to release something and how to react. Because it's funny, because you know, yes, there was some trump tariff changes, wasn't there, I think, going on at the moment. And so, yeah, chris ball just like messaged me right, get into my office tomorrow, I want to do a video. And I was like right, okay, put a script together, get the teleprompter out, and I want to put a video out straight away. Um, and I was like right, well, how quickly do I want to get it out? And he was like I want to get out, like tomorrow. So it's funny, isn't it? Because there's there's ways to react to news which would make someone feel comfortable. The the quickest way would be maybe to pick up your mobile phone and just talk into it, naturally, isn't it Just like hey?
Speaker 2:Another thing that's interesting is you know the old school way advisors would say well, we don't really know what's going to happen from these tariffs, and we're going to end up going on camera and just saying we don't really know what's going to happen. It could go this way or this way. We can give all the talking points, but they didn't want to go down in this prediction zone. Especially in the US right now, politics are so highly combustible. It is really really a lot of advisors do not want to and rightfully so give any indication of which side they're on, for fear of losing clients, and so they don't want to touch anything with a 10-foot pole. That is related to politics, but obviously politics completely impact what the economy does, and so I agree.
Speaker 2:I think what Chris did was perfect. The advisors that I talked to I'm telling them the same thing. You need to send out something, because your clients are looking at the news, feeling like the world is collapsing and we're about to enter a trade war, and if you say nothing, two things are going to happen either they're going to go, look for information somewhere else and you're no longer the trusted person that they are feeling like is guiding them, or your inbox is going to be all of these messages, and now you have to be reactive instead of being proactive. So that is one of the value adds that we really provide is giving you the educational content. You can make a video, use it as a script, you can send it out via email, but saying nothing is one of the worst things you can do.
Speaker 2:There was a really interesting study here from a company called Y Charts in the US, and they found that the number one reason that someone will fire their advisor is from lack of communication. Number one More so than anything else. No one is firing their advisor for over communicating, but they very well might if you don't communicate enough, and so just keep that in the back of your mind. We really recommend a once a week cadence to stay top of mind.
Speaker 1:And also keep some calm. When things are going on politically, it creates unrest, that they worry about their investments and then all of a sudden, their investment might be going down and they think I'm gonna rip it all out. And all of a sudden, your client's running away, they rip the money out. They made the wrong decision because they need to be in for for for the long game. If we can reassure people look, this is happening, don't panic, because you're in it for the long game then at least we're coming across as the voice of reason and hopefully we're also keeping our clients calm, keeping them, keeping them with us. I think that's a really important thing as well. It's not just invest your money. It is kind of like look, actually this has happened before. It will happen again. Remain calm. In america, are people focusing more on pictures and texts, or are they leaning into using video more? How are you finding that? Are people asking you for advice around video?
Speaker 2:Yes, I wish more people would lean into video. We know that it is. You know, I've been bullish on video for so long. People are watching almost. I think it's. The number now is that like one hour and 54 minutes of video on their phone on average per day. So obviously that's the average. So we have some young people probably doing six hours of video. But YouTube is the number one if you think of it as a social media channel. It is the most popular social media channel by adoption. Right? You have nine month famed beans who are out to eat with their parents watching YouTube and 95 real people watching it as well. So video is the great equalizer.
Speaker 2:And if you think about what, as an advisor, you're selling, you know investment management returns. It's pretty much at this point. You know everybody, I don't want to say, can offer the same thing, but you're not really making your differentiation there. It's the service, it's the relationship. Everyone has access to the same.
Speaker 2:You know, for the most part, products and investment strategies, but what you're selling is the relationship and the idea that you're going to be looking at someone's portfolio. So if you're in the US right now and your advisor messages you and says you know everyone else. Yes, it's true, we're in it for the long haul, but you're actually taking money out of your portfolio right now, so we need to adjust your strategy a little bit. That's what you're looking for that relationship and so video allows someone who doesn't yet know you to see your face, hear your voice. It allows them to feel like they know you. It's why actors and actresses have these crazy followings because people see them and they think they know the person. If you're trying to build a business where someone's hiring you for the relationship, there is no better way to build that trust and rapport than to get on camera 100.
