Libby Greiwe: 

Alright, awesome. Okay. Jeremy Keil, CFP, CFA. Let's see all the things, CIMA, CLTC ChFC, CLU, RICP, certified Kingdom advisor, and a National Social Security Advisor certificate. He is a retirement focused financial planner with Keil financial partners and host of the retirement revealed blog and podcast of which I am a huge fan. So I have known Jeremy for a really long time. I'm going to guess Jeremy, it's probably been eighteen years, maybe? (that sounds right). And I think every time I bumped into you, you had acquired at least seven new maybe designations since I had talked to you the last time. I really want to see at some point what your business card looks like with all those letters on it. It's probably like four or five lines of just little letters.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, that's how you got a legal size documents now.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

That's right. So needless to say, You're a really smart dude. And I think what's going to be super valuable today for advisors listening is to show them that even for someone who is as crazy smart as Jeremy, right, you're a fantastic financial planner, super smart, it all still comes down to, at the end of the day, it all boils down to client experience, and marketing. So Jeremy's marketing strategy changed and it literally tripled his referrals in 12 months. So that is what we're going to be talking about and what he's going to be sharing with us today. So Jeremy, welcome. I am so glad to have you here. Let's dive in. I know the thing people will be hyper focused to after listening to the intro will be that I mentioned your referrals tripling in literally a 12 month window. So people are wanting to know, okay, what were you doing? What changed? What are you doing now? What are you doing that's working so incredibly well? So welcome. I'm so glad to have you here and to talk about this.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Thanks, Libby. I've been a big fan of everything you're doing, so thanks for the honor of having me on the show.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Woohoo. So tell us a little bit about what was this pivotal marketing, give us your kind of overall philosophy, just walk us through what you were doing before, what you're doing now, because I know people are like, okay, no fluff Libby, let's just jump right into like the “what is he doing that's working?”

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, I suppose I was thinking through here, I'm going to tell people that quit marketing, and start branding, or at least do the branding before you do the marketing.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Right. Okay. define that for us. What do you mean by that?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

That is exactly it, sure. So many people want to do marketing, like just give me leads give me clients, but they have no idea who they want to reach. Or why they even are wanting to reach them at all. And I'll hear typically, where people say, Oh, well, yeah, I've got it, I know what I'm looking for. I'm looking for the million dollar person who is willing to take my advice, like that's their ideal client, which really means I want rich people that are easy to sell. And I just don't think that's like an actual target market that exists. Maybe it exists, but good luck to finding it out there. So before you market, you need to focus on your brand, then your message, and then you market. So think of it in that order. Branding, messaging, marketing. And so some definitions for you; Branding is who you are, and who you serve. Messaging is what you say to who you serve. And marketing is how do you find who you serve. So think of it those three words in that order.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, and I love that. So I call this kind of the eyeroll. So in our group coaching programme, we spend the whole first month or two kind of peeling back and doing some of this foundational work. And I'll tell you every time I kind of lay out the framework for advisors, I get that like, kind of like, “I know this is the stuff that I need to do, but like, this isn't the stuff that's going to move me forward”. Like I want the systems, I want the processes, you know, what's the tips and tricks? How am I going to get better, faster, smarter? And so I'm really glad that you bring this up, because I think it's so critical to have an ideal client avatar, to know exactly who you're speaking to, and to really be able to understand what are their needs, right? So it's not always just about you as the advisor, it's about what does this group of people collectively whether that's, I mean, in an ICA a target market a niche, it could be an age, it could be people dealing with a particular problem, it could be people within the same corporation, it could be geographic, it could be psychographics. There's a lot of different ways to define niche. So I'm curious a little bit about what your niche is and how you found it, and then what are kind of the problems that you're solving for. So I'm a big believer, and if you haven't listened anybody to episode number 10, if you need help with an ICA, Episode 10 of the efficient advisor podcast is creating a laser focused marketing message that speaks directly to your ideal client, there's a worksheet that goes along with it that walks you through it step by step. But every single person I talked to, that's a super successful advisor mentions this idea of niche. So tell me a little bit kind of about yours and what you've learned about them, and what is it that they need from you? And what's kind of the transformation? Or how do you then drive all of your efforts towards that particular client?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, you said something I might have heard wrong, but I feel like you said that it's not actually so much about who you are, but it's who you want to serve. And it is actually a bit about who you are. And I'm thinking specifically, the best example I can think of is that CFP commercial campaign where they were having someone dressed up in a suit and tie, and then the prospective clients came in, and then he just used a bunch of buzzwords, and people were maybe saying yes to him, and then they reveal he's a DJ, he's not a CFP. And the whole point of that was, you should, you know, go past the suit and tie and the looks, and then you'll find someone that's legit, and CFP is the way to be legit. And I think there's nothing wrong with a DJ being a financial advisor, right? Except, why is he wearing a suit and tie? And why is he not serving the people in the entertainment industry? Like, that's great. Just know who you are. In his case, he's a DJ, maybe he wants to become a financial advisor, use his experience of who he is, be true to who he is, don't wear a suit and tie and go target the people that kind of like that stuff. So yeah, think about your brand is and who you are. So like, for me, I'm just a complete finance nerd. I love helping people. When I was growing up, I used to do all these math logic puzzles, like that was my fun. And so I figure, for me retirement planning is just like a math logic puzzle that just helps people, right? And so the people I serve are the people that need that puzzle solved. And so these people are facing retirement decisions, especially pension, especially social security, especially employer stock, and what do you do with 401k's and things like that. So that's my brand, that's kind of who I am, that's who I'm going after. And my messaging has nothing to do with public loan forgiveness, term insurance, saving $50 a month, nothing to do with that. It's all about lump sum pension offers, Medicare, maximize your retirement income, low your taxes and retirement. It's all the messages that hit those people that I'm trying to serve. And then for my marketing, like everyone I talk to or want to talk to is over 50 plus, and they're on Facebook, like people under 30 are not, people at 50 are on Facebook. So you do things on Facebook, and they're researching advisors online, so you do things to get your name out there online.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Yeah. And so when I say it's about them, it's branding, obviously, yeah, about you. But marketing, do you focus mainly on the messages, right?  So having that ICA, knowing what it is that they're struggling with, knowing what they're Googling, knowing what their needs are, what their concerns are, what their fears are, how they're making buying decisions, and of course, weaving your brand into that. So what have you kind of identified as your ideal client? And I know you shared with me that there're kind of two main things that it boils down to, that they're looking for, and that's kind of how you've established your marketing plan to speak directly to that.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, and you got a few things that are maybe the psychological, a lot of these people, they don't want to miss out on anything. Like they have this one shot at their pension, their Social Security and Medicare decisions, they don't want to miss out on anything. And so I've got a guidebook that takes people through a lot of those things, it's six questions retirees aren't asking, but should be. So it addresses like that kind of thought in their mind, like, I don't want to miss out. Okay, here we go, we’ve helped people out before, here's the things you want to look at so you don't miss out. They're also wondering who do you trust? Because they probably haven't had a financial advisor, or they've just had a financial salesperson, and so they're wondering how do I find a good financial advisor? So we have a guidebook for that too, three things you should know before hiring a financial advisor. And so we're understanding what it is they want, and creating the content to help address those issues and questions that they have.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

