What Advisors Don’t Get About Millennials

Bloggers don’t get those phone calls; advisors do.

This is where advisors can make an educational impact; by offering the perspective of the experience they have seen their clients have with the products that bloggers write about. By filling in the gap, you can complement what they are saying, and thereby get some of the attention.

How do these bloggers and social media personalities like Physician on Fire earn a living?

I don’t know how PoF earns his money, but, in general, people who market themselves as financial experts on the internet (but aren’t practicing as financial advisors) tend to make money by:

• Getting advertising revenue from the ads that people click on their YouTube channels;
• Featuring specific products or companies in their content for a fee – this is called “sponsored content”;
• Mentioning products with a link and discount code for followers to use to purchase the products, and the blogger gets a cut of the revenue – this is called “affiliate marketing”;
• Allowing sponsors to air a short advertisement in the beginning of their podcasts for a fee;
• Offering exclusive content such as webinars or blogs that are only available for a fee; or
• Getting paid to do keynote speeches or host live events that their followers attend.

We’re talking about people with massive followings – tens of thousands of followers.

You say to be genuine with your content. How do you know when you’re not being authentic?

It’s hard to tell because of pride of authorship. It’s just a natural bias we have as human beings. That’s why I suggest getting a millennial, maybe your kids or their friends, to review it and tell you how they see it.

How are regulators adapting in light of social media?

Let’s face it: Regulators are overwhelmed. There aren’t enough of them to review every advisor in depth in the first place – and with the massive amount of content coming onto the scene it’s just getting worse. Additionally, finance has typically been a pen and paper-type of industry and there’s a learning curve.

I’m not seeing a significant loosening of standards when it comes to regulatory content review, but I am seeing a movement within the vendors offering new digital products. It’s more common to see integrations between compliance and archiving solutions; for example, a CRM system that offers text-messaging capabilities and has automatic archiving.

You talk about using social media to reach millennials, but do you mean other populations as well?

I encourage advisors to view the term millennial as mindset rather than an age. Millennials are supposedly the first generation to be raised in the digital age. I see members of many other generations, such as Generation X and even the Boomers, who share the affinity for technology.

Marketing to millennials is an exercise in marketing to anyone who has a passion for information and prefer to be communicated with digitally rather than in-person or through paper-based methods.

You mention using a round table instead of a rectangular one because it is more inclusive of meeting participants. I have couches in my office that are more popular than my traditional table and chairs. Should I get rid of the table altogether?

There has been a movement in financial office design to be more humanized and favoring a work-life balance element. Although comfortable couches are likely to be the seat of choice in the modern office, for medical reasons there are folks who may prefer to sit at a table. I would make sure you offer that option while making your couches the default choice.

Are you sure you recommend doing business with millennials? They’re the third generation of wealth transfer in some cases and usually not qualified to be prospects.

I can’t tell you to do something that doesn’t make financial sense for your business. At the base level, you should maintain a relationship with the millennial children of your clients, whether or not they are qualified. You can do this relatively inexpensively through webinars, online events, social media and by including them in your clients’ planning meetings. Those are generally not costly methods, but if you feel that your margins are compromised then consider charging a fee or creating some kind of monthly membership program that charges a low retainer.

If your business model is compatible, take the relationship to a higher level by taking advantage of the available technology. For example, many custodians offer roboadvisors. Or there’s Betterment for Advisors, where you can white label your platform. Why not create a relationship of trust using these technology solutions and wait it out? There’s enough technology and if you look hard enough you can make it work financially. Or maybe you take a loss but if the wealth transfer is big enough in some cases it is more costly in the long term to lose the relationship.

You never know what can happen in life or who will hear about the caring things you do for people. Technology now gives us the opportunity to scale in ways we weren’t able to and pay attention to those that would have been too expensive to reach in the past. It’s an amazing opportunity, and one you should look into and sketch out economically if you want to reap the coming wealth transfer.

Sara’s upshot

Many people give a keynote talk thinking the value they provide is in what they say; I look at it from the opposite view. The best thing about presenting a speech is the opportunity to listen to what really weighs on people’s minds. Likewise, I’d love to hear your questions on this, or any other subjects I cover, and welcome the opportunity to listen to you.

Sara Grillo, CFA, is a top financial writer with a focus on marketing and branding for investment management, financial planning, and RIA firms. Prior to launching her own firm, she was a financial advisor and worked at Lehman Brothers. Sara graduated from Harvard with a degree in English literature and has an MBA from NYU Stern in quantitative finance.

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