Next Generation Planner: February 2022
Kerri Feazell
Co-founder and co-CEO, Concurrent Productions
www.linkedin.com/in/kfeazell/
Kerri Feazell is co-founder and co-CEO of Concurrent Productions, specializing in effective marketing videos for camera-shy leaders. She can be reached at HERE.
Disclaimer: I am not a compliance officer or attorney. Always check with your own home office or compliance officer before engaging with any new marketing strategy and ensure they approve.
When you think about compliance, you might not feel warm and fuzzy. But when it comes to creating effective, useful (and usable) marketing videos, collaborating with your compliance department is key. Unfortunately, many advisers approach compliance with trepidation or even consider compliance as an adversary.
But it’s not as daunting to pass a video through compliance as you may think. Barry Toole, senior vice president of compliance at Pensionmark Financial Group, puts it in simple, familiar terms: “[Video is] not really unlike a PowerPoint presentation; [my process is similar to] when I know an adviser is going to be conducting a seminar.”
If You’re Not Using Video, You’re Missing Out
“Video is the most powerful medium. And it’s also the most practical medium,” says Mary Kate Gulick, chief marketing officer of Carson Group. “There’s no other medium that touches all of the senses the way that video does, outside of being in person. . . . They start to understand who you are in a different way than writing can really ever do.”
When done right, video marketing is an opportunity to automate part of your lead-warming process in a way that’s difficult to do otherwise.
Wealth adviser Drew Creekmur has seen this firsthand in his role at Creekmur Wealth Advisors. He shares the following statistics from a period where video was used heavily by his firm.
From March 1, 2020, to September 30, 2021, his firm sent 553 emails. Results included:
- 36.47 percent open rate (2.75 percent increase over the previous 18-month period). Subject line experimentation was also implemented around the same time video was included, which could account for higher open rates. For example, the addition of an emoji or action words were included.
- 13.88 percent click-through rate (8.83 percent increase over the previous 18-month period). The video was embedded into the email and was placed at or near the top to ensure it was immediately visible. Additionally, the video would autoplay the first three seconds to ensure that there was some movement in the email to help draw eyes toward it. Drew credits this strategy as “more than likely responsible for the larger increase in click-through rate we experienced.”
Drew has seen such success in video that his firm went from spending about 10 percent of its marketing budget on video to about 30 percent. And he expects that to increase to 40 percent or even 50 percent in the next few years.
Video has also proven less tangible—but vitally important—results for Drew’s firm in terms of business development. He shared, “I actually had a client that I met with [who] said: ‘Hey, I noticed your videos. I watch them all the time. . . . It’s like we’re actually sitting in person.’”
To Script or Not to Script?
An authentic video that shares your true self is the holy grail to establish trust with potential clients. On a scale of difficulty, it’s nearly black diamond impossible to achieve that tone if you’re reading a script on a teleprompter or have memorized every word. The conundrum is that using a script makes it easier to pass a video through the compliance process.
An additional challenge is that there’s an expectation for you as a financial adviser to be stiff and formal. Is reading a perfect script and getting every word right the way to go, not only from a compliance standpoint, but also as a professional best practice?
As CEO and wealth adviser for Gertsema Wealth Advisors, Nick Gertsema frequently uses unscripted video as an effective marketing strategy. “When you come into the industry, you’re taught to be stiff and to speak from a script and to say phrases that you wouldn’t ordinarily say. But at the end of the day, people want to work with a person. . . . I really want to have fun in portfolio reviews and have a give-and-take conversation. So if people aren’t comfortable with that . . . they’ve eliminated themselves by watching the videos and saying, ‘I don’t want to talk to that person anyway.’ But if they warm up to [the video], then more than likely when I’m in a portfolio review, it’ll be a good conversation.”
Nick confessed exactly what I know about myself and what I tell every one of my clients: “I don’t have the voice of Morgan Freeman. So if I start to read, it becomes very, very obvious. I tried to do videos with the script a little bit, so I wouldn’t deviate. And then I learned to just trust my knowledge and know that compliance will look at it and say, ‘OK, if there’s something wrong, we re-record it.’ . . . At the end of the day, if I’m reading something and it’s boring and no one’s going to listen to it anyway, then who cares if it’s compliance approved?”
So, how do you achieve success and establish authentic trust through video like Drew and Nick without getting a compliance headache?
Three Principles of Creating a Story-Based Video That Passes Compliance
- Put everything you say in context.
- Get specific.
- Relate what you say to a personal experience.
Below are two examples of videos created for the Dallas-based adviser firm Global Wealth Advisors to illustrate examples of the above principles.
1. Put everything you say in context. Context allows you to provide a basis for your statements and avoid making baseless claims.
What was said in the video: “Our unique approach works because we’ve perfected it over the last 21 years. It’s time-tested.”
What was not said in the video, which might have raised compliance flags: “Our unique approach works better than others.”
2. Get specific. Specificity provides detail to avoid exaggerated or unwarranted statements lacking basis.
What was said in the video: “Commonwealth Financial Network is our broker-dealer. We chose Commonwealth Financial Network because they’re private; they provide due diligence, support from a technology standpoint, and compliance, and legal, that really helps us operate as efficiently as possible for our clients.”