And how long would you say it took you to really kind of hone that message and to kind of boil it down to those two basic, you know, basic yet not basic, simple needs that your clients have that I don't want to miss something, and I don't know who to trust? How did you distil that those were kind of the two primary objectives? Was it just listening to what your clients were saying? Or how else would you say you kind of narrowed it down to those needs?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, well, you definitely want to listen, and it was helpful for me that I have a company proud mouth that helped me do my branding and help increase my podcasts and things like that. So they guided me through their process of asking kind of their discovery questions just like we would do for one of our clients on there. But I'd say if I had the one activity that helped the most is, before I was going through, I was kind of in this process with problem out of, you know, what's my niche? Who do I want to serve? You got to look at, really, who do you already work with. And so I looked at that and that's kind of a typical things, supposed to look at your clients and separate them out by age and assets and that kind of stuff. I separated them out by the age when they joined me, and the reason they joined me. And so who cares if your client’s 70 right now and they have a million bucks? What age did they join you? Why did they join you? Maybe even what assets they bring along at that exact point in time. So I went through that the prior like five or six years’ worth of clients that had come on board, and it broke down into almost exactly 50-50 of two reasons that they came through. And the first people were like, 52/53, and it was just them getting ready for retirement. And I figured that trigger, there's almost always a trigger. The trigger for them is that they turned 50, and probably freaked out about that. Their kids got out of college or out of high school, and they realize they only have 10 years left until they have retirement. So you spent the last 25 or 30 years taking care of your kids, you realize you only have 10 years left to take care of yourself before retirement. And so those are the triggers to say let's just get ready for retirement.  Then there's a lot of people that showed up around 62, and they have a retirement date in mind. Like, there's nothing more they can do, like they've saved and they know I'm retiring no matter what, but they want to make the best of it. So the first people were just kind of getting ready for retirement. The second one, we call them imminent retirees like they're coming up soon.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

I love that. So I love that you didn't just look at your book and where it is right now. But really kind of what was the precipice of people coming to you and your practice? And how can I speak to those people knowing then that I'll just continue to retain them and continue to work with them throughout that time. So would you say the two main messages that I don't want to miss out on something and I'm wondering who to trust? Is that where the vast majority of your marketing speaks to?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

