alexa skill

Case Study: Financial Advisor Client Onboarding + Alexa Skill (Podcast / Voice Marketing)

Welcome new clients or customers with an Echo Dot welcome kit so they can access your content on Alexa. The right client gift will boost positive regard and lower churn. Voice adds value and builds trust. Here’s why this technique is so effective:

Before we discuss the psychology of giving a gift, let’s talk about CAC.

The average Client Acquisition Cost (CAC) of a financial advisor is $3,119 per client. The cost of the marketing method below averages under $75 per client (using the Echo Dot, or under $200 with the Echo Show) and it will pay dividends because these WealthVoice welcome kits:

  1. Build your brand

  2. Let you communicate authentically

  3. Encourage word of mouth referrals

  4. Reduce churn through positive sentiment and trust over time (with your voice updates)

These most-scalable ‘standout’ marketing strategies included client referrals (which amongst top advisors generated an average of almost 19X the new revenue as the cost to acquire the referral), books (an average 10X multiplier of revenue/cost for top marketing firms), direct mail (a 9.1X multiplier), paid web listings (8.3X multiplier), COIs (7.8X multiplier), marketing lists (7.2X multiplier), and SEO (6.8X multiplier).

-Michael Kitces

If you delight a client, they will talk about you to their friends, and say nice things. This will get you referrals and grow your business. This will reduce churn. A great way to delight them is to demonstrate your tech savvy, your accessibility, and your commitment to offering helpful guidance: send a badass gift like a smart speaker with your custom Alexa skill so they can get your updates hands-free.

Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the customer gets out of it.

-Jay Baer, customer experience marketing expert

When you make a purchase decision, you typically experience some degree of uncertainty afterward. Important decisions are all the more taxing and incite more powerful feelings after pulling the trigger. It’s called buyer’s remorse when a decision leads to an undesirable outcome.

Your Clients / Customers Want to Feel Good About Their Decisions

The good news for your business is that social science research reveals that we are psychologically motivated to be satisfied with our decisions. People want to think they’ve chosen well. It’s usually pretty easy to help them feel that way.

Decision making is stressful. Clients want to be reassured they’ve chosen wisely.

Decision making is stressful. Clients want to be reassured they’ve chosen wisely.

Smart marketers know that the period after purchase is a sensitive time where there’s an opportunity to reassure your customer they made the right choice. This is why after a product purchase, you’ll often get follow-up emails that educate you on the great features you can access. Marketers want to reduce any potential for buyer’s remorse, a return of the purchase, or churn.

When someone hires you in a professional role, like as their financial advisor or any type of consultant, it’s important to reassure them they chose wisely. Doing this helps avoid churn and starts the relationship off on the right foot. Here’s how we helped our client do this with their end clients using a gift and voice marketing.

The Psychology of Gifts

From an evolutionary perspective, gift giving includes tactical motivations, such as creating a good impression, displaying financial resources, or as a means for seduction. This applies to your personal and business life.

From an evolutionary perspective, gift giving includes tactical motivations, such as creating a good impression, displaying financial resources, or as a means for seduction. This applies to your personal and business life.

Gifts are part of our universal social fabric. For thousands of years, gifts have been exchanged to build political and social relationships. They evoke feelings. They are loaded. They are powerful. Gifts usually become a sentimental value to the receiver because it helps recognize the special connection with the gift giver. In this sense, gifts are a way to show caring or commitment and a way to communicate.

First we built Protect Your Assets, an Alexa Skill and Google Action, for Liberty Group LLC (a financial advisor in the Bay Area). (Read more about our social media strategy and podcast marketing for this client.)

The challenge:

  1. Level up their client onboarding

  2. Educate clients about the Protect Your Assets smart speaker voice apps and all the interactive features like hands-free access to Protect Your Assets podcast and interactive quizzes on long term care and gray divorce

The solution:

We created a voice marketing hub page for Protect Your Assets on Alexa and Google Assistant, and accordion insert card to be shipped with Echo Dots (with Clocks) to each new client.

