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19th February, 2025 - Webinar replay

In conversation with Samantha Russell – practical and actionable lessons to improve your marketing

Phil Bray 

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to today’s webinar: In conversation with Samantha Russell. Who we now have permission to call Sam. Thank you, Sam for that. We’re going to talk about practical and actionable lessons to improve your marketing. We’re going to have a good jam-packed hour with hopefully lots of things that you can take away, add to your to do list and to improve your marketing. Let’s start with an introduction. Sam, you’re coming to us from the US today. Whereabouts are you?

Samantha Russell 

I am, yes. I am in State College, Pennsylvania. If you know where Philadelphia is, it’s about three hours due west of there. It’s smack in the middle of the state where Penn State University is.

Phil Bray 

Nice and Dan, if you could, please move the slide on one, if that’s okay? We’ve got a few problems with the slides this morning, guys. So, Dan is sorting these slides out. Sam, you are a marketing expert in the financial services space, and we’re going to talk today about branding, digital marketing, social proof, and all sorts of other things. But before we do that, I’m just going to get Dan to do the housekeeping in the usual way and remind anybody that’s new here how we do things. Dan, do you want to take that away?

Dan Campbell 

I certainly do, Phil, yes. Welcome to today’s session. What do we all need to know? Well, if this is your first Yardstick webinar, we encourage as much participation as possible. Your microphones and cameras are not on but don’t worry, you can still talk to us. There are a few ways you can do that. You can send us a comment in the chat function, or you can use the Q&A box to have your say. I’ll be monitoring both as we go. Hey, it’s your hour, ask questions about the things that Phil and Sam are discussing. Tell us you agree, tell us you disagree. Let’s open up the floor and let’s learn. It’s a safe space, it always has been, so, make the most of your hour with us today. As usual, when we have a special guest, Phil is going to lead with his own questions but don’t worry, I’ll be sweeping up any comments and questions at regular intervals as we go along. Let me answer a question that we always get right at the start. Yes, we absolutely are recording today’s session so don’t worry if you miss something. A recording, along with a summary of any notes and resources from today will be sent out later. We have our very own Abi  Robinson to thank for that, as always, she’ll be working diligently behind the scenes. Now, that’s enough of me. Whenever we have a guest, I can very quickly become a member of the audience and enjoy the hour. So let me do that now, and over to Phil and Sam to kick us off.

Phil Bray 

Cheers, Dan.

Samantha Russell 

Thank you.

Phil Bray 

Take the slides off would you mate? Thank you. So as we already established Sam, you’re from one side of the Atlantic and we’re from the other. Most people on here will be UK based, but there will be some people from overseas. For you, what are the main differences between how US-based advisers and planners approach their marketing compared to UK-based advisers?

Samantha Russell 

Yeah, it’s such a good question, and one I’m still wrapping my head around. I only recently started working with and even conversing with more and more advisers in the UK. The first thing that comes to mind is just that you have more flexibility when you’re based in the UK in certain things you can do, that US advisers cannot do. We have stricter compliance overall, I would say. Then, depending on what organisation you’re affiliated with in the US, some broker dealers interpret the laws that are written in an even more conservative way. So, there are a lot of firms that can’t use Instagram or YouTube, and don’t have the ability to solicit reviews of any kind. Some still can’t leave comments on social media. So it’s really restrictive in some instances, and I’d say that’s one of the biggest differences I’ve seen, and also the number of smaller niches. In the US, there are a lot of firms that have  gotten, especially in the last five years, much more specific with the niche that they serve because they’re using digital tools to serve anyone in the country. Instead of their market being location based, it’s based on other socio economic factors and lifestyle factors, and they can serve anyone in the US. So, I’d say those are probably the two biggest differences, but I’m excited to learn more.

Phil Bray 

For me, one of the things that’s the same when we’ve worked with US firms and when we’ve worked with UK firms, is that referrals and recommendations from existing clients are the best type of new enquiry. With the highest conversion rate and the lowest cost of acquisition.

Samantha Russell 

Yes, absolutely. One of the things that most people rely on still too.

Phil Bray 

Absolutely,  makes up the majority of their leads. But as you said on a LinkedIn post a while ago – I’ve written it down because I knew I was going to quote you. “Helping clients refer you to friends and family is not a growth strategy.”So, what should be in, in your opinion, a referral strategy?

Samantha Russell 

I love that you wrote it down. What I was getting at there is, as you said, referrals are an amazing way to grow but the difference is between being passive or active about it. So, what I find that most people do is have a hope and a prayer that people are going to refer them because they deliver great service. Well then your marketing strategy truly is a hope and a prayer. Instead, what we want to do is think, “How can we put ourselves at the helm of the process? How can we be driving the car of this referral strategy?” There are some different things that you can do. Number one, you create remarkable, memorable moments that lead somebody to want to talk about you, because most people in conversation with their friends and family when someone says, “What did you do today?” are not saying “Oh, I had the most amazing hour long meeting with my financial adviser.” That just doesn’t happen. Even if it was amazing, money is not something that people often sit around and want to chop it up about when it comes to their own money. So, the thing that we can do is create these moments. So let’s talk about an example of what that might be, an event where you’re adding value. In the US it’s been constant that people are using AI to scam the elderly. They’re replicating people’s voices to make it sound like your child is calling you, somebody needs money, or they make an email look like it’s written from a friend. There’s a firm that we work with who just hired a local FBI agent, every area here has an FBI headquarters, so the adviserbrought somebody in from the local office, they gave a one-hour talk about some of these scams that are targeting the elderly. When the adviser sent the email out, rather than saying, “Invite everyone you know”, they said, “We’re doing this for our clients because we want to keep them safe.” Then, two days later, they sent a follow-up email saying, “So many of you are asking if you can invite anyone else. We have a limited number of seats, but we’re going to allow each of you to extend the invitation to three people each.” Almost everybody used up those three slots. And because it sounded exclusive, it was very helpful. It was informational, and that is the type of thing that gets people to talk about you and say, “It’s my adviser putting it on”, not just “I had this great meeting”. So, we want to shift our mindset and be really in charge of making those referable moments and those conversations happen.

