Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you've been watching our AI for agent series, then you have the tools, the use cases, your voice, and the content. Now it's time to bring it all together.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: This is the final of our AI series and we're excited to do an overview for you. I'm Jo Barker.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: And I'm David Belleville.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: And this is the Amerilife Marketing Mentors podcast.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: Jo, how many times have you heard of an agent or advisor who gets their marketing started and then a few weeks to a month later, things putter out and they, they stop? I mean, it's a tale as old as time. What do you think is the biggest cause for people getting started and eventually stopping with their marketing?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: I think some people just go, go big too quick instead of just kind of walking into it. So it's kind of like people who like, start that, you know, new workout program or that new weight loss program and they're like, in the beginning, highly motivated and they're like, yeah, I'm gonna do this every single day. And then by like week two, you're like, okay, this is starting to drain on me. This is an actual commitment.
And then it starts to tail off. I think it's the same thing with marketing as, you know, some people, when they look at it, they're like, all right, I'm going to commit to marketing, I'm going to do this. And they put this huge master plan together and it's almost like they over commit and it's like, no, you know, it takes a while to change a habit and it takes a while to get comfortable. And you don't have to go all in. It's smarter actually to build over time and to get more comfortable. And it becomes easier and easier instead of trying to say, all right, I'm going to start my website and my email marketing and I'm gonna get my CRM and I'm gonna get my social media marketing. I'm gonna do it all, and I'm gonna do it all in the first month. It's not practical unless you have an entire team that's gonna sit there and help you, which most agents and advisors don't. Yeah, and that's what we see a lot of agents and advisors do. They really don't have a strategy. They just try to deploy as many tactics as possible and then they're not seeing the results. And the fact is there was never a strategy behind it.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: I think tactics often gets confused for a full fledged marketing campaign or strategy. If you're posting on Facebook, that's great. For you and your business and we encourage it. But posting on Facebook by itself is just one marketing tactic. And when it's not really connected with anything else or it's not serving a purpose for your audience to find you or your website, then that's where the area that we're talking about today, ensuring that each tactic you deploy connects with the next and, and ultimately creates a journey for a client to ultimately find you, your information and be able to book that first client call. And Jo, I love that you brought up working out. I think that's a really good comparison because if you're just getting started working out, you're not going to be bench pressing £500. You're going to hurt yourself. And that's what you mean by launching a marketing system. The key is to start small, something you know you can manage and then scale from there. And, and on. Social media is a great example of that. You don't need to be on all five platforms. We tell people to start with one platform and start with something you can stick with.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: I think we're going to keep going with this whole workout thing because another thing that's super important is when you really start out, you don't want to compare yourself the other. So if you're joining the gym for the first time, you're not going to go in there and compare yourself to the person who's been coming there five days a week for the past five years. You need to compare yourself to you and your current state and then try to get better. Same thing with social media. Don't come onto social media and be like, oh my gosh, these five people are killing it. And I can't believe I'm not where they are now. Well, guess what, they've been doing it for 10 years. They perfected what they are, what they're doing. You can go back into their history and see how much they've optimized and they've changed their channel to get to where they are today. You can't compare yourself to them, but you can compare yourself to what your page was last week. You can look at it and say, hey, I haven't posted once in the last quarter. And, and my goal this month is I'm going to post once and then I'm going to post twice and you start building it up and before you know it, you're starting to get a cadence going and then you're starting to realize kind of what works, what doesn't work. You get into some community forums, you start getting social on There, that's when you really start to see that it's compiling.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: I love that you mentioned that too, because how often do we get asked, like, what's the right amount of times to post on Facebook or Instagram?
When should I be posting on Facebook and Instagram? How many videos do I need to put on YouTube per week? And what. There are strategies and best practices out there. But at the end of the day, the answer to all of those questions is whatever works for you.