Speaker 1:I've known it myself as soon as I started getting on camera putting myself out there. That's exactly what you said people, when they, if I would phone somebody up, they'd be like oh hi, sam god, it's like, it's like talking to somebody. So it's like talking to some. Yeah, hey, they take the call. I never, no one, never, most of the time, don't turn me down if I want to have a chat with somebody, if I, if I send them a calendar link nine times out of ten on deck, they, they know, they know who I am, which is, which is perfect. Or if I do a voice note to somebody, they're like oh my god, like I listen to your podcast, it's really cool hearing like a personalized your voice, yeah, message.
Speaker 1:And obviously, if you put yourself out on linkedin all the time and you are sharing who you are, how you come across your natural tone, uh, even things like you around your personal brand, because it's not just about turning up for business, it's about turning up for you as well. Who am I? What do I care about? Am I? Will my audience identify with some of the challenges or the struggles that I might have? Am I being honest? You know, and there's things that I always like to share, because I know that others would identify with it and then build that closer connection. As I always say, create that wonderful oxytocin that builds that connection even deeper.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if you think about you know what in the past, when there before there was video and social media, you'd go to a conference and you talk with somebody and you learn about their family. You learn they love to golf, whatever. And there might be another vendor who had something very, very similar and their price was lowered or maybe their product was better, but you love working with Joe and so you kept working with Joe. Right, social media, video sharing those personal antidotes allows that to happen. I will say there's a few things, though if I could just give some quick tips if anyone out there is listening and thinking about making video. Number one is the hook.
Speaker 2:The first five seconds makes such a difference in whether someone keeps watching or not. So one of the biggest cringe things I see people do all the time is they start by introducing themselves. They say like hi, I'm Samantha Russell and I'm the chief evangelist at FMG. Well, you could have already lost someone who doesn't know what FMG is. They don't know me, they don't care.
Speaker 2:Instead, the first five seconds should be what someone is going to get out of watching the video. Right, you can always introduce yourself by having a little caption that comes up on screen with your name and title. You could put it in the text, you could say it later in the video, but do not waste those precious seconds by introducing yourself. Instead, you tell a story. Tell them what they're going to get out of it. You know, share something that's going to make them want to keep watching, and that also applies, then, for social media posts. The first line of your social media post has one job, and that's to get someone to read the next line. So those hooks right. Don't spend hours making a piece of content and then seconds writing the the first line. That's where you really want to spend a lot of your time. Is what is that hook?
Speaker 1:you know, with video. When you put your videos out on linkedin and I, I do the same as well, you you get quite, a, quite a high engagement on your videos, right? Do you notice, though, that the impressions are a lot lower than what you would have if you were to put a picture out, for example?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's, it's interesting and the algorithm is always ebbing and flowing and it really depends. I've noticed on. I thought maybe that was the case, but I have found it really does depend, like it's not always the case. So I just had a video. When my videos are sort of like really short less than 60 seconds and they're just giving away something really, really tangible, if I make it so that it's reshareable easily, like people would want to reshare it.
Speaker 2:So I just did one, for instance, on this hack where if you click on the LinkedIn icon on your phone and you like hold it down, it will a little pop-up menu will come up and there's a thing that says share QR code and you can click on that. And now when you're at any conference or event, you can just show people your QR code and they can connect with you on LinkedIn that way, or you can scan theirs and I did a video showing people how to do that. And again, it's about something on LinkedIn. Everybody on LinkedIn is watching it. It was really quick and really tangible and anyone could share it and kind of look like a LinkedIn hero. So it got tons of shares. So that one performed really well. But yes, I think overall images right now with text on them almost kind of like what people share on Instagram stories if you're familiar with that are performing really well.
Speaker 1:Do you of like what people share on instagram stories? If you're familiar with that, aren't performing really well. Do you in in the us? I don't think linkedin has such a high adoption in the us as it does in the uk.
Speaker 2:Correct me if if I'm wrong on that. Sure it has a high adoption, but not as much like daily. People aren't logging daily.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, do you have you? So what's your, what's your advice to advisors, then, when it comes to linkedin, do you, do you recommend it in the us? You try and get them on. They're using it or are they using other platforms? Are they using other platforms where they're getting more success and that's the reason why they're not using it?
