Warning: Sometimes Social Media Advertising Flops

In this special edition of What’s Working Now, an AdvisorRADIO feature in which Horsesmouth members tell us about recent success they have had running and growing their businesses, we learn some lessons by proxy from Victor Connor, a successful veteran advisor who encountered some serious challenges when he made his first foray into social media advertising.

The following article is an edited version of the conversation between Victor and Sean Bailey, Horsesmouth editor-in-chief. Or you can hear more by watching the full interview in the video below.

Sean Bailey: It’s “What’s Working Now Special Edition,” this time, because we’re going to talk about what didn’t work out so well. I’m here with Victor Connor, Horsesmouth Master Member, longtime friend of the company. And Victor is going to tell us about a sort of misadventure that he had over the last year on this whole question of pursuing social media.

It’s a topic that I’m increasingly feeling very mixed about because advisors are told in many different venues by many different people that the way to go forward, build your brand, connect with prospects and clients is through social media.

And underneath that umbrella of social media, there’s some great things, but there’s a lot of booby traps in there as well. So Victor’s going to tell us the story of how things didn’t go so well in this case.

Victor, thanks for being out here. What was the problem you were looking to solve by getting into social media advertising?

From seminars to webinars

Victor Connor: Well, I have been doing seminars for many years; I am a longtime Master Member at Horsesmouth in part because I love to use the seminars. I used to design my own, but candidly, over time, I learned if you get the material already made, good! The real key is just getting in front of people. Which brings me to what happened.

So in 2020, we had covid hit and we all got shut down. So for 2021, my seminars got canceled, I couldn’t do anything. And if you don’t grow in this business, you’re going to die of atrophy. You always have to keep the pipeline full. I’ve been an advisor for 40 years, I have a good client base, but no matter what, you have to keep it going.

So after a year of covid and Zoom meetings, I thought OK, if I can’t do all my live seminars, I’ll do webinars.

Well, how do I promote them? At the time, I thought, I can’t do direct mail anymore to get them to log onto something because they’re not going to type the code in. So I decided social media is the way to do it.

Well, for the boomer generation, which is the primary bulk of our clients and social security maximization, it was going to be social media, Facebook being the number one, LinkedIn being the number two. Facebook is where the boomers go the most. LinkedIn is very good, but I found for the most part it was other professionals seeking other business. And I’m looking for my own clients.

Finding an ‘expert marketer’ to help

Victor: I’m a believer that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I’m good at what I do, but for other areas of specialty, I want to partner with somebody that’s good at what they do.

So I was also the past president of our Chamber of Commerce. I’m still on the board and very active,and there I met someone who was “the best marketer in all of my city,”—that was his logo.

So I go to this particular individual and I explain, “I want to do webinars—seminars online. That’s not my expertise. I don’t want to be a computer programmer, I just want to do what I do. Tell me what to do.”

So we sign up and basically, it’s $2,850 to start for his services, which are to put out ads on Facebook and on LinkedIn to a smaller degree, to design the ads and then publish them. Then $2,100 a month. And then we are going to spend $1,500–$1,750 a month for our advertising.

OK, we get started. And we start hearing, “Well, Victor, we’ve got all these clicks. These are all our Facebook and LinkedIn clicks.” Well, they keep saying I’m getting all these clicks but I’m not getting any prospects.

Attempting to tune it up

Long story short, he goes, “Well, the problem is the way that your Internet is set up or your Facebook account is set up,” through the broker dealer, “You don’t have Google Analytics. So we can’t see what this is. We need to build you a Google Analytics page.”

OK, if that’s what we need to do, I need to get this done. So then it takes them a month and a half to build the Google Analytics, get it coordinated between my firm, get him on there, get all that. Well, we’re still getting all these clicks, but we’re not getting any leads.

I have no doubt because I’ve done them before, that the Social Security seminar is the biggest draw. What we were planning to do was a cycle: Social Security, taxes, retirement and then some timely topic, like now would be SECURE Act 2.0. Just rotate that over and over. It doesn’t have to be original all the time. How many baby boomers are retiring every day, Sean?

Sean: 10,000 per day. Maybe even more. 12,000, who knows?

Victor: So we still have a good target. So that’s the plan. Social Security, taxes and retirement and then again the timely topic. So we set that up, I go put it all through compliance, get it all approved.

Horsesmouth had a video advertisement to put on there and for a month and a half, he couldn’t get the video on there. I almost said, “Come on, Sam.” Well, we had to rewrite part of our interface. It dragged on and on and on. So I’m just going to say after putting all that in…I wanted it to work, I desperately wanted it to work.

Breaking it off

Victor: After, candidly, just about a year, I said, “You have 30 days to make this right. I’ve now spent over $40,000 between your monthly charge, my advertising budget, rewriting by Google Analytics, redoing my website, and even with the interface going correctly, I still don’t have a single lead. You have one month and if you can’t get it fixed in one month, it’s not going to work anymore. That’s it.”

So he says, “Don’t worry, I can straighten it all out. I can do it.“ Well, long story short, the month went by and now you would click on more information. It registered as a click. So we know people click, but once they hit more information, it just went to La La Land. We didn’t get any information. He couldn’t tell me what happened to the lead.