Our process:

  1. We designed the insert cards to fit in the square blue boxes, just like Amazon’s (why reinvent the wheel?) - the cards have simple language to welcome clients and educate them on using the Alexa skill

  2. We included QR codes and one-shot invocation phrases to enable the Alexa skill: “Alexa, enable Protect Your Assets.”

  3. We included sample phrases to access more content

  4. We tested the process with three existing clients we hand picked. Then we asked for their feedback via survey.

  5. Based on the trial and error around printing, packaging, and shipping we streamlined the process to send an Echo Dot Welcome Kit to every new client.

Here’s the new client greeting from David Hollander. It plays when you say:

“Alexa, tell Protect Your Assets that I am a new client.”

New Client Greeting (voice recorded on Alexa by CEO/Founder David Hollander):

You may have a mix of assets ranging from a business you own, to real estate, to investments, a 401k, IRAs, art, or cryptocurrency. And sometimes you also want tax and legal advice. We're here to help with all of it to get you on track and keep you strategically invested for the retirement you've always dreamed of. I'm David Hollander, Founder of Liberty Group. Welcome to our family and thank you for trusting us to protect your assets. You can say "learn more", "play the latest podcast," or "goodbye"

WealthVoice is a voice marketing platform to easily build your Alexa skill and send clients voice updates on their smart speaker with notifications. You reap the benefits of podcasting without the time commitment or competition. Get a spot on the waitlist:

Case Study: From Radio to Podcast Audiograms - Voice Marketing (Financial Advisor)

David Hollander is an attorney and financial advisor, and the Founder of Liberty Group LLC headquartered in Oakland, CA. Liberty Group is an RIA (registered investment advisor). Unlike most financial advisors, they provide estate law, wealth management, and tax planning all under one roof.

Award-winning financial advisor and attorney David Hollander, Founder of Liberty Group, shows you how to protect your assets at 8:00 a.m. Saturday mornings on KNBR 680, and on his popular podcast, Protect Your Assets.

Award-winning financial advisor and attorney David Hollander, Founder of Liberty Group, shows you how to protect your assets at 8:00 a.m. Saturday mornings on KNBR 680, and on his popular podcast, Protect Your Assets.

For about ten years, David has hosted Protect Your Assets on the Bay Area’s number one sports radio station, KNBR. PYA airs Saturdays at 8am. David’s show is also a podcast by the same name. He successfully acquires leads from the radio show who convert into clients for Liberty Group. Many of these leads call into a phone number given during the live radio show.

The problem:

David recognized that while his main marketing channel of his popular radio show was effective and his business was booming, he needed to ensure his marketing methods would be future proof.

We rebranded Protect Your Assets and upgraded its brand strategy and social media presence, also launching an interactive voice app on Alexa and Google Assistant so listeners could simply ask to hear the latest episode or learn more about Liberty Group.

Liberty Group’s target demographic of pre-retirees and retirees are aging. People listen to terrestrial radio less and less each year. (Edison Research has shown for years in their Smart Audio Report that radio is declining in favor of spoken word streaming audio such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more podcast apps, sometimes called podcatchers).

The number of radios in the average household is declining in the U.S., going from a 3.0 mean in 2008 to a 1.5 mean in 2020 via Edison Research, Infinite Dial 2020

The number of radios in the average household is declining in the U.S., going from a 3.0 mean in 2008 to a 1.5 mean in 2020 via Edison Research, Infinite Dial 2020

David also had a minimal social media presence and wanted to share more engaging bite size audio content to engage new people online and drive more subscribers to his podcast which is adapted from the radio show and airs three segments weekly.

five-fatal-retirement-mistakes-protect-your-assets-podbean-widget.png

He wanted to take all his audio content to the next level and grow his podcast audience.

We showed the team how to generate audiograms from their podcast episodes then share to social - like this tweet from @pyaradio. Engagement increased 36% in the first week of this effort.

We showed the team how to generate audiograms from their podcast episodes then share to social - like this tweet from @pyaradio. Engagement increased 36% in the first week of this effort.