Speaker 2:I would say the biggest strategies. Again, it's going to really depend on who your target audience is. So someone comes to me and they're trying to work with people who are about to retire, linkedin is not going to be for you. But if you are wanting to work with executives and you know a lot of managers you know people that are job moving around a lot, maybe like physicians who go from hospital to hospital then LinkedIn is going to be great. But I do recommend that every business has both a business and a personal LinkedIn page, because when someone types your name into a search engine including definitely Google, but even like sometimes with these AI tools the results that they're going to get but especially in Google, usually their website's at the top and then their LinkedIn pages. Linkedin has amazing SEO, so you want to claim those and make them look really great and have great content, because people, if they're checking you out and researching, you are going to click them. If you want to work with young women, especially in like between 35 and 55, instagram is amazing. Everyone, I think, should have a YouTube channel, even if they don't post to it all the time.
Speaker 2:Again, from an SEO perspective, and then Facebook groups in the US is actually one we've seen some advisors have so much success with Can be a little bit of a compliance hurdle, depending on how your compliance is managed. But if you like, there's a gentleman I know. He lives in a retirement community called Teleco, tennessee, and so there's this retire to Teleco Facebook group and he belongs to it and he doesn't self promote. But if somebody asks the question like, hey, I'm going to be moving to Tennessee, what should I know about this? Or that, He'll give them like, oh, don't forget, every Tuesday there's a farmer's market and as a senior you get a discount at this restaurant at this time. And oh, by the way, you might not realize, but if you're leaving Chicago and coming to Tennessee because you're changing states, your estate plan needs to be updated. If you need a good referral for that I'm an advisor and I know a bunch of estate planning attorneys let me know he is killing it using this group.
Speaker 2:So, again, it really is going to depend on your audience. What I would recommend most.
Speaker 1:Do you find that America as well advises a niching down on clients the type of client, yeah, and is that something that they're seeing a lot of success in?
Speaker 2:I think the more that your firm as a whole can adopt specific messages for specific populations even if it's like the firm as a whole works with a lot of different kinds of clients but different advisors are kind of known as specialists in certain areas the more success you will have. I mean, we personalize everything in our life. When you log into Netflix, right, each person has their own profile and it's recommending content to you based on who you are and what you've watched before. We have all these subscription services that get to know all of our buying behaviors and what we like and don't like. Nobody wants to work with a firm that just works with everyone. If you think of a magnet, in order for a magnet to attract people and work, one side has to repel right, so it has to not be for everyone in order for it to work.
Speaker 1:So again, there are firms seeing great success that are large firms, but within the firm, individual advisors are specializing within certain segments you mentioned earlier about ai and about people are using ai to ask it questions such as give me the top 10 best advisors in my local area. I mean, that's a big one, right? So if we look at that, um, we consider what's known. As you told me this answer engine optimization. Talk us through, talk us through what that means and talk us through what financial planners really should be doing. Or I'd love to know as well, because I don't think I'm doing enough of this how do I turn up when someone says who's the best financial planning company or who's the best financial planning podcast? Talk to us about that, aeo yeah, so it's.
Speaker 2:It's definitely a little bit of the wild west right now. But think about if you go to google and you search for something. Most of the time you're not just typing in the word burger, like we used to search forever ago, right? Or burger recipe, you would say something like the best burger recipe using ground turkey instead of ground beef, because that's what you have. Or you might search the best burger restaurants in San Diego, so are. Or what is the best burger restaurant in San Diego? So are. Or what is the best burger restaurant in San Diego?
Speaker 2:They're very question-based and they're very, very specific. And then let's just use Google as an example. When Google gives you the answer, in most cases you do not need to even click to read the website. You can just get the answer right at the top of the page, right, they might give. They're starting to add little links where they'll show where they source the info from. But ChatGPT, if we ask it a question, it just gives us the answer. It's not directing us to a website. So that's a whole nother question about. Well, should I still bother having a website? Yes, you should. We can talk about that in a minute.
Speaker 2:But from the AEO perspective. What you need to do is a few things. Number one it is going to look if someone's asking specifically for the best financial advisor for X situation, it is specifically gonna look at reviews. The more reviews that you have and the better those reviews, it will rank you higher because it sees that it's even social proof You're legitimate. Other people have used you. So the more reviews you can get and Google reviews specifically. If you wanna be listed on Google's Gemini product or any of Google's other tools, right, because they're pulling from their own reviews. If you want to like, think about those long-term search keywords. So not just saying who's the best advisor, but can capital gains push me into a higher tax bracket? Right, so it's content specific.
