The 52: The Short-Term Opportunities of ChatGPT

The Short-Term Opportunities of ChatGPT

If you follow the news closely, you’ve probably heard the buzz about ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that solves problems to questions you pose. If you aren’t familiar, read “Here’s What to Know About OpenAI’s ChatGPT—What It’s Disrupting and How to Use It.”

ChatGPT is exciting from a marketing perspective because it can create original content in a matter of minutes. For example, I asked it to “write a 750-word article on the taxation of RSUs,” and it produced a great article in less than two minutes.

From testing ChatGPT, I found the articles it wrote on general topics to be quite good. For advisors who use canned content, this technology may be an acceptable, if not superior, alternative.

I believe there is also a window of opportunity for early adopters of this technology. Advisors who use it can create large volumes of content quickly. That means more original content on their website, which can increase their search engine rankings. It can also mean there is more content for these advisors to share and get noticed on social media. This window of opportunity reminds me of the same windows I observed with advisors who were early adopters of social media, SEO, and Google reviews.

While I see great opportunity for advisors who adopt this technology in the short term, I predict there will be serious marketing consequences for all advisors in the long run whether they use the technology or not. I’ll discuss that next week.

The 52: Become a Guest on a Podcast

Become a Guest on a Podcast

One way to get in front of a large number of people in your niche is to be a guest on a podcast. The time you invest into being a guest is minimal—usually just a few hours, including preparation, recording, and promotion. Yet it potentially gets you in front of hundreds or thousands of people in your niche.

To become a guest on a podcast, you can reach out directly to the host of shows you are already aware of and pitch them on the value you would bring to the show and its audience. You can also use podcast-matching services like PodMatch.com or PodcastGuests.com to find opportunities.

Find Your Patient Zero

Find Your Patient Zero

You’ve decided to focus your business on a niche. But now what? How do you get the word to spread?

While there are many options for generating awareness about your business, one quick way is to find your patient zero. What’s a patient zero? It’s “a person identified as the first to become infected with an illness or disease in an outbreak.”[1] Usually, having a patient zero may be a negative, but it is a positive in your case. Every business would love to have viral growth. This rapid growth starts with “infecting” one person who will then spread their enthusiasm about your work.

Who is the one person you know that is well-connected to your niche? Who is the person who will make introductions to others in your niche to jump-start your growth? 

I recently spoke with an advisor whose patient zero was a friend and client who was a partner at a prominent consulting firm. This one person loved what the advisor was doing for him and introduced the advisor to a few colleagues. This started the ball rolling with this niche. After working with three or four more partners from the consulting firm, the advisor wrote a white paper specific to their needs and shared it with these clients. And those people shared it with their colleagues. Business took off from there, and the advisor has struggled to keep up with demand ever since—with very little additional marketing.

How to Identify Patient Zero

So how do you find your patient zero? First, you need to identify people with the right characteristics and relationships. Your patient zero is likely to be someone who:

• Is highly connected to your niche

• Is a connector by nature

• Has professional or personal experience working with you (a client is the best option if possible)

You will have the most success with someone you have a long-time relationship with because you don’t have to spend months (or years) developing trust.

New clients are also good candidates for patient zero because they are usually enthusiastic about the advisor-client relationship in the first months of working with you. These people are likely to tell others about you during this euphoric stage.

For example, I spoke with an advisor who told me her niche got off the ground after she met a wealthy woman at a club she belonged to. This woman became a client and referred enough people to kick-start the niche.

How to Evaluate Patient Zero

Once you’ve identified a list of possible patient zeros, you’ll need to explore which ones have the capability to infect others with your message. To do this, conduct informational interviews commonly used by new college graduates exploring career options. With this approach, you ask people to meet with you one-on-one to get their feedback on your business. You are honoring them by asking them for their opinion and expertise while planting the seed for introductions and referrals. As you wrap up the conversation, ask them these two questions:

1. What other opportunities do they recommend you take advantage of to get in front of your niche?

2. Is there anyone else in the niche they suggest you speak to?

If their response is positive, probe further by asking them to provide you with introductions to the people and opportunities they mentioned.

By the end of the interview, you’ll be able to gauge which people have the potential to be your patient zero. If you are lucky, you will uncover a few options to pursue.

How To Engage Patient Zero

Once you’ve determined someone has the potential to be your patient zero, you need to help them infect others. While you hope they will just shout from the rooftops about your amazing work, realistically you need to provide them with tools to make it easier on them. You do this by giving them something to share, like an ebook, a recorded webinar, a podcast episode, a video, or an invitation to an event you are hosting.

When you give them the marketing asset, be clear that you hope they will share it with their friends, colleagues, and contacts who fit into your niche. If you have identified the right patient zero, this should not be a difficult ask.  

Final Thoughts

I’ll be honest. Relying on one person to drive clients to your business is not a smart long-term marketing strategy. But when you are just starting with a niche, a patient zero can lead to quick wins and jump-start your efforts. You can eventually build a more solid marketing foundation on top of your early momentum, but in the meantime, identify the patient zero who will help drive that initial momentum.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patient%20zero

---

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke is the President of Kaleido Creative Studio, a marketing consulting firm that positions Registered Investment Advisors and their employees as experts in a niche, making them “uncomparable” to other advisors. Over the past 17 years, Kristen has consulted with hundreds of financial advisory firms and shared her marketing expertise via industry conferences and publications nationwide.