We rebranded the podcast logo to be more visible than the previous one which was dominated by more empty white space and the Statue of Liberty; in this logo we feature David’s alter ego/nickname, The Sandman as a heroic cartoon character who helps y…

We rebranded the podcast logo to be more visible than the previous one which was dominated by more empty white space and the Statue of Liberty; in this logo we feature David’s alter ego/nickname, The Sandman as a heroic cartoon character who helps you sleep at night (because your assets are protected).

The solution:

  • We created a content calendar to promote his podcast content and implemented dozens of tactics as part of a level-up strategy

  • We rebranded the PYA podcast graphics and boosted the quality and frequency of his social media sharing featuring Instagram audiograms like this.

  • We created brand consistency across all social channels for Liberty Group and Protect Your Assets including homepage updates and the podcast page getting a Plink universal sharing link

  • Podcast SEO and discoverability: We renamed all past podcast episodes with keyword rich titles and set a format for new titles going forward to take advantage of podcast search engine indexing around terms like “investing” and “retirement”. Examples:

    • Before:
      https://libertygroupllc.com/radio-show/week-37-market-segment (no keywords)

    • After:
      https://libertygroupllc.com/radio-show/last-minute-tax-tips/ (more search friendly now)

  • We created audiograms and a process for generating at least two audiograms each week like this

  • We leveled up his YouTube presence, giving specific video filming training to his advisors on creating videos relevant to investing and retirement

  • We gave the team a process and format to optimize each episode’s show notes/blog post embedding their podbean audio player widget and creating at least a paragraph of unique intro text with keywords and a strong URL

  • We created a YouTube SEO strategy utilizing titles, descriptions, and all-important thumbnails to help people find his videos

  • We taught the team how to repurpose YouTube videos into blog posts like this

  • We created a blog on libertygroupllc.com, which previously didn’t have one. This would allow us to create content around important investing and retirement topics and be found organically, a goal for the team (to decrease ad spend and boost inbound content marketing for lead gen)

  • We created a New Client Welcome Message available on his custom Alexa Skill and Google Action called Protect Your Assets (more info on the voice apps coming soon in a separate case study):

  • New client greeting on Alexa:

    “You may have a mix of assets ranging from a business you own, to real estate, to investments, a 401k, IRAs, art, or cryptocurrency. And sometimes you also want tax and legal advice. We're here to help with all of it to get you on track and keep you strategically invested for the retirement you've always dreamed of. I'm David Hollander, Founder of Liberty Group. Welcome to our family and thank you for trusting us to protect your assets. You can say "learn more", "play the latest podcast," or "goodbye".

”Alexa, ask Protect Your Assets to play the latest podcast.” Quick Link here to launch


”Alexa, ask Protect Your Assets to play the latest podcast.” Quick Link here to launch

Results:

  • 36% increase in podcast downloads

  • 5 star reviews on Alexa on Google

  • 23% increase in Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn engagement

  • Highest number ever of leads registering for weekly webinars and booking introductory calls

Case Study: Podcast + Alexa Flash Briefing for Women-Led Wealth Management Firm

Aspen Wealth Management is an RIA based in Fort Worth, Texas. Their daily audio briefing embodies their transparent approach to financial planning with an emphasis on relationships. (Photo by Enrique Macias on Unsplash.)

Aspen Wealth Management is an RIA based in Fort Worth, Texas. Their daily audio briefing embodies their transparent approach to financial planning with an emphasis on relationships. (Photo by Enrique Macias on Unsplash.)

Financial advice "by women, for women, and the men who love them."

Relationships are the keyword for Aspen Wealth Management. They’re a fee-only, comprehensive financial planning firm located in Fort Worth, Texas. 

Aspen Wealth Management offers an honest and transparent approach to financial, retirement, tax and investment planning for individuals, families, and small businesses, with an emphasis on building relationships.