I'd say yes, yeah. So those are the questions I'm solving for people or trying to answer for people. The solving is, how do I retire and what do I do on there? And we create a process for that. So we have the five step retirement process, you can go to fivestepretirementplan.com and check it out, you can spell it out or use the number, but five step retirement plan is how people can check that out. And we guide people through that, that's what we do for our clients. I read somewhere that people want to know what your doing process and what's your buying process. So that five step retirement plan is our doing process. That's how we go about answering the questions for these retirees. And then as far as the buying process, we spell it on our website, then you have a quick call with us, have a meeting with us, we'll quote you a fee, and then we start working together. So they know there's no surprises, they know how it's going to work.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, I love that. And so you know, I'm a big fan of being like very specific. And I know you and I talked ahead of time, and we've got some kind of specific, just really specific advice for advisors, based on the experience that you've had by okay, I made this fundamental shift and I started doing things a little differently, and literally, within a year my referrals tripled. So I hear having an ICA here, I hear you having like lead magnets, and a very specific messaging, and obviously I'll drop the link for the five step retirement plan in the show notes. So you've got this really defined process that you're delivering. So let's talk then about marketing the time, how are you literally going to market, like time, money? How did you really dramatically change what you were doing before to what you're doing now?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, so I'll say with the referral specifically. So I switched from a captive career insurance broker dealer area to being part of an independent channel. And so that allowed me to do my own website. And so having my own website, and I could control the messaging, and control, especially how people interact with that. And the number one thing people need to keep in mind with their website, is the entire goal is to capture their email. You know, you're having 2000 people on LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever, is meaningless. Having 2000 people on your email list is absolutely huge. And so you want to have people's email, and the only way they will give you your email is if you give them some sort of value. And typically that value in the marketing world is called a lead generating PDF, where it's a guidebook it's saying, or it's a video course, it's some sort of thing where people say that's solving the or answering the questions I have, and so I want to hear about it, and I'm willing to give you my email to find out. And so that's what we did. We created those guidebooks, the six questions, the three things, we've got our five step video course on there, where people can hand over their email, so that we can give them great value. And now that we have their email, we send them a nurture sequence, where here's, you know, five other things that are valuable to you. And the last email that comes through is, would you like to book a time with us. And then of course, we have their email. So now they are getting our podcasts announcements every single week, they're getting an email from us saying, here's the newest, and latest podcast. And so it's amazing. It's not like we did a referral focus. But all the marketing we did on brand new people, trying to find brand new people, made it a lot easier for our clients to refer to us, because it's a lot easier for our clients to say, go check out my advisors podcast, than it is to say you should give my financial advisor a call. And it's a lot easier for me to know people are referring, when I get an email through that says it's from At&t or Harley Davidson, or we energies, or Abbott, or Wells Fargo, all these companies that I have a lot of clients with, when I see that email come through, I pay special attention to those ones. And so we can reach out to those people even more directly and personally than just a nurture sequence. But exactly it, where our referrals tripled in our first year, and when we call people and we talk to referrals, what happened is, they said, Oh, my friend told me I should give you a call. Well, they didn't give me a call, they went to my website, they downloaded something, they watch the video, they put their email in, and they still didn't respond to our emails, but I saw their email, and that was a company that is probably a referral. And then we sent them a personal email, and then they start responding to that. And so the email capture is what allowed us to reach out more to the prospects and the referred people. And the value that we're adding on the website made it a lot easier for the clients to say, hey, go check out this podcast or go check out this video course whatever it is.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, I love it. So I just did a podcast with a woman named Olivia Looper on nurture sequences. And I was curious about yours, is it all text? Is it video? Are there additional PDFs and supporting documents? What does that nurture sequence look like?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, the first thing you do is you send out immediately, whatever it is they wanted. So we send them out immediately their first guide book or the video course. And then you send them some other materials, like if you were interested in that, you might be interested in this thing. And then you do some different things that Donald Miller story brand, I tried to file his framework. I don't remember exactly what it is. But one of the things I remember is that he wants you to overcome an objection. Like one of the nurture sequences should be you know, what does it look like if you meet with a financial advisor? You know, this is what it looks like, this is what it costs. And it just overcomes that objection of I don't want to call you because I have to bring in my tax return. No, I don't want to meet with you because it's going to cost me $500. Like you overcome whatever the objections you're maybe hearing from people that don't show up at your door. And of course, if they don't show up at your door, you have to kind of guess, a little bit at that. But just think through like why would people not be showing up and learning more about you, and overcoming objection, as part of that nurture sequence?

