Tara (00:50):
Thank you for tuning in to episode 47 of the Art of Estate Planning podcast. It's Tara here again, and this episode is pretty much my unsolicited unqualified advice about talking about testamentary trusts on social media.
(01:10):
So strap in, this came out of inspiration from a couple of things that happened last week at the time of recording where testamentary trusts were getting their time in the sun. They seemed to be the topic of the week. There was a clip that was doing the rounds on Instagram and TikTok from SBSS Insight Programme and a financial advisor who's got a huge following. James Wrigley also started talking about them as well. And I just observed after testamentary trusts were getting their spotlight, how some of the members of our TT precedents club were really primed to take advantage of that and capitalise on the conversation to generate new leads and new followers from that. And that other members of our TT precedents club who I was trying to support or give a shout out to, just didn't really have anything going and posted on their profile or anything to really direct people to that made it a lot harder to involve them in the conversation.
(02:27):
So it just got me thinking about some of the things that you can have on your social media if you're going to do social media that will really just help people understand what you're about and what you offer, especially when it comes to testamentary trust. So I guess the first thing I want to acknowledge is you do not have to be on social media, and if you have other strategies that work for you and social media posting is not part of that, then just maybe even switch off to a different podcast now because I don't want you to feel guilty or you have to be doing something if you've made a strategic choice not to do it. I completely respect that.
(03:09):
So this is for the people who are trying to use social media as part of their marketing and brand strategy. I do just want to mention or give a shout out to my good friend Caralee Fontanelli of Scalable Law because in terms of making that decision about is social media one of the marketing channels that suits your business and is giving you a return, her programme, scalable law really helps you to dive into the data and the business case behind what is working in terms of your marketing efforts in your business, what is the return on investment and what do you like doing?
(03:52):
So just want to, if you're feeling totally lost, I do just want to give a shout out to currently at Scalable Law. So in terms of where I sit, I am an Instagram girly, so I don't actually have TikTok. I feel like I already get sucked into the void of Instagram as much as it is already. So I haven't dived into the TikTok realm, but I think what I'm talking about today works for both Instagram and TikTok and maybe to an extent Facebook and LinkedIn and Pinterest. I guess if you're on Pinterest, I'm probably YouTube as well is another good one. So I feel like these comments all kind of apply, but where this action was all happening was on Instagram. So yeah, basically I want to talk about the things that I think you should have on your Instagram profile so that your ideal customer knows what you're about and knows how you can help them and that has enough information to choose that you are the right lawyer for them and then knows what action to take.
(05:02):
Because really the whole process, the very first thing that I think you need to do, and some of you will have done this and others will not, but it's a good opportunity to revisit it and check in if it's still accurate or actually take the steps to do this, is to work out what your customer avatar is. So your ideal customer who you are talking to in all of your messaging. So we all know that we have lots of different customers and they don't all follow the same mould, but when it comes to marketing, and look, I'm no marketing expert, I'm a lawyer, I'm not a marketer, but what I've picked up and have been using and practising for several years in my out of estate planning business, now I'm doing it right now talking to you is it's so much easier just to talk to one person and craft your message and get everything that you're saying for this one person rather than it is to try to please everybody.
(06:10):
So there will be people outside of your ideal customer who are going to your message, who are going to buy from you, and that is amazing. But in terms of you feeling inspired to create some social media or marketing content and how you go about messaging that, I think if you can pick one person, whether it is a real person or a made up avatar person, which is a jumble of features, that that's the person you talk to, because I think that will really help simplify things about, well, how do I explain this in a way that this one person is going to really get it, it's going to resonate with them. This is the message they need to hear. So if you haven't worked out your customer avatar, go and do that. I'm sure you can Google how to do that exercise or get ChatGPT or something to help you.
(07:08):
Basically, it's just a matter of giving them a name, their age, where they live, what their buying habits are, what they like, what their hobbies are, their interests, and how they like to be communicated to what media they consume, kind of going deep diving into everything about them that is important to you, crafting your message properly for them. And then the next thing is I want to dive into what I think posts that you have reels, videos, especially the ones pinned to the top of your account, if you can do that on the channel you're talking about so that as soon as someone is directed to your account say, I mean they'll most likely come to you because someone shared something of yours. So I'm going to use this example. So shout out to one of our TT precedents club members, Jamie Stefanac, I hope I've said your surname properly.
(08:06):
She runs Family First estate planning in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. So firstly, her account is so worth checking out just for all of the beautiful landscape and scenery, but she is a huge inspiration in terms of how she's always showing up on her socials and communicating her message. And huge shout out to Jamie. She's got five kids. The youngest is like two, maybe only two at the time of recording. If Jamie can do it, we can all do it right? There is no excuse. And out of this last week what happened was some content was being shared. James Wrigley, the financial advisor influencer with a large following shared I think a real on testamentary trust and also shared some of Jamie's information and she increased her following to by like 22,000 followers in a week, which is just crazy. She messaged me and said she had more than like 50 people had booked in for a free introductory 15 minute phone call in her calendar the next week, which she was like, oh my God, I didn't realise I needed to put an upper limit on that, but I do.