Speaker 2:That is where one of the best things you can do is, on your website, add an FAQ section in general that takes every question you can think of a client would have about the service you provide and then answer it. So question answer, question answer. But then do the exact same thing with all your other content. So if you have a blog post, instead of saying the top five things to know before starting to retire, you would say what are the five biggest mistakes people make before they retire, and then in your content, don't list out one and just put it as a statement Make each thing a question with your answer under it, because everything is now question and answer based right, and you can add little FAQ sections on the bottom of every page.
Speaker 2:So if you have a page about how you help people with investments, at the bottom of the page, have an FAQ section for investments. If you have a financial planning page, at the bottom of the page, have a financial planning FAQ section. And, to not make it so long, you could add what we call accordions right, you've seen these where you see the questions all in a row and you could click one and it'll drop down and give you more answers. Those are two of the biggest like tactical things you can do the reviews, especially Google reviews, and adding all your content to be question and answer based. That will really give you a leg up I love it.
Speaker 1:Great advice. I've got about 50 000 followers not sort of trying to be big-headed, it's not bad, but that's I'm trying to aim for. I'm trying to aim for a hundred thousand across everything over the next year. So I want to.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say what platforms do you have?
Speaker 1:so I use. I use predominantly linkedin, where the majority of mine are. So if I calculate that, that up, it's around about 40,000. And then it's YouTube is my next big one. And then I've got Instagram. What else have I got? I've got some like Facebook, tiktok, that sort of thing, but very, very small amounts. Predominantly, I've always hung my hat on LinkedIn. Okay.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:So I want to grow my followers now. You've got 44 000 following you. I've only got 27 000 following me personally. The rest follow my newsletter, which is a great way to generate followers, yep, and then the other one they follow in my company page. So combined that's around about 40 000. What advice would you give to somebody like me or our listeners who might be struggling to attract followers? What advice might you give to help them build followers quickly? We're talking like, hopefully, like can you attract thousands, you know, quickly, or is it a slow game? What's your thoughts and have you got any tips or ideas on that?
Speaker 2:yeah, um. So it really depends on the platform. So the linkedin, you know, followers that I have I've built up over the course of maybe like six years, and one of the so let's go by platform. So, with LinkedIn, my tips, especially for right now, would be, for every one thing you post, spend time engaging with at least 10 other people's posts and do it with your engagement before your post goes up. Right? So you're one of what we call prime, the algorithm, because the algorithm is looking for connections between people.
Speaker 2:So, before I decided I'm coming to London, what I've been doing every morning is, let's say, I pick you, or I pick my friend, alan Smith or Paul Bradley, and I go and I click on their page and I click your connections, right. Linkedin lets me tap into my own networks and see their connections and then I filter by all of Sam's second degree connections, right. So all the people that you know, that I don't yet know, and then I would click on their picture and the last thing they posted. If it's someone I want to connect with, I just leave a comment on it. So I want to connect with really big wealth managers in the UK. So I'm going to tap into your network, alan's network, paul's network, and I'm going to go click on those secondary connections and leave comments on them and then they're going to say who is Samantha Russell? They're going to go to my profile, see that we know each other and then see that I help financial advisors with marketing and hopefully they'll say oh yeah, this is someone I want to connect with. But I'm not even starting with a connection request, I'm starting with the commenting. So that would be tip number one. Tip number two is DMs really matter. A lot of people think it's all about the commenting to build and grow. But I try to send every day at least five DMs to my current network and five DMs to new people. And again, this is not a sales pitch, it's just you know, hey, I see you're trying to grow organically. We just created this really great marketing guide. It's ungated. Here you go, check it out. I think it will apply to you. Or, if there's a firm I work with, hey, I think your advisors would really love this LinkedIn QR code tip. Here you go.
Speaker 2:So with LinkedIn, it's really about comments, it's about the DMs and then, of course, the content you actually post. I used to try to post at least once a day. I really pulled back a little bit and I'm more like three or four times a week and I spend a ton of time focusing on that first line hook what it is going to get someone. So one of the ones that's working really good for me lately is people you know. You ever hear of the pratfall effect. People like kind of seeing people make mistakes and learning from it and they can relate to that person. So one of my favorite hooks lately is I used to do X, whatever the mistake is, until I learned Y. Everybody wants to know how did you fix it. So that's a really great hook. So, yeah, I would say that would be my biggest tip for LinkedIn, and I'll stop there because maybe you have a different platform you want me to talk about.