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Yeah, and I'm going to imagine kind of your mindset behind is I'm going to give, and give some more without asking until that very last email of a hey, I've provided some value to you, what does that language look like if you're willing to share?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, I have to pull it up, I suppose and look at it. (you mean you don’t have your nurture sequence memorized?) I don't have my nurture sequence memorized. But it's, hope you enjoyed this stuff. If you'd like to meet with me, here's the link. It's just pretty simple. I figured that the less is better. Well, number one you want to be talking to people directly. Don't say like many people want to meet with us and in general, they are asking these questions. It's like you it's direct. You write it as if you're talking to one specific person like, hey, Libby, I hope you enjoyed the information I sent you. If you want to meet with me, it's you know, click this link, it just so quick and simple and easy. The Less is more, is really it with that.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, I love it. So owning your email list. So I love what you're saying about not having all these followers on different platforms, one thing that I have found, or at least in all of the research as I've been continuing to grow and learn in this whole marketing arena, is the idea that you always own that email list so that you can do whatever you want where Facebook can change the algorithm in a heartbeat and only show a certain amount of things, a certain amount of people or Instagram can kind of change the way they've decided how they're going to do it, and there's a lot of like guessing with, “when are your people going to be on” and what's the best time to post and there's a lot of kind of like rigmarole that you have to go through in order for it to be really effective. And email being kind of like, hey, no matter what I've got this, I've got their names, I've got their emails, I can kind of do it whenever wherever and however I want, and there's a one to one guarantee that this email, if I send it will land in their inbox. Obviously, we can't control open rates and stuff. I mean, I guess there's things we can do to influence open rates. But the email is definitely going to get to them, and it's definitely going to have a much higher likelihood of being seen than a Facebook campaign or something along those lines. So what are the things do you do to drive people to your email list? I know you have the lead magnets, but  talk to me about SEO, what are the kind of marketing? I know you've got your podcasts are a little bit about that. Tell me more.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, I mean, the number one thing is going to be the lead magnet, because if people show up at your website, you have to give them a reason to give you their email address and things like that. But a few things that are maybe just quick and easy for people. There's a company called mose.com, and they've got a service called Mose Local. And what they do is they take your information that you give them, and they just put it everywhere. Like they make sure that your Facebook, and your Map quest, and your Apple Maps and your Yelp, and all those things are exactly the same. Because Google thinks you're legit, if everywhere says the same thing, and everywhere points to your website. So it's less than $200. I forget exactly, but it makes sure that all the information you have is correct, where it's retirement investment and tax planning, everywhere. So when people are searching for retirement investment and tax planning, and there's 30 sites that point back to mine, that say, KeilFP.com, retirement investment and tax planning, then the right people show up at your door. Because you've got that and Google likes you better because they figure if 30 places are saying the same thing, then you have a legit website. So that's one thing to do. And you can do that, if you're an Ameriprise advisor, or a thriving advisor, or captive somehow in any way where you can't control your own website, you can at least control the things that are on your website, everywhere else is correct. I mean, even just the Google Maps and the Apple Maps, like people should be able to find you. And using Mose to get your information correct on the Maps is a great thing, that's a big help. And that's so cheap and easy. And if you do control your website, having some sort of search engine optimization is vitally important if you want to start ranking higher and have people find you naturally, it's going to cost money, it's going to cost you at least $750 a month to do that, probably more like 2000 even. So you might not be willing to invest that. But here's the quickest, easiest free thing you can do on your website, Google it, look at what is called a meta description, and a title tag. And I'll talk about the title tag, specifically, the title tag is really just like maybe a five word summary of what you do. The Meta description is more like a sentence or two description of what you do on there. But the title tag especially go to your website right now and scroll over kind of the top left in the top of the page. It's like the tab. And it's going to say what your title tag is. And so most people, they go to the homepage or website, and the homepage, title tag says home. No one is looking for home. Then you go to your team, and it says about us. No one is googling about us and finding you. And even if they weren't googling about us, there's 500 other people that are doing the same thing. So you're not going to rank anywhere good. So you have to create something. So our homepage says Milwaukee retirement and financial advisors.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Because that's what people are typing into the search engine, right?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yes. we're a retirement and financial advisors, we're in Milwaukee, like that's what people are looking for. And really quick, I told my SEO person, hey, we're a financial planner, that's what we do. We do financial planning. He said wonderful. Eight times and many people search for financial advisor than financial planning, so online, you are a financial advisor. So that's fine. Like that's what people are looking for so I will be a financial advisor online. And so it says financial advisor on my about page, and even our about page doesn't say about Keil financial partners, it says your Milwaukee retirement and financial advice team. Right? So that kind of stuff. It doesn't say about us or who we are, you know, that's quick and easy. You can do that one easily.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Yeah, and I love that and something I learned recently too, is when you type in like what would a client normally type into Google, when you type it in at the very bottom, it also gives you 10 other recommendations of other things that people are looking for, what other language phrases that they're using. So you might type in financial planner, and it might say, you know, looking for, how do I know if I have or what's a good financial planner in Milwaukee, you know. You can use all these other things that can become blog titles that can become, you know, weaved within your SEO all over your web page, or social media, etc. So, okay, I love that. So you just save people a ton of money by just having them just update their meta description or their title.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