(09:35):
So it's just absolutely incredible and Jamie is the gold standard of how to capitalise on an opportunity like this when your area of law is in the spotlight. So here's my thoughts on when a prospective client comes to your profile, what they need to see to know if they want to work with you and to go and book in that next step. In Jamie's case, it was the free 15 minute call. So firstly, and it doesn't have to be in this order, but I think some kind of content about who I am and how I can help you. I can prepare your wills, I can prepare testamentary trust wills, I can sort out your family legacy with testamentary trust, wills, something like that. Also around my ideal client is a person who does this. So you are doing your customer avatar, turn that into a real or a post so people know that, okay, that's me.
(10:42):
I'm in the right place. She wants to help me. She's set up to help people like me. The next one is I think some general information like what is a testamentary trust? What is an estate plan? What do you need in a comprehensive estate plan? Just something where they can go, oh, I came here looking for this information about what it is, and here she's explained it in a beautiful way that makes sense to me. It's not too complex. I'm not overwhelmed, I'm not intimidated. I also think doing that in a way where the simpler it is, the better. So on my social media, this might be a case of do what I say, not what I do, but on my social media, my customer avatar is a lawyer, and I know that lawyers really want to understand the detail. They want to know that what we're dealing with is legitimate and understand it.
(11:44):
They're not just going to take it on face levels. So a lot of the content I create has got a lot of detail in it, but your ideal client, the mom and dad's getting their wills done, they don't necessarily want to see all the technical detail behind a solution. They just want to know what the outcome is for them, what the solution is. You now have peace of mind. You now can rest easy at night, your kids are taken care of. You don't have to worry about your husband's new wife after you die, things like that. So an account who I want to shout out who does a beautiful job of this is an Ange Treichel at a AJT Legal in Gympie Queensland. Her social media is incredible. She is so creative. She's always coming up with new funny estate planning reels, and the one thing you'll notice about it is they're super simple.
(12:41):
It's usually just one small idea that she hits on and doesn't really use the reel to explain and dive into the depths of it. Now, Ange is incredibly technically excellent, so of course she has that depth, but in terms of just raising awareness and getting people to choose whether they like her style and want to work with her, she keeps it really simple, which I think is a fantastic example. So yeah, in terms of these concepts, I think examples of how testamentary trusts have made a difference to clients or can make a difference to hypothetical clients in this regard, I've actually put in the show notes my nine strategies for overcoming estate planning inertia conversation template, which has a whole heap of ideas that you can borrow to leverage off in terms of those different examples. So I think having a lot of posts on your feed about the different examples of how testamentary trusts or estate planning has made a difference.
(13:51):
Again, keeping it really simple and just constantly bringing it back I think. So a little story, I'll take a little side quest here. So when James Wrigley shared his reel about testamentary trust, I saw it pretty soon after he posted it, and I have a heap of reels and videos on my Instagram about testamentary trust. So I tagged him in a couple of the more interesting ones I thought, and he very kindly saw the tag and reshared them. So then I got a bunch of new followers and a bunch of traffic coming to my page, but I don't prepare wills. So James's audience is different to my audience. His audience are mom and dad's interested in investing and what they need to do from a financial planning perspective. My audience is lawyers who want to confidently offer testamentary trust. So I actually don't really want new followers from James's audience because they're not my customer avatar.
(15:06):
So I was very clear that to people who reached out to me that I can't help them. So I actually jumped on and did a whole bunch of stories and I was like, Hey, I'm so glad you're here. I teach other lawyers. I am not the person to prepare your testamentary trust will here. I have an incredible network of lawyers around Australia who are experts in testamentary trust, and I'm going to share some of their posts and profiles now, and if you are new here coming from James, to find out more about testamentary trust, go and check out everyone's pages because they will be able to deliver. So I was like, I'm going to pass this on, pay this forward so that we've got a win-win. The new people following me have got someone to reach out to and my TT precedents club members are getting in the spotlight.
(16:04):
I went through, I follow all of you on Instagram, and I went through and the people who were front of mind who posted recently or had posted that day and it was coming up in my feed, I reshared one or two posts or videos that you'd each made about testamentary trusts to the stories. So what's really interesting there is some of them I was like, oh, I've got this person in my mind and I really want to share their profile, and I went to their profile and I couldn't find anything to share. There was nothing helpful about who I am, what I do, here's how I work with testamentary trust, anything like that, that was easy for me to quickly share in one reel to get your attention to these new followers. So that what's inspired me to make this real and contrast to that, there was a tonne of people, maybe like 15 of you who did have content.