A Strong Foundation, Not Just Investing Results

Helen Stephens founded Aspen Wealth Management in late 2011. Helen has been a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional since 1993, an Enrolled Agent (EA) since 2009, and has more than 20 years of experience in the field of financial services.

Helen Stephens founded Aspen Wealth Management in late 2011. Helen has been a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional since 1993, an Enrolled Agent (EA) since 2009, and has more than 20 years of experience in the field of financial services.

Candace Scholz is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional and joined Aspen Wealth Management in 2015.

Candace Scholz is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional and joined Aspen Wealth Management in 2015.

During our second planning call, Candace shared this insight about what makes Aspen unique:

Most clients will say that investment returns are key. In fact, Dimensional Fund Advisors polled the clients of other advisors who are the same size as our firm. Across the board, most clients responded that the most important factor in their satisfaction with their advisor was their investment returns.

Except for our clients. They said that their overall financial plan is key. 

It is NOT just about investing, it’s the value of understanding all the facets of your life and how this impacts your finances and your future. Having a strong foundation to move confidently forward in your life - this is what our clients value in Aspen as their financial guide.

DFA cornered us and said: “You’re the only firm with these results (where clients highly valued the holistic plan).”

The Solution

We helped Aspen Wealth Management launch Purposeful Planning, a daily briefing featuring investing and retirement advice. It’s a mini podcast and is available on Alexa Flash Briefing (Alexa’s native news feature).

We helped Aspen Wealth Management launch Purposeful Planning, a daily briefing featuring investing and retirement advice. It’s a mini podcast and is available on Alexa Flash Briefing (Alexa’s native news feature).

Candace explained, “Every member of our team focuses on making our clients and their families feel comfortable when discussing financial decisions that can potentially be stressful and could have a great impact on their lives.”

How could we translate those values into content marketing?

We help people.

What really stood out after getting to know the team at Aspen Wealth Management is how passionate they are about helping clients. This is a reason we love working with financial advisors. People in this profession really do care. You can hear it all in Helen’s emotional and touching client stories that she shared on the pilot episode “Good Cop, Bad Cop” on TD Ameritrade’s podcast, Beyond the Portfolio:

“Helen has a strong personality and no-nonsense attitude. But, more importantly, Helen knows when to play good cop and when to play bad cop.” Listen on Overcast.

Alexa Flash Briefing allows anyone with an Amazon Echo or the Alexa smartphone app to get short daily news by saying, “Alexa, news.” This is an easy way to push out helpful content in bite size chunks.

We created a content plan and specific step-by-step guidance to help Aspen launch a mini podcast.

How We Named the Show:

We went through a branding exercise together, having them team free associate with adjectives and nouns or phrases that embodied their brand. After coming up with a dozen options for show names, we settled on one of our earliest ideas.

Because the purpose behind their planning is their foundation, the title Purposeful Planning with Aspen Wealth Management was an obvious choice for meaning as well as keywords for search.

Podcast and flash briefing features:

  • Length: 2-3 minutes average, new episodes every weekday

  • Audio only: available as an Alexa Flash Briefing and as a standard podcast

  • Multiple voices/hosts - showcasing the Aspen team

  • Original sonic branding that we created with a partner musician (intro / outro music, play a sample below)

  • Weekly and monthly themes incorporating seasonality or current events (such as a presidential election, tax season, or handling the COVID-19 stock market and volatility)

We trained the team in best practices and tools for producing a daily 3-minute briefcast (AKA mini podcast). Play a sample briefing:

Results

  • 328% increase in plays over past 30 days (as of August 2020)

  • Over 1,100 listens in the first three months with zero advertising (only organic social media promotion)

  • Ranking #1 on Alexa Skills search for terms like “financial advice”

  • Social posts with audiograms from the briefing garner 66% increased engagement on Twitter and Facebook

Aspen Wealth’s Flash Briefing skill is ranking #1 on Amazon under Alexa Skills for search terms such as “financial advice”

Aspen Wealth’s Flash Briefing skill is ranking #1 on Amazon under Alexa Skills for search terms such as “financial advice”

Hear Purposeful Planning Everywhere:

  1. On Amazon Alexa: Enable the Alexa skill here then say, “Alexa, news.”

  2. 1-click enable the podcast in your favorite app

  3. On Google Assistant (Google Home smart speaker, Google Assistant iOS app, or Android device):

    1. Say, “Hey Google, play the latest episode of Purposeful Planning with Aspen Wealth Management”


How do you grow an Alexa Flash Briefing?