Speaker 1:No, it's fine. Linkedin predominantly. A lot of our listeners are really on LinkedIn, but do you do much on Instagram, though, because I know you talked about a lot of women use LinkedIn, right? So, if you look to build a female audience, we've had some great female financial planners on the, on the podcast, and I'd love to be able to, you know, talk directly to some of these women that are listening on the podcast, and if you've got some tips around instagram, that would be amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I love instagram. I actually um, we have a instagram for fmg and we give tips there and things, but I have a little. I wanted to help people more with Instagram and so I thought I'm going to challenge myself to create an Instagram and see how fast I can grow it. So back in December I started. We love to travel. We do lots of travels. I started a little travel Instagram called Jolly Good Travel and it is now at 30,000 followers since December. So I've been having so much fun exploring it and what I have found works really, really well.
Speaker 2:There are two things. Number one, reels are what helps you get the most new followers. Carousels are what target the followers you have and if you give them really good value with tips, they love it. And then stories If you put your face on and show up in stories every day and with Instagram you can it's almost like you have a lot better audience engagement. I wish LinkedIn would allow you to do this. Where you can, you know, ask a poll question or have a little question box and people could type in their questions and you can answer them live in real time. So I what took me? I mean I'm not at 43,000 or 44,000, yet like I am on LinkedIn. But yeah, three months to get to 30,000. You can grow so fast, so fast on Instagram.
Speaker 1:Do you think the travel side of it is something that is quite attractive though on Instagram, because if I go on there, I am inundated with travel stuff, because I think it's just one of those things that builds that vision of I don't know getting away. You know, peace and quiet, sitting on the beach drinking a cocktail, like people love that they. This escapism, isn't it?
Speaker 2:essentially, it's escapism in escapism well, it's so visual of a platform that it definitely lends itself to beautiful photos, but I am not a beautiful photo taker, videographer, so my content is not beautiful in any way, shape or form. Again, it's at Jolly Good Travel, if you want to see what I'm talking about. But you'll see like one of the ones that works really well is just kind of get B-roll of yourself. So you could turn on your camera and you're working at your desk and it's just 10 seconds and then you put a caption over it saying something like I'm a financial advisor and I work with you know, I have over 50 clients that have retired with over $5 million. Here's the number one thing that they all did. And then you people go into the caption and get it.
Speaker 2:So what the visual is, yes, it matters, but it can be really basic stuff not even related to what you're talking about. There's a really great Instagram account called Personal Finance Club and he doesn't even really use videos. He uses really great images. So he uses Canva to make images to show how small little behavior tweaks can change how you think about money and your spouse thinks about money, and he has, I think, a half a million followers. So, yeah, I would say it's right for the taking for our industry, because not that many advisors use it and people are thirsty for really relatable finance content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. There's only a handful in the UK as well that really do go all out on the socials. When it comes to video content as well very visual content it's the same with YouTube. There's only a handful of YouTubers that are financial planners that are dominating in that space. It's an area that I'm moving into in the next 12 months. It's something I'm going to put a lot of time and energy and effort and budget into, because I think it's just just wide open to be uh you know, to be able to communicate directly with the client that you're looking for, the the interesting stats.
Speaker 1:You looked back earlier and we talked about like an hour and a half people consuming on their phones, right. So I kind of looked into also what is the most consumed pieces of content now that are out there at the moment, and top of the list is podcasting. So the long form podcast audio and video is the most uh, it's got the most amount of complete watches or listens. So whether that's someone putting on putting on when you go to bed and falling asleep, I don't know, but you, it's got the most amount of complete watches or listens. So whether that's someone putting on putting on when they go to bed and falling asleep, I don't know. But you, it's got the most amount of stickiness when it comes to content. So podcasts are really like the last true form of long form content that's working even better than you know.
Speaker 1:You used to sit and watch tv and watch hours of a film or whatnot. I can't even do that these. I tend to sit in front of the TV. Now, genuinely, I put a podcast on. I go to my bedroom and I lie on my bed. I put a podcast on.