(17:05):
I had to choose which reel for you. You all had so much amazing content and it was hard to pick. So it was super easy for me to share and promote the people who are constantly creating the content versus I couldn't really go through everyone's, keep scrolling down the depths of the feed to try and find something relevant to post. Share your profile. So if you saw that and you were wondering why I didn't post you firstly, please don't take any of it personally, I was literally on my way to a tennis lesson when all this was happening, juggling the kids on school holidays, and I was kind of just going through, oh, who's popping up on my feet? Yes, I'll share Jamie, yes, I'll share Lana. Yes, I'll share Lucy, yes, I'll share Andrea. Oh, Jacqui's done something great, I'll share that. So it was very scatter gun, but that's kind of how this all works in the sense that you, if you are front of mind, you get an advantage.
(18:06):
So the other I guess tip is just keep sharing over and over, keep posting and anyone who follows me, I'm prolific in posting, but I don't sit there every day thinking of what to post. I actually pre-schedule my social media content a year in advance at the start of every calendar year, my VA and I work out the schedule, which is usually the same as last year's schedule, and she posts in my schedule on social media, the posts a whole year in advance. So I obviously jump in, I add new posts when I'm feeling inspired and delete things that don't feel right for me anymore or feel outdated. I create at the moment, I am looking at the perpetuity period for trusts in Queensland is increasing on the 1st of August to 125 years from 80 years. So we are making a new post on that, so that's obviously going to go in.
(19:16):
So I keep adding in new things, but when I'm feeling uninspired, when I'm really busy on technical work and don't have time to focus on my marketing, I still know a post is going out and they're not new posts. I repost one post. It probably gets posted like three times a year, maybe more for the really pertinent ones I post every two months or something because new people are constantly coming in to your audience all the time. People are stopping following you, growing and joining your following, and they haven't seen this stuff before. They don't usually when they start to follow, you scroll all the way down. They just kind of look at the first couple of posts and then what you keep posting. So things that you posted six months ago, you can post it again, I'm giving you permission to repost or you might have the same content with a different colour background or something, just something to tweak it.
(20:20):
I don't make my Canva content, but my virtual assistant Kat does and I sort of tell her what the words need to be and the vibe and then she is the one who comes up with all the cool branding and the fonts and positions and all that stuff. I'm actually terrible at it, so I leave it to someone who knows what they're doing and usually she makes a couple of versions of the design for me to approve. And what we might do is I'll be like, great, the first time we post this, we're going to use the first design when we post it again in four months time. Let's use the second design. They're both good. I don't have a strong preference, and so it's the same but different and new people are going to see it. So I'm not saying that to constantly be in the spotlight, you have to be dedicating every day to posting on your social media because you all have got so much on your plate already, but there's ways that you can still keep showing up without constantly having to reinventing the wheel. So on that note, I am just going to take a sip of my cup of tea. I think my voice is getting croaker and croaker as we go through, and I'd love for you to hear from one of our TT precedent club members fluff.
Fleur (21:40):
Hi, I am Fleur Craig from Armour Craig Legal in Morwell Victoria and I'm an estate planning lawyer. I've been using the art of estate planning testamentary Trust wills for 18 months and I love them. I've used a number of TT will precedents over the years and none have been as easy to use. I'm a member of the TT club, so I benefit from regular updates to the precedents and feel confident that they're up to date and reliable and will help my clients achieve their estate planning goals. I highly recommend the Art of Estate Planning precedents.
Tara (22:13):
Thank you so much, Fleur, that is just so wonderful to hear and thank you for staying on and tuning into this episode. So yeah, just to recap, I think work out who your customer avatar is and just write your content and your message for them. Everyone else will either love it, your ideal customer, it will speak to them like you're jumping out of the screen and everyone else, they'll take it or they'll leave it, but at least you're talking to the people who you really want to attract to Heather, how I can help you, make sure you use your highlights If you're on Instagram, the pinned post I've even got, I just did a reel and it was like start here. I put on the text so that people know what I'm about and that's my first pinned post. So how you can help them, who your ideal client is, what is a testamentary trust, what is an estate plan?
(23:11):
A bunch of different examples, and the last one actually we haven't covered is the call to action. So that means the next step, what do they do if they love everything that you are about, if they are picking up what you are putting down and totally on board with all your recommendations, what is the next step? Obviously have that bio with a link, but make it really clear even in your Instagram bio, you can be like, book your 15 minute call or fill in our online will form or whatever it is your call to action is and have it at the end of every post. Just make it so clear that they know what to do once they are ready to work with you so that Jamie, you can get those over. I think she has like 53 first meetings in a week, which is obviously crazy, but they knew what to do.
