Swift Chat with Alex Khassa: Revolutionizing Financial Advisor Marketing with Precision Video Ads

In this Swift Chat conversation, Jonny Swift speaks with Alex Khassa, founder of Clients Blackbox, a marketing partner to some of the fastest-growing financial advisory and retirement planning firms in the USA, about transforming financial advisor marketing through precision-engineered video ads. Khassa explains his approach to helping advisors capture more clients by creating highly targeted, short video ads on Facebook and Instagram that replace the traditional, slower webinar funnels. By focusing on the "speed to lead" principle, his strategy significantly reduces lead loss, offering clients immediate access to educational content and fast-tracked appointments. This method enables rapid scaling, delivering a superior return on investment.

He shares success stories of advisors who have grown their businesses through his system, including one client who closed a $13 million virtual deal. Khassa also highlights a new partner program for smaller advisors that allows them to leverage the systems of larger, successful advisors without creating their own video content or virtual sales process.

Learn more about Alex Khassa and Clients Blackbox at www.ClientsBlackbox.com 

Listen to Podcast / Audio Version

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Transcript of Conversation

Jonny Swift: Welcome back to another Swift Chat, where we talk with interesting people in the financial services industry. I'm Jonny Swift of Impact Communications, and I'm joined today by Alex Khassa of Clients Blackbox. It's great to meet you, Alex. I'm excited about our conversation today. Can you introduce yourself and explain how and why you started Clients Blackbox?

Alex Khassa: Thank you for having me on the podcast, Jonny. My name is Alex. I'm the founder of Clients Blackbox. I'm a growth consultant. I work with financial advisors and help them get more clients virtually. I've been doing digital marketing for eight or nine years, and for the last three to four years, I've been working exclusively with financial advisors. They're primarily hybrid advisors; part of their business is in annuities and insurance, and the other is AUM. That is because I've created a way to convert people at an excellent cost and grow a hybrid RIA quickly at a very profitable pace. We only focus on marketing campaigns targeting pre-retirees and retirees, which are educational campaigns sharing the top retirement mistakes they might be making. Usually, the solution for them is to book a meeting with one of our clients, who is a financial advisor who can help them with their retirement income plan. We've had great success so far.

Swift: That's awesome. You focus on precision-engineered Facebook and Instagram video ads. The typical approach for many advisors is using webinars and other ads, such as an offer to download a special report, as their primary lead generation tools on Meta. I'm sure many advisors are aware of the importance of video in their marketing efforts, but they may think a webinar recording counts towards that style of video marketing. Will you touch on what makes the videos you produce so much more impactful than a webinar recording?

Khassa: We are not using webinars at all because it goes against the law of speed to lead. Whoever gets to the lead first usually wins the deal. Think about a webinar funnel. When somebody clicks on a Facebook ad to register for a webinar, they must first fill in their information. On the registration page, you've lost 70% or more of them. The second step is the time they spend waiting between registering and attending the webinar. At that step, you've lost 50% to 80% of them. While waiting, Facebook tracked them as somebody registered for a webinar about retirement planning. They add them to an audience of people interested in retirement planning.

In the days that they're waiting for a webinar, they will start seeing other ads from clients like ours that say, “Hey, if you've registered for a webinar or seminar, don't waste your time. I have a video that will tell you everything you need to know about retirement planning in just ten minutes. Click the button.” They watch it immediately. Then they book a meeting with one of our clients. That's one way they could get taken away from you. The second way is they could see advertisements from other people running webinars or seminars coming up sooner. We're not the only people that are advertising on Facebook. When you take somebody from being really interested in something and adding time to the deal, time kills all deals.

The webinar system has worked for some people in the past, but it was because nobody else was doing it more efficiently. Then we came to the market. Now, most people I speak with who are using webinars to get new clients are seeing higher cost per registration, lower show-up rates, and lower return on investment, and it's a very slow cycle for cash flow. For example, if we run an ad, we can start getting appointments within 15 minutes. We're spending money. We're getting people to click and watch a ten-minute video. They get educated and can book a meeting with an advisor within 15 minutes of watching that video. If we're running ads for webinars, we can only track registrations, and we don't know if they will show up.

If they do show up, they may or may not book a meeting. It's a long feedback cycle. Our process has a much faster feedback cycle. I can optimize, iterate, and make it better faster. That's why, over the past three years, we spent more than $2.5 million on ad spend. I stopped counting at the end of 2023. I will give the updated numbers at the end of this year. I don't want to give people too much information on our pace. Spending more than $2.5 million on Facebook ads generated over 10,000 qualified appointments to our system because of speed to lead. Our system is straightforward. It's a short 90-second educational ad on Facebook, which leads to a ten-minute educational video. Then, it goes directly to book a 45-minute, no-cost retirement planning consultation with the advisor or their team. It is very simple and scales wonderfully.

Swift: It’s simple and shows people the information they need and are looking for immediately. Many in the industry know about the power of video and your marketing efforts. It allows you to put a face to the name. Just seeing a video of you talking about yourself and your services and positioning yourself as an expert and thought leader gives people the feeling that they already know you a little before they even meet you in person or book a virtual meeting. It's really big for pro-personal marketing. That's the mix of professional and personal marketing; video is a great way to do that. That's especially true for the type of video content you're helping advisors produce. I assume this method isn't for every advisor. Who would you say is a right fit for this type of video marketing?