The Balanced Advisor Podcast: Finding Your Niche with Kristen Luke

Are You Selling Life Rafts or Sailboats?

Are You Selling Life Rafts or Sailboats?

If you have read any of my articles over the last few years, you know that I strongly advocate that financial advisors focus their practice on a niche market. The reason is that it is much easier to reach a small group of people with similar needs and mindsets and persuade them to work with you than it is to do the same for a broader audience with diverse needs.

That being said, most advisors still cater to everyone who will meet their minimum fee. One of the marketing challenges these advisors face is finding one marketing message that connects with people facing different life experiences.

Let’s say you are a generalist Registered Investment Advisor working with widows, retirees, and people experiencing sudden windfalls. What message would you use that applies to all three of these groups?

Messaging is difficult because some of these clients come from a place of survival, while others come from a place of abundance. To reach all three of these groups, you have to use a generic message like “Helping you achieve your financial goals.” But this message doesn’t deeply resonate with any of these clients, which means you lose out on your chance to connect with your prospect through your marketing.

Instead, let’s consider the messages you could use if you worked with just one of these client types:

Widows: Helping You Regain Your Footing After Your Loss

Retirees: Helping You Understand If You Will Be OK in Retirement

Sudden Money: Helping You Thrive Using Your Newfound Wealth

In financial services marketing, a lot of emphasis gets placed on aspirational marketing messages—for example, “Live the Retirement You’ve Been Dreaming Of.” There is no question that everyone wants to live happily ever after. But some people are so far from that outcome, they can’t even imagine it. They aren’t in the headspace to consider aspirational goals. A recent widow doesn’t want to re-envision a life she loves. She just wants to know if she will end up as a bag lady or have to live with her kids.

If you aren’t willing to niche, at least decide whether you are trying to help your clients thrive or survive. Then build a message around one of those themes. Are you selling them life rafts (survive) or sailboats (thrive)?

Below is a list of scenarios where someone may be looking for a life raft versus a sailboat.

Life Raft

• Loss of a spouse

• Eldercare

• Divorce

• High debt

• Retirement with limited savings

Sailboat

• HENRY status

• Sudden windfalls

• Legacy planning

• Retirement with significant savings

These are generalities that would need adjusting for your clients. For example, retirement may be an exercise in surviving for some, while it is an exercise in thriving for others. For most, the death of a spouse requires a life raft. However, there may be cases where a 22-year-old is in a marriage of convenience with an 80-year-old. The death of their spouse would put them into the sailboat category. Or there may be multimillionaires planning their legacy but have such complicated family dynamics (e.g., blended families, children with special needs), they feel like they are drowning and need a life raft.

Whether a person needs a life raft or a sailboat has nothing to do with how much money they have. It has to do with their mindset. Do they just want to know that they’re going to be OK, or do they want to achieve something greater than what they’ve already accomplished?

Your marketing needs to communicate the message your prospects want to hear today. And if you are trying to sell both life rafts and sailboats by “helping you get the boat you need,” neither group will hear your message.

---

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke is the President of Kaleido Creative Studio, a marketing consulting firm that positions Registered Investment Advisors and their employees as experts in a niche, making them “uncomparable” to other advisors. Over the past 17 years, Kristen has consulted with hundreds of financial advisory firms and shared her marketing expertise via industry conferences and publications nationwide.

The 52: Don’t Hide Behind Development

Don’t Hide Behind Development

Marketing is about getting your name in front of your prospects. That can mean speaking to a group, networking, or actively participating on social media, just to name a few.

Yet so many advisors hide behind developing their marketing instead of interacting with their prospect community.

A common scenario would be spending your allocated marketing hours each week perfecting your website and obsessing over search engine optimization in the hopes that prospects will just find you. In this case, you would feel like you are spending a lot of time on marketing, but in fact, you aren’t moving the needle.

Instead, you would be better off having a mediocre website and spending your time actively getting in front of prospects, directing them to your website to schedule an appointment.

Ask yourself: Is your marketing time spent developing or interacting? While development is important, it should be a fraction of the time you spend interacting.

The 52: Be Consistent with Your Niche Message on Social Media

Be Consistent with Your Niche Message on Social Media

When starting with a new niche, make sure you communicate a consistent message on your social media posts. Your goal is to be known as the go-to person in your niche, so every post needs to be clearly for them. If you start integrating non-niche content into your posts, you’ll fail to reinforce the positioning you are trying to establish.
For example, let’s say you are an individual advisor in a larger RIA, and you have decided to focus on the niche of employees with equity compensation in a specific industry. Every post should address the things that are top of mind for this niche (e.g., how your RSUs are taxed). Do not post other content your company is creating, such as economic outlooks or blogs on non-related topics like estate planning.
You need to be laser focused on communicating that you are an expert in one niche. Every time you post a non-niche topic, you are failing to differentiate yourself.

The 52: By the Time You Need Marketing, It’s Too Late

By the Time You Need Marketing, It’s Too Late

Marketing is an investment of time, money, and energy. And like any investment, it takes time to see a return.

When you get to a point when you need marketing to keep your business going, it’s too late to do much. Just like a prospect coming to you with $150,000 in assets who wants to retire this year, there just isn’t enough time for the investment to pay off.

If you need prospects immediately, focus on outbound sales. Pound the pavement, make calls, and hit up your referral partners.

If you want your business to easily generate prospects in the future, focus on marketing now. Establish your identity, build your reputation, and put systems in place to execute consistently.