That's all I got to do. I mean, that's going to take care of like 80% of it. And yes, it's nice to do the SEO. And I'm doing it because I'm trying to get to first pages and a bunch of different stuff. Another one is to claim your Google My Business, and so many places Google finds out you exist, they'll create their own page for you. So just search yourself, and on the right hand side, where it pulls up the Google kind of description of it, it'll say, own this business claim it. Well clearly if it says that, you haven't claimed it yet. So claim your Google My Business. And that way you own what Google thinks is going on, and then you can use the mose.com, the mose local package to make sure it's showing up in the right way for you.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, I love that. So, tell me more about the podcast and sort of what's the function of it for you? How do you use it? I know, we talked and you shared a whole bunch of ideas, if you don't share them, I'm going to make you but tell me a little bit about sort of, where did it come from? Why are you doing it? How much time do you spend on it? And how has it impacted your referrals and just your planning practice in general?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, I just like educating people, I figure the more you know about your money, the better you feel about your money, and you make better money decisions. Which right there, that's basically my tagline that I use during the podcast, I just love to do it. I've taught college courses, I've done over 100 seminars, and a podcast is a way to just do that without being live. And I just had so many topics, so many things I wanted to get out there that starting the podcast allowed me to do that. And we started off, you want to start off a little small. And so I was doing every other week for the podcast, then I was looking at, we were growing and seeing kind of some goals, I looked at the top 10 retirement podcasts, they all do weekly. And so I thought, well, if I want to compete, and be in that conversation, I need to go weekly as well. So last September, about seven, eight months into it, I started going weekly. And another reason too, my list of things to talk about was just getting so long. And if you're curious about what to talk about, listen to your clients. And when they have questions, write it down and read the literature. Like if you're not reading the Kitsis, nerds eye view, Friday, weekend reading, you're not reading the journal financial planning, or things that the investments and wealth Institute put up, that's just me for retirement planning stuff. Like what are you doing? Like, how are you doing to increase your awareness? Actually, the top two places here, I'll give you number one, the number one place where I get information or ideas on what to talk about is the AARP. You do not have to be 50 or older to join the AARP. Anyone can do it for 10 bucks. I joined the AARP, I get their magazine, I get their newspaper, these are the things my clients are reading. So whatever your niche is, figure out what your clients are reading, if a journalist thought it was worthy enough to make it to this magazine that goes to 5 million people, clearly, it's a question that a lot of people have. And so I get so many podcast topic ideas just by paying attention to the things that my clients are reading and looking at and to start talking about it in the podcast.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, so I fully expect at some point a photo of you in like these big fuzzy socks drinking hot cocoa in your family room, reading AARP.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yep, the fireplace is on, it happens.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Your small children running around. (It's exactly, it happens.) Okay, so I love that and how do your clients listen to your podcast? Or do you use it as a lead generator? Tell me how it functions within your business?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Sure, well, the only way to get it as a lead generator is you few give people a call to action to show up at your website. And then when they show up at your website, there's a place that grabs their email. And so I probably went a year and a half without that. And I thought, hey, if I'm spending all this time and money and effort, I better actually have some sort of lead generating thing going on. And so that's what really prompted me to start the fivestepretirementplan.com. So I cut in really quick with a 30 seconds ad for myself, saying if you love the topics, if you're curious about how to take this information and apply it to yourself, go to fivestepretirementplan.com, check out our free video series. We'll send you five emails with videos that are three minutes long, so you can just learn how to go about managing your retirement. And so they only get that if they go to the website, and then give us your email. And so now they're on our email, nurture sequence. And so there's people that are doing that. And one part of it is booking a time on our calendar and people are booking times on the calendar. So that's what you do, you basically advertise for yourself on your podcast.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Well, and what I love about podcasts is that it kind of lives in perpetuity, where like a Facebook post, or even a really great video kind of lives for a moment. Otherwise, people have to search and search really hard, where a podcast you know, people can very easily when they find you scroll back and essentially binge all of your content. The other thing I like about it is that it's so easy to share. So do you find that a lot of your clients or listeners are sharing your podcasts with other people and that's how they're coming to you as well?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yes, that's what really made it so much easier for people to refer to me. There's one client in particular, where I did a podcast, and she was telling me oh, yeah, I sent episode 26 to these people. I had no idea what episode 26 was, so I looked it up, and that was her favorite episode. And so she just sends out Episode 26, to the people that she's talking to. And it's really easy for her because if you're talking at the picnic at your company, and you say you should call my financial advisor, you don't remember my phone number. Maybe they remember to go check out KeilFP.com, but it's lot easier say go to retirement-reveal.com, like people can remember that. And that pulls up my podcast. And for her, apparently, she's really good at remembering that podcast episode. And she sends out the direct link to that podcast episode because that was her favorite one. And so the podcast is just an easier way for your clients to refer you. It's an easier way to educate your clients. Our clients are getting an email every single week with their podcasts. And they're responding back like, Oh, thank you for this topic of Medicare. And then it's so helpful because it replicates yourself in so many different ways. So when a client emails in and ask questions about Medicare or estate planning, I don't have to type out a new paragraph, I say, great check out this podcast. Let me know if you have any questions. And they have the Medicare series, they have the Estate Planning series, John, my other advisor, he can do the same thing. Brad, who's kind of our salesperson who has his series 65 and was a banking salesperson for 35 years in his career. But he's not a financial advisor when he's on the phone with somebody and they say, oh, yeah, I call because I have questions about Social Security and rolling money out of my 401k. Awesome, I'll send you some great resources. He doesn't have to know a thing about those two areas. He just has to know how to type it into our website and send out the exact podcasts that talk to it directly. And so it saves yourself time, it replicates yourself, it educates your clients. It's great.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Yeah. Okay. And so and then tell me, did you have a barrier with your clients being retirees, and maybe podcasting not necessarily being their primary source of receiving information? Was there much of a barrier? Or was it a pretty simple thing to get over?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