  1. To organically grow your Alexa skill, optimize your skill icon, title, description, and keywords on your settings in the Alexa Developer Console following SEO best practices.

  2. Share clips as audiograms on social media.

  3. In social posts or emails, include clear instructions and links for people to enable the skill, play the Flash Briefing, and subscribe to the podcast. More tips here: how to grow your flash briefing.


Audiograms are still images with audio and captions that get high engagement on social media. Podcast hosts can share short clips effectively with audiograms. See this audiogram tweet featuring Candace hosting the flash briefing.

Audiograms are still images with audio and captions that get high engagement on social media. Podcast hosts can share short clips effectively with audiograms. See this audiogram tweet featuring Candace hosting the flash briefing.

See those social posts from Tip #3 above in action: Aspen is now sharing audiograms like this and this.

By the way, you should really have a Plink if you have a podcast. It’s that 1-click podcast link we shared above.

Here’s why (video) or read more about podcast marketing tips on our blog.

Get your Plink here.


Have a specific marketing need? get 30-minute coaching.

Book a marketing session with Emily Binder.

Case Study: Content Marketing + Alexa Voice Strategy for UX Design Agency - Nine Labs

Nine Labs is an Atlanta-based user experience and product design firm with clients including major airlines, hotels, and startups.

The problem:

With years of blog posts, podcasts, videos, white papers, and ebooks there was plenty of content but no strategic method to effectively share it on social media. Potential traffic and leads were left on the table. Nine Labs wanted to organize and share all their content to increase engagement, brand recognition, and ultimately leads.

Nine Labs: Made with ❤️in Atlanta, GA


Nine Labs: Made with ❤️in Atlanta, GA

The solution:

We created a robust social media marketing strategy and guide to help Nine Labs with content marketing. We also launched an Alexa Flash Briefing to establish a voice presence in the UX design category. Then we provided ongoing guidance in implementing, empowering their in-house team to manage it.

Custom Content Marketing Strategy

Goals:

  1. Increase blog traffic

  2. Increase leads

  3. Increase social engagement

  4. Establish voice presence on Alexa

Strategy characteristics:

  • Content buckets and monthly themes based on Nine Labs’ driving principles from 4 Steps to a Human Centered Business Model

  • Specific guidelines to create social posts (text, graphics, video, and audiograms) for different social channels including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn - each with different goals and slightly different audiences

  • Introduction of audiograms

    • Guidelines on creating effective, short audiograms for Instagram and Twitter by repurposing past podcast and YouTube video content

Audiogram for Instagram (static image with 1-minute audio and captions)

Audiogram for Instagram (static image with 1-minute audio and captions)

Alexa Skills search ranking in app for “UX design” keywords - Nine Labs Flash Briefing

Alexa Skills search ranking in app for “UX design” keywords - Nine Labs Flash Briefing

  • Brand separation from executive profile: Clarity and direction on content strategy for CEO (and helluva smart guy) J Cornelius’s personal brand and the Nine Labs brand

  • Strategy and launch of Design Driven, an Alexa Flash Briefing about UX and product

    Fact: Design-driven companies outperform the S&P by 228%.

    Interested in the intersection of business, design, UX, and product development? Enable this daily briefing about using design to build great products and lasting companies.