Phil Bray 

Apart from creating those moments of “Wow”, those moments when you really impress somebody, and I can see how the webinar to keep people safe online would be would be massive, what other top tips would you have to for advisers and planners to be more proactive with referrals? Where do you stand on asking, for example.

Samantha Russell 

If somebody is sitting there in front of you and you just solved a big pain point for them, a big problem, and they are saying, “Oh, I’m so thankful that you helped me. This, this is amazing. Thank you so much.” That is a great moment to, look at them and say, “This is why I do what I do. I want to help people like you and I feel so great that you feel relieved and in a good spot…” Let’s say it’s a woman who just lost her husband. “…I understand that somebody who is a widow goes through all of these things, it is so challenging and there’s so much going on. If there are any other widows that you know, or other women that are going through something similar, I have a couple of extra spots right now to take on new clients, so, feel free to send them my name.” I think it’s just doing it at the right time, so that it doesn’t appear salesy. In my opinion, you don’t want to send a blanket email saying, “Hey, can you tell your friends and family about us?” I think that way, the number of people who actually do it is pretty small, s,o it’s about finding the right time to ask and asking in a moment when somebody is really appreciative and thankful for the work that you’re doing.

Phil Bray 

In our experience, I don’t if it’s the same in the US, consumers and potential clients will solicit more than one referral. They’ll talk to a couple of friends, a couple of professional connections. Do you think that’s the same in the US?

Samantha Russell 

Oh yes. I think at least two. People are inherently, I don’t want to say lazy but they’ve got other things going on and they can only do so much research. Two to three is usually the the top number, so when somebody’s Googling your name, what they’re going to find is so incredibly important. You can also really help the referral process by showcasing things like social proof. If you somebody googles their refferals and your firm comes up, and two other firms come up, and you have a bunch of great reviews but the other two don’t have any reviews at all, that says something. Because now they’re not just relying on the testimony of their friend who referred them, they see all these other consumers who have used you as well. That is where the power of social proof and referrals can go a long way and in the UK, you’re in such an amazing spot to be able to use them.

Phil Bray 

We had Marcus Sheridan on this webinar last year, and Marcus talks about 70% of the consumer’s buying decision is made before they meet the sales person, hence social proof being so important. But just explain to everybody on here, and Jonathan, who made a comment earlier, how you guys have got it a lot harder in the US when it comes to social proof compared to what we’ve got in the UK.

Samantha Russell 

Yeah, 100%. In the US, if you are an RA, a Registered Investment Adviser, you’re able to get reviews and things like that a lot easier but there are fines being leveled left and right for people not – Basically, the rule was written to say, “okay, we can now use reviews and testimonials” but it’s was written in a very grey area, so people are waiting for enough lawsuits to happen to understand what the rule is really saying. That’s kind of how it’s going forward. But also there’s such a big gap right now between what the very tail end of clients that most advisers were getting, like people in their late 50s, and 60s, and how they were finding an adviser versus how every other generation is now going about it. I don’t care if you’re 30, 40, or 50 years old, most people aren’t even going to buy a pair of jeans online without reading a review, let alone handing over all the money that they have to somebody else. So, the need for these reviews is more powerful than ever, and what happens is, the more advisery firms that get them, the more the consumer becomes accustomed to seeing them. If you went online to buy a pair of jeans tomorrow, and you couldn’t find a single review, you’d probably think, “I’m going to find a different pair that other people have said works” because we want to do what others do. When we have a lack of information, psychology tells us we look to what others have done, what experience they have had. So, getting those reviews is crucial to showing the social proof that you are an expert and that people can trust you.

Phil Bray 

What would you say to reluctant advisers? Because I was on a call earlier with a firm, and their advisers are reluctant to ask clients for reviews for two reasons. The first was, “What if we get a bad review?” And second was, “We don’t want to pester our clients. We don’t want to put our clients out make it awkward by asking for reviews.” What would you say in response to those two things? I’m interested to see whether your response was the same as mine. So, what would you say to those two things?

Samantha Russell 

The first one about not wanting a negative review, I always say, “Remember that the exception justifies the rule”, or whatever that saying is. If people see 100 5-star reviews, they’ll think it’s fake. They want, as the consumer, to see that these are real reviews. So having one or two negative reviews and 100 positive reviews is fine. If you’re going to find a hotel tomorrow, and you see one review from the person who’s like, Tthe bed was lumpy and it was loud. I found lipstick on the coffee cup, and the people next door wouldn’t shut up but the manager wouldn’t do anything.” You conclude they’re just a grumpy person. If you’re a good provider, and you have tons of great reviews, and one bad one, most people are going to say, “Okay, well, that’s just that person. It’s not the service provided.” So, I wouldn’t worry about getting one negative review, it’s just part of reviews, some people are going to be happy, and some people aren’t. But, it does make people realise the reviews are from real people. In terms of asking people for it, usually the people that are reluctant to ask for a review have no problem asking for a referral, which is basically the same thing. A review, just think of it as a digital referral. When you have a client and they tell their neighbour, Jane, about you, well, only Jane got to hear about how great you are, but if that same client goes online and leaves a review on Google, 1000s of people get to hear how great you are. So a review online is really just a digital referral. Think of it that way. Instead of just being told to one person, it’s being told to 1000s of people. The same way you would ask for a referral, is when you should ask for a review, for example, when they’ve had a good experience, when you’ve just had a meeting together, when you’ve just solved a pain point for them, when they’ve paid you a compliment. You could say, “This is so great, and because I serve people anywhere in the world and everything is online these days, my client base doesn’t just grow by referrals and I would really love it, if you wouldn’t mind, just writing exactly what you just said to me in a quick review online, and here’s the link.” Make it as easy as possible, send them the exact link that they need to go and leave the review. I’d love to hear what you said, Phil.