It's simple because I use proud mouth that helps me out. So they submit my podcast to like every single place. So it doesn't matter if you're on Apple or Google or whatever. They also throw it onto YouTube. And it's really easy to click a link. And so many people are watching videos on YouTube, like the people are 50 Plus, that are watching videos on YouTube. They just click the link and they pull up the YouTube which is just my logo, playing the audio, and so we haven't done the video thing yet. But it's there, they can listen to it. It's on my website, so you can just click through the website and listen to it directly on the website, and the pandemic helped because everyone 50 Plus that has a grandkid got very technically savvy because they want to be able to FaceTime their grandkid. And so that helped out a ton.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Yeah, and I know we've been talking a lot about podcasting, because that's your particular medium of choice. But really, what I hear you saying is having some form of I mean, it doesn't have to be long form content, but some sort of content that you're putting out on a consistent basis. And consistent is probably the operative word there that you can refer back to that you can use that speaks directly to your ICA. So even if people listening are like, Oh, I could never, you know, podcasts that's just not my jam. There's so many other ways, whether it's LinkedIn articles, whether it's having a blog, whether it's a video show on Facebook, or Instagram or wherever, that you can do all of these things with that you can continue to use in perpetuity sending links to clients and such. So thank you so much for sharing a lot of the detail about the podcast. Now for someone getting just kind of revamping their whole marketing strategy. So they've been doing like maybe the whole like I just asked for referrals and meetings, where would you suggest or how did you educate yourself? Like where did you learn like okay, I want to do this and this is how I want to do it, and I know you had shared with me just an amazing quote that I wanted to make sure we brought up, the “know it all” one? You said that.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Okay, yeah. When you go in there like, Okay, what did I accidentally say that was smart? Yeah, I mean, I just love learning. And I mean, Google is your friend, you know, the Kitces platform is your friend when it comes to podcasting, I learned so much on marketing, from the TEDx talk podcasts, and Joe Polish and Dan Sullivan, the things that they're talking about, the prowl mouth podcast, where they're talking about specifically to financial advisors. So just listen to others that have been there before, and be curious about it and learn that way. So that was a great thing. And then I felt like a responsibility. I mean, I'm reading this stuff, I'm spending so much time reading blogs and listening to podcasts. And I just got so excited, I wanted to share it with my business team, with other advisors, things like that. Somebody I talked to what you're talking about there, they call me a “know it all” once, and that kind of stung for a second. And then I thought, wait a second, you that's calling me the “know it all”, you spend like an hour a day on, you know, fantasy football and Facebook and Yahoo at the office. And I spent like an hour a day on financial advisor blogs and podcasts and reading the CFP journals and things like that outside the office. So really like the “know it all” is the person that doesn't think they can learn anymore, and so I realized, okay, I'm going to learn it all. I'm just trying to learn all of it. And I just got so excited about what I learned I became a “share it all”. I just want to share it with people like, here's the great resources, why would I try to hide it from others?