“Well, Victor, we show you had 42 clicks.” Well, wait a minute, I haven’t gotten a single lead. He’d say, “Well, we have 42 clicks. So we know people are looking at it.”

Where’s the names?

All we were requesting was their first and last name and an email address. And the firm required city and state to make sure we were licensed in that state. And that was it.

I said, “I want the least amount that they can put on at this point to get a lead.” I don’t want a whole list of questions because the more questions you ask, they drop off. Give me the least that I can to get by.

Just first name, last name, city, state, and an email address. And we kept getting all these clicks and we just went round in circles. So at the end of November, I fired him.

I went to look for a social media firm that specializes in the financial services industry. Started with them. We started just to try them out on digital ads. They got our ads working. We were literally getting one to two leads a day.

So, I learned, you have to vet them, especially find out if they had actual experience with financial advisors. The first guy didn’t know how to hook up to our compliance. They think they can do an ad and just put it on. No, it’s not quite like that.

Social media has no shelf life

Victor: Another thing I have learned is that social media works to a degree, but it cannot be your sole platform. You still have to get out there. We have to do some seminars live. That’s just the nature of the game.

I’m getting ready to start some mailings as well. The difference I’m learning is that social media can be more “cost effective” when you’re doing mass distribution. But the problem is social media does not have a shelf life.

If I send you a mass mail invitation piece, whether you like it or not, you’re going to look at it and it might sit on either the kitchen counter or your in-home office for a week or so and then you might come across it again.

Social media does not have any shelf life. People see it once they scroll past it, that’s it. Email marketing is good, but again, it’s too easy to delete, delete, delete. So in my opinion, and candidly, I’m still learning what’s going to be the best thing. I believe you have to do a multi-facet approach. If there’s a silver bullet out there, I’d certainly like to hear it. I just paid over $40,000 for a lead bullet that sunk.

Clicks don’t mean anything

Sean: I think one of the things that is worth addressing is I don’t sense that your guy really was as experienced as he said he was. Because if all he’s talking about is clicks—clicks don’t mean anything to anybody. We want completed appointment forms. Somebody who’s filled out something, they’ve downloaded something, they’ve exchanged their email address, that is the measurement.

Victor: That is exactly right. A click doesn’t mean squat. They can click all day long. But until you get that info page: your name, address, city and state for the firm…You have to get that; if you don’t collect that contact information, a click is worthless.

Sean: You’re absolutely correct that in these kinds of things, you want it to be as frictionless as possible for the member of the public who’s responding to your ad. Adding city and state, yes, it will depress results versus something that only asks for name and email address. But not in a huge way. I mean, there was something more fundamental. That wasn’t the problem at all. There was something else fundamental.

Victor: He said, “You’re going to have a 40% drop off when you ask for city and state.” I don’t believe that is a genuine stat, but that’s what he said. I said the firm requires me to make sure whoever’s responding, I’m licensed in that state.

Sean: Yeah, right. So obviously, the person didn’t really have the experience because you switched to a different horse by the end of the race and you started seeing some leads right away. The other thing people might question is like, “OK, well what were you asking them to sign up for? Is that the right thing?” And I know the programs that you’re promoting, it’s all pre-retirement and retirement-based stuff. It’s all very hot.

The other question would be, “Was he really targeting the right people? Did he understand how to run the ad tool in Facebook so that you could get the kind of targeted demographic that you were looking for?” I would certainly have some questions about that as well.

Direct mail does work

Sean: I would say a couple of things. First of all, early on in your comments, you made the observation that you felt like direct mail doesn’t work anymore. And I just wanted to respond to that because I don’t believe that at all. We’ve heard from people who have been extremely successful with direct mail.

And for $45,000 you could have had five, six, seven direct mail campaigns each that reached upwards of 7,500–10,000 people. If you’d have put that money into direct mail, you’d have gotten leads. It definitely would’ve worked, especially if you worked with the right firm.

Victor: Guess what? The basics still work. So I’m starting direct mail again. I would have to say, again, there’s no magic bullet. I think you need all of the facets if you’re going to build your business, and you just have to go out there and do what works. And it’s just persistence. You just have to keep doing it.

Sean: No, I know. And listen, I really appreciate that you’ve agreed to come on here and share this with other advisors. I’m sorry you had this bump in the road, it’s a painful one, but you’re back on track. Listen, I think 2023 is going to be a fantastic year for people and you’re doing all the right things. You’re doing the blocking and the tackling and just keeping it going and well, you know how that works out.

Victor: I don’t think there’s any, like I said, silver bullet or secret. I think if you master the fundamentals, just the basics, you got it. You just have got to keep grinding away and that’s what it is. What did they say? Overnight success takes 20 years? You just keep pumping it out. Sometimes the results are better than the others.

Sean: All right, Victor, well, thanks so much. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing a very useful story. And I would say a big lesson from here is: Vet whoever you’re going with. I mean, let’s really make sure…and if they’ve worked with other financial advisors, so much the better.