Phil Bray 

I said the same as you when it came to the online reviews and the quality of the reviews, that they need to be authentic. That’s why typos are quite nice into some online reviews, because it just shows the authenticity of them. So, I gave a very similar answer there and then when they mentioned pestering, I referred back to what we call client testimonial videos. Every so often, I will go out on a video shoot where I interview the clients of financial advisers, and I tend to ask the client off camera, “Why did you agree to do the video? You’ve traveled here today, it’s raining, it’s cold outside…” at least in here in the UK it is at the moment, “…why do you agree to do it?” And they always give the same answer. They always say, “Because I really wanted to say thank you to them” or “It’s my way of saying thank you.” I do think advisers sometimes underestimate the impact they have on their clients’ lives. Adviser’s clients see things on a far less transactional basis, and really do want to do things that helps their adviser, over and above just paying their fees. So it’s just about reframing it, I think, in terms of the motivation of the client for doing it.

Samantha Russell 

Yeah. And if you are having such a good experience with someone, they’re helping you in so many ways, you want them to be successful. So if by typing something up which takes two seconds helps-, and you could even make it easier, let’s say they write you an email and they leave you a compliment, you could even say, “Could you just write that in a review? You don’t even need to recreate the wheel, just what you wrote right there, put that online in the Google review.” Maybe say that verbally on the phone and don’t put that in writing, you don’t want to tell them what to say in writing and I don’t know how strict the rules are there. I think you hit the nail on the head and being scared of a bad review is the last thing that I would worry about.

Phil Bray 

Also, almost all businesses have got Google Business Profiles now anyway.

Samantha Russell 

Exactly.

Phil Bray 

Whenever we see a negative review, it’s never at a point where it’s been solicited by the adviser. It always hits out of the blue from left field, because you can go and leave a review for anybody these days.

Samantha Russell 

Yes, that’s a really good point. One other thing I was going to say is that most people do not think to go leave a review when they’ve had a good experience, but they’re quick to leave one when they’ve had a bad one. So, if anything, soliciting for the good ones is so important if you do have a few negative ones to counteract it, because many people will leave negative reviews when they’ve had a bad experience as a way of seeking their revenge almost. Versus, we’re not so quick to think, “Oh, I should go leave a great review.”

Phil Bray 

I guess in many ways, if a bad review was going to come in, it would have happened already.

Samantha Russell 

Yes, exactly.

Phil Bray 

Dan, let’s circle back to referrals. I think we’ve got some questions and comments about referrals and then something about Abi’s water bottle.

Dan Campbell 

Yes, we’ve got all sorts. So, let me begin with Scott’s message. Scott says, “With referrals, it always surprises me how many people would contact me to ask, “Can I pass your details too?” Letting people know that you are open and happy for them to refer you to friends and family, is half the battle won.” Then, Scott did mention, on a totally different topic, “How massive is Abi’s water bottle?” That’s a very good point, Scott, I didn’t see the bottom of it when she took a sip; it might go all the way down to the floor.

Samantha Russell 

Oh, what are you drinking? It’s red. It’s a red drink, that’s fun.

Abi Robinson 

Purple bottle, but it is just squash, nothing exciting, I’m afraid.

Dan Campbell 

It’s always nice to see what people are focusing on and I was caught by the big water bottle too. So, good point, Scott. Let’s move on to Lee’s comment here. Lee asks, “What is the most important thing for a client to articulate in an adviser’s review? Are there certain things they must include?”

Samantha Russell 

To reiterate what Phil said earlier, in my opinion, you shouldn’t give them guidance because you want them to leave an authentic review about why they feel they’ve had a good experience. Let them say whatever that is for them and you might be surprised. For some people, it might be, “Every time I come to your office, I feel like I’m meeting with family.” Not anything related to an outcome, you just make them feel welcome and at ease. You don’t know for the person who’s going and looking at the reviews, what it is they’re looking for if they’re evaluating different advisors. So, letting your clients guide the ship is important because it will sound the most authentic, rather than if you said, “Make sure you mention this” and those types of things. In the US we couldn’t do that anyway, it would be against compliance rules.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Let’s go for- Steve does make a good point. Steve says “It always makes me wonder if the advisers have something to hide when they’re fearful of a bad review.” which goes with what you’ve said often, if something bad was going to come out, it probably already would have. So, the fear is not necessarily true. Mike mentioned the best time to ask for a review for social proof is right after the client is happy with what you have done for them. Absolutely, Mike, strike while the iron is hot. Although, unfortunately, Rachel adds, “I had a client give me a one star review, but raved about me in the comments. I left it up as VouchedFor wouldn’t take it down without her emailing them, and I didn’t want to upset her, but also figured it might highlight that they’re real people.” Yes, and if people see a one star review, often, that’s where people will read first. That’s what I do because I want to see I want to see the dirt. For example, going back to Sam’s comment about a hotel review. I was going to a wedding once and I needed to book a hotel; one of the three star reviews I saw said, “Shame it’s haunted, but it was really good breakfast.” so I booked it and It was a really good breakfast. I didn’t see any signs of it being haunted, so, there you go. Dan mentions, “Yes, I agree with Mike. Straight after a successful onboarding of a new client, or a great and positive planning meeting. Timing is absolutely everything.” Then Kelly mentioned, “We had a VouchedFor four star, but they said the adviser couldn’t have done anything better. I wondered if they click four by mistake and assume anyone reading it will see that one for what it is.” Absolutely.