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Yeah, okay. I loved when you said that when we were chatting, and I was like, Oh, that's really good. I love that. So you're doing all the things, you're doing the SEO, you're doing the podcast, you've got lead magnets, you're paying proud mouth a fair amount of “cashola” to keep you out in front and center and doing all of the things. How do you actually measure the success of all of these different areas? Like how do you know where to really put your time, energy, and education?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, so the success specifically is very hard to measure because that's really on the branding side of it. Like this is educating people, it's getting out the messages of who we are what we do. So that's difficult to measure. But one way I like to measure it is I want to spend enough on my marketing that I grow, and the percent of my revenue that I'm spending on marketing, I want to grow by more than that. And so my goal with growing is 26% a year, and that's my goal for growing. And I'm wanting to spend about 10 to 15% on marketing. So if I spend 10 to 15% on marketing, and my growth rate is more than 10 to 15%, that's a success. Now you can get down to and you should get down to very more detail, for example, I purchase leads online, and I'll be spending like $150 a lead from places like smart assets, smart fester, wiser advisor, there's so many places that are out there, and when I spend that dollar amount, I want to keep track of how many people do I talk to? How many people book an appointment, how many people become clients, and what's the revenue that comes out of those people that become clients? And my goal, at the minimum is to break even in the first year. And so if I spend 10 grand in a very tactical lead purchasing area, then the recurring revenue ought to be at least $10,000 coming from that. And when it's not, you need to reevaluate. So I actually had a few podcasts talking about how great smart asset is, it was phenomenal for me for four years, and then the last nine months, it has not been hitting the numbers, because I'd keep a track of this quarterly, keeping track of it monthly. And so we're tweaking some things, hopefully we're trying to dial in to where if we can tweak some things, it'll become profitable again. But for four plus years, it was 2x, if I spent 10 grand on buying the leads is about 20,000 a year of recurring revenue that will come back in. And now it's like if I spend 10 grand in the leads, it's dropped down to where I'm not, I'll never break even, at least that's last nine months. And so this is a signal that I need to adjust some things and perhaps stop using that area. So I'm not saying that smart assets is bad, it's not working for me the last nine months. And that means I need to need to adjust and perhaps stop it and go somewhere else. And I am looking and exploring another place, some webinars, that group, someone referred me to them and they are getting 4-5x on their investment. So they are spending the 10 Grand and getting 40 to 50,000 a year in recurring revenue. That looks like a phenomenal return on investment because you're more than breaking even the first year. 4-5x's is pretty good. And so now I just started looking at that, then guess what we'll be doing, we'll be measuring the return on investment.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Yeah, I love that, that saying if it's measured, it's managed, right? And you actually have to, like, do the measuring and take, I can’t tell you how many times I talk to advisors, I'm like, Okay, let's talk about your marketing funnel. And like, where are you seeing it fall apart? Like what's broken? And it's like, what? How am I supposed to know? Like, and it's funny, because I have a very strong opinion, that marketing really isn't part of your budget, because it's actually like a generating side of your business. So I think people initially look at those dollar amounts that you're throwing out as, like holy smokes, he's spending 10 grand a year on this, he's spending $750 a month on this, he's spending, as opposed to he's investing with a very specific ROI goal attached to that marketing effort.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Right. Yeah, I've probably spent 300 grand on marketing in the last three years, and my revenue went from 565 to this year should be about 1.25. Like, I spent 300 grand once, and now my revenue is like double that, you know, the increase is double that on a recurring basis. That's a wise investment.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, thank you for being so open and transparent and sharing  that that's

 

Jeremy Keil: 

I got to be a share it all, I claimed it.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Yeah. Hey, you know, that's right. So I love that. If people don't know much about tracking their marketing, I'm going to do it again, I'm going to say listen to episode 14, it's maybe a little bit of a TED talk, but it's on tracking your ROI and making sure that you really understand where your marketing funnel is working, not working, and when it needs to be tweaked. So it's really just part of that, like stepping into that CEO role of your practice, and really managing it and doing all of the things that you know, business owners do. I know, advisors often feel so overwhelmed in that day to day that they're really literally just handling what's in front of their nose at that moment. And, you know, we need to create that margin, we need to create that time in the calendar to really oversee the business like a CFO or a CEO, or whatever role it is that you'd want to share. So okay, sorry, I digress. I get very passionate about people not tracking stuff. (I believe it). But I'm a you know, I'm science girl by background, so, tracking, spreadsheets, those are kind of my thing. Probably not to the extent that, did you go to school for finance? Like is your degree…?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

No, I think we've talked about this previously.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

What is your degree in?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

So I'm a physics major. And I'll give a quick story about that is I graduated in 2002. And, of course, you know, September 11, and things happen in the economy so that a whole lot of jobs were not available around that time. But I interviewed to do some finance job at your price [unclear word 42:44] in Baltimore. And at the end of the interview, the lady kind of like closed her book, and she said, Okay, that was nice to meet you. I just have to ask you something, everyone that interviewed was a finance major and you're a physics major. What are you doing here? And I said, Well, can you tell me a little bit more about the job? And she's like, What do you mean, I'm like, just tell me like, what is the job entail? She said, Okay, well, you look at a whole bunch of data, you plug in a spreadsheet, and you detect patterns with it. So what do you think scientists do? They gather a whole lot of data, they put in a spreadsheet, and they detect patterns and draw conclusions. I'm sorry, but all the finance people are not qualified. That's all I've been doing the last four years. And she was right on. I mean, that's the connection, I suppose.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, so I completely forgot that you were a physics major. I did not remember that. So that's something else that we have in common but I have a feeling like he maybe got way better grades than I did. So you said you had three tactics that you wanted to share with advisors before we wrap up here, so would you be willing to share kind of these three specific marketing things? You remember what you said?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah. So the first one is to stop marketing, until you go through the branding process first, which is brand, message, market. Branding is who you are and who you serve, Message is what do you say to who you serve, and then you market, which is how do you find who you serve. So that's the first one.

The second one is to go to Mose.com, sign up for their Mose local package, so that you can control and get all the information out there; Google Maps, Apple Maps, yelp.com, all these places, so that it's pointing correctly to your website, that it's telling people and Google what is it you do and how they can get ahold you.