Khassa: There are two ways that people can work with us. One way is very restrictive, and the other is very open, allowing pretty much anybody to work with us. The first way is for them to become a direct client at Clients Blackbox. To qualify for that right now, as of April 2024, they must be a large hybrid RIA. They need to have more than a dozen advisors working for them. They need to start with about $75,000 a month of minimum marketing budget and a minimum commitment of three to six months for it to make sense because the sales cycle is about 60 to 90 days. If somebody has a meeting with an advisor on April 9, they won't close until July 9. We have to give it enough time for it to prove itself.
 
That's the first way, and it's not for everybody because it is cost-prohibitive for only larger clients. They need to be comfortable with being on video, which takes a bit of practice. They need a virtual sales process that can take somebody from being interested in retirement planning information into a paid client, 100% virtually, without meeting in person. Because our process is to advertise virtually nationwide. It became increasingly difficult to work with us that way because we realized it's best if we kept it boutique and focused on a smaller number of clients. Those are the requirements for taking somebody on as a direct client. That's not for 99.9% of people who listen to this podcast.
 
For pretty much everybody listening to the podcast, there is another way to work with us, which is even better. Over the past three and a half years, I've seen many individual financial advisors try to work with us. They came in to get appointments and failed at closing them because they didn't have a virtual sales process or were not good on video.

Their videos didn't do as well as others we work with, even though we used the same video scripts and audiences. We realized we already have clients doing really well with our campaign. For every $10,000 to $15,000 they spend, they close about a million dollars of annuities and $800,000 of AUM business, which is a 7-10x ROI, depending on what they get paid.  We know their ads work, and they have a good sales process.

Why don't we have other advisors with a smaller budget tag along with them, learn from them and their sales process, use the ads that are already working, and add them to their Calendly round-robin accounts and get the appointments? Those are our partner programs; we have a few right now. If anybody's interested, they can go to clientsblackbox.com/partner. It starts at about $7,500 a month, and you can get about 15 booked appointments, nine to ten of them show. Usually, if you follow the sales process that the advisor you're joining will give you, you should be able to close about 10% of those. 10% is one out of nine or ten. The average case size is $500,000 annuity and $400,000 AUM. Which is a pretty good ROI. I won't do the math right now. You can spend $7,500, $15,000, or $22,500. You can keep doubling and increasing it until you are doing about $1 million to $2 million monthly in annuity business, which is very systematic. We've made this a process and a system.
 
That's how we've solved the problem of someone not being good on video. Someone else is good on video and already has a virtual sales process. They'll use their videos. If they don't have a virtual sales process and have only been doing business in person through seminars or referrals, it's not a problem. They can learn from somebody doing $3 million or $10 million monthly in annuities with their team. That is the partner option. It took us about six months to develop. It's working very well for the advisors in that program. It's not cost-prohibitive. It's $7,500 a month, which most advisors can afford. It's no commitment. You pretty much just have to join the advisor's team, and you're taken care of.

Swift: That sounds fantastic. You have some amazing success stories on your website. Are there any that jump out to you that exemplify the Clients Blackbox experience?

Khassa: Definitely. I have two in mind. The first is a financial advisor. His first name is Aaron. He started working with us in June 2022. He was using webinars to get clients, which worked for him. He saw one of my Facebook ads and then had a call with me. He learned about my process and saw how much more efficient it is. He said, “If this works and you're not just bluffing me, I need to spend all my money on this because it will work better.” At that point, he was doing about $100,000 a month income. Within five months, we took him to $300,000 a month. We tripled his income in just five months. At that point, I think he brought his company about 1 million a month in new assets. In 18 short months, he went to $18 million a month in new assets; he hired about eight or nine advisors under him and started his own RIA because he found a way to spend a dollar and make ten. His constraint was his time, and how many meetings he could take, so he brought on more advisors and paid them a smaller cut of what he made, then spent more money and gave them the appointments and the sales process. That's the biggest case study that is public right now.
 
The second one is Jonathan. He’s a great advisor in New Jersey. As far as I’m aware, he closed the largest virtual case. Imagine you're a financial advisor. You've never met the client in person. How much money do you think that client will trust you with? In this case, Jonathan closed a $13 million case. The client gave him $13 million. They put $5 million into annuity and $8 million into the market. The $5 million takes care of the clients, a guaranteed lifetime income. The $8 million grows with the market. That's the largest virtual case that I've ever heard of. It came from one of our ads. Jonathan had a good sales process. He made the client trust them, and they took care of that. Those are great case studies. I think that Jonathan, aside from that case, does about, $3 million a month in annuity production between him and his partner. It's very exciting to see that our process works that way and is so successful.

Swift: That is exciting. Thank you again for joining us. Can you tell everyone where they can learn more about Clients Blackbox?

Khassa: Yes, I’m happy to. There are two places. You can go to clientsblackbox.com. I'd like you to go to my YouTube channel, which has almost 100 videos about financial advisor marketing and how you can grow your company as a hybrid RIA with digital marketing and has many free resources. We share pretty much everything we learn on the field. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly for a few dozen financial advisory companies like yours. This is all we do; we're not distracted by anything else. You can learn pretty much all we know for free on YouTube. If you want to become a client, go to the website clientsblackbox.com.

Swift: That's fantastic. Thank you for joining us today, Alex. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.

Khassa: Thank you so much, Jonny.

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