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This is the number one way I would find prospects who have suddenly come into wealth and need your services: Rather than lottery winners or athletes, start with a unique category of those with “sudden wealth” – so-called YouTube celebrities.
The YouTube nouveau riche
Have you ever heard the term “YouTube celebrity”? In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a ton of young people getting rich as skunks as career YouTubers. Here are some examples.
The ACE Family
They live in the Los Angeles area and Kylie Jenner has appeared in some of their videos. They have 15 million subscribers and two kids. A few years ago they were living in their dad’s basement.
The Prince family
Typical rags to riches story. This couple from Fort Wayne, Indiana, was living in poverty until they started a YouTube channel making reaction videos to other people’s videos and now they are followed by 3.5 million people.
Carmen and Corey
Nearly 2.4 million people subscribe to this hilarious channel. They’ve come into fame quickly due to the popularity of their comical prank videos. In a more popular one, for example, Corey pretends to be cheating on Carmen with someone posing as his stepsister.
OKBaby
This channel was started by a couple who had a baby as teenagers. They’ve documented their story and rise to fame as they are now in their earlier 20s with 1.5 million subscribers and a merchandise line. Two children later, Kyra the mother of the family, opened her own business selling baby items.
In one video they talk about how they lost tens of thousands on the sale of a house they owned. Could have used some financial advice, no?
How much coin are we talking about here?
These families aren’t doctors or lawyers, but who cares? They’re making bank. They’ve made it.
They own fancy houses, trailers, jewelry — all kinds of assets. And they have kids, dogs, and aging relatives who appear on the show. Fendi, Gucci, Lamborghini, all the brands. You get to see all of it because they flash it like crazy.
YouTube forbids people from discussing how much money they make, but if you do the math some of these families are probably making $1 million per year. There’s no way to tell for sure as advertising rates vary.
They don’t just earn from the advertising, though; just like celebrities, popular YouTubers earn money from doing product endorsements to their followers. They also sell their own branded “merch,” or merchandise, showing the themes of their shows.
How to reach them
Follow their channel. And I mean get obsessed. You have to know every nuance of their lives. I have four kids so I love the family channels (as you can tell) but there are YouTube stars of every type. So, if you aren’t following any big channels, get on the Tube and hit the subscribe button.
These are just a few ways you could connect with them:
- Some of them have meetups in person. They go “on tour” and meet up with people to show loyalty to the fan base.
- Make a video about them and why you love their channel. It will create attention for them, so they’ll watch. To do this you’ll need to have a YouTube channel of your own.
- Make a video about financial tips for YouTubers and send it to them through Facebook direct messaging.
- Send them a letter as many of them have a P.O. box to receive fan mail. You may want to wait for some dramatic life event (they publicize everything). The medical scares get higher views so the moment something goes wrong with anyone’s health, you’ll know.
- Some of them will “livestream” on YouTube. This will provide you with direct access to them as you can instant message them during the stream.
Just like any form of marketing, the messaging matters when you reach out to someone online. Of course, don’t even think about a sales pitch because they get those all the time.
Sara’s upshot
As you may have guessed I’m a big fan of YouTube marketing for financial advisors. In my opinion, it can open up a world of opportunity for you even beyond what I’ve discussed here. If you’re new to YouTube, listen to this episode of my podcast for tips about how to get started.
Sara Grillo, CFA, is a marketing consultant who helps investment management, financial planning, and RIA firms fight the tendency to barf meaningless cliché on their prospects and bore them as a result. Prior to launching her own firm, she was a financial advisor and worked at Lehman Brothers.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.