(24:12):
She was so clear in her call to action, I'll have to check in with her after that week to see. I'm sure she's lost her voice by then, but how incredible it was such a clear pathway for them in the space of 24 hours that many people saw her profile and knew what to do. Now, I just want to make, this is kind of related. I thought I'd just throw it in here as a little extra. So I had one of our good members in the TT Precedents club send me a message this morning, and I guess I just wanted to share it as a little reminder for anyone who needs a pep talk. So they asked me, I'm getting a lot of requests for people from social media asking if I have a simple will template that they can fill in so they want a low cost will solution from me, should I do it?
(25:06):
And I was like, absolutely not. Those people are not your ideal client. They're not your customer avatar. Your customer avatar believes in the value of your high-end bespoke solution. For starters, and I gave her the analogy, okay, if you're in the market to renovate your kitchen, there's so many ways it can be done right? You can go to the Bunnings caboodle range, you can engage a designer with a actual builder attached and they design a custom bespoke, beautiful, unique kitchen and project manage the implementation. You can do it yourself from watching YouTube videos where you are just doing a quick flip shoddy return. And I said to her, you are the high end bespoke designer beautiful kitchen, okay? That is what you deliver to people. You are not here to serve the people who are spray painting the old cabinet doors and getting those stick on tiles that they're putting straight over the old tiles to just give it a quick facelift.
(26:19):
That's probably all going to be peeling and scratching in six months time after they've sold the apartment. You need to know stay true to the value you deliver, who your ideal client is and what your product is. Because the difference between those two kitchen solutions, it's chalk and cheese, it's night and day, and it's the same with wills. How much if you sell these simple DIY wheel templates, firstly they're going to expect a bargain basement price for them. So how many do you need to sell for this to actually really make a difference to your profit? Not to mention the risk, and I think I had just been sitting there having a cup of coffee and my breakfast reading the Jade Barnett case summaries that I get subscribed to, and I was reading the succession ones and I just read a construction case where one son had to buy the other sun out and they had to go to court because the will was poorly drafted in terms of the consideration for the price to buy the other sun out on the property.
(27:30):
Anyway, it wasn't really a landmark decision or anything, but I was just like, it's so easy to make these mistakes in simple wills. Nearly all of the cases that we see that require construction applications or disputes over will interpretation are simple wills. We actually get very few testamentary trust wills cases coming through the courts, and I think that's just because the majority of wills being done are simple wills out there in the real world, or hopefully all the people who know preparing testamentary trust wills know their stuff. But I was like, what's the risk that this adds to your firm for what additional profit? You don't have to be everything to everyone, and by the way, you'll go and do all this work to set up this DIY will template and then you won't be able to charge competitively. I guarantee because it's Charity Week.
(28:33):
Oh, the will from Safe will or Be Willed or whatever the company is, there's like 10 of them now. It's free this week because of Charity Week, Westpac Helicopter Week, oh, it's half off because of this holiday. The wills are down to $20. You are never going to be able to compete. It's a real race to the bottom trying to play in that market. So stick to the value that you have with your complete estate planning solution and the legacies that you've built don't play in that space. It's not your ideal customer. And one of the ideas that we workshopped when you get those inquiries, because it takes a lot of energy replying to them, even though you're never going to work for them, but you want to be kind, you want to defend yourself and your business and your prices. You want to explain to them how misguided their thought process is.
(29:37):
So I suggested, okay, why don't you make a blog post or a video on your social media or maybe both. Use the blog post as a script for the video on social media about why you do not offer that solution, why you stand by the value in your solution, why a will is not an estate plan, and what they really need to do and what they need to, the things you need to measure a will against to make sure that it's appropriate and the value that you add so that work on that and create a single source with the myths and everything in it and put that on your website, record the video and have it on your profile so that if you get a DM or an email inquiry from someone saying, do you do this? You don't even have to think twice about it.
(30:30):
Your, VA if you have one or your secretary can just go, no, we don't offer that. Here's our reason why. Send the video or send the blog post. And you haven't put any energy or emotional energy into thinking about being pulled into that negative thought spiral so you can focus on the clients who do value what you deliver and keep changing lives and building legacies. So I wanted to just share that for anyone else who needs to hear it today in case that helps. Thank you so much for tuning in. I think my voice is on its last legs, so I am going to go have a teaspoon of honey and a cup of tea and wrap it up. But I would love to hear from you what you think in terms of social media. Obviously, there's no right or wrong. This is just my unsolicited opinion in 2 cents, and if you do create any content inspired from this episode, please feel free to share and send it to me.
(31:28):
Tag me in it. I would love to see, I get a huge thrill from seeing testamentary trust and estate planning taking over everyone's social media feeds. We need to get the word out there and it's the perfect place to do it. So thank you so much for tuning in. I will see you next week.