To go back to the workout thing one more time. Consistency is what gets you results, and having a routine that you can stick with is what gets you results.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: We need a gym sponsor.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: I know at this point, but affiliate
[00:04:31] Speaker B: marketing is coming up next.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: But it's so relevant, right? Because there are so many comparisons to what we're talking about. And consistency is key and you can always scale. But if you're, if you're dormant or you're just not where your audience is living at all, then you're just never going to give yourself a chance. But just getting one Facebook post out there a week is a good start.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: But I think another comment that I hear a lot from agents and advisors is, well, I'm not going to make a video about that because so and so already did a video about that, so there's no point to it. And every time I hear that, I'm like, what? That doesn't make any sense. Like, yeah, yes, you should absolutely make a video about that because otherwise they're always going to be the thought leader or the person who's getting that traffic. So just because there's 10,000 other videos about it doesn't mean that you can't create that video and make it your own. Don't copy and paste what they did. But if we were to look at it and be like, oh, well, there's lots of videos out there about AI and marketing. Yeah, but is there a video out there about AI and marketing for insurance agents? And does it have David and Jo? No, it doesn't, but this one does. And the way that we present it is different. And so I think that's really important to keep in mind is find your niche, talk to your audience. We say it all the time. When you're trying to create content and when you're building out content utilizing AI, give it the Persona and give it who your target audience is. And I always use Sally. Like, everything that I write, I try to keep Sally in mind. Like, would Sally like it if I posted this? If it's a yes, then I'M posting it because if I think it's helpful or even funny for her or social for her, I'm going to post it.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And all of that makes it easier to stick with.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: And bringing it back to putting this all into an actual system to turn Sally into a paying client, there needs to be a step by step process. There needs to be some next step for them to take. And that's what we mean by starting to bring all of these tactics together. At the top of this AI for Agents series, we talked about finding an AI platform that you're comfortable with. This is probably, that's probably good advice in terms of building a marketing system. Where do you want to get discovered? Where do you want your business to live? And Google and social media are two of the best places to get discovered. Right.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Know your goals. Don't go out there and just say, hey, I'm going to get started with AI. I'm going to get started in marketing. Have actual goals that you're trying to accomplish. Set clear goals of what it is you're trying to do. You know, you can't go to Facebook and say my goal is to post on Facebook and I'm going to get a sale out of this within a month. It's not realistic. Set realistic goals of. My goal is to get a sale a month. And here's, here's the strategy that I'm going to use in order to get there. And what complements that strategy are these tactics that are going to feed into that. And so it's coming up with things such as, you know, value ads. It's coming up, you know, We've done the 10 top prompts for insurance agents. Those are all part of our strategy of building our audience and giving away value. So they realize, look, we're not trying to sell anything. Yeah, we're just trying to help. And the more that you can come across as, as truly just being a good partner, that's when you're going to start to resonate with more people and people are going to want to work with you.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: So let's say I'm an agent and I found my groove on Facebook. I have an audience now that's coming to me. What do I do with this audience? How do I ensure that they're just not getting lost in, you know, the sea of Facebook or in my DMs.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: For me, I go back to it all the time. You know, take those real, real life scenarios and put them in posts and put em into interactions that you have on, on that platform, Facebook. So if you have a meeting with a client and they ask you two really good questions, remember those questions? I was at an event not long ago and I got two really good questions. I got one of them was, is there a difference between the AI LLMs, their apps on Android and iPhone, or are they the same? And I was like, oh, that's a great question. I bet you Google or Gemini is probably really good on Android because it's an Android. And I was like, but I would assume the rest are good across both because it's an Apple. But it was a good question. And I was like, oh, let me go find that. And then the other one was the League, the AI aggregate aggregator of. Well, have you used one before? And if you do, what are your thoughts on it? And for those that don't know, it's a tool that you use. You put in one search query or one prompt and it feeds all of the AI LLM. So it goes into Claude, it goes in the chat, Gemini, Grok, and it gives you a response from all of them with one prompt. And I didn't have an answer because I was like, well, I haven't used it, so I don't know the pros and cons, but let me go check it out.
So after that event, I went and looked and I went through and I was like, all right, well, here's this. And then here's why I personally probably wouldn't use the AI aggregator. That was perfect. And then I could go back on LinkedIn and share those. Now I haven't yet, but I will. And so those will be coming out on my LinkedIn channels. Cause those were great questions for sure. Same thing for an agent. If you're working with consumers and they ask you good questions, other people may be thinking about that. That is gold content.
Take that, share it on there.
Most importantly, when people comment or they're being social on your channel, respond 100%. Make sure that you're commenting. And don't just wait for people to come to your page. Make sure you're commenting on other people's pages too. That is just as important as, you know, responding in your own comments. Be social. Yeah, you can't just take, take, take and be like, everyone's got to come to my page and everybody has to like me. Get out there, like other people's stuff. Interact with your consumers on there. It's okay.