  • Repurposing and repackaging high quality content instead of starting from scratch, saving the client time

  • Optimize lead magnet forms on blog and website

  • Strategically drive traffic to lead magnets, downloadable PDFs, and blog

  • Optimized Alexa Flash Briefing keywords, description, and daily content. Hear past briefings below:


Results of 8-week marketing engagement:

Obsess over your customers. #uxdesign

Obsess over your customers. #uxdesign

  • Increase in social engagements:

    • Facebook up 21%

    • Instagram up 893% (from 312 to 3,100)

    • Twitter up 178%

    • LinkedIn from 0 to 48 average weekly engagements

  • Increased blog traffic and leads from social

  • VOICE SEARCH OPTIMIZATION: Within two weeks, ranked on page 1 , top three results of Alexa Skills search results for terms including “ux”, “product design,” and “ux design”

  • Empowered marketing team to efficiently run with this strategy on their own


Emily has an incisive mind about marketing and how voice is rapidly changing the landscape. She worked hard to find the right use of the technology without compromising quality or our brand message.
— J Cornelius, Founder and President, Nine Labs

Why We Love Nine Labs

If you need guidance on designing a digital product, we recommend J Cornelius and his ace team at Nine Labs. Hands down, they’re the best. Nine Labs understands design and how it fits into business as a whole. They also run killer workshops and training.

Get the best thinking from startups and enterprise to give your projects the support to succeed. https://ninelabs.com/

Case Study: Josh Brown's Mini-Podcast "The Compound Show" - Alexa Skill

What if you could listen in on regular conversations between professionals working in money management?

We created the strategy and built a custom Alexa Skill for Ritholtz Wealth Management called The Compound Show. After launching their Market Moment Flash Briefing in 2018, in 2019 the RWM team wanted to expand on the voice marketing strategy to increase their early adopter voice marketing footprint.

As trailblazers in blogging and social media in the personal finance and investing space, the Ritholtz Mafia wanted to be early to voice, too.

Josh and Emily discuss Ritholtz's Alexa Skills. Hear why RWM is "kind of a big deal" when it comes to voice in the finance space.

Read more about Josh Brown (@reformedbroker) and Barry Ritholtz (@ritholtz), the forces behind some of the most popular investing blogs, videos, television, and social media accounts: Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz: From breakout bloggers to RIA rock stars

Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz. Image courtesy of Citywire USA, 2018.

Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz. Image courtesy of Citywire USA, 2018.

THE COMPOUND SHOW (Original version) - MINI-PODCAST AND ALEXA SKILL

Ritholtz Wealth Management is an RIA with roughly $2.57 billion in assets under management (AUM) as of May 2023.

In March 2019, we launched a first-of-its-kind custom voice Alexa Skill and mini-podcast about investing based on the popular The Compound YouTube channel.

Josh Brown explained our project “The Compound Show” in its first iteration and how his goal was to disrupt the traditional lengthy podcast format:

I invented the mini-podcast. All the financial industry and investment-oriented podcasts are an hour long or more. I think that’s because the person whose podcast it is feels bad about asking a guest to come on and then cutting them short. Some podcasts should be an hour – Patrick O’Shaugnhnessy interviewing Michael Mauboussin, for example, or Barry Ritholtz interviewing Ray Dalio, or Michael Kitces interviewing Ric Edelman.

But most podcasts are too long and not every guest has an hour-plus worth of stuff you want to hear. However, the format persists.

I think it’s just something that’s become a tradition – to interview each guest for an hour and change – even though that’s not what the listener actually needs or wants from every conversation.

-Josh Brown

read more about The Compound Show on The Reformed Broker

The original Compound Show Alexa skill icon (new branding replaced this in 2020)

Original logo for The Compound Show mini-podcast and Alexa Skill

For this podcast, Josh recorded 10-12 minute phone calls with investing experts to give the audience a behind-the-scenes glimpse. We synced the RSS feed to his custom Alexa Skill available by voice command.

2021 update:

With a growing audience, Ritholtz and team rebranded and expanded the show, making it a weekly full length YouTube podcast. It’s fantastic and has topped the Apple Podcasts top 10 financial podcast rankings as of 2023.

You can hear it on your favorite podcast app or hands-free by saying: “Alexa, play The Compound and Friends” or “Hey Siri, play The Compound and Friends.”