Speaker 2:It's like I'm even listening. Think about how podcast lends itself to multitasking, and that is what we've all trained our brains to do. We can't sit in front of a TV and watch it without scrolling on our phone, folding laundry, doing something else. We don't know how to do that anymore, and so podcast is so great for that. And actually the tides are turning so. Buffer released statistics just the beginning of March showing that even like so, in January, instagram changed the longest a reel could be from 90 seconds to three minutes. Tiktok followed suit, and they're finding that the most watched completion videos on TikTok are over three minutes long.
Speaker 1:I could understand that. I think I never really bought into that. Well, I did. I tell a lie, right? Obviously, I got addicted to the reels. When you go onto Instagram, I think everybody does it's like a drug, isn't it? The real is, when you go onto instagram like everybody, does it's?
Speaker 1:like a drug, isn't it? But they're so kind of like dopamine destroying that almost you before when you go on it, the fatigue of going on to a real now is just too much. It's like hang on. This is definitely bad for me and it's interesting you said that because another area that I want to focus on. So I want to focus on good quality sort of 10 minute long educational, financial planning or financial education content, but I want to focus on the minute to two minute long reels highly produced, really great reels because at the moment, like I'll put a long form piece of content out from a podcast and I might carve that up into like little segments, right, yeah, which is a great way to repurpose your content, but I do feel like it's getting old and the way I look at it is like have your podcast, which is your long form deep dive, right, go long form, deep dive into it.
Speaker 1:You can go as deep as you want. It's personal and all of that kind of stuff, and people love it and listen to it and they'll do it when they're running or they do it when they're cooking or eating or whatever it might well be. You hit the nail on the head when it comes to that multi-purpose. But sometimes when they go and they try and find an answer to something they want to know pre, they want to know within 10 minutes. Really, they'll give 10 minutes their time to do it. But if they can know in three minutes or if they can know in two minutes they're happy. But for some reason 60 seconds obviously is not long enough, but we've had this idea that we should be doing it within 60 seconds.
Speaker 2:That's rubbish, it's not enough time because that's what the instagram and tiktok gave us, so then became conditioned to make them. I will say, when you're growing a YouTube channel, a really good thing to do is you know, youtube's algorithm balances that percentage completion with total minutes watched. So you want those. You want to have those longer form pieces, so you're going to really hike your total number of minutes watched, but then you also want some of these, the YouTube shorts that they allow you to do, or even just shorter videos that are under five minutes, so that the percentage completion is high, and so that's the sweet spot you want to have, that you pay attention to is you know how do you get people to do both, and so you really need a balance of those of those videos. I helped fmg and our previous company, 20 over 10, build our youtube channel, and um really can talk forever about youtube seo, but um, yeah, those are the two most important things amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, look, sam, I don't want to give away too much, because people can hopefully come along to your um, your training workshops, when they go back when you come over to the uk. So I want people to follow you. I want people to sign up to your workshops and go along and catch up with you and learn more. One obviously follow you. Follow you on linkedin. I'm really looking forward to meeting you because I'm very, very interested in the usa, obviously working for an international firm that has a us presence, and we're building our business in the us. We're doing very well in that respect. We want to keep on on growing.
Speaker 1:I'm very excited about the USA, so I definitely want to meet up with you. I definitely want to learn more and more and more about the US and pick your brains a little bit further. I could obviously share about the UK. I know a thing or two about the UK when it comes to financial planning and I think there's loads of things that we can share and hopefully in the future, we can start to create some content together as well, because I think that would be so fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would be really fun. Yeah, Listen, it's been a lovely getting to know you today on the Financial Player Life podcast and if anyone wants to reach out to you they can just check the show notes and there'll be some details in there and they can sign up to the workshop when you're over in the UK and you definitely get the Sam Oak seal of approval. So really looking forward to it.
Speaker 2:One more thing I will share and I'll put it for you. To released the 2025 marketing guide specifically for advisors. It's 30 pages long, broken into five sections websites, social media, email marketing, video. What am I missing? Events, and so, for each section, I give you my best tactics. There is a link to watch a video with me teaching it to you, and so it doesn't matter where you are on the spectrum of your marketing. There's something great for everyone in there, so I'll put the link to it that you can share with everyone.
Speaker 1:Samantha, that's very kind of you. We'll get that shared out because I think lots of people will absolutely find that beneficial. I'd love to read through that as well. So sounds really really good. Samantha, so much for your time today. Really really appreciate it and I look forward to meeting you in the