And I think the more that people realize be social, the easier it's going to get.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Yeah, let's talk about CRMs now because once you start building an audience on Facebook or LinkedIn, wherever you're posting, you want to be able to move them on and be able to nurture that relationship and connect with them. You mentioned giving away value and ensure you're always providing value. That's a great way to capture an email and also start to begin that relationship. So where does social media end and an email campaign or a nurture campaign beginning?
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Well, in my opinion, all of it should be in your CRM. So for us personally, we utilize HubSpot. I love HubSpot. If you need help with HubSpot, give us a call because we can definitely help you with it. But basically what we do within our HubSpot system is we have it connected to our social media, we have it connected to our email marketing, we have it connected to our website, we have it connected to everything. And we utilize the CRM as our pulse on what our consumers are, what our partners are doing. So we know if they come to our website, what pages they went to, we know if they are looking at certain topics or blogs within our page. They that helps guide us to know. Okay, well this is a hot topic this month. We need to come back out and create videos like this. This is a perfect example. What we're doing right now is a perfect example of how we've used that data because we know everybody wants to hear about AI. So we keep making AI content because it's on demand and everybody keeps asking us for it or they're showing interest in it.
And so that's where I think if you're trying to pull it all together, putting the time and the effort into a robust CRM that can pull all those puzzle pieces together and help you analy the data which that system happens to do. To me, it's a no brainer and it's definitely. And then you think of all the tools you can get rid of by having one platform or all the tabs
[00:11:26] Speaker A: you can close in your browser when it's all in one place. Exactly where does AI fit into all of this? Well, it's everywhere. And if you are using a CRM, it's very likely that there are AI tools everywhere. As she mentioned, we are HubSpot users and every, every page that you're on has some type of an AI assist on it. And that's not exclusive to HubSpot. That's almost every tool out there now.
And in our last AI for Agent series episode we talked about just this. And AI is meant to make all of this so much easier. So you're not having to pour through all of your data and analytics. AI can just do it for you and it's presented for you right there. It is unreal how much simpler your life gets with a CRM, especially if you're using it. In terms of best practices, we know that the traditional marketing funnel is dead, and it's because of AI and consumer behavior changing. If I have, you know, my platforms and everything aggregated into my CRM, how do I then ensure that that relationship doesn't stop at the sale?
What does that look like after the sale is made?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: It's just continuing with the tying in of all of your goals within, you know, the least amount of systems as possible. So if you're trying to get Google reviews or Facebook reviews, it's tying those into an email request that's going out to your clients right after, you know, or close to once you closed or had that sale, and asking them, hey, if you receive great service, go, leave me a review. It's also expanding and diversifying your portfolio of offerings. And so if you just worked with somebody who's in the Medicare space, and maybe they are a perfect candidate for an annuity or a final expense policy, and that's an area where you can diversify and you can begin to help that same client you work so hard to receive. Now, you can help them with other areas and it expands, you know, your, your product offering, which is great.
I think the opportunities are endless. It's more of just making sure that you can tie it all in together and you can make it as simple as possible. I think that's where people start to feel overwhelmed. Like you said, it's a hundred tabs. All of a sudden you're logging into Facebook and you're logging into LinkedIn, and then you're logging into this CRM or you're logging into an email platform over here, and then you've got some other platform over here that maybe your text messaging is coming out of. Before you know it, you've got 15 systems that aren't talking to each other. The biggest concern when you do something like that is you don't have a true touch point on the consumer. So you may be sending them a text and you're also sending them an email. And by the way, you're hitting them on a message of social and you just hit that person three times. And it's different messages maybe. And you see that a lot. You see that with people who are sending emails and then they have different campaigns running and they're just hitting send to list. And then you ask them like, hey, did you make sure that you weren't sending like the same consumer wasn't on all three of those lists? And they're like, oh no. And I'm like, so you hit them with three emails in a week of three different offering. That would, I mean it would make me mad because I'd be like, do you even know me? I don't need any of those. Yeah, but those are the type of things where I think a CRM and all of those tools tie it all together and if you have it set up right, it should be as simple as that as please leave us a review. By the way, here's what we can also help you with. Hey, did you like the service? Can you recommend us to our friends? If so, here's a message. Can you forward this to your friends for us? It's as simple as that and it doesn't have to be complicated. And I think some people just, it gets to that level where they almost make it too complicated.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Okay, let's keep it simple as you mentioned and let's start to tie all of this together now. And we started with social media. If I discovered you on social, I'm buying what Jo is selling. I'm going to shoot her a follow. That's kind of the first step in this journey that we're talking about. How would you further that relationship with me?