Samantha Russell 

Some people will never give anyone 100. They’ll never give 5 stars. There are people like that.

Dan Campbell 

Well, that’s what Jonathan says. For some people, perfection means a five star review, but for many people, four star reviews are negative because it means something could be improved. Elaine says, “I think the tough thing for some of our advisers is they don’t remember a lot of the time to ask for the review or the referral. However, when we get them, they are great and they’ve become one of our biggest enquiry channels.” So, it’s all about remembering to ask for them, isn’t it?

Phil Bray 

Yes, so much about marketing is down to good processes, good habits, and getting things done. We’ll come back to a few more later Dan, if that’s okay? Let’s go on to websites now, Sam. If somebody’s going on this digital journey where they’ve been recommended to an adviser or multiple advisers, they’ve got the weekend ahead of them, they’ve got Google on their laptop, iPad, and phone, they’re going to Google them. They’ll first meet them on the Google search results page, and they’ll probably start getting to know the advice firm on their website. We’re slowly getting the message across in the UK about the importance of websites, but there are still a lot of awful sites out there. Marcus Sheridan talked about the big five that he suggests should be shown on websites. What do you believe are the most important things that should be on advisers’ websites?

Samantha Russell 

The first thing, 100%, is something I end up critiquing on every single site. It’s the copy that is used when you first land on the page because most people talk about themselves. Things like, “We’ve been in business for 35 years. We do this. This is why we’re so great.” or they have a really generic, try-to-be cutesy statement, where they’re not very clear about who they are, what they do, and who they help. Think about being in the shoes of the consumer looking at three different potential advisers that you want to work with. You have a specific problem or pain point in your mind that you’re trying to solve. You want to read how somebody is going to help you and the types of problems you have. So, as much as you can, write the language to be all about the person viewing the site and the problems they have and not about you. So, change a lot of your language from “I” or “we”statements to “you” statements. For example, “You are worried about this.” or “Your family is going through something like this, and this is how we help.” You could have a “Does this sound like you?” section, or “These are the types of questions that we help clients solve” The more you can use language where the person reading can self-identify, they’ll think, “Yes, this firm helps people just like me.” The second thing is being really specific about who you do work with. There are so many advisers out there and consumers. The Bank of New York Mellon Pershing did a study a couple of years ago, and they found that almost 70% of consumers have a really hard time telling the difference between a financial adviser, a financial planner, and an insurance person. And within those groups, understanding how they differ. They feel like everyone is saying the exact same thing. So the more specific you can be with your language about who you are, what you do, and who you do it for, is key. It needs to be used on the homepage too, you want your site to pass what we call “the five second test.” When someone lands on that website, within five seconds, are they able to answer those questions? To give you a good example, I work for a marketing firm in the US, FMG. We were rebuilding our own website and our executive team got into this huge debate because they wanted to use this tagline, which was “Our expertise is showing off yours.” And I kept saying “That is all about us, we cannot use that. It needs to be “Marketing your financial advisory business doesn’t get any easier”, and then somebody landing on it knows exactly what we do. We fought and fought and fought and we did an AB test because they wanted to try out different ones. That would be my number one thing for everybody listening to this, to go and look at. How much of what’s on your website allows the person visiting it to know how you will specifically help someone like them with their problems? Get away from that generic language.

Phil Bray 

Yes. Adam Kay, one of our digital copywriters, wrote a blog, about this. Abi, maybe we can put it in the follow-up notes? It’s about why you shouldn’t “we” all over your website. We do this, we do that, we are, etc. That was a good blog, so maybe we can put that in. One of the things Marcus talked about is talking about pricing and costs. The majority of UK advisers, and before anybody shouts at me, I am not saying they should or shouldn’t, do not disclose their fees on their website. What’s your view on the pros and cons of doing that? The pros and cons of disclosing your fees on the website.

Samantha Russell 

In the US, we’ve seen a shift to more and more firms putting them on there, and when they’re not listed, the consumer thinks immediately, “Oh, maybe they’re too pricey for me.” It’s sort of like going to a restaurant where you don’t see prices on a menu, you think, “This is a high-end restaurant.” So, that is one thing. I think for a lot of firms, the reason is they say, “We meet with the client and we need to get an assessment. It’s like hiring a contractor to come to your house and give you a quote depending on what your specific needs are.” You can do it in a really eloquant way, where you can say, “It starts at a minimum of £_____”, so that you’re weeding out people who just can’t afford it, because at the end of the day, you don’t want to be fielding calls from people who are not a good fit. If you are very specific about who you help though, you can probably get away with not including your fees. People will weed themselves out because they can tell, based on the other factors you’ve listed, whether it’s a good idea or not. I will say this, I’ve never had anybody who adds their fees come back to me and remove it. They end up adding it and thinking, “This is helping to weed out some of the people who are not a good fit and it makes it a lot easier when someone comes into the office, because it sets expectations of exactly how this is all going to go and the consumer feels empowered when they’re coming in knowing what those fees are.” So again, I don’t know culturally what the difference is, but in the US, it’s becoming very popular. People have a range, they might say, “Our asset under management fee starts here, and as your assets go up, here’s the table of what it looks like. We also have a planning fee depending on the complexity of the plans which can range from this to this.” It’s giving people a menu. The reason that I like fees is because it allows you to share more about the specifics of how you’ll help. In a table format, somebody’s able to look through it almost like a menu. “Okay, here’s all the different services. They can help with estate planning. They can help me talk to my accountant and my CPA, they can help me think about health insurance in retirement.” It gives them a broader insight into all the ways that you can help them that maybe you don’t get into in the copy of your website, or they haven’t seen all those pages. The average person doesn’t. I don’t know what your analytics show you, ours is showing people are not reading your website the way they read a book, they’re going to a few pages and they’re gone. But the fees page, they will pay attention to.

Phil Bray 

I completely agree. Elaine has just put up a comment, which I’ll ask Dan to read out in a second, about a fees page. We look at the analytics on Elaine’s website, as well as plenty of others, and generally speaking, the home page is always the most popular. If you exclude any topical blogs that are popular now but won’t be as popular in the future, the fees page and the team page are generally second and third and slightly interchangeable. If you’re going to do a fees page, people are going to go on to it. Therefore, it’s got to be good. It’s got to have the right things on there. Dan, do you want to talk about Elaine’s point on fees pages? And then we’ll go into the third slide we’ve got where we can tell everybody how to learn a bit more about what Sam does?

Dan Campbell

Yeah, of course. Elaine says, “The best thing we ever did was putting our fees on our website. We’ve gone through some great beauty parades because we have been transparent.” So, it’s working for Elaine. In terms of the slide-

Phil Bray 

While you’re doing that, Dan, I’ll just answer Jonathan’s point. Jonathan said, “That’s great to hear Elaine, I’m currently in the process of putting fees onto my website.” Jonathan, we’ve written loads of blogs about that. I’ll get Abi to put those in the follow-up. We’ve also got an online scorecard, an online quiz, where you can score your fees page against what we believe to be best practice and see how good it is. So, we’ll get that in the follow-up as well. Sam, we’ve been here half an hour and you’ve given us loads of value already. We’re going to come back and talk about social media in a minute, but just talk about this and this lovely QR code for everyone on this call to find out more about what you do and get more value from you.

Samantha Russell 

Thanks. So first of all, if we’re not already connected on LinkedIn, definitely connect with me there. It’s Samantha C Russell. I try to post at least three to four times a week something helpful to get your marketing wheels spinning or help you move the needle. This is something our team put together at the end of last year. We have all this content, all these blogs, videos, and tips, but if somebody was feeling, “I want to know what to do in 2025. I really want to focus on organic growth.” we wanted to put it all in one place for them to find. So, this is a 30 page guide. It is huge. It’s broken into five areas: your website, social media, client and prospect communication, events, and then video. You can just go to one section, if you like and within each section there are links out to further resources, like videos of me explaining it in more detail. They’re really tactical things, it’s not just the philosophy. It’s to answer questions like “If I want to start shooting video, what equipment do I need? What does my setup need to be? What should I talk about?” I wanted to give it to all of you who are here today as a thank you for inviting me, Phil,

Phil Bray 

Thank you for sharing it. Again, we’ll put it in the follow-up. This follow up email is going to be yay long, but never mind, all the good stuff is going to be in there. Right, I think it was the second thing that you talked about in that guide, social media. If referrals and recommendations are the best type of new enquiry, we often find that there is a gap between firms’ growth ambitions and how much they can generate through referrals and recommendations. So, there’s a gap to fill at the top. Clearly, social media is potentially a valid tactic there, not always, but potentially a valid tactic. So, if a firm is wanting to use social media, I guess the starting point is, which channels? As X and Twitter goes through a bit of a change right now, should we call it that? And other platforms are equally going through change. Where do you think advisers and planners should hang out online from a social media perspective?

Samantha Russell 

Everyone hates this answer, but it really does depend on who your audience is. If you’re targeting people who are about to retire or are already retired, as some firms do, but you’re exclusively on LinkedIn, well that’s a terrible strategy because the people on LinkedIn are in their working years, and they’re focused building their career. That’s why they’re there. If you want to work with young families and you really want to get the attention of the mums in their 30s and 40s, Instagram is a fantastic place to be because that is a great place for that demographic. It skews more towards women, and it’s changing as more and more people older than 30 and 40 are joining but right now, that is a great place to be. If you want to build a focused community and have people helping each other, or you want to tap into communities that already exist, utilizing Facebook groups is amazing. Facebook groups are such an underrated platform. In the US, some of the advisers cannot use them, but I know an adviser who his company is called, retire to teleco, and he realised that almost all of his clients were obsessed with pickleball, so he leaned into that. I don’t know if you guys do pickleball in the UK, but he set up this community group, and it’s pickleball focused, but he ends up posting in there, or he’ll make jokes like, “You don’t want to get hurt playing pickleball and not have the health care coverage you need.” And they could talk about these financial topics related to pickleball. So, it’s about knowing your audience. One thing I will say, is that X (Twitter) is moving along and not as effective for lots of different reasons, and LinkedIn for people in their career years, has become a lot more prominent. TikTok and Instagram have really taken off. We saw here in the US, the ban of Tik Tok scared a lot of creators, thinking they need to diversify. And that’s also a key statement. You want to pick at least two platforms to go all in on, so as to not have all your eggs in one basket because you are renting somebody else’s space. You want to build your audience but ultimately think, “How do we then get them off social media, add them to our email list.” So that if the platform goes away tomorrow, you can keep serving them. One last thing I’ll say is everybody should have a YouTube channel. I think YouTube, I shouldn’t say just YouTube, rather video is the thing that consumers want more than anything, especially short form video. So for lots of different reasons, including the power of YouTube search, the ability to have both long and short form videos on there, and the fact that when someone is choosing a financial adviser, so much of it is about the relationship between people. What a better way to showcase your humanity than to be on video?

Phil Bray 

So if you’ve picked your two channels, whatever they are, Tiktok, Insta, YouTube, etc., and you’re going all in on them, what are the three or four things that people should be doing regularly? What are the habits they should be getting into? What are the top-tips you’ve got for anybody who’s a bit nervous?