What was not said in the video, which might have raised compliance flags: “Commonwealth is better than alternatives.”
3. Relate what you say to a personal experience. You can’t argue with personal statements, and you avoid the risk of unwarranted claims.
What was said: “Growing up, we were [an] upper-middle-class family, and Dad had a really good job. And there came a time where he, he got—you could tell, he just got stressed and then life changed all of a sudden, and it was because he had all of his money in his company stock.”
What was not said in the video, which might have raised compliance flags: “I’m the most passionate financial planner you’ll ever meet.”
The primary principle of storytelling is always “Show don’t tell.” And when you follow all of the above guidelines, you accomplish that.
Compliance Is on Your Side
Collaboration is key to success for your marketing video to pass compliance. Carson Group’s Mary Kate shared: “The first [and] most major mistake that advisers make with compliance is that they take the mindset that compliance is not on their team. . . . I have never met a compliance resource in my life who is not willing to have that conversation and to work with you on the front end; they really prefer it overall.”
What is the scope of the video production process, and where does compliance come in? In the next section, I’ll walk you through.
Pre-Production
The pre-production phase is everything that happens before filming your video—all the preparation and planning that goes into creating a video.
Key checkpoints
Get familiar with compliance issues. For an interview-based video, make sure you and your video team are familiar with compliance direction before interview questions are prepared.
Even if your video production team has worked with clients in the financial services industry before, there are some variances in what is allowable. I recommend over-communicating on this point and sharing guideline documents for your video team to review.
Make sure your compliance officer reviews interview questions in advance. To create the embedded videos, my questions were submitted to compliance well in advance to get direct input from the compliance team before questions were finalized.
A few examples of questions that passed compliance review:
- Why do you offer a no-cost consultation as the first step in working with you?
- Why do you provide an ongoing review for your clients? What would happen if you didn’t?
- Why is a client-centric approach so key to your philosophy?
Notice these all focus on the process, passion, and philosophy of the interviewees to elicit a story with emotions. None of these questions are designed to invite comparisons or performance-related responses that would be red flags for compliance. They’re also not designed to elicit formal (and boring) information that belongs elsewhere.
Production
Production is everything that happens during filming.
Key checkpoints
Make sure your video production team is aware of what can and cannot be filmed in your office. For example, some awards may not be allowed to be shown in video. If you capture something you shouldn’t on B-roll (secondary, visual-only footage), it might not be a big deal to replace it with something compliance-approved. However, if your primary interview footage has an award in the background that compliance will not allow to be shown, it could require you to reshoot your entire video.
Without compromising on-camera comfort levels, invite compliance into the room. This could go either way on creating a comfortable filming atmosphere. As the interviewee, it could make you more nervous to be closely watched, or it could give you a sense of safety that you won’t say the wrong thing. I recommend doing what makes you feel most comfortable on camera.
Post-Production
Post-production involves everything that happens after you capture your video footage. This includes editing, color correction, sound engineering, music, and graphics (including disclosures).
Key checkpoints
Collaborate with your compliance officer before you edit any footage. Prior to editing footage, your video team should have a conversation with your compliance officer. At this stage, you know exactly the filmed material you’re working with to build your story and can get greater clarity on what will be allowed in the video story before assembling the edit.
Add disclosures appropriately. Adding disclosures at the end of your video is ideal from a marketing perspective. However, your compliance officer may want them at the beginning, depending on their preferences and the video content.
Add your name and title. This is easy to do with an on-screen graphic as in the embedded examples where this appears as a “lower-third” graphic.
Distribution
Distribution is how you share your video—where it appears.
Key checkpoints
Get approval on the video edit before you finalize and release it publicly. If compliance doesn’t approve your video before it goes live, they may ask you to remove it, edit it, and replace it.
Pensionmark’s Barry reminds us that compliance teams want you to be successful with video. He shared, “I’m glad that [advisers are] thoughtful. . . . It does need to be reviewed and approved beforehand, but it’s really not as difficult or cumbersome as I think that they make that out to be. . . . I think [video] is a fabulous tool. I wish we would do more of it.”
Use a proper archiving tool for social media posting. For posting video on social media, you will need to get the proper archiving tools set up. Archiving tools scrape for specific keywords and flag that content, which may cause your compliance officer to require you to remove or change a video. Some popular archiving tools are Smarsh, Hearsay, and Global Relay.
Summary
Carson Group’s Mary Kate reminds us that video isn’t going away. She asserted, “[Video] is one of those areas where you can’t be left behind. So if you hate the sound of your own voice and you don’t think you’re good on camera, it’s time to put on your big boy pants and get over it.”
Most people don’t like the way they look and sound on camera. It’s uncomfortable, like all growth. So, if you’re struggling to locate those “big boy pants,” just know that you’re in very good company. There are resources for DIY videos and professionals with full-service production teams to help you out along the way. If you’ve been viewing compliance as a hurdle when your actual hang-up is being camera-shy, you’re not alone in that either. Whatever’s been stopping you from pursuing video to its fullest potential, hopefully now you can face your fears, make friends with compliance, and move your business forward with confidence using authentic video.