[00:15:03] Speaker B: I'm going to keep providing value and then I'm going to put out there some offerings where I'm going to, you know, put a call to action to it and it's going to be, hey, contact me to learn more about this or hey, go visit my website to learn more about this and I'm going to try to engage you and try to get you interacting with me. Um, and I'm going to put out, I'm going to continue to just put out value. My goal is not to like, not to get you to convert within X amount of time. My goal is to provide you so much value that you want to talk to me and you want to pick my brain and you want to have a relationship. That's the goal. It's not about the sale, it's about seeing how can I help you, what can I do. And so the more that we can put out there and just make it available, the better. And so for me it's simply going to be that it's going to be trying to get it to where they're engaging more over time and Then now
[00:15:47] Speaker A: let's say you've captured my email address. I'm in your CRM. What's that next step for an agent or advisor?
[00:15:52] Speaker B: You're going to get put into a nurturing campaign where I'm gauging what you're interacting with and what you're not interacting with.
If and if we're starting to see a trend of interest, that's where AI is going to help us and say, okay, they like this, let's feed them more of this. I'm not going to hit you with 10,000 emails that I don't think that you're going to want, but it really is about growing that relationship. It's going to ask them, we're going to ask them to attend a webinar. And so in the beginning, you know, you're going to see a commitment of, hey, I'll give you my information. So now you can email me. Now we're going to ask them for their time. Hey, I have your information. Will you come spend some time with us? By the way, this is a live webinar, so you got to actually be there with us.
Then you're starting to see that commitment level increase. So now we've gone from you can have my info to I'm going to spend some time with you. And now I'm going to say, hey, let's spend some time one on one together, you know, instead of everybody. Do you want to have a meeting? Do you want to do a consult? You want to have a quick call, that's all it is. And then when they're ready, they'll come out. But I'm not going to have, no, I'm not going to do a big sales pitch. It's just going to be, I have value to share and those who it resonates with will connect to it.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: All right, so let's say that was successful campaign and I'm buying what you're selling and I become a client. One thing we want to ensure that you take with you today is that that's not where things end. That person can then become an advocate for you. So ask for that review, ask for that testimonial, ask for a referral, and that's how you start to really gain momentum. And that's where you'll start to notice that things really start to feed together. The last point I want to make sure we make today, Jo, is ensuring that you're leveraging data and analytics in all of this. Because if you go through an entire campaign and it doesn't Land where you want to. You can't just do that same exact thing again.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Exactly. Now you have to know where it broke. And so we run a lot of campaigns and, you know, we're constantly analyzing what it is that we're doing. We. We do it from every single webinar we do to every podcast we do, with every single social post we do. We're analyzing all of it. And you see trends that start to pick up. Now, don't be wrong. One, one day doesn't make a trend, or one campaign doesn't necessarily mean a trend. But if you're looking at it and you're like, oh, wow, I drove a thousand people to this landing page with this offer that is really good, and I have a 1% conversion rate. There's a problem with the landing page.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Either that or there's a problem with your targeting for the audience that you're sending to that landing page because your messaging is not mass matching what they're landing on. Those are the type of questions you have to stop and you have to ask yourself. And then you have to see, did I put any friction in the way to make it to where they are not responding?
And you have to start breaking down the system. And when you do that next campaign, change one of those features and see if it works. And if it doesn't, change that other feature, see if it works. And keep reiterating until you get to a system that works, which is what you brought up earlier, that loop. Just keep evolving, keep going, and then when you bring it back around, do it again and optimize it.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And if you need help with any of this, that's why the Amerilife Marketing Mentors exists. We want to help you put together a repeatable system that does. It doesn't feel like a chore that you can utilize every single month. And that will start bringing you attention and some organic leads. Jo, any final thoughts for today?
[00:18:53] Speaker B: I think we covered it all. Hopefully everybody you know learned a little bit about AI. You know, I know we talk about it a lot, but I would say if there's something that you're curious about or there's something that we haven't touched on, reach out to us, Let us know, because even if we don't know the answer, we're going to find it and then we're going to come back and create a video on it.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah. And AI can help with every step of the process that we laid out today, from social media content generation to email subject line help to deciphering between all those analytics. We're excited to help anytime, so be sure to reach out. Find us on social media. Go to the AmerLife Marketing Mentors.com until then, I'm David Belleville.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: And I'm Jo Barker.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: And we'll see you next time.