Samantha Russell 

I think a lot of people get the media part of social media right. They post things like a link to their blog, a podcast they were on, or an article from the Wall Street Journal, but they don’t get the social part right. The whole point of social media is that we’re supposed to be recreating the conversations and relationship building that we have offline, online. Think about it as if you are at a local networking meeting. You don’t walk in with a billboard saying “my latest blog post”, or an advertisement for your firm, walk around the room and then leave. But that’s what a lot of people do on social media, they post things and then they leave. Instead, you want to be mingling and interacting with the other people there. My rule of thumb is, for every one thing you post, you should be leaving at least five comments on other people’s posts. If you can make it 10, even better but that engagement with other people is the secret sauce for growth. You will not believe how much faster you will grow. One of the reasons is the algorithms on social media platforms are looking for connections between people. If I leave a comment on Dan’s post, the algorithm is going to think “There’s a connection between Sam and Dan.” and it’s going to be much more likely to show my next post to Dan. Now, if he leaves a comment on my post too, the algorithm is going to think, “Okay, that’s an even stronger connection between these two people.” and the chances of both of our content being shown to each other goes up even higher. Beyond the algorithm, behavioral psychology tells us that as humans, we understand reciprocity. We know what it feels like and we get that little endorphin rush when we see a comment on our post. We remember who leaves comments. If Phil or Abi leave a comment on my post, when I see that they posted something, I’m going to be so much more likely to leave a comment on theirs because of that reciprocity rule. So, tapping into the comments, and making sure that you have a commenting strategy of setting aside time every day to leave comments on other people’s posts, is one of the most underrated yet most successful strategies you can use on social media.

Phil Bray 

Where do you stand on AI writing comments? I was in a conversation with somebody on LinkedIn at the weekend, and the reply that he left, he couldn’t physically have written it in the three minutes between me posting and him posting his reply. Where do you stand on using AI to make commenting easier?

Samantha Russell 

It does exactly what you just said. People are going to know if it’s inauthentic and it might be easy, but it completely gets rid of the point of doing it. Instead of somebody walking away feeling like they had a conversation with you, they feel like you tried to use the easy button to hack the system. So, I am not a fan of that at all. I think AI can be amazing for helping us with content creation, I love to use it if I read an article and I want three or four main takeaway points to be pulled out that I can then summarise and when I’m writing a first draft, I can say, “Give me the top 10 things people should know about this.” And take those ideas and turn them into my own. But using it to respond to other people? No, I’m not a fan of that.

Phil Bray

So if that’s a mistake, what are the other mistakes that people make on social media? What are the things that make you cringe, that make you want to reach out to them and say, “Please stop doing that.”?

Samantha Russell 

One of them is not posting what’s called zero-click content. Because these comments are so important, you have to give people something to respond to. If you just say, “Go and check out my latest blog post”, or “I was on this podcast. Go listen to it.” The number of people who are going to click off and go and do that is close to zero. It might be like 0.1% or 0.2%. You can look at analytics and it will show you that. So, instead, you want to give the meat, the takeaway of whatever your blog post or the podcast is about in the post itself, so that as someone is scrolling and scanning, it will catch their eye and that they will leave a comment. If you don’t give the information away, then they have nothing to respond to. Tthat’s called zero-click content. They don’t need to click off the platform in order to get the gist of the information. All of your posts in 2025 should have a zero-click element to them so that people can respond. So, that’s number one. Number two is having one theme of content. Remember, we’re trying to recreate offline moments online. If you’re only ever posting about how you help people, and it’s all related to financial services, no one is going to get to know the real you. At a dinner party you would not only talk about your work. You might talk about where you went on vacation, your family, where you volunteer, or something going on in the news. You want to have a good mix of the types of posts that you share. You want to post things that relate to you your expertise, but you also want to have a personal photo thrown in there, or something your team did over the weekend. You need to have that mix. I like to say it’s a three post mix. It’s one post that’s something timely related to what’s going on in the news, things people are talking about, then something that shows off your expertise and maybe something that you wrote, you authored, the third one should be something that you can incorporate some personal element, whether it’s you on video, a photo, or something like that. Keep going with that formula, it works really well.

Phil Bray 

What about audience building and trying to improve that? Take LinkedIn, for example, the number of people you’re connected to, or the number of people who follow you. What tips have you got to help people build an audience?

Samantha Russell 

A really easy one on LinkedIn, if LinkedIn your your platform, is going back through your calendar every Friday and all the emails you sent that week, every person that you had a meeting with, including an admin of an executive or if there’s multiple people on a project but one decision maker, take all the people that were included and connect with them on LinkedIn. That alone should grow your LinkedIn following by hundreds, if not thousands in a year. So that’s a really powerful one. The other one is, we’ve been talking a lot about comments, if you’ve never commented on a stranger’s post before, you are doing social media wrong. The whole idea is to be building a network. You can go in the search bar and search for topics that interest you, then look at the posts that come up, pick people you’ve never connected with before and leave comments there. LinkedIn is great with their advanced filters. If you have a company and you know that the employees of another company in certain positions would be a great fit for you, you can search the company and filter by all the employees that have a certain job title and then go and leave comments on their posts. So, that’s another great way to build an audience. The last thing I would say is, when you write a great post, pick maybe four or five people and send them a DM. Say, “Hey, I just posted this, I thought you would think it was interesting.” You don’t want to use the same people every time, change it up. Not everyone is going to see your posts, a very small percentage of our network’s posts are we seeing. So, sending those like DMS will help people be alerted, and most of the people you send it to, will leave a comment on it. So, that’s another great way to do it.

Phil Bray 

Where do you stand on tagging people on LinkedIn posts?

Samantha Russell 

It can be great and useful when done correctly. You want it to be natural. Maybe you collaborated with another firm, or if somebody’s a guest on your podcast, of course you would tag them. If you worked collaboratively with some somebody on something, tag them in the post. Or in the comments you could say something like “I read this and thought of you, Phil. “but you don’t want to do what a lot of people do, which is tag 20 people that are completely unrelated to the post itself because you want more eyeballs. People get very annoyed by that.

Phil Bray 

LinkedIn is one of the things over the years I’ve changed my mind on. A decade ago. I used to hate LinkedIn, now, I spend far too much time on there. What are the things you’ve changed your mind about in a marketing context over the years? Views that have changed, you used to think one thing but you now think another.

Samantha Russell 

That’s a good question. I used to think that in order to market your business successfully,the amount you could outsource was very minuscule. I used to think you really needed to have your voice at the forefront of everything. I’ve learned over the years, especially as businesses that I’ve run have scaled, that that’s not possible. It’s a pain point for many of you listening, and the key is to know what to outsource versus what to do yourself. I think only you can be on camera, so that’s something you can’t outsource, but you can outsource having somebody help you write blog posts and newsletters with them learning your voice and you signing off on it. You can outsource handing your calendar and emails from the week to your admin and asking them to connect with all these people on LinkedIn for you. So, that’s a big thing I’ve changed my mind on for sure,

Phil Bray

I want to ask one last question, and then Dan, I’m going to throw it over to you for everybody else’s questions. One of our core values at Yardstick is that we freely share information. We have great guests like yourself, Sam, on webinars helping us to share their information. I’m interested to know who your marketing heroes are. Who do you look up to? Whose podcasts do you listen to? Whose LinkedIn posts do you set notifications on for so you make sure you see them? Who are your marketing heroes that everybody else should be following?

Samantha Russell 

It’s funny. I always end up being inspired, writing things down and getting inspiration from Rory Sutherland every single time I read anything that he does. There’s a guy named Harry Dry and he has a company called marketing examples, I don’t know if you have ever heard of it. He will pull old ads from the 1970s, he’ll pull billboards, he finds inspiration everywhere in the world and then talks about why it works. I think his website is marketingexamples.com and I have it bookmarked. I look at it weekly because he has the best stuff there. I love Anne Hardly, the MarketingProfs author, I follow her. From a more technical side of things, thinking about the changing nature of SEO, and now we have AEO (answer engine optimisation), how AI is changing things. So for anything related to the more technical side, I love Rand Fishkin, co-founder of SparkToro. So, those are probably four of the top ones for me but I would say a lot of my inspiration when it comes to ideas or ways to approach things, I look outside of the standard. Instead of “here’s a marketing expert teaching you” I like looking at companies that have great messaging and why it works. I love to read behavioral finance books about what the levers are that we can pull or push to make people make decisions in certain ways. And I think so much of marketing is really just psychology executed well.

Phil Bray 

Absolutely. There are some good names on that list that I think will be new to a lot of people here. Mike, yes, we’ll send the a list and watch this back if Abi has not already made a note. Oh, Abi has already made a note so, we’ll send the list across. Dan, for the last 10 minutes, let’s throw it open to questions.

Dan Campbell 

Yes. Going back to something that Jonathan said in the chat a short while back, it seemed as though he was having trouble connecting with Sam on LinkedIn, and he only had the option to follow. If anyone else is having the same issue, if you click more where you can see follow, you’ll then have the option to connect as well. It’s interesting that they hide it, but that’s how you find it. A couple of comments came through. When we were talking about YouTube channels a short while back, Mike said, “I went from newsletters to monthly client video blogs. YouTube has a great reach, but can divert client attention with amusing cat videos. Currently, I’m using Wistia, and I edit them in Cyberlink Power Director.” So, going back to what Sam was saying, only you can be in front of the camera and if you feel comfortable doing that, do it!

Samantha Russell 

If anyone’s looking for other great tools. Sorry to interrupt you.

Dan Campbell 

Go for it.

Samantha Russell 

There’s something that I love called veed.io, and I have found it to be the easiest tool to record and edit videos, even if you are a complete beginner. I’m talking about when you don’t need a high production value video and you just want to send out something to your clients, or maybe you want to share your screen and talk about something at the same time. It allows you to record yourself and then you can edit right in the app, there’s a subtitle button you can click to add captions. In red, it will tell you if it thinks a word is wrong. It’s also got the ability to, let’s say you messed up, you just keep going and afterwards, identify the area you messed up, veed.io will use AI to fix it with your voice so it you don’t have to take a million takes. I love that tool if anybody’s looking for a good video tool.

Dan Campbell 

That’s called Veed.io, is it Sam?

Samantha Russell 

Yes.

Dan Campbell 

Perfect. Okay, a question that Jonathan asked a short while ago too, “Is it worth paying for LinkedIn premium?” So I’ll be interested to hear both Sam and Phil’s opinions here.

Samantha Russell 

I think if you want the advanced filtering techniques and you’re running a new campaign, perhaps. We worked with an adviser who focuses on tech executives in Silicon Valley at certain companies. He wanted some of the advanced filtering features that would allow him to hone in and invite people tocsome events he was doing on their different compensation packages. He created an event page on LinkedIn and there’s a way that you can invite people to the event without having their email address in LinkedIn, which is amazing. For so many people, if you’re hosting an event and think “I don’t want to only email the list I already have or pay for ads.” It is so cool in LinkedIn that you can be hyper specific, filter by people and send them an invite to your event that you’ve created. So, In instances like that, I think it’s amazing, but you can 100% do amazing things on LinkedIn without it too. So, I think it depends on your growth goals but if you are trying to build a new prospect list and you really want to use those advanced filtering techniques, I think it’s good for that.

Phil Bray 

I’m going to give Abi the chance to answer for Yardstick and my opinion. Go on Abi, you go on LinkedIn premium.

Abi Robinson 

The chance or passing the book? Yeah, I totally agree with Sam. I think it’s one of those things where if your profile isn’t optimised in all of the things that you can do with a basic profile, you can’t just pay for premium to cover that up. The advanced features are only going to be advanced if you’ve already got a great profile to start with, but things like being able to personalise all of your connection requests rather than just the first 10, which is a benefit of premium, is a pretty big deal if you’re trying to grow your network. Things like being able to add slideshow banners, that can be quite useful if you run events. Having the custom button, for example, on your profile. All of these are features that you might find really useful if your profile is optimised, and if your business, as Sam says, has growth targets that those features support. It’s £50+ per month, so, not an insignificant amount of money. It’s dependent on you and your business. That annoying “It depends.” answer again.

Dan Campbell 

I don’t think it was an annoying “It depends.” I think it was a very good “It depends.”, because you are right. You can’t disguise a bad starting point can you?

Samantha Russell 

In that QR code that you have in the guide, there is a LinkedIn checklist of the five ways to make sure your LinkedIn page is completely optimised so check that out in the giveaway that we gave away too.

Phil Bray 

Dan, back to you for a few questions.

Dan Campbell 

Okay. Who shall I choose next? Let’s go for Jonathan’s question. Jonathan is in pursuit of efficiency and asks, “I just wondered if there is a way of posting across all the social media platforms in one go.”

Samantha Russell 

There are scheduling tools you can use that will allow you to do that. However, I would advise not posting the same thing at the same time across all channels. Using a scheduler is fine, but you would want to vary it. Something like, “Here’s my blog, and I’m gonna post it to LinkedIn on Tuesday at 9am and then it’s going to go out on Facebook on Thursday at 10am.” and change up the caption because the audiences on each platform are going to be a little bit different. The other thing is, the type of media that works best on each is also different. So, for Instagram, it’s very visual. It can be hard to schedule it in one way that that would work across all the platforms, so you need to keep that in mind. But yes, having a social media scheduler can be a great asset so that you know you have your posts scheduled and ready to run.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Let’s go for Will’s question next. This was around 10 minutes ago, when we were talking about what to post and you were talking about the three things to diversify what you talk about. Will asks, “How should this be implemented between company social media accounts and personal social media accounts? What’s the consensus in posting similar material across each of those channels, or should they be split based upon Sam’s comments, with regards to commenting, slash interacting and growing the presence?”

Samantha Russell 

My take on this is that people are always going to connect with people over brands. When you see a logo as an avatar on social media, how inclined are you to feel like you can have a conversation with this logo? It’s a lot harder and so personal pages are always going to experience more growth and more engagement for that reason. The business page is still really important, people are going there. If they do a web search for The Yardstick Agency, they might see their website come up, and then the company LinkedIn page could be the second or third thing that people see. So, you want to make sure it has great posts and  that it’s up to date. What you’re sharing there can be a lot more about the services you provide, how you help, and talking about your areas of expertise, whereas your personal page is where you would share the personal stories and have personal photos. So, it is a different strategy. Every once in a while on your personal page you can re-share a post from the business page or vice versa. Let’s say an employee at your company runs an ultramarathon, and you re-share their post to the business page and say “We’re so proud of our own Samantha Russell for completeing this ultramarathon. She’s not only-” I don’t know why I used myself an example, this sounds boastful, “-a kick-ass marketer, but she also is a kick-ass runner.” You get the idea, right? You can do it both ways but the goal of the business page is highlighting the areas that you are an expert in. It would be about awards that you’ve won, blog posts that you have written, your podcast, and other things that talk about your company and what you can do, whereas the personal pages are really where more you’re able to share the personal information.

Phil Bray 

Thank you, Sam. Dan, just put the last slide, if you would, for next month’s webinar. Jonathan has asked which schedulers we recommend, so I’ll come to you for that in a second Sam, if that’s okay? So, next month’s webinar. We are live on the 19th of March, at our usual slot of 10am and it’s all about AI. 10 practical ways AI can improve your marketing. Writing comments on LinkedIn posts will not be one of them. To hear about 10 practical ways AI can improve your marketing, Abi has put a link in the chat so you can register for that now. Dan, can you do us a favor and click back to the slide with the QR code on it so everybody can get that while we just do Sam’s last question, if that’s okay? Jonathan asks, “Which schedulers do you recommend for social media posts?”

Samantha Russell 

It’s a hard question for me, because at FMG we have a social media scheduler, so most of our clients are using that. I’ve seen a lot of people use HootSuite. That is a really popular one. It depends how many other tools you want with it, because a lot of these are all-in-one marketing platforms where the scheduler is just one of many that they’re sharing. There’s something called CoSchedule. I don’t know, Phil, if you guys have one that you recommend?

Phil Bray 

Yes, we use, Abi, what do we use? It’s gone out of my head. SmarterQueue. That’s it. We use SmarterQueue generally for doing that sort of stuff. Sam, thank you so much for today.Thank you to Dan. Thank you Abi. Thank you to you, Sam. It’s been a fabulous hour and there are some lovely comments coming through. If people want to go and connect with Sam on LinkedIn or go and follow her on X, there are the details. Sam, there’s been so much value there. We will send this recording out and all the other great links mentioned today. But I want to say, thank you, Sam, for spending the hour with us.

Samantha Russell 

Thank you so much. Thanks everybody for welcoming me, and thank you Phil and team for having me. It was it was so much fun.

Phil Bray 

Thank you, Sam, see you soon. Bye bye.

Dan Campbell 

Take care, everyone. Bye.