And then the third thing is to if you can show your website hopefully you do, stop using home and about us, who we are in your title tags especially. You can go on there and adjust it so easily. And the quickest way to do that is to think of “where are you?” like I'm in Milwaukee, Milwaukee is in that title tag, and what do you do? Retirement and financial advisor. So Milwaukee retirement and financial advisor is what I use in my title tags or some variation on that. So there you go, go update your title tags, that's number three.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, so Jeremy just saved you like, I don't know, a couple of 1000 bucks. (hopefully) Great, thank you for that. And something else to add on to that, you know, the I've been learning about backlinks and how important backlinks are to SEO, so for listeners that don't know what a backlink is, is basically when another website, social media podcast, wherever links your website, it helps Google recognize that, okay, not only are they this reputable brands, like Jeremy was talking about, they're consistent and all these different locations, but now, other brands or other companies are actually talking about this person and referencing their website within their website, media, whatever, and they're linking the website. So Google really likes that it makes it very happy when other people are talking about you. So if you're an advisor, and you are guest blogging, or putting an effort to have other people mention you, produce your content, or copy, you know, use your content, going on podcast, and you know, so I'll be certainly backlinking Jeremy in the show notes here, all of that contributes to that algorithm that moves you up the line, because really, when someone's typing in Milwaukee financial planner, they're not going to page 10, to find the planner that they're looking for, they're really going to stay on those first couple of pages. So that's kind of another little hot tip of something that I have learned here in the last year or so.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

That's actually item number four. And I'll tell you, the quickest, easiest way to do that is join your chamber of commerce, join the Better Business Bureau, things like that, just local organizations, even sponsor your local football team for 100 bucks, they'll often throw their sponsor list on there. And so just google your city, so just Google Milwaukee, and whatever is starting to pop up towards the front, and especially if it's some sort of association page or a nonprofit that accept sponsorships, pay to be a part of the organization or to sponsor them, and they will be backlinking out to you.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, I love it. Oh, and you know what? I wanted you to share a little bit about what you call the Google juice test.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Oh, yes. The Google juice test on there. So you got to be on Google Chrome. I'm going to kind of do it like, while I'm talking here. So you want to be on Google Chrome, find a place that has a website, especially one that maybe links back to you or just anything. So look for your chamber of commerce, right. So go to your chamber of commerce, because maybe you're not on there yet but they probably have at least one other member. And that one other member probably links out to their website. So go to their link, you got to be in Google Chrome, go to their link, and right click on the link, and it's going to pull up with a lot of options. One of them is called inspect. And what you're looking for is you don't want the term no-follow. So if there's nothing on there, or maybe it says some other things, these are all like really in-depth, programming language stuff, but the one you're looking for is no-follow. If it says no-follow, then that website is telling Google don't bother counting this as a backlink. And so you could be spending money joining an association or sponsoring place, and it's not helping you out any…, I call it Google link juice; a bad link just gives you some Google juice that moves you up the rankings. So that's how you do it. So use Google Chrome, right click on the link, and you'll look for the word inspect. And then I'll pull up some like HTML code stuff, I have no idea what it says other than it'll be pointing to that website. And if it says no-follow, that means that the website is telling Google that just ignore the link, and you're not going to get any Google link juice out of that. So that's how you make sure that the money you're spending is worthwhile, if that's what you're spending the money for is to get the link back.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, that's fantastic. Thank you for, I love me a good like, very specific thing people can do. So okay, I know we need to wrap up. Before we do. I always like to ask my guests just to share maybe two things, whether it's like a practice, a software, a tool, a template, a mindset hack, I don't care, whatever that you have found that you use that has helped you work more efficiently or more effectively in your business

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Efficiently and effectively, I'd say two things. One is Calendly. And so you can use Calendly so easily to book all your meetings, and it'll send out the link to zoom. It'll send out directions to your office, you can put in there exactly what your hours are that you want to work. And so that's just a perfect thing to use is Calendly. So stop booking your appointments, use Calendly. And then I guess in the vein of stop booking your appointments, I have an executive assistant for the last year and a half, and I don't know how I can do the things that I do right now without that executive assistant, it's so helpful to have somebody that's managed your email inbox, that's managing your calendar, and then they can go be out with a lot of things. But that's the beginning point is your email inbox, and your calendar that they manage on your behalf.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

I heard automate and delegate. (That's it). I love it. Okay, so I'll link everything that you mentioned in the show notes today. How can listeners connect with you and take in your content?

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Yeah, you can go to KeilFP.com, and that'll have connections to everything, connections to the podcasts, connections to the video course that we do. Things like that.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Okay, fantastic. Well, thank you. This has been super helpful. I know every advisor on the planet covets, you know covets the holy grail that is a referral. So I know this podcast is going to really challenge a lot of advisors to step up their marketing game in a pretty meaningful way. So thank you so much for being here. You are an absolute gift. And I honestly hope, my one takeaway for you is that you should try to make some just margin in your calendar coming up to try to get a few more designations.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Alright, I'll give it a shot.

 

Libby Greiwe: 

Awesome. Thanks so much.

 

Jeremy Keil: 

Thank